Resilience- Inside and Out
By: Phds Of India
Tags: Mandi, PhD, Resilience, Social Science, India

“I pride myself as a risk taker and have always taken my own decisions. I think that way, only you are responsible for your life. As a kid in Standard V, when I got admission into a sports school, I took the tough decision of leaving home because I wanted to do something differently. In hindsight, that decision played a significant role in shaping up my personality. When I was there on my own, I understood that one has to put in that extra effort and get out of the comfort zone in order to be successful.

Over time I realized that we spend a big chunk of our lives studying the curriculums set by other people. I wanted to get out of that and think out of the box. A career in research was one option where I could set my own terms and have the freedom of choice and therefore higher education was an obvious path for me. I contemplated quite a lot about my future during Master’s and eventually started applying for PhD positions.

I was at home when I got the news of selection in IIT Mandi. I was ecstatic, but my mother was a bit concerned. After losing my father during my Bachelor’s, it was just me, my mother and my younger sister. It was difficult for her to let me go. Also, all my cousins were getting married and I wanted to study. But she always had faith in me and after convincing her that I was confident about my decision and could face the challenges out there, she came aboard.

Initially, life in Mandi was quite an adjustment for a person coming from the moderate climate of Kerala. And I couldn’t complain too much as it was solely my decision to pursue this. I was super ambitious in the beginning but as I started getting to know the system, the reality hit me. With the coursework and the comprehensive exam to be cleared, my supervisor and I were not able to find a common platform for my research. We were oscillating around a few topics when my supervisor left Mandi and joined IIT BHU. Finalizing my PhD topic thereby became more difficult. He did assign me a co-guide I was familiar with and around the same time, Kerala was going through the frightful floods of 2018. I intended to do a qualitative study that needed a good grasp of the local language. So, I immediately jumped to work on it to have the opportunity of interacting in my mother tongue for collecting data.

I am currently in my fifth year and have been working on Community Resilience with a focus on crowd behaviour in disasters. Being a sportsperson throughout, I strongly believe that it is as essential to look into mental health as physical health. I am interested to see the psychological resilience that people exhibit and the factors that contribute to it. I am studying how people live in disaster struck areas, their solidarity behaviours, cultural consequences and how they come back to their everyday lives. Through my research I explore the nature of collective psychosocial resilience of a community and the underlying microprocesses of it during and after a disaster.

In social sciences, there are two datasets — primary that comes from the real life experiences of people and secondary that comes from government documents. I obtain primary data through fieldwork by interviewing people and observing the surroundings and then analyse both datasets. I am often questioned on the significance of my discipline in a technological institute when presenting the analysis and it is a challenge to convince people about the way of doing research in social sciences. Having a supervisor far away is difficult, and such questions add to the pressure that often subjects me to an identity crisis at IIT.

Furthermore, there is a stereotypical perception of people working in the social sciences. The fact based approach in sciences and the interpretation approach in social sciences often tend to stand at crossroads. But I feel that any major scientific breakthrough or discovery is, in the end, being used for the people to better their lives. And when we study social sciences, we are trying to determine the efficacy of scientific discovery in benefitting society. As my sports coach used to tell me, ‘even if a one year old kid is trying to teach you something new, respect that knowledge.’ Both the fields complement each other and more collaboration between them might bridge this gap, which I think the government can catalyse by offering funding opportunities for such interdisciplinary projects.

As far as India is concerned, we have policies in place that are well equipped to deal with a disaster. But these policies often remain on paper. In Kerala, a state known for its high social quotients, the policies initially weren’t being implemented in the ground reality. We currently have a top to bottom disaster management approach where the officials decide what measures to be taken once the disaster strikes. What I have found through my research is that we need a bottom up approach. The local community is capable of overcoming a disaster. They only need some specialized support from the government. So as an academician, I think disaster management training can be made a part of the educational curriculum; particularly in disaster prone areas, people can go through specific mock drills to understand the reaction they need to have in relevant situations.

My sports background always motivates me to push my limits and never settle for less and I think that everybody should strive to push theirs. My husband and in-laws, throughout these years, along with my mother and sister, have supported my decisions and encouraged me to follow my heart.

After my PhD, I have a long term plan to start an NGO to implement my PhD research in the field. However, for the time being, I want to teach and pursue a postdoctoral degree. Through teaching, I think I can influence young minds. I feel that I have a responsibility towards those around me and that my education can be useful to them. Just imagine every one of them doing their job to the best of their ability, how beautiful the society would be!”

- Amrutha N V, PhD in Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi