Deepika M

Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad

[𓃰🇵🇸 @homobhabha]

i kiIIed that guy please arrest me @keralapolice @Mohanlal @vdsatheesan

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

@uohpolsc congratulates @ganeshwar_s on his piece in @epw_in, Vol 61 Issue 33, on the theme "Dravidian Consensus and Electoral Politics in Tamil Nadu."

@HydUniv @CommunitasPolSc
#EPW #TamilNaduElections #DravidiamPolitics

https://t.co/UmYyYcWYlw

[Mike Pesca @pescami]

Ordinary Abundance. This is the greatest thing I've read in weeks. No kidding. This should win a Pulitzer in a category not yet invented. https://t.co/iqnoACNt6z

[Ganeshwar @ganeshwar_s]

Wrote on the Cambridge Companion to Periyar, why it matters and what it could have been. For @thewire_in

https://t.co/jHOgnXCy9p

[Nidheesh M K @mknid]

Dileep walked free today.

The legal case will continue.

But let’s take a moment to sink this day. These eight years ushered in a cultural reset that cannot be reversed by any court decision.

The legal case itself made abstractions like patriarchy and power structures suddenly acquire physical weight, became things you could point to, document, fight in a courtroom.

But the case’s true significance lies in how it equipped a Malayali to hold powerful men accountable, how male impunity became slightly less absolute, how silence became slightly less obligatory.

When the survivor filed her complaint on that February night in 2017, she couldn’t have known she was tipping the first domino in a sequence that would topple structures standing for decades. The crime itself—abduction and sexual assault in a moving car, recorded by the perpetrator—was horrific enough. But the complaint’s filing set off a chain reaction that would dismantle the Malayalam film industry’s carefully maintained architecture of silence.

Something changed in how Malayalis talk about gender and cinema. Before this case, discussions of “casting couch” culture existed in whispered rumors, blind items, and knowing jokes. After 2017, these conversations moved to op-eds in major newspapers, prime-time news debates, social media discourse with real names attached.

Young women I’ve interviewed for various stories now reference post-actress assault case as a temporal marker, a before-and-after in their consciousness about gender dynamics in Kerala. They can’t point to what changed exactly, but they know something did.

Kerala’s film industry long maintained a self-image as somehow more progressive, more artistic, less crass than Bollywood or South Indian commercial cinema. The WCC’s formation and the testimonies that emerged shattered this exceptionalism. Malayalam cinema was revealed to be just as patriarchal, just as structurally violent toward women, just as invested in protecting powerful men.

This loss of innocence punctured collective myth-making.

The survivor’s decision to continue her career, to be photographed smiling at events, to do romantic scenes, challenged Kerala’s narrow conception of how assault survivors should behave. She didn’t subscribe to visible suffering, withdrawal from public life or performance of permanent trauma.

Her refusal of that script didn’t just help her personally; it expanded imaginative space for other survivors. The idea that you can be assaulted and still be sexual, ambitious, glamorous, professionally successful. This cognitive shift ripples outward in ways impossible to quantify.

The Women in Cinema Collective didn’t exist before May 2017. Now it does with office space, regular meetings, official spokespeople, institutional memory. You can attend their press conferences, read their statements, trace their interventions.

The Hema Committee Report didn’t exist before 2017. Now there’s a 235-page government document sitting in archives, cited in academic papers, referenced in parliamentary debates. 30+ FIRs were filed.

A.M.M.A’s entire leadership went into resignation, leaving a vacuum that forces institutional restructuring. These are concrete institutional realities that exist independently of how anyone feels about today’s verdict.

Then there are things you can feel but can’t put a finger on. On film sets, a moment of calculation exists now before certain jokes get told, before certain demands get made, before power gets exercised in certain ways.

It’s not that harassment stopped. It’s not that power dynamics disappeared. It’s that there’s a new variable in the risk calculation: Could this get documented in ways that damage me even if I’m never convicted?

