M.A. in Development Studies

This course seeks to introduce the study of industrial labour and its intrinsic role in development to students. The emergence of an industrial workforce needs to be understood through the specific trajectory of the consolidation of both capitalism and state power in India. The interplay of local systems of hierarchy with these forces has resulted in specific patterns, sections and contradictions characterising the Indian labour force. The everyday of the average Indian worker is thus enmeshed in peculiarities that can be most fruitfully understood at disciplinary intersections, which the course attempts to do by drawing from social anthropology, labour history and political sociology. The course introduces central themes in this discussion through five modules, namely (1) Capital, State and Labour (2) Inequality and the Working Class (3) Shopfloor Relations and Labour Control (4) Mobility, Migration and Working lives (5) Welfare, Regulation and Organisation. The pedagogy revolves around intensive reading and lecture-based discussion.

This course starts with a discussion of the supply and demand for health and health care delivery. It then introduces the role of asymmetric information in the market for health insurance leading to adverse selection and moral hazard. It further introduces the concepts used to assess health technology. It then discusses the range of policies,such as nationalized health care and social health insurance available to different countries to solve the problems that arise in both the healthcare and health insurance markets.

This course aims to introduce students to what are chronic diseases and the various factors involved in their management. The course consists of two modules: 1) a theoretical, taught module that includes topics ranging from patient education to supportive care systems, and 2) a practical module where students are expected to visit hospitals and conduct a study.

The main aim of this course is to provide a basic understanding of economics. The course covers microeconomics topics such as the theory of households making consumption, the theory of firms making input choices and output decisions and different types of market structures that these firms operate and government policies to deal with market failure. Then in the second part of the syllabus, the course broadly covers macroeconomics topics such as measuring national income, fiscal and monetary policies, balance of payments and exchange rate policy. The course makes an attempt to improve student’s abilities to evaluate views and opinions related to economics and develop their own perspectives based on sound reasoning.

This course will introduce students to understand how sexuality and sexual identity are entangled with discourses of development, namely health, labour industry and human rights. The objectives of this course are to understand the role of sexual identity within global discourses around development; to analyse different policies and laws around sexuality and sexual identity, and to sensitise students about the different kinds of prejudices and discriminations against sexual minorities in the formal economy

This course foregrounds the need to incorporate the question of social justice, in research on mental health and disability. Drawing on recent work in the critical and discursive traditions in psychology and allied disciplines such as anthropology and disability studies, this course will train students to examine and analyze contemporary theory and research in disability and mental health from critical perspectives. In the course, students will read qualitative and ethnographic studies on people experiencing shared suffering in different domains including but not limited to disability, disasters, mental health, social suffering, political violence, trauma, etc. Questions of value and justice will form the bedrock of the course. Readings will illustrate the importance of taking into consideration local contexts and engaging with marginalized voices in order to address development issues in the Global South.

Free Elective allows a student to register for a course in any discipline within IITH.

This course will introduce students to ideas and concepts in development drawing from the disciplines of economics, sociology and politics. It will emphasise on diverse theoretical approaches to development that emerged after World War II, and the historical and ideological contexts within which these theories evolved. Thereafter, the course would focus on the ‘practice’ of development using empirical studies from the North and South. At the end of the course, students will be familiar with seminal literature in development theory, and be able to critically appraise specific development policies and practices.

Primary objective of this course is to build an understanding of the economic issues in the developing world using theoretical foundations and empirical evidence based on the economic theory. This course will focus on both ‘macro’ as well as ‘micro’ perspectives of economic problems in developing countries. This course starts with an overview of comparative development across the various countries in the world. It then introduces the models of growth which helps in exploring the determinants of economic development. It further introduces the concepts of inequality, poverty, and the structural characteristics of development. It then moves on to discuss the demographic evolution during the process of development. In the end, it will focus on the structure of markets and the associated problems of these markets in the developing countries.

One of the primary objectives of Behavioural Sciences is to understand behaviour in controlled situations. Behavioural sciences rely heavily on quantitative research methods. Quantitative research methods are extensively used in studies in behavioural sciences. This course will help research scholars get an in-depth understanding of different quantitative research methods and the basic assumptions behind those methods. Topics covered: Introduction to Quantitative research methods, Different types of data, Ethical issues in behavioural research, The research process, Defining the research problem, Research and theory building, Experimental method, Survey method and questionnaire design, Research Designs, Determining the sample size, Sampling techniques, Measurement and scaling, Descriptive and univariate statistics, Multivariate analysis.

