Dhole, Neha
(2022)
Doing Complaints: Infrastructures, Boundaries, and Media in New Delhi, India.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which people report and resolve complaints about neighborhood infrastructures in New Delhi, India. I argue that complaints about potholes, broken streetlights, overflowing drains, and toxic air are used to create and manage boundaries of communities based on class, caste, and religious affiliation. Complaints are also used to negotiate authority and responsibility among various political actors. My research is based on interviews, observations, audio recordings, digital ethnography, and participation in events and protests. Over 18 months from 2018 to 2019, I conducted fieldwork in the Okhla region of the city, where about one million people live and work in motley clusters of planned and unplanned neighborhoods. They are involved in “doing complaints” that are solved by Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and employees in different governmental institutions.
I found that complaints were submitted, circulated, and received through face-to-face meetings, written petitions, mobile apps, WhatsApp messages, phone calls, and protest rallies. People’s use of different media depended on their intersecting social affiliations (of class, caste, religion, and gender), historical and contemporary political practices in India, and ideas of scale-making and space-making. The objectives and results of doing complaints using different media technologies were to invoke, maintain, and even blur boundaries between neighborhoods, state and society, and other social orders. The chapters in this dissertation together explain how complaints lead to the (re)making of such boundaries to imagine different communities in Okhla, and India at large. Complaints are approached from diverse perspectives in each chapter: how they are formulated by residents and RWA members in a planned neighborhood; how they are dealt with by technical experts and local politicians; how they are addressed through WhatsApp posts; and how the complaint against a waste incinerator shaped the organization of regional protests. This study analyzes the collective experiences of participants in conflicts and decision-making, as they represent, evaluate, and respond to competing claims to culturally heterogeneous spaces. Thereby delicately balancing the ideal of secularism, the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the enormous reach of social media.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
30 April 2022 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
4 April 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
25 October 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
7 April 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
209 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Anthropology |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
talk, government, belonging, exclusion, neighborhoods |
| Date Deposited: |
25 Oct 2024 19:13 |
| Last Modified: |
28 Oct 2024 12:14 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/42546 |
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