UMass Boston

Global development, Institutional change, social and economic change processes, market-driven policy paradigms, democratic politics, political economy, transnational flows of knowledge and aesthetics, agrarian studies, artisanal commodities, identity and cultural politics, ethnography, measurement

PhD, Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis

Graduate Certificate, New Institutional Social Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

MA, Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

BA (Honors), Economics, Indraprastha College, Delhi University, India

• Daftary, D. (2020). Democratic decentralization, microcredit, and the workings of local government in rural India. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.
• Daftary, D. (2020). Cultivating a market like the state: Rural development and democratic decentralization in India. Journal of Asian and African Studies.
• Daftary, D. (2019). Elected local bodies, space, and the governance of market expansion in rural India. Geoforum, 103(July), 105-113.
• Daftary, D. (2019). How democratic decentralisation facilitates, sustains, and interrupts market-driven development in India. Development in Practice, 29(3), 360-370.
• Daftary, D. (2019). Market-driven dairying and the politics of value, labor and affect in Gujarat, India. Journal of Peasant Studies, 46(1), 80-95.
• Daftary, D. (2018). Cattle, milk and women’s labour: The politics of contemporary dairying in Gujarat. Economic & Political Weekly, 53(22): 43-50.
• Daftary, D. (2018). An improvising state: Neoliberal governmentality, gender and caste in Gujarat, India. In Leela Fernandes (Ed.), Feminists rethink the neoliberal state: Inequality, exclusion and change (pp. 179-217). New York, NY: NYU Press.
• Daftary, D. (2018). In 2019, disenchantment with the BJP may not be limited to Gujarat. Economic and Political Weekly, 53(3).
• Daftary, D. (2016). Development in post-liberalization India: Marketization, decentralization and informalization in Gujarat. European Journal of Development Research, 28(4), 690–704.
• Daftary, D. (2014). The politics of person, property and technology: Emergent development practice in semi-arid communities in India. Community Development Journal, 49(4), 573-588.
• Daftary, D. (2014). Development in an era of economic reform in India. Development and Change, 45(4), 710-731.
• Gonzales, E., Morrow-Howell, N., Daftary, D., Stafford, R. & Echols, J. (2013). Career transitions in mid-life: Pursing an MSW as an older student. Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, 35(2), 134-151.
• Daftary, D. (2013). Watershed development and neoliberalism in India’s drylands. Journal of International Development, 26(7), 999-1010.
• Menon, N., & Daftary, D. (2011). The impact of political and social associational membership on political engagement: A comparative investigation of Brazil and India. Journal of International Social Work, 54(1), 81-96.
• Daftary, D. (2010). Democratic decentralization from the bottom up: The comparative effect of wealth and electoral capital on elected leaders’ distribution of development. Social Development Issues, 32(2), 42-54.
• Daftary, D. (2010). Elected leaders, community and development: Evidence on distribution and agency from a case in India. Journal of Development Studies, 46(10), 1692–1707.
• McBride, A. M., Pritzker, S., Daftary, D., & Tang, F. (2006). Youth service: A comprehensive perspective. Journal of Community Practice, 14(4), 71-89.

Media Contributions

• Daftary, D. (2019, July 2). A blatant quest to consolidate power. The Hindu.
• Daftary, D. (2017). Time for a new political order in Gujarat? The Wire

Dolly Daftary’s research focuses on the impact of social and economic change processes on individuals, households, and communities in resource poor and natural resource-dependent environments in a global and comparative perspective, grounded in field research in India. Dr. Daftary's cross-national interdisciplinary approach to scholarship is informed by political economy, institutional social sciences, and postcolonial studies. Her work is focused on the intersection of economic transformation, human and non-human nature, and democratic politics in agrarian environments.

Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from political science, anthropology, institutional economics, and geography, Dr. Daftary explores how change processes and social relations articulate with one another. Additional interests include poverty and inequality, the workings of local government, and well-being with specific reference to gender, caste, indigeneity, and religion.

Dr. Daftary has been conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork in India’s drylands which are inhabited by the largest share of the country’s poor. Her research has received media attention, and her current work explores the politics of caste and religion in Gujarat, the state known as the “laboratory” of Hindu nationalism in India. Her writings have appeared in The Wire and The Hindu.

Dr. Daftary is cross-affiliated with the PhD Program in Global Governance and Human Security at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. For more on her, read this profile on her research in India.