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Sumeet Mhaskar

Contact

mhaskar.sumeet@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1628-3813

Biography

Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar is a Professor of Sociology at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O. P. Jindal Global University. He earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Oxford and a Master's from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at Stanford University and has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Göttingen University. Additionally, he has held positions at the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University; the Center for South Asia, Stanford University; the International Centre for Development and Decent Work, Kassel University; and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Mhaskar's research has examined the multifaceted vulnerabilities workers experience at the lower end of India's rising economy. His primary focus has been on large-scale industrial closures in Mumbai (late 1990s onwards), joblessness, displacement, migration, labour markets, and social and political movements. He is currently working on his book manuscript, tentatively titled The Unmaking of an Industrial Habitat. He is a peer reviewer for academic journals and leading university presses. His scholarly work has been published in top peer-reviewed journals, as well as in edited books, policy reports, and working papers. He also frequently writes opinion pieces for mainstream newspapers and online platforms.

Research Interests

I am interested in the multi-faced vulnerabilities workers experience at the lower end of India’s ‘rising’ economy. To explore the varied dimensions of labouring lives, I deploy qualitative methods, conduct large-scale surveys and engage with archival material. My initial curiosity in labour emerged from the absence of discussions on the caste question within the labour movement in India. South Asian labour studies entirely ignored the labour mobilisations carried out by anti-caste movements. These silences had to do with privileging the category of labour over caste, gender, religion and ethnicity. The latter categories were supposed to become irrelevant due to the force of urbanisation and industrialisation. Interestingly, scholars rarely tested the irrelevance of caste with large-scale empirical evidence. As a result, South Asian scholarship on labour dominated by the privileged castes invisibilised the specific challenges faced by working classes belonging to socially marginalised groups such as the Dalits (untouchables) and Adivasis (indigenous). I pay attention to the intersections of labour with caste, gender, religion and ethnicity while researching migration, the ghettoisation of the labour market, occupational (im)mobility, the impact of joblessness, and social and political movements. I am finalising my book manuscript on Mumbai’s mill workers’ responses to joblessness due to large-scale industrial closures and the spatial-economic transformation of the working-class district.

Selected Publications

Mhaskar, Sumeet (2021). Crisis of Dominance: Understanding the Rural-Urban Roots of Maratha Caste Mobilisation for Reservation. Urbanisation (Indian Institute for Human Settlement) 6(1): 64-81

Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2019). The State of Stigmatised Employment in India: Historical Injustices of Labouring. In D. Dutta (Ed.), Mind The Gap: The State of Employment in India, Oxfam India Inequality Report 2019. New Delhi: Oxfam India, pp. 180 – 199.

Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2019). Preface In H. Van Wersch, The 1982-83 Bombay Textile Strike and the Unmaking of a Labourers City. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, pp. xv – xxxvi.

Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2018). “Ghettoisation of Economic Choices in a Global City: A Case Study of Mumbai.” Economic and Political Weekly (Special Article) 53(29): 29-37.

Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2014). Claiming Entitlements in ‘Neo-Liberal’ India: Mumbai’s Ex-millworkers’ Political Mobilisation on the Rehabilitation Question. QEH Working Paper Series, QEHWPS200: Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, pp.1-24. 

Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2014). Locating Caste in a Globalising Indian City: A Study of Dalit Ex-millworkers’ Occupational Choices in Post-Industrial Mumbai. In Mobility or Marginalisation? Dalits in Neo-Liberal India ed. Clarinda Still. New Delhi and Abingdon: Routledge, pp.107-132.

Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2013). Indian Muslims in a Global City: Socio-Political Effects on Economic Preferences in Contemporary Mumbai. MMG Working Paper 13-04: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, ISSN 2192-2357, pp.1-31

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