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Cover Credit: Sneha Shrestha (IMAGINE) @imagine876, Surya This painting is about the illuminated path lit by the fire of imagination. Sneha's paintings are mindful mantras based on Sanskrit Scriptures, married with contemporary graffiti. Graffiti is something Sneha learned about when she moved to Boston from Nepal. Blending the two art forms is her way of creating a home away from home.
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Table of Contents
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ABOUT THE MITTAL INSTITUTE
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FACULTY
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EVENTS
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STUDENTS
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IN REGION
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IN THE NEWS
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BUDGET
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Our Mission The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University (The Mittal Institute) engages faculty and students through interdisciplinary programs to advance and deepen the teaching and research on global issues relevant to South Asia. 4
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From the Director
It’s been a pivotal year for the Institute. The transformational support from Indian industrialist Mr. Lakshmi Mittal and his family ensures that South Asia remains an education and research priority at Harvard. The 25 million dollar naming endowment builds on the foundation established by the University and our Advisory Council. The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute (The Mittal Institute) at Harvard University enters a new era of being a catalyst for interdisciplinary, Harvard-wide initiatives across South Asia. February marked the official opening of The Mittal Institute’s India office in Delhi, an important milestone for the University. It provides a substantive platform for launching new research and academic exchanges with important regional stakeholders and with Harvard faculty and students.
“The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute (The Mittal Institute) at Harvard University enters a new era of being a catalyst for interdisciplinary, Harvard-wide initiatives across South Asia.” -Tarun Khanna
Last summer, the Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program was one of the best teaching experiences I have had at Harvard. 50 highly-talented students - the first in their families to attend college - from eleven countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East gathered in Dubai, following an extremely competitive application process. These students have had to overcome challenging economic, social, and cultural circumstances to pursue higher education in their country. We were able to provide them a fully-funded opportunity to learn and engage in critical thinking, of the kind that is available at the best institutions in the world. They, in turn, brought an exceptionally high level of energy and intellectual curiosity. This year, The Mittal Institute and Harvard Business School Club of the Gulf Cooperation Council have collaborated again, expanding the program to admit up to 120 students who will be taught by faculty from multiple schools at Harvard. The Mittal Institute prides itself on the diversity and depth of its work, across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, with projects and programs that connect a wide range of intellectual resources. Our progress over the years validates our platform approach to growth, making it feasible for all kinds of scholars to work with us. Our programs in the Arts and Sciences made great strides in 2017/18. The Arts Program expanded significantly, with four visiting artists from across South Asia spending two months at Harvard, connecting their important work to the university and other key institutions in the New England region. Our Boston Bangalore Biosciences Beginnings (B4) Program has also lived up to its potential, with top young Indian scientists doing ground-breaking work in Harvard’s laboratories. We have welcomed excellent scholars from Pakistan, as Aman and Babar Ali Fellows; our Nepal Studies Program is entering its third year; and we are assiduously building on new relationships with civil society and universities in Bangladesh. On a personal note, I have the honor of leading this organization for the next three years, having accepted an offer to continue as Director. Alongside the indefatigable Meena Hewett, Executive Director, and the rest of the team, I am excited by the possibilities that lie ahead at The Mittal Institute. I invite you to continue to follow our progress and find opportunities to contribute to the work we do in what will surely be another fascinating year ahead.
Tarun Khanna Faculty Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
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About The Mittal Institute The Mittal Institute’s administration of staff and students, based both in Cambridge and South Asia, supports The Mittal Institute’s mission and its day-to-day operations.
CAMBRIDGE STAFF
INDIA STAFF
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM (SHARED WITH OTHER ASIARELATED CENTERS)
Tarun Khanna
Sanjay Kumar
Sarah Gordon
Director; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, HBS
India Country Director
Director of Finance and Administration
Meena Sonea Hewett
Farhana Siddiqui
Maryam Mirza Alivandi
Executive Director
Staff Assistant, Delhi
Financial Associate
Abanish Rizal
Garima Aggarwal,
Karen Christopher
Assistant Director
Finance Manager, Delhi
Financial Associate
Jee Soo Kang
Savitha Ananth
Program Coordinator
Kathryn Maldonis
Science Program Coordinator, Bangalore
Senior Financial Associate
Amy Johnson Communications and Outreach Coordinator
IN-REGION SUPPORT
CAMBRIDGE OFFICE STUDENT COORDINATORS
Emma Fitzgerald
Mariam Chughtai
Kelsang Donyo,
Administrative Assistant
Programs Director, Pakistan
Harvard College '19
Hasit Shah
Pukar Malla
Sheliza Jamal
Communications Affiliate
Programs Director, Nepal
EdM Candidate, HGSE '18
Sneha Shrestha Arts at The Mittal Institute Project Manager
Satish Wasti, Harvard College '21 (September - December 2017)
Anushka Ghosh EdM Candidate, HGSE '18 (February 2018 - current)
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THE 1947 PARTITION OF BRITISH INDIA STAFF RESEARCHERS Shubhangi Bhadada
Minahil Khan,
Interfaculty Fellow, The Mittal Institute
Harvard College '19 (June - August 2017)
Nabil Khan
Janani Krishnan-Jha,
Research Associate
Harvard College '20 (January 2018- current)
Saba Kohli Dave
Stephanie Mao;
Research Associate
UC San Diego '19
Rasim Alam
Sohini Mukherjee,
Research Associate
HSPH '18 (September 2017 - October 2017)
Ajay Kumar
Neeti Nayak,
Research Associate
SEAS and GSD '19 (January 2018 - current)
Shayyan Qaiser, HLS '18 (November 2017 - January 2018)
STUDENT RESEARCHERS Diane Athaide,
Sarah Rahman,
GSD '18
Harvard College '17 (April - July 2017)
Hamza Chowdhury,
Siddharth Ramalingam,
Princeton University '19 (June - August 2017)
HKS '18 (May - August 2017)
Aditi Chitkara,
Shaharyar Zia,
Harvard College '21 (January 2018 - current)
HDS '19 (February 2018 current)
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Remembering Asma Jahangir Friends, activists, and admirers gathered to celebrate and remember Asma Jahangir. A fierce upholder of the democratic political process and rule of law, Asma Jahangir defended the rights of women, children and religious and ethnic minorities, workers, peasants, and journalists, not just as a lawyer in Pakistan but in her capacity as a UN Special Rapporteur, most recently in Iran. She co-founded the Women’s Action Forum and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy and South Asians for Human Rights. Speakers included Amartya Sen, Martha Chen, Sugata Bose, Homi Bhabha and Raza Rumi. Co-sponsored by: The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University; HKS South Asia Engagement Forum; Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia; The Harvard University Asia Center; South Asia Center Boston; Harvard Pakistan Students Group; HKS Pakistan Caucus; Coalition for a Democratic India; The Benazir Bhutto Leadership Program of ClassACT HR73.
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Visiting Scholars The Mittal Institute offers opportunities for scholars and practitioners to come to Harvard to continue their research.
The Arvind Raghunathan and Sribala Subramanian South Asia Visiting Fellowship, (previously called the South Asian Studies Fellowship) is a yearlong appointment that supports recent PhDs in the humanities and social sciences whose research relates to any period of South Asian history or contemporary South Asia.
The Aman Fellowship supports doctoral and advanced professional degree holders working on research related to Pakistan’s development.
The Syed Babar Ali Fellowship supports doctoral and advanced professional degree holders working on issues relevant to Pakistan.
THE ARVIND RAGHUNATHAN AND SRIBALA SUBRAMANIAN SOUTH ASIA VISITING FELLOW
AMAN FELLOW
BABAR ALI FELLOW
Raile Rocky Ziipao South Asian Studies Fellow, 2017-18
Faculty mentor: Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asia Studies Raile Rocky Ziipao is trained as a multidisciplinary researcher and development practitioner. His research interests include frontier highways, political economy of Indigenous/Tribal/Adivasi peoples development, critical infrastructure studies, philosophy of Indigenous methodology (perspective from within), and an alternative path to modernity.
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Imtiaz ul Haq Babar Ali Fellow, Spring 2018
Faculty mentor: Shawn Cole, Professor in Finance Unit at Harvard Business School Imtiaz ul Haq is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. His research primarily focuses on understanding how individuals (and occasionally institutions) engage with financial services. He has studied preferences towards basic financial products (such as essential banking services from an inclusion perspective) as well as more advanced products (such as Islamic mutual funds). His research covers both developed and developing markets.
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Saad Azmat Aman Fellow, Fall 2017
Faculty mentor: Asim Khwaja, SumitomoFoundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School Dr. Saad Azmat is an Associate Professor of Finance and Associate Dean of Research at Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is also the Chair of the Centre for Islamic Finance at LUMS. His research is published in well regarded academic journals including Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Pacific Basin Finance Journal and Economic Modelling.
Research Affiliates The Mittal Institute’s Visiting Fellows Program supports mid-career, self-funded professionals to continue their research at Harvard.
Ronak D. Desai Law and Security Fellow at New America in Washington D.C.
Faculty mentor: Mihir Desai, Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School; Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
A recognized scholar in the fields of law and foreign policy, Desai’s scholarship focuses on U.S.-India relations, diaspora politics, anticorruption, and global governance. He has extensive legal and policy experience in the public and private sectors. From 2014-2016 he served as the Democratic Counsel to the Select Committee on Benghazi in the United States Congress. Ronak also has extensive legal and policy experience in the public and private sectors.
Hasna Moudud Former Visiting Fellow, Ash Center, HKS
Faculty mentor: Rod McFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science; formerly Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research
An advocate of environmental issues, Moudud created a committee of non-partisan parliamentarians representing coastal constituencies working to highlight the tough problems of coastal ecosystems in Bangladesh. Her most recent publication, The Silk Road to South Asia: From Mongolia to India through Bangladesh, discusses the historical passage through the subcontinent.
