Postcolonialism, Hegemony, Gender and Development: A Much Discussed Discourse or a Failed Path?

The main part of the proposed paper is a theoretical discussion on hegemonic structures of development discourses. It takes a postcolonial perspective while having a gender focus. Thus, the paper addresses four keywords: hegemony, development, postcolonialism and gender. After a detailed discussion on how these four discourses are interlinked, it brings empirical exemplifications to make their interlinkages visible. It does so by taking South-India, in particular Telangana, as an example of how and where development has taken place. The paper analyses India´s status post her opening to the global market in the 1990s. Thus, the temporal perspective is of the last 25 years. The paper explores marginality of Dalits, religious minorities, LGBTQI and women. The proposed interdisciplinary study engages with sociology, development studies and gender studies and is an outcome of fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2014.