Speaker: Ekta Chouhan
Through everyday stories of local women navigating intensified surveillance and restricted mobility, of young students from outside negotiating visibility, desire, and vulnerability, and of families responding to rapid change by tightening control over land and lineage, Prof Chouhan explores how rural–urban interaction becomes deeply gendered. As campuses, gated housing, and new economies emerge, older patriarchal hierarchies do not disappear; they adapt, harden, and sometimes reassert themselves.
This talk is a journey through the villages at Delhi’s edge, where the city does not simply arrive but collides with existing rural worlds. Drawing from her book Sheher Mein Gaon and long-term fieldwork in Sonipat, Haryana, she reflects on what happens when urban expansion is layered onto agrarian life rather than replacing it.