Dr. Anurekha Chari-Wagh from Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune will be delivering a seminar titled "The Challenge of Gendering Social Security: Agrarian Crisis, Precarious Livelihoods and Widow Farmers".

Abstract:

The focus of the presentation is the suicide widow farmers-(small and marginal farmers, single women headed households) who depend on unsustainable agricultural based livelihoods. The analysis by interlinking agrarian crisis and vulnerability of suicide widow farmers highlights the challenges of gendering social security policies. The presentation aims to: one, examine the inclusion process of marginalized groups into unequal structures; two analyze how neoliberal policies of government accentuated existing inequalities within agrarian sector, leading to the deepening of the agrarian crisis; three examine to what extent does the existing social security polices relating to agrarian based livelihoods and widows address the needs of the widow farmers and four, evaluate the highly promising social security policy, the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (henceforth MKSP) that claims to address the varied livelihood needs of women farmers within a highly fragile agrarian economy. I argue that it is important to be wary of ‘one size fits all social security policies’, as it is a waste of time, financial and human resources and programmes though in design may be innovative and gender sensitive, there is a wide chasm between the policy and its implementation. Further a number of policies addressing the specific needs of citizens depending on agriculture based livelihoods are ‘short term and catering with immediate crisis,’ and thus are not sustainable. I would analyze the above arguments by using the conceptual framework of ‘politics of inclusion’, where I state that though the policies are interesting and innovative in design is not effective because it is ‘including widow farmers into existing structural marginalities’, thereby fails to build capabilities necessary for dealing with risks and vulnerability and move towards building sustainable livelihoods.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Anurekha Chari-Wagh is an Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, at Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India. Anurekha specializes in the areas of gender and development, with special focus on rural development programmes (access to wages and microcredit for women in poverty) and land rights for women. She has published on the above issues in national and international journals and chapters in edited books. Anurekha has been teaching sociology since 2001, in various institutions. Anurekha was also a research fellow at Institute of Development Studies, IDS Sussex and received fellowships from Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pursue two study programmes on Social Security and Gender and Policy at Institute of Social Studies, (ISS) The Hague. She has visited University of Uppsala, Sweden and University of Deutso, Spain to teach a seminar course on Contemporary Debates in India; visited Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland) to conduct ‘Classrooms as Multiple Sites of Power: Teaching Sociology to Different and Diverse Student Groups’. Anurekha was also awarded a Short Term Research Fellowship for Academics by Georg-August University, Goettingen, Germany to pursue research on ‘Gendering Citizenship: Women’s Movement in Germany’. May and June 2011. Anurekha was also awarded C V Raman, Post- Doctoral Fellowship, UGC 2014-2015, where she worked at Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut on Wages, Credit and Land Rights in Globalizing India. She is also faculty at Associated Colleges of Midwest (ACM), Pune teaching a course titled: Exploring India: Gender, Culture and Globalization to undergraduate American students under study abroad programme. Anurekha Chari Wagh is also the coordinator of sociology papers: Sociology of India and Sociology of Gender under the University Grants Commission, (UGC) India E Pathshala programme 2012-2016 for developing e-content literature in Sociology.