Excelsior Correspondent
RAJOURI, July 30: In a significant initiative aimed at understanding grassroots challenges, an ICSSR-sponsored research study led by Prof. Arvind Jasrotia, Department of Law, University of Jammu, conducted intensive fieldwork in Rajouri district to explore barriers faced by tribal communities, displaced persons from Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) and women.
The study employed immersive and context-sensitive methodologies through a series of Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) held across Thannamandi, Darhal, Rajouri town, Nowshera and Sunderbani. These sessions were structured to engage diverse stakeholders including civil society members, NGOs, local leaders, and community participants, allowing for an intersectional understanding of lived experiences.
Facilitators used semi-structured guides with emergent probing to unpack themes such as marginalization, policy accessibility, constitutional reforms, and bureaucratic challenges. Over three days, the team captured non-verbal cues, local expressions, and community-prioritized policy gaps, contributing to a co-created understanding of place-based vulnerabilities.
Prof. Jasrotia highlighted that the dialogues revealed community-specific cosmologies of justice, ritualized bureaucratic resistance and gendered impacts of legal ambiguities.
The field team included Dr. Kartika Bakshi, Dr. Gazala Noor, Rupakshi Wazir and Ritika Gupta, who ensured ethnographic depth through reflexive documentation. Key community interlocutors such as Vikrant Sharma, Abdul Qayoom Mir, Arif Jatt, Shakti Sharma, Hamid Malik, Dr. Sajjad Mir, Sabar Choudhary, Vinod Raina, Dr. Ajay Prasher, Rajesh Prasher, Sonam Sharma, Gurnam Kour, Pragati and Dr. Nitan Sharma provided crucial emic validation, enriching the collaborative analysis of intersectional marginalization.
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