This event is in coll aboration with the Department of Anthropolog y\, Department of Asian Studies\, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democrac y (SANSAD)\, David Lam Centre (SFU)\, Sc hool for International Studies (SFU)\, Institute for the Humanities (SFU)\, and Indian Summer Festival.
Alpa Shah presents her co-authored ‘Ground Down by Growth: Trib e\, Caste\, Class and Inequality in 21st Century India’\, listed as a 2018 Book of the Year by The Hindu newspaper. While the world marvels at India’s economic growth rates\, inequality is rising and the country’s ‘untouchable’ and ‘tribal’ communities – who make up a stagge ring one in twenty-five people across the globe – remain at the bottom of t he economic and social hierarchy. How and why is this the case? In conversa tion with economists\, a team of anthropologists lived with Adivasis (‘trib es’) and Dalits (‘untouchables’) in five different sites across India to an swer this question. They show how capitalism is entrenching social d ifference\, transforming traditional forms of identity-based discrimination into new mechanisms of exploitation and oppression. Inherited inequalities of power are merging with the super-exploitation of migrant labour\, and t he conjugated oppression of class\, caste\, tribe and gender. The struggles against these inequalities are considered.
Alpa Sh ah was raised in Nairobi\, read Geography at Cambridge and completed her Ph D in Anthropology at the London School of Economics\, where she now teaches as Associate Professor. She is the author of Nightmarch (a finalist for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing\, a 2018 Book of the Year for the New Statesman\, the Scroll and History Workshop\, a Hindu Year in R eview Book and a Hong Kong Free Press Best Human Rights Book)\, In the S hadows of the State (2010) and Ground Down by Growth (2018) whic h is co-authored with Jens Lerche\, Richard Axelby\, Dalel Benbabaali\, Bre ndan Donegan\, Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramaditya Thakur. She has reported for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service and co-curated the photo exhibition\, Behind the Indian Boom.