[Satyaki Barua @barua_satyaki]

Glad to share my review of @AmoghDS's pathbreaking, ambitious and empirically rich study on the transformation of electoral campaigns in India, The Backstage of Democracy (2024, @CambridgeUP) for @FCCPolitics.
@uohpolsci
https://t.co/lsYyLoQ3sd

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

@ArchisMohan writes a review of Prof. @kailashkk's study, titled 'The Politics of Social Welfare: The BJP and the Discerning Voter', for @bsindia Standard.

[K K Kailash @kailashkk]

In the latest issue of @StudiesIndian I write on the politics of social welfare using data from the National Elections Studies @LoknitiCSDS post-poll survey on welfare and voting in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections https://t.co/PTqN2m9Byz
🧵

[Amal Jose Philip @thengummoodan]

A scholar at the @HydUniv and his family has been undergoing cruel harassment at the hands of the @BJP4India MLA in Rajasthan.

The MLA and his gang have unlawfully occupied his house for long time and does not let them live there anymore.

Please do share and support.

[K K Kailash @kailashkk]

@uohpolsci is recruiting. Come join us, great place to work and live. Advert is broad. For more details, https://t.co/sE0O97XGNN
Do share with friends & colleagues.
@School_SocialSc @HydUniv

[K K Kailash @kailashkk]

I write on the #TirupatiLaddu fracas in @IndianExpress https://t.co/FNMhZrhmJz

[Lokniti-CSDS @LoknitiCSDS]

Recent @LoknitiCSDS article in @the_hindu by @kailashkk sheds light on the evolving impact of #socialwelfare policies on #votingbehaviour since 2004. From #MGNREGS to #Ujjwala, these policies have shaped election outcomes.

[K K Kailash @kailashkk]

Coalitions governments are demos-enabling, executive constraining, inclusive, and representative of the plurality. Checks and balances and veto players allowed space and autonomy to institutions. @NeelanjanSircar @thewire_in

https://t.co/d4GRikbkiv

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

'BJP's Surat win: Indication that party is a victim of its own success'

@kailashkk, faculty in the Department of Political Science writes in @the_indian_expr

@HydUniv @CommunitasPolSc @School_SocialSc

[Kham Khan Suan Hausing @kksuanh]

My colleague @kailashkk perceptively weighs on the implications of BJP's uncontested win of Surat parliamentary seat on trust within and without the BJP and democracy at large in India @uohpolsci https://t.co/RXV8yBJI8j

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

@ShreyaKSugathan, research scholar in the Department of Political Science, reviews -

'Love Jihad and Other Fictions: Simple Facts to Counter Viral Falsehoods'

by @SreenivasanJain @MariyamAlavi @sharmasupriya

Link-https://t.co/pLAzEtbtYL

@AlephBookCo @KailashKK @HydUniv

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

Department of Political Science invites you to a talk on-

'Digital Sovereignty and Data Ownership: Dilemmas in the Global South'.

Speaker-Dr Aakansha Natani, IIIT Hyderabad 
Chair-Prof Vasanthi Srinivasan, @uohyd

13th March, 3.30PM, Seminar Hall

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

📢PUBLICATION ALERT📢

@kailashkk, faculty in the Dept of Political Science, discusses the importance of generational shift in helping us nuance existing party-choice explanations in his new article published in @StudiesIndian

@HydUniv @CommunitasPolSc @School_SocialSc

[Dept of Political Science, University of Hyderabad @uohpolsci]

Department of Political Science, @HydUniv is all set to host 16th AICCS

@bhimeas, Assistant Professor and Co-convener of 16th AICCS invites you all to participate in this event.
@ics_delhi @CsdHyderabad @Himalayas_SNU

Register now to attend: https://t.co/1s6bDuOgcP

[K K Kailash @kailashkk]

Happening later this month. The All India Conference of China Studies at @uohpolsci @School_SocialSc @HydUniv organised by @bhimeas on the theme social dynamics and political responses in #China To register: https://t.co/NzcuGn6KQa