Title: Political Geographies of Human Accidents and Trauma Care in Mumbai's Commuter Railways
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: I will use the fellowship opportunity to strengthen my knowledge contributions and research capacities through expert mentorship, and dissemination, networking and skills training. The objectives of the fellowship are organised around three core aims. These are (1) academic impact, (2) collaborative engagement for policy impact, and (3) developing future reseach career. The key objectives for each aim are: (1) Academic Impact a. Establish track record and disseminate PhD research findings -I will finalise two articles for submission to targeted peer-reviewed journals: Article 1: 'Contestation and claim-making in the railway' (by February 2023). This aims at empirical contribution focusing on civic engagement and political claim-making in the Indian Railway and transformation in the same from the colonial to the postcolonial railway state. Article 2: 'Tribunalisation of social justice or socialisation of administrative justice'? Compensation for victims of untoward incidents in Indian Railway's accident law' (by July 2023). This makes theoretical contribution on the tensions between constitutional and administrative law in advancing substantive welfare goals as examined through ethnography of everyday adjudication in accident tribunal courts in Mumbai. -I will finalise and submit a book proposal to targeted publishers. The book will draw from my doctoral research b. Establish my research within the discipline and develop academic networks for future collaboration opportunities, including grant applications, events and publications: -Hosting a workshop on railways and politics of claim-making at University of Sheffield which will invite participation from academics, practioners and civic activists from South Asia + initiation of a blog for consolidating workshop outputs/outcomes and fostering continuing knowledge exchange; -Participating in research networks; -Organising a panel on legal geographies of infrastructure at RGS-IBG 2023, and presenting papers at two other major academic conferences. (2) Collaborative engagement for policy impact, with the aim of benefitting communities and stakeholders A 2-month visit to India will involve user-engagement through stakeholder workshops with -Railway and City police: This will be a participatory workshop involving non-gazetted officers of this force, who are engaged at the frontline of traffic and transport policing. A key output will be a policy brief on policing needs in a mobility context, with special focus on traffic-fatality. It will be aimed at feeding into ongoing police reforms in India. The policy brief will be accompanied by a narrative report on the workshop proceedings and findings, which will be circulated internally within the organization for training needs. -Medical practitioners and researchers engaged in trauma care-related research and implementation. This workshop will be aimed at collaborative inputs into, and from, the ongoing project 'Towards Improved Trauma Outcomes in India (TITCO)' being undertaken by medical practitioners and researchers across four tertiary public hospitals in India. (3) Develop my future research career Toward this aim, I will use the fellowship time and proposed activities for: -Conducting limited new research, which will input into my book and future grant project; -Developing a new research program examining the contested railway geographies of people, labour, land and governance through the lens of law and litigation, and submit a research funding application to the ESRC New Investigator programme; -Training and personal development: I will leverage the excellent training opportunities offered by the University of Sheffield,the ESRC and NCRM to avail advanced methods training and gain skills in co-production and collaboration for impact; public and media engagement; grant and book proposal writing; data archiving, ethics and management.

Lay abstract: Traffic-related trauma is now a leading cause of preventable death (WHO, 2009-2018), especially in low and middle income countries (LMICs), and is gaining increasing attention in policy, planning and scientific research. Scholars working on both prevention and access to trauma care in the global south have underscored persisting challenges in the form of multiplication of legislation, lack of co-ordination between planning agencies, fragmentation of statistics and severe resource deficits (Bhalla et al., 2017, 2019; Mohan, 1984; Sanghavi et al., 2009). While existing scholarship concentrates mostly on road-fatality, this study contributes insights on railway-trauma in the context of Mumbai, where hundreds of lives are lost or incapacitated yearly in track-related incidents across the city. Nearly a third of the dead remain untraced. The research combines archival data and legal and policy analysis with a multi-sited ethnography of accident-work with a range of people - emergency response, medical care, investigation and case closure, and adjudication for compensation - as well as those involved in health and death care activism. Through this multi-focus on law, policy and practice, the research develops a nuanced, historical and systematic account of state response to human accidents in Mumbai. The findings offer extremely valuable insights for efforts in reducing the number of deaths and injuries in railways in India, addressing the needs and concerns of frontline agents in performing their roles in trauma and death care, and in securing appropriate support and justice for victims and their families. A key finding of the dissertation is how 'accident-care' is produced as 'accident-al care', and the effects it has on both accident-victims and accident-attendants. On the one hand, human accidents are marginalised through abstracted systems of legal classification and jurisdictional fragmentation between the railway and the city. Legal classification of human accidents as outcomes of individual deviant behaviour within railway administrative law serves to depoliticise accidental injury and absolve the railways of accountability. It also severely undermines the scope of justice for victims and family. At the same time, the codification of accidents as medico-legal cases within criminal law expands the role of police and other state agents in their after-life. However, within the broader political economy of trauma care in India with its absence of a robust pre-hospital system, the police start to become less of the keen investigators and more of victim-carers in this encounter with the accident, what I call the 'accident-al' accomplishment of accident-care. Considering that a large number of accidents result in death and several of the dead remain unidentified/untraced, the involvement of the police is extended further into the domain of social management of death too. During the fellowship, I will consolidate my existing research on this topic, making its findings available to academics as well as policy makers, practictioners, and the wider public. This will be achieved via written pieces for both academic and non-academic audiences in the form of journal papers, blog articles and presentations at conferences; and development of a manuscript project proposal. In addition, two stakeholder engagement events will be held to share my research findings and address the key opportunities and challenges facing institutional actors who are at the front lines of public health and deathcare provisioning in India.This will also promote the value of knowledge exchange. A period will also be spent back out in the field to undertake new research in institutional archives. Additionally, the fellowship will contribute to career and personal development through offer of advanced skills and methods training, mentorship for developing future research grant proposals, as well as opportunity to build wider networks and collaboration.

Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES;8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: INJURIES AND ACCIDENTS