Ketki Shah is a dentist and has completed her Masters of Public Health in Health Policy, Economics, and Finance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She joined IPH in 2018 and is presently a doctoral fellow within the DBT/Wellcome trust India Alliance project led by Dr. Upendra Bhojani. As part of her PhD project, she aims to explore livelihood concerns of marginal workers within the tobacco sector and what non-tobacco alternatives could look like. She was earlier part of the Emerging Voices for Global Health secretariat and briefly assisted in research activities on health financing.
She is registered at The University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU) and she is being guided by Dr. Upendra Bhojani (Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru) and Dr. Prakash B N (TDU), Dr. Prashanth N S (Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru)
Understanding the livelihood challenge and safer alternatives for marginalized workers in tobacco sector
The PhD focuses on understanding from a worker’s perspective the issues, and experiences with shifting to alternative and safer non-tobacco livelihoods. My PhD is divided into three phases. In the first phase, I plan to do an integrative review to explore and review the initiatives that have been tried out in South and South East Asia. The findings will be used to understand factors that influence transitioning to non-tobacco livelihoods. In the second stage, I aim to map the supply chain of bidi in Gujarat to identify the processes, geographies, and workers involved. And finally, in the third phase, I plan to conduct a primary qualitative inquiry with former and current bidi workers. This is to understand from their perspectives the dynamics and drivers for transitioning to alternative non-tobacco livelihoods.