Neha Basu

Neha Basu, a Rhode Island native, graduated from Pitzer College with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology.  Her honors-level senior thesis was called “The Collection Being More than the Sum of the Parts: The Role of Identity Integration and Racialization in Multiracial Students’ Experiences”, for which she conducted a survey and interviews with multiracial college students.  Neha has served as a student representative on the Faculty Executive Committee as a fellow at the Writing Center.  In 2023, she was fortunate to collaborate with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in street vending research and policy advocacy, which sparked her interest in global street vending regulation as an intersection of various social and political factors.  She has received the Kallick Community Service Award in recognition of her work in this area.  In the future, Neha plans to attend law school, with the goal of becoming a movement attorney.

Street food vendors are a key part of urban life in India, yet they are excluded from the formal economy and often face restrictive regulations, making vending an interstice of sociopolitical, economic, and legal forces.  These come together for street vendors in Kolkata, where such vending falls within the jurisdiction of two recently passed national- and state-level laws designed to regulate the practice.  Neha’s Fulbright-Nehru project is utilizing a participatory action methodology to investigate the nature of Kolkata vendors’ interactions and navigations in terms of the law, what the local vending landscape reveals about conceptions of public space, and what it reveals about culture and economic factors.