Analytical Frameworks and an Integrated Approach for Mini-grid based Electrification

Although rural electrification using mini-grids has attracted recent global attention, the concept has been there for quite some time. Consequently, a number of analytical approaches exist to support the decision-making process. This chapter first provides a review of literature dealing with analytical frameworks for off-grid and mini-grid based electrification projects. The range of analytical options includes simple worksheet-based tools to more sophisticated optimisation tools for technology selection as well as assessments based on multicriteria analysis. This is followed by an evaluation of mini-grid based off-grid electrification projects in India that allows the identification of critical factors for the success of such projects. Finally, the chapter proposes an integrated approach for analysing decentralised mini-grid projects in a holistic manner

Misogyny posing as measurement: disrupting the feminisation crisis discourse

Feminisation discourses appear to represent nostalgia for patriarchal patterns of participation and exclusion in higher education. It is curious why this particular melancholic formulation has gained currency in the context of higher education today, raising questions about the misogynistic impulse seeking to set a ceiling on women's current success by assuming it must have come about by disadvantaging men. This paper will raise questions about the norms, values and assumptions that underpin the binaried conceptualisation, or 'mystic boundaries' between women and men. This essentialised division situates women's achievements in relation to men's putative underperformance. I wish to suggest that feminisation discourses are unsatisfactory as they work with monodimensional, stable concepts of identity, ignore intersectionality, and are parochial in so far as they fail to examine gender globally, reduce gender inequalities to quantification, and treat gender as a noun, rather than as a verb or adjective. Higher education is gendered in terms of its values, norms, processes and employment regimes, even when women are in the majority as undergraduate students