Inlaks Shivdasani Fellows for Social Engagement 2024: Anu Alex, Karthik Gunasekar and Biraja

The 2024 Inlaks Shivdasani Fellows for Social Engagement are Karthick Sakthivel, Avinash Poinkar, Raj Shekhar, Biraja, Chandni Jagat, Anu Alex, Saba Khan, Karthik Gunasekar and Debasish Bhuyan.

The Fellowship is designed to give graduates and early to mid-career professionals the confidence and security to explore alternatives and make independent choices about their lives while contributing to social change.

In a three part series, we will be introducing the 2024 fellows. In this week’s post, meet Anu Alex, Karthik Gunasekar and Biraja.

Anu Alex

Anu is a special educator working with people with disabilities across different institutional and community-based settings. Having worked extensively in rural Tamil Nadu, India and South East Asian countries, she has an interest in building programs that respond to the needs of people with disabilities and the communities that they live in. Her interest in building sustainable livelihoods that empower adults with disabilities through art and craft has led her to co-found and direct And Alt Foundation. 

Through the  fellowship, she will build a resource that documents the process of building and implementing functional intervention plans to address vision-related issues in children with multiple disabilities.  The aim is for this resource to equip professionals working in the disability sector to enable children with vision challenges to participate more independently in all areas of life. 

Karthik Gunasekar

Karthik works on organic agriculture, local livelihoods, and climate action movement focussing on localised climate resilience. 

He is the co-ordinator of Tamil Nadu Iyarkai Velan Koottamaipu (TNIVK) (translating to Tamil Nadu Organic Agriculture Collective) which works on promoting organic farming in Tamil Nadu. TNIVK works on Capacity Building and Knowledge Management, Documentation and Communication, Research and Advocacy and Local Markets. He has initiated  Aram Thinai, a platform for youth to engage and work on localised climate resilience and eco-social justice. He also volunteers for  initiatives like Chennai Climate Action Group (CCAG) and Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) and has earlier been part of initiatives like Nonviolent Economy Network, Participatory Guarantee System Organic Council (PGSOC), Keystone Foundation etc. 

During the fellowship, Karthik will work on ‘Dry land agriculture charter for Tamil Nadu’ focussed on organic farming and climate change adaptation. Dry land agriculture plays a key role in the country’s food and nutrition security and provides livelihood to lakhs of people. However, dry land agriculture is highly neglected in the government perspective and the dominant narrative of agriculture in general context. His action based research  will involve landscaping of dry land agriculture, documenting model farms and initiatives, organising trainings for farmers, documenting the impact of climate change, analysing the adoption of practices by the farmers and the policy environment, and disseminating the knowledge acquired through podcasts and reports. 

Biraja 

Biraja works as a researcher and gender trainer, who happens to be a non-binary transgender person. As part of their training work, they engage with corporates, NGOs and field functionaries, grassroots collectives, labour unions, and student collectives across India to build their understanding of gender, sexuality, power, and patriarchy with a feminist lens. Currently, they are researching changing forms of masculinity in order to reimagine feminist engagements with masculinity. After completing their Masters in Gender Studies, they have been working on gender and sexuality rights with leading human rights, youth, and feminist organizations.   They have been associated with the transgender community to advocate for transgender rights in India and have a special interest in matters of labour rights, gender justice, and universal public services. Biraja is also a creative writer and  loves reading and writing fiction that foregrounds the complexities of human emotions and experiences. While not working, they can be found imposing a genderless utopia on their friends over any random conversation.

During the fellowship, Biraja will work towards creating an anthology of short stories written by transgender people through a community writing initiative. By engaging with a cohort of transgender community members from Odisha and Delhi through theater-based writing workshops, guided reading,  and mentorship, the community writing initiative aims to produce narratives of transgender lives beyond the stereotype of tragedy and inspiration.