This course aims to study the ways in which medicine, its practice, institutions and its principles are enmeshed in social relationships and structures. Drawing from an existing and emerging engagement in the field of science, technology and society studies, medical anthropology and psychology this course introduces students to the ways in which medicine and its practice comes to be marked by social negotiations. The course brings together disciplinary conversations in Psychology and Anthropology to reflect upon clinical practices surrounding health and other aspects of the body.

This course will introduce students to the ongoing politics and intellectual debates that are currently affecting and are being affected by institutions and practices in contemporary India. Using an anthropological approach and critique, this course will be taught using detailed ethnographies and case studies to look at processes of social stratification, political negotiation, and identity formation that are inscribed through everyday practices of education, work, and governance.

Ecological crises have been a central aspect of social life for the past several decades. In the early 1990s, sociologist Ulrich Beck, in his “Risk Society” thesis, famously argued that risks are better understood as the primary product of industrial civilization rather than its unfortunate side-effects. Sociologist Charles Perrow has similarly argued that in tightly coupled complex industrial systems, accidents should be understood as “normal” rather than exceptional. Since then, both, the acuteness and visibility of environmental crises have become ever-more urgent: witnessed, for example, in growing levels of air, water, and plastic pollution and associated health and ecological effects as well as the increasing frequency of extreme weather events globally. Indeed, many have argued that the current geological era should be rightly understood as the Anthropocene, in recognition of the unprecedented impact of anthropogenic (i.e. human) activity on the earth’s environment. How can we understand the dynamics of the anthropocene? How are the risks and rewards of environmental harm distributed across and within various societies? How do we address the seeming tension between economic development and environmental sustainability that seem to be at the very heart of contemporary socio-political dynamics? What kinds of techno-social infrastructures can help address some of the challenges that the Anthropocene brings forth? This course surveys these and other questions, using Beck’s “risk society” thesis as a point of departure.

The course will familiarise students to questions of social inequality and justice in the specific context of development initiatives and policies in India. Divided into four modules, the course introduces students to historical and contemporary conceptualisations of both inequality and our efforts to address it. This will be achieved through an evaluation of social structure, state interventions and popular action in the case of scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and religious minority communities in India using a variety of academic and popular sources. Gender is woven in as an overarching dimension of inequality across all modules. Pedagogy is lecture and discussion based with well-defined readings and material for each class.

Introduction; Theoretical and philosophical premises of qualitative methodologies; Difference between quantitative and qualitative methodologies; New paradigms in the social sciences \\ Qualitative methods of data collection: Ethnography; Participant and non-participant observation; Interviews (semi-structured and unstructured) and focus group discussions; Participatory research methods and action research \\ Qualitative methods of data analysis: Thematic analysis; Narrative analysis; Grounded theory technique; Discourse analysis; Quantifying qualitative data.

This course foregrounds the need to incorporate the question of social justice, in research on mental health and disability. Drawing on recent work in the critical and discursive traditions in psychology and allied disciplines such as anthropology and disability studies, this course will train students to examine and analyze contemporary theory and research in disability and mental health from critical perspectives. In the course, students will read qualitative and ethnographic studies on people experiencing shared suffering in different domains including but not limited to disability, disasters, mental health, social suffering, political violence, trauma, etc. Questions of value and justice will form the bedrock of the course. Readings will illustrate the importance of taking into consideration local contexts and engaging with marginalized voices in order to address development issues in the Global South.

To examine the relationships between population variables and sustainable human development. It will expose students to the components of population growth and their influence on development.

The objective of this course is to introduce the applied econometric methods and research designs commonly used in empirical microeconomic research. This course starts with the assumptions of the classical linear regression model. It then discusses the basic properties of ordinary least squares estimator. It further discusses the implications of the relaxation of the various assumptions of the classical linear regression model. It moves on to the discussion of selection bias that typically arises in impact evaluation studies. It then discusses the role of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) to address the issue of selection bias. In the end, it introduces the tools such as Instrumental Variable (IV) estimation, Differences-In-Difference (DID) and Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD).

This course aim to introduce the basic concepts in statistical testing, and data visualization. Topics will include: Probability, Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, Parametric and Non-parametric tests. Course will provide detailed theory, assumptions and method related to various hypothesis testing tools for example: Measures of central tendency, Correlation, Regression, ANOVA, and Linear Models.

The aim of this course is to understand main aspects of latest developments and policy issues affecting the Indian economy. The course is expected to enable the students to understand Indian economy in a comprehensive manner.