As we hurtle towards clean energy based technologies, we also need to be mindful about how these sustainability transitions can support livelihoods, community aspirations and ensure social justice !
Nagarajan R Durai, our next pathbreaker, Research Assistant at School of Sustainability, IIT Madras, works on developing ecological and social safeguard frameworks for offshore wind energy projects in the Gulf of Mannar
Nagarajan talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about quitting a stable and safe engineering career to pursue a career in Anthropology, as he became increasingly interested in environmental issues and coastal communities, particularly small-scale fisheries and how they are affected by sustainability transitions.
For students, changing your career is not as dangerous as it often seems. But curiosity alone is not enough, especially if you are choosing a field with fewer employment opportunities. Understand what kind of organisations recruit people from your desired discipline.
Nagarajan, tell us about your initial years?
Mine is more a story of confusion, curiosity, risk, and slowly finding a place where I feel I belong.
I am originally from Tamil Nadu, but I grew up in Kerala. My father was a daily-wage worker, and my mother has been engaged in household care work. Like many students, I didn’t have a dream profession from childhood. Looking back, I don’t think I had any obvious signs that I would one day become an anthropologist or a researcher.
I enjoyed social science in school and always scored well in it. I loved reading those textbooks from cover to cover within a few months after getting them, just because I’m excited about them.
What did you study?
However, I was equally good at mathematics and science. Since I was not leaning towards a particular subject, and because I didn’t have a mentor or even the internet to guide me, I chose what many students considered the safest choice at that time- Engineering as an undergraduate. However, my life took a lively turn when I chose to do a post-graduation in Anthropology.
What were some of the influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventional and uncommon career in Anthropology?
After my graduation in Mechanical Engineering, I worked for a little over two years in oil tankage construction. Although I was underpaid, the motivation was to learn, build one to two years of experience, and go to the Gulf. Although I was learning as an engineer, I felt that something was missing every day. I was appreciated for being good at my work, but I couldn’t connect with it. In the long term, I couldn’t think of myself waking up, getting into a boiler suit and spending my whole life on a construction site. I was really worried.
Around that time, I developed a habit that slowly changed my life. I started reading non-fiction extensively. Particularly, books by Yuval Noah Harari and the Tamil writer Tho. Paramasivam fascinated me. They shaped me into a person so curious about human beings, culture, history and the different ways societies evolve.
I still remember carrying these books to the construction site. Whenever there was a break, I would take them out and read a few pages. After returning home tired in the evening, I would continue reading late into the night as if I were preparing for a competitive examination.
Fortunately or unfortunately, COVID happened around that time. I suddenly had enough time to pause, think and reflect about where my life was heading. I started exploring the academic interests behind those books. That was how I discovered the discipline of Anthropology.
The more I explore anthropology, the more I feel that someone has finally given a name to the questions I had been carrying for years. I felt reinvented. I quit my job and joined for post graduation in Anthropology at the University of Madras.
Can you talk about some challenges you faced?
I was twenty-four years old when I decided to quit engineering and study Anthropology. It was probably the most difficult decision I have made in my life. I was the sole breadwinner of my family. Leaving a stable engineering job to study Anthropology did not seem like a sensible decision to many. Convincing my family was difficult. Prioritising your personal interests over your family’s financial security is always viewed as a selfish act.
The initial years were difficult, financially and emotionally. I worked as a delivery person to support my family while pursuing my master’s. The fact that anthropology is generally considered a degree with limited employability always worried me. Many seniors, and even some in academia, told me that choosing Anthropology after Engineering was irrational. I kept asking myself, “How do I make sure I get a decent job after this?”
Tell us about your career path
Instead of worrying alone, I tried to prepare myself. I cleared the UGC-NET examination while I was still pursuing my Master’s because I thought it would demonstrate my academic ability (not really because I was interested in a PhD at that time). I deliberately chose internships that would expose me to different kinds of fieldwork.
First internship at the Centre for Socio-economic and Environmental Studies (CSES) involved working with street vendors in Kochi, in which I was engaged in the survey of the street vendors as part of the preparation of the street vendors’ plan for the Kochi Municipal Corporation. Another internship at M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) took me to shrimp farming communities in Mayiladuthurai, where I explored the impact of shrimp farming on agriculture and food security. Similarly, my dissertation work involved ethnographic fieldwork among the Alu Kurumba community in the Nilgiris.
Although anthropology is not about ‘meritocracy’, the job market certainly is. I built an ‘impressive’ CV by the time of graduation, and made sure that the interviewers had enough context to ask me questions in the interview. Fortunately, that approach worked.
How did you get your 1st break and what followed?
My work during the internship at the CSES helped me join the institution as a Research Assistant after graduation. The other work at MSSRF eventually became my first publication in the Journal of Political Ecology. Qualifying for UGC-NET in my first attempt, getting my first research job within two months of graduation, and publishing my first paper within six months gave me the confidence to become the researcher I wanted to be.
During my tenure at CSES, I worked on qualitative and mixed-methods research related to labour (such as MGNREGS work, gig work, street vending, dhobi work, etc), extreme poverty, public policy, and public health. Since CSES has diverse projects addressing all social aspects that require policy intervention, my more than two years of experience have afforded me the opportunity to work in diverse social and geographical settings (urban-rural and tribal-coastal contexts).
Every project taught me as an anthropologist. At the same time, I found myself becoming increasingly interested in environmental issues and coastal communities, particularly small-scale fisheries in Tamil Nadu. Part of that interest came from inspiration from seniors and reading relevant literature. I began attending seminars, taking online courses, meeting people and reading research papers on fisheries, climate change and environmental governance. Slowly, I started moving my research in that direction.
Eventually, I joined the Wildlife Institute of India, where I worked with fishing communities in Palk Bay to develop benefit-sharing mechanisms as part of the Dugong Conservation Reserve project. My role as an anthropologist was more than just cultural brokerage, to act as an effective link between the project developer and communities. I understood the government’s conservation priorities and helped translate them into community vocabularies, primarily to help understand how those policies affect communities and their livelihoods, and how they can be compensated.
What do you do currently?
Today, I work at IIT Madras, where we are developing ecological and social safeguard frameworks for offshore wind energy projects in the Gulf of Mannar. Although offshore wind farms are considered a sustainable energy option as we move forward, it is reported to have ecological and social consequences. My role as an anthropologist is to travel across the Gulf of Mannar, Tamil Nadu, consult with communities and other stakeholders to understand how the project might affect the livelihood of the fisherfolk community and the ecologically sensitive marine ecosystem. The larger goal is to develop a safeguard framework to protect the interests of the environment and people once the project in the paper goes live.
How does your work benefit society?
Over the last four years, I have spent a lot of time with vulnerable and marginalised communities, understanding their challenges and generating evidence to improve policy and governance. That is the part of my work I’m grateful for. Anthropologists hold a unique ‘emic perspective’, i.e., to understand a problem from the perspective of different people. An anthropologist with great virtue is equally good and necessary to change community conditions from within through institutional power, access, and policy control, as an activist who is demanding those changes through external pressure.
Your advice to students?
Before I conclude, I want to leave you with a thought.
Changing your career is not as dangerous as it often seems. But curiosity alone is not enough, especially if you are choosing a field with fewer employment opportunities. Understand what kind of organisations recruit people from your desired discipline. Identify the skills they expect. Build those skills while you are still a student through internships, projects and field experience. Passion and planning should go together. Secondly, read as much as you can as a student and find peers with whom you can discuss them. Finally, never underestimate the importance of networking when you attend seminars and workshops. Speak to people whose work you admire. Many opportunities come not because someone knows your marks, but because they know your WORK and SINCERITY.