FAS conducted Focus Group Discussions in Palakurichi village

The Foundation for Agrarian Studies conducted Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with two groups of women in Palakurichi village in Kilvelur Taluk of Nagapattinam District in Tamil Nadu on December 22 and 23, 2021. The first group consisted of twelve women from Scheduled Caste households mostly engaged in farm and non-farm manual work. The second group had eleven women from Backward Classes and Most Backward Classes households. These focus group discussions were carried out as part of a study by the International Labour Organization (ILO), that aims to understand the gendered impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women in rural India.

Palakurichi is located at the tail end of the lower Cauvery Delta region in Tamil Nadu. The village is located 16 km from the nearest town Velankanni and 18 km from Nagapattinam. This village has been first studied in 1918 by Gilbert Slater from the Univeristy of Madras. Four more studies have taken place in the village subsequently with this being the fifth study in the past hundred years that looks at the agrarian relations in the village. The village was first surveyed by FAS in 2019 under the project on “Agrarian Relations in the Lower Cauvery Delta”.

Scheduled Caste households comprise about 60 per cent of the village population, while many of the remaining households belong to Backward Classes and Most Backward Classes. Only a single crop of paddy is cultivated in the village. There is limited availability of work in agriculture which forces households engaged in agricultural labour to turn to other non-agricultural employment as well. MGNREGS plays a vital role in the economy of the manual worker households. Other non-agricultural employment options were construction work, driving, and casual labour in the tourism industry in nearby Velankanni.

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Date

Dec 22 - 23 2021
Expired!

Time

3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Local Time

  • Timezone: America/New_York
  • Date: Dec 22 - 23 2021
  • Time: 4:30 am - 5:30 am

Location

Palakurichi
Category

Organizer

Foundation for Agrarian Studies
Email
office@fas.org.in
Website
https://fas.org.in

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The Foundation for Agrarian Studies is a charitable trust based in India and established in 2003.

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Parvathi Menon is a writer, and former journalist. She was Resident Editor of The Hindu, Bengaluru, and also served as the London Correspondent of The Hindu.

Namasivayam is currently a member of the Kerala State Planning Board. He has over 37 years of consulting experience of which over two decades have been spent on leading several large, complex, multi-year reform engagements in various sectors, with a special focus on the electricity sector. He was Deloitte India’s Energy and Resources Industry and Government sector Leader until his retirement in March 2017. Before joining Deloitte, Namasivayam was part of the India leadership team of PwC, and led its Government Reforms and Infrastructure Development service unit and Energy Utility & Mining industries.

Sarita is a special teacher and certified trainer in QST for autism spectrum disorders. She has been working at the Spastics Society of Karnataka from 2007, and is currently the Head of the Autism Spectrum Unit.

Professor, Department of Economics, Meijo University, Japan

Associate Professor, Kanagawa University, Japan

Former ICSSR National Fellow, Former Professor and Head :
1. Department of Economics, University of Madras

2. Dr. Ambedkar Centre for Economic Studies, University of Madras

Yogesh holds an MA (Honours) degree in Economics from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana. He is interested in understanding credit markets and financial inclusion in rural India. Yogesh will be a part of the team involved in the entry and processing of data collected during our recent re-survey in Uttar Pradesh.

Sai Chandan Kotu is a Research Assistant at the Foundation. He holds a Master's degree in Economic Growth, Population & Development from Lund University, Sweden, and an Integrated Master's in Development Studies from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He has previously worked with FAS as an intern and is currently working on the entry and processing of data collected through our recently concluded survey in two Uttar Pradesh villages. Sai is interested in studying farm mechanisation and technology adoption in Indian agriculture.

Utkarsh is the Communications and Events Coordinator at the Foundation. He holds an MA in Global Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi, and has worked in different capacities, participating in field research, and organising academic and other public events in various organisations. Utkarsh's interests include geopolitics, conflict history, and technology.

B.A. Economics student at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

Saniya is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Symbiosis School of Economics, Pune. She is working with our team to process the data collected from the two villages in Uttar Pradesh. The villages were resurveyed by the Foundation in July.

Komal is an Associate Fellow of the Foundation. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in Sociology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Her research interests include agrarian labour, caste, and gender. Komal is currently working on (un)freedom and labour relations in rural India.

