Yogesh Sharma

Bio: Yogesh Sharma is an academic researcher from Jawaharlal Nehru University. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 3 citations.

The Circuit of Life Water and Water Reservoirs in Pre-modern India

Abstract: The problem of water availability was a pivotal facet of daily life, particularly in urban areas, where it had to be made perennially obtainable in large quantities. Thus, apart from river water, a...

Alexis de Tocqueville and the Indian Revolt of 1857–58:

Abstract: Two important thinkers of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Alexis de Tocqueville, had completely different perceptions about socio-political reality, and change in society. The thematic focus of their writings mainly centred on Europe, and in the case of Tocqueville also America. But India too interested both of them. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote extensively on India, particularly in the context of the Indian revolt of 1857–58, which attracted world-wide attention. What is less well known is that Alexis de Tocqueville also had a serious political and academic interest in India, or rather English India, of which he made a preliminary study in the 1840s. This appeared in the 1962 edition of his works titled Les Oeuvres Complètes d’Alexis de Tocqueville. Earlier, Tocqueville’s close associate Gustave de Beaumont had published his letters in 1861, in the collection Les Oeuvres et Correspondance Inédites d’ Alexis de Tocqueville. Several of these letters, particularly those he wrote to his English friends in 1857–58, contained elaborate comments and observations on the Indian revolt. His comments were pertinent and insightful because they were made by one who had attempted a serious study of India. On 14 November 1843, Tocqueville wrote to his English friend Henry Reeve that he had spent the entire summer doing an intensive study of India. He informed Reeve that he had examined ‘with an infinite pleasure the important question, from all points of view, about the process of your [English] establishment in India. It has been a long time that I have worked with so much passion and involvement.’ The very next day, on 15 November, he wrote to his friend de Corcelle:

From source to sink ‘Official’ and ‘improved’ water in Delhi, 1868–1956

Abstract: This article examines the making of a modern colonial city through the rhetoric of ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’ in relation to water. The reference is to the history of water in the city of Delhi and what may be called ‘the first science of environment’ in a colonial urban context, with a focus not so much on the ‘extent’ of water supply and drainage, and its (in)adequacy in the colonial city, as on concerns around the ‘(im)purity’ of water, narratives of pollution, technologies of purity and the transformations they effected in a colonial context. In doing so it hopes to build upon a rich tradition of writings on urban water, its modernisation as also its location within a colonial regime, being suggestive of a framework in which we may consider water both as infrastructure and as environment, as much a network of pipes and drains as matters of pollution and well-being, as much a story of the search for and protection of the source as of the fate of the sink into which it ultimately flows.

Drinking-Water and drinking water: Trajectories of Provision and Consumption in the UK, Taiwan and Delhi

Abstract: In many advanced economies, water is one of the most taken-for-granted and ?ordinary? objects of consumption However, the emergence of all-purpose (including drinking) water was the outcome of long and varied historical processes, involving major changes in both systems of provision and patterns of consumption In many parts of the world, there are still different types and sources of water for different consumption purposes, and there are significant inequalities in rights over this most basic resource, especially water fit for drinking Water presents a critical lens to explore organisations of economies of a good, which are often a complex mix of private, commercial, or public systems of provision This paper will argue that an ?instituted economic process? approach is fruitful in exploring diverse configurations of production, appropriation, distribution and consumption of water In particular, it will argue that practices of consumption are best analysed as integral and necessary dimensions of these wider configurations of economic organisation The analysis will draw on my current comparative research in the UK, Delhi and Taiwan, and empirically demonstrates the need to problematise water as a consumption good, in order to understand its rich and complex diversity This research arose from my comparative research on bottled water, undertaken in the wider research programme of the ESRC Sustainable Practices Research Group