Social Sciences
Mona G. Mehta
Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Arts
PhD (University of Chicago)
Research Interests: Cultural politics of urban transformations, Youth aspirations, Middle class politics, Democracy and its vulnerabilities
Mona G. Mehta is Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Arts at the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. She is a political scientist (PhD, University of Chicago) with research interests in urban transformations, democracy and middle class politics in the context of Gujarat and India at large. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the cultural politics of urban transformations and youth aspirations in post-liberalisation India. Her book explores what we can learn about India’s urbanisation by examining the trajectories of pastoralists or maldharis, who have increasingly settled into urban spaces, and their strategies to navigate the precarious urban informal economy. Her previous work explored the vulnerability and complicity of democratic and civic spaces in the production of exclusionary politics. Her academic writings have been published in journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Contemporary South Asia and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Professor Mehta has previously taught in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Scripps College in Claremont, USA (2010-2012) and in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (2012-2020).
Profile
Professor Mona G. Mehta is Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Arts at the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. She is a social scientist with research interests in urban transformations, democracy and middle class politics in the context of Gujarat and India at large. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the cultural politics of urban transformations in post-liberalisation India. Her book will explore what we can learn about India’s urbanisation by examining the trajectories of pastoralists or maldharis, who have increasingly settled into urban spaces, and their strategies to navigate the precarious urban informal economy. Her previous work explored the vulnerability and complicity of democratic and civic spaces in the production of exclusionary politics. Her academic writings have been published in journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Contemporary South Asia and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Professor Mehta has previously taught in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Scripps College in Claremont, USA (2010-2012) and in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (2012-2020). She has authored several scholarly articles and book chapters pertaining to her research interests.
Select Publications
Peer reviewed journal articles:
Mehta, Mona G. “Upgrading’ in Precarious Times: Social Mobility, Skills and Entrepreneurship among Pastoralist Youth in Urbanising Gujarat.” South Asian History and Culture, (2024), 1–16, Doi:10.1080/19472498.2024.2338596.
Priyam, Manisha, Mehta, Mona G., and Vaid, Divya. “Urban Transformations, Youth Aspirations, and Education in India.” South Asian History and Culture, (2024), 1–11. Doi:10.1080/19472498.2024.2338597
Mona G. Mehta. 2019. ‘Regional liberals and the urban anxieties of Indian populism’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, [Spotlight On - Political Geographies of Right-Wing Populism] Vol. 43, Issue 4.
Mona G. Mehta. 2018. 'The Middle Class Capture of Urban Spaces', Seminar Magazine, symposium on ‘Ahmedabad: The City and Her Soul’, July, Issue 707, pp.20-25.
Mona G. Mehta. 2018. ‘Reflections on place, mobility and belonging in Gujarat’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 52, 1 (2018): 1–18.
Dyotana Banerjee and Mona G. Mehta. 2017. “Caste and capital in the remaking of Ahmedabad”, Contemporary South Asia, vol. 25, Issue 2, 182-195.
Mona G. Mehta. 2017. ‘From Gandhi to Gurus: the rise of the ‘Guru-Sphere’’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 40, Issue 3, 2017, 500-516.
Mona G. Mehta, Raghubir Sharan. 2016. IITs and the Project of Indian Democracy, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 51, Issue No. 11, pp.12-14.
Mona G. Mehta, 2016. Ahmedabad: the middleclass megacity, South Asian History and Culture, Volume 7, Issue 2, pp.191-207.
Mona G. Mehta, 2010. A river of no dissent: Narmada movement and coercive Gujarati nativism, (Gujarat Special issue), South Asian History and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 509–528.
Nalin Mehta and Mona G. Mehta, 2010. “Gujarat beyond Gandhi: notes on identity, conflict and society”, (Gujarat Special issue), South Asian History and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 4, October, pp.467-479.
Book Chapters:
Mona G. Mehta, 2020. ‘Chunaav/Election’, Keywords for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century, Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza (editors), Bloomsbury.
Mona G. Mehta, 2020. ‘Jumla,’ Keywords for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century, Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza (editors), Bloomsbury.
Mona G. Mehta, 2015. ‘Partisan Dreams, Fractured Homeland: Gujarati Diaspora Politics in America, Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right, Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum (editors), Oxford University Press, New York, pp.327-345.
Mona G. Mehta, 2010. A river of no dissent: Narmada movement and coercive Gujarati nativism, in Gujarat beyond Gandhi: notes on identity, conflict and society, (Routledge).
Nalin Mehta and Mona G. Mehta, 2010. “Gujarat beyond Gandhi: notes on identity, conflict and society” in Gujarat beyond Gandhi: notes on identity, conflict and society, (Routledge).
Book Reviews
Mehta, Mona G. 2024. Language, Identity, and Power in Modern India (Gujarat, c.1850-1960) by Riho Isaka, International Quarterly for Asian Studies, (March, 2024)
Mehta, Mona G. 2019. A people’s constitution: the everyday life of law in the Indian republic by Rohit De, Biblio: A review of books, vol. XXIV, no. 1-3, Jan.-Mar., pp.13-14
Mehta, Mona G. 2018.‘Violent Conjunctures in Democratic India’, by Amrita Basu, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 52, Issue 2, pp. 250 – 253.
Mehta, Mona G. 2017. ‘Tamil Brahmans: The making of a middle-class caste’, by C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 124-126.
Mehta, Mona, G. 2017. ‘Democracy and Its Institutions’, by André Béteille, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Volume 51, Issue 1, pp.124-126, 2017.
Mehta, Mona G. 2016 ‘Divided we govern: coalition politics in modern India’, by Sanjay Ruparelia, Studies in Indian Politics, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 252-253, Dec. 2016.
Teaching
Courses Taught:
State and Society
Within the world of cities
Economy and Society
Key Concepts in Social Theory
Paradox of Indian Democracy
Mobs, Crowds and Citizens: Democracy and Mass Mobilization in India
Nations and Nationalism
Introduction to Comparative Politics
Ballots, Bullets and Identities: South Asian Politics and the Shadow of Gandhi
Books
Nalin Mehta and Mona G. Mehta (editors), 2010. Gujarat Beyond Gandhi: Identity, Conflict and Society, (Routledge, New York and London).
Mona G. Mehta. Navigating concrete pastures: Maldhari marginality, mobility and aspirations in urbanising Gujarat (manuscript under preparation)