Master's Student at Lund University, Sweden

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Kulvinder Singh

Kulvinder is a Research Assistant at the Foundation. He holds a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, and an MA in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has previously worked with the Haryana State Government as an Information, Education and Communication Expert, Atal Bhujal Yojana. Kulvinder is interested in studying aspects of agrarian change and rural transformation in India and aspires to do a PhD soon.

Nikita is an Editorial Assistant at the Foundation. She is involved with the coordination of the Review of Agrarian Studies (RAS), the peer-reviewed academic journal of the Foundation. Nikita has extensive experience as a copy editor. She holds a Master's degree in English from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Lucknow campus.

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Research Scholar, School of Economics, University of Hyderabad, and

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Tapas is an Associate Fellow of the Foundation. He has a Ph.D. in Social Science from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. His research interests include the irrigation economy of India, water policies and institutions, agricultural policy, economics of farming, and rural incomes. He is also interested in the use of spatial technology to study the Indian countryside. He leads the Project on Village level Spatial Information using Geographic Information System (GIS), and the Pandemic Study Unit of the Foundation that examined the impact of Covid-19 pandemic in rural India.

Sudha is an Administrative Assistant of the Foundation. She assists the administrative division of the Foundation and also has taken part in fieldwork organised by the Foundation.

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Sethu is a Data Analyst of the Foundation. He has done Integrated Masters in Development Studies from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. He has experience of coordinating a field survey of two villages in Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu in 2019. He is interested in agrarian relations in Tamil Nadu and Geographic Information System (GIS).

Sanjukta is a Senior Data Analyst working on the Project on Agrarian Relations in India. She holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Application from West Bengal University of Technology. Her major research interest lies in rural education and schooling. She has experience in working with a web development company prior to joining the Foundation.

Sandipan is a historian of Science, with a Ph.D. from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. His research interest lies in the history of agricultural science in India. He started his professional career as a Software Engineer and a Business Analyst with the Tata Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd, before shifting to social science research. He holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science Engineering, and was a gold medalist for post-graduate studies in School of Development Studies, TISS. He joined the Foundation as the Programme Coordinator in 2016 and became the first Director of the Foundation in 2018. He oversees the work of the Foundation and its various research projects.

M. Sc. in Development Practice. Riya assists in editing the Review of Agrarian Studies and other publications of the Foundation.

M. A. Economics. Ritam works on the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI) team.

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Pinki works as Assistant Manager-Accounts at the Foundation. She has done her Masters in Financial and Management Accounting from Sikkim Manipal University, and Masters in Economics from University of North Bengal. She is experienced in various accounting software packages. She has also been involved in several field work projects of the Foundation.

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Nihira graduated from the New School University, New York with M.Sc. in Media Studies. Her educational background is in film-making and audio production with a concentration on South Asian history. She joined the Foundation for Agrarian Studies in August, 2020 as the Online Events Coordinator.

Madhura Swaminathan is Professor and Head, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore Centre. She is one the Trustees of the Foundation. Webpage

Jayamary is our Office Assistant. She assists the administrative division of the Foundation in maintaining office supplies and in upkeep and maintenance of office premises.

Divya works as the Administrative Executive at the Foundation. She handles the administration and operational human resources activities. She is experienced in the use of MS-office, and accounting software packages. She also assists the Foundation in organising and coordinating various events. Divya has been involved in several fieldwork projects of the Foundation.

Deepak is an Associate Fellow at the Foundation. He has a Ph.D. in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. As part of his doctoral research Deepak analysed the incomes from rice production in Kerala, and compared the crop incomes in Kerala with the Mekong Delta Region in Vietnam. Deepak is interested in agricultural policy, with a particular focus on agricultural costs and incomes. Data visualisation is another area of his expertise. He has experience of working at an analytics company. He holds an Integrated Masters in Economics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. 

Arindam is the Joint Director of the Foundation. He is pursuing Ph.D. in Economics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS)-Pilani, Hyderabad. Arindam leads the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI). He has worked at the Foundation from 2011 and has in-depth knowledge about various data management and analysis techniques. His research interests include rural wage rates and its determinants, rural employment, and Economics of farming. He has hands-on expertise in the use of R software for social science research.

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