Getting by and falling behind in the new India

Join the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation for an insightful open seminar with Assistant Professor Patrick Inglis

Patrick Inglis Assistant Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College is the author of Narrow Fairways: Getting By and Falling Behind in the New India. 

India remains a country mired in poverty, with two-thirds of its 1.3 billion people living on little more than a few dollars a day. Just as telling, the country's informal working population numbers nearly 500 million, or approximately eighty percent of the entire labour force. Despite these figures and the related structural disadvantages that imperil the lives of so many, the Indian elite maintain that the poor need only work harder and they, too, can become rich.

The book highlights how elites secure and extend class and caste privileges, while also delivering a necessary rebuke to India's present development strategy, which pays far too little attention to promoting quality healthcare, education, and other basic social services that would deliver real opportunities to the poor.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation.

To find out more about the centre, visit our website.