Political Science Sees Expanded Focus on South Asia

Over the past decade, Yale’s Department of Political Science has grown to address some of the most pressing areas of political concern, both contemporary and historical, in South Asia.  Driven by faculty recruitment, including two positions created through the Yale India Initiative, this growth is also marked by a strong cohort of graduate students pursuing research in the region, by the expansion of course offerings and the achievements of its undergraduate majors. 

Faculty expertise in the region spans the subfields of comparative politics, international relations, and political theory and is especially strong in the study of India and Pakistan.  Through the Yale India Initiative, the Department has seen the creation of both senior and junior faculty positions. Professor Steven Wilkinson was appointed as the Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, and Tariq Thachil was recruited as Assistant Professor in 2010.  Professors Wilkinson and Thachil bring to the Department combined and complementary expertise on electoral politics, ethnicity, and democracy.

Focusing on India and Pakistan, Professor Wilkinson’s current research interests examine electoral competition, ethnic riots, and the relation between military and democracy.  The latter are explored in his forthcoming monograph Army Nation and Democracy: India in Comparative Perspective (Harvard University Press). Beyond his research, teaching and advising, Professor Wilkinson has actively participated in programs generated by the India Initiative, including the Yale Parliamentary Leaders Program and the Shimla Retreat.  The former has brought a cohort of Indian parliamentarians to Yale’s campus every summer since 2007 for an intensive academic and leadership training program with Yale faculty.  The latter, now in its second year, seeks to foster dialogue among scholars, activists and policy makers within and outside India on issues of contemporary significance.

Professor Thachil’s research focuses on political parties and his book manuscript, Patient Persuasion: Why the Poor Vote for an Elite Party in India examines the reasons for electoral support for religious nationalism among lower caste and tribal voters. The dissertation on which the manuscript is based was awarded the Gabriel A. Almond prize by the American Political Science Association, and the Sardar Patel Prize for best dissertation on modern India in the social sciences, fine arts, and humanities. His new project examines the political consequences of domestic migration within India. Professor Thachil has also served as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the recently created South Asian Studies major, and has been involved as a co-organizer of the Modern South Asia Workshop and other conferences convened by the South Asian Studies Council, and as a participant at the Shimla Retreat.

Associate Professor Thad Dunning’s research examines parties, political mobilization, and caste-based quotas at the local level in India, using evidence from surveys in several states including Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. A recent paper in the American Political Science Review on ethnic quotas in the first three of these states, co-authored with his former student and Yale College graduate Janhavi Nilekani, argues that caste-based quotas may not achieve distributive targeting of resources to disadvantaged communities because of cross-cutting and competing partisan affiliations and politics.

Associate Professor Karuna Mantena combines expertise in political theory with a regional interest in South Asia by working at the intersection of social theory, political thought and histories of empire in the region.  She is presently focusing her research on political realism and the political thought of M.K. Gandhi.

Faculty strength in South Asian studies has fostered a strong cohort of graduate students working in the region.  Recent and current students include Paul Kenny, Shivaji Mukherjee, Madhavi Devasher, Nikhar Gaikwad, Gareth Nellis, Niloufer Siddiqui, Suparna Chowdhury and Anurag Sinha.  Professor Wilkinson observes that because of the Department’s strength in South Asia, it is able to now recruit both top students in the field, and places them well after graduation. 

With the growth in faculty expertise comes an expanded array of course offerings.  In the 2012-2013 academic year, political science courses covering South Asia included PLSC384/SAST 244 Indian Democracy in Comparative Perspective; PLSC 424/SAST 440 Gandhi and the Politics of Nonviolence; PLSC181/EP&E 425/SAST 342 South Asia in World Politics; and SAST 341b/PLSC 442 Development in South Asia.  For the past several years, an innovative collaboration with Professor Christophe Jaffrelot with Professors Wilkinson and Thachil has enabled the Department to offer two co-taught comparative courses: Indian Democracy in Comparative Perspective, and India and Pakistan: Democracy, Conflict and Development.  Visiting scholars and researchers have further enhanced course offerings.  In 2012-2013 Visiting Assistant Professor Jennifer Bussell taught The Political Economy of Natural Disasters, while Rice Visiting Lecturer in Global Justice and South Asian Studies taught Diversity and Struggles for Equality in South Asia.

Indeed, the energy and momentum generated around the political science of South Asia is evident in the flourishing of a new generation of scholars in the region.  Among these future scholars, Thad Dunning notes that Yale College graduate Janhavi Nilekani is now pursuing a PhD at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, while Rishabh Khosla published the results of his senior thesis on caste reservations and the distribution public goods in Andhra Pradesh in Economic and Political Weekly. Tariq Thachil notes that Olivia Dowling, who graduated in 2009, has spent time at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University on a Fox Fellowship.   

Graduate students are placing well, even in a difficult job market, and moving on to establish careers of their own: Shivaji Mukherjee will take up a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, while Paul Kenny, currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, will in July 2013 join the Australian National University where he will be Research Fellow in Indian Political and Social Change in the School of International, Political, and Strategic Studies.