Sujatha SUBRAMANIAN, The Ohio State University, United States
Contemporary scholarship has highlighted how the disproportionate focus on violence and victimization in the framing of Indian women’s interactions with public spaces is used to justify the regulation and surveillance of women (Khan et al, 2011; Bhattacharyya, 2015; Iyer, 2017). However, adolescent girls are largely absent from this scholarship, even as girls are most affected by practices of surveillance in the name of their protection. My paper addresses this gap in scholarship by looking at the key role played by the policies and practices of the juvenile justice system of India in creating specific discourses around urban public spaces and the safety of girls. I focus specifically on the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the international development discourses that inform the work of these organizations, studying how NGOs construct working class neighborhoods of Delhi as unsafe for young women and girls. Romani (2016) argues that girls are “monolithically rendered by NGOs as subjects at risk of violence, exploitation and disempowerment”, often because of their location in neighborhoods that are constructed as “dangerous, immoral and exploitative” (p. 368). How do NGO staff working in the slums of Delhi create slippages between “dangerous neighborhoods” and “girls in danger”, and how do these slippages justify the policing of girls and their detention within juvenile justice? Based on interviews with NGO staff who work in the slums of Delhi and analysis of India’s child protection laws, my paper argue that the work of NGOs in Delhi’s slums has particularly constructing working-class and oppressed caste girls’ sexuality as deviant, dangerous, and pathological, and in extending the carceral net of the juvenile justice system over their lives.
Mots clés : Non-Governmental Organizations|Girlhood|Juvenile Justice |Delhi |Slums
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