Anindita Adhikari is a WCED Postdoctoral Fellow for 2023-25. She is a political sociologist who studies varieties of local citizenship practices, bureaucracies, and the politics of welfare with a regional focus on South Asia and India in particular. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University in 2023. Her research is motivated and informed by a decade of work with activist networks and federal and state governments in India on expanding access to social rights and accountability in governance.
Anindita is currently working on her book project, "Shikayat to Jawabdehi: Redeeming Rights and Democratizing the Local State in India," which traces the evolution of the most ambitious phase of rights-based welfare expansion in post-colonial India and its effects on local governance and civic action. The book examines how accountability can be institutionalized within highly centralized and opaque bureaucracies and engender citizen participation in unequal contexts with long histories of state failure. Based on extensive field research conducted in the state of Bihar, the book argues that the ritualization of interactions with citizens who have been historically marginalized, in rule-based settings, builds a new legal consciousness within the bureaucracy. The book shows that these reforms are not merely technocratic initiatives but bear the stamp of ordinary people’s long struggles against state power and are institutionalized through a cyclical embedding of civic norms in bureaucratic frameworks and vice versa. Turning to the law in action, the book shows how these new openings in the local state, which combine organic forms of mobilization with induced forms of participation and recognition of individual and collective claims, builds political capacities through its use, incentivizes collective action, and enlivens local democracy. In large part, these changes can be attributed to the role of state-sponsored but autonomous facilitation and transforming the conditions under which the state listens. At a time when democracies across the world falter and welfare rights come under attack, the book aims to offer new understandings of how legalizing accountability can build effective social democracies, particularly in the Global South.
In addition to developing her book manuscript and preparing articles, Anindita will continue to support the organization she co-founded, the Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research, which works on strengthening transparency and accountability in public service delivery in India, in collaboration with government and civil society. She is also a visiting assistant professor at the National Law School, Bangalore, India where she co-teaches a course on Accountability and Governance.
Education
- Ph.D., Sociology, Brown University, 2023
- M.A., Sociology, Brown University, 2017
- M.A., Development Studies, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2008
- B.A. (Honors), Political Science, Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, 2007
Awards and Honors
- International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (2019)
- Joukowsky Research Award, Brown University (2017)
- Graduate Program in Development Fellowship, Brown University (2016)
- Centre for Contemporary South Asia, Research Fellowship, Brown University (2016)
