The Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) Nuffield - FLAME University is pleased to welcome Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar, Junior Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Dr. Mhaskar's talk is titled "Claiming Entitlements in a Neo-Liberal City Mumbai’s Ex-millworkers Political Mobilisation on the Housing Question."


Abstract
"The question of housing for the urban poor and the working classes has been a contentious issue the world over. Since the 1980s, as the state began withdrawing from the social sectors under the neo-liberal dispensations, it had negative implications for the housing initiatives. This housing crisis has been prominent in the cities, which were once marked by large-scale manufacturing industries and a massive army of workers. These industrial centres had historically witnessed the industrial and political action, which at times, took militant forms. The organised working class movements became the platforms through which the urban poor staked their claim in the city. By 1980s, organised labour in India, like elsewhere in the world, was under attack from the capital and the state. As industrial closures began taking place since the 1990s, the already marginalised space for labour politics began to diminish, and traditional working class unions became non-functional. Studies on Ahmedabad and Kanpur have shown how these processes resulted in the disappearance of spaces for ‘social cohesion,’ and the ‘death of political culture.’ In most places, the former industrial workers felt a ‘loss of power and capacity’, which resulted in their disillusionment with democratic politics. However, the case of Mumbai’s ex-millworkers demonstrate that they did not became cynical towards democratic politics and re-organised on the housing question after their factories closed down. This paper explores the conditions that enabled the re-organisation of ex-millworkers on the housing question in post-industrial Mumbai. It also looks at the role of the mill owners and the ‘neo-liberal’ Indian state on the housing question."


Biography
Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar is currently Junior Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. He also holds Visiting Scholar position at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen. Dr. Mhaskar has previously held post-doctoral and Visiting Scholar positions with Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Max Weber Foundation and CeMIS Göttingen, Center for South Asia at Stanford University, International Centre for Development and Decent Work at Kassel University and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Dr. Mhaskar holds a doctorate in Sociology from St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, and M.A and M. Phil degrees in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. His research interests include labour studies, rural urban migration, educational and occupational attainment, discrimination and exclusion at workplaces, urban transformation and social and political movements.