Alka Palrecha Humphrey Fellow, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
Suraj Yengde W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Nonresident Fellow; Associate, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Faculty mentor: Richard Cash, Senior Lecturer on Global Health. Department of Global Health and Population
Faculty mentor: Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Palrecha is currently interested in policies and institutional processes for the safe reuse of urban wastewater for agriculture in peri-urban India. She has carried out studies in five states in India and made a film “Wastewater Bazaar” in partnership with the IWMI TATA program. As a Research Affiliate at The Mittal Institute, she focused her research on addressing public health concerns of wastewater consumption during farming.
Suraj Yengde is India’s first Dalit Ph.D. holder from an African university in the nation’s history. Suraj specializes in the inter-regional labor migration policies with a focus on global south migration. He is also a published author in the field of Caste, Race and Ethnicity studies. Currently, he is involved in developing a critical theory of Dalit and Black Studies. Suraj is a Human Rights attorney, who is also an anti-caste and anti-racism advocate and columnist.
Vineeta Sinha Head, South Asian Studies Program & Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore Faculty mentor: Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
Sinha’s research predominantly focuses on Hindu religiosity in the diaspora. She is currently working on three separate publications, which center around tracking Hinduism in Singapore, women in academia, and sojourneying deities.
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Steering Committee The Mittal Institute’s Steering Committee provides guidance and advisement to The Mittal Institute, and represents schools from across Harvard University.
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN
Ali Asani
Rahul Mehrotra
Kristin Stilt
Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, FAS; Director, AISP
Professor of Urban Planning and Design, GSD
Professor of Law, HLS; Director, Islamic Legal Studies Program, HLS
Homi Bhabha Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Department of English, FAS; Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University
Diana Eck Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society, FAS; Member of the Faculty of Divinity, HDS
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
Jacqueline Bhabha
Ford Foundation Professor of International Education; Director, International Education Policy Program, HGSE
Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, HSPH; Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer in Law, HLS; Adjunct Lecturer, HKS; Director of Research, FXB Center
David Bloom
HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL
Venkatesh Murthy
Nicholas Burns
Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, FAS
Sultan of Oman Professor of the Practice of International Relations, HKS; Director, Future of Diplomacy Project, HKS
Parimal G. Patil
Martha Chen
Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Committee on the Study of Religion, FAS; Chair, DSAS
Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS; Affiliated Professor, GSD; International Coordinator, WIEGO Network
Jinah Kim
Asim Khwaja
Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture
Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development, HKS
Tarun Khanna Director, The Mittal Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, HBS
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HARVARD T. H. SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Fernando Reimers
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
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Chair, Department of Global Health and Population; Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, HSPH
JP Onnela Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, HSPH
Jennifer Leaning François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, HSPH; Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights
HARVARD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES Conor J. Walsh John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Advisory Council The Mittal Institute Advisory Council, a team of distinguished volunteer leaders, provides strategic counsel and financial support to The Mittal Institute. Representing Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, the distinguished members of the Arts Advisory Council provide financial support and advisement. Friends of The Mittal Institute are individuals who invest in the Institute’s interfaculty projects, leveraging the resources and expertise of Harvard faculty to support research that has direct impact in the region.
SPECIAL RECOGNITION TO MR. LAKSHMI MIT TAL AND HIS FAMILY FOR A NAMING GIFT TO THE INSTITUTE
ADVISORY COUNCIL
ARTS ADVISORY COUNCIL
Syed Babar Ali AMP ’73, Pakistan
Chandni and Mukesh Prasad AB ’93, USA
Dipti Mathur (Chair) USA
KP Balaraj MBA ’97, India
Sribala Subramanian and Arvind Raghunathan USA
Shanay Jhaveri (Program Advisor) USA
Sumir Chadha MBA ’97, USA Kuntala and Purandar Das USA Jo Froman and Mark Fuller AB ’75, MBA ’78, JD ’79, USA Meera Gandhi USA
Rajiv and Anupa Sahney India
Archan Basu and Madeline Jie Wang (Incoming) USA
Parul and Gaurav Swarup MBA ’80, India
Poonam Bhagat India
Tom Varkey MBA ’97
Anurag Bhargava India and USA
Arshad Zakaria AB ’85, MBA ’87, USA
Radhika Chopra India
Vikram Gandhi MBA ’89, ExEd ’00, USA/India Mala Haarmann AB ’91, MBA ’96, UK Anuradha and Anand Mahindra AB ’77, MBA ’81, India
Aparajita and Gaurav Jain India
FRIENDS OF THE MIT TAL INSTITUTE
Chandrika Pathak UK and India
Anonymous
Pinky and Sanjay Reddy India
Gobind Akoi, The Imperial Hotel, Delhi Karen, AB ’82, and Sanjeev Mehra, AB ’82, MBA ’86, USA Victor Menezes USA Arif Naqvi UAE
The Resource Group, c/o Nadeem Elahi Karachi, Pakistan Jeffrey Smith, Principal Shareholder, law firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP USA
Omar Saeed Pakistan Sana Rezwan Sait New York Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani Bangladesh
Anwarul Quadir Foundation Chandrika and Dalip Pathak UK
Osman Khalid Waheed Pakistan
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NOTEWORTHY NEWS
Mark Elliott cuts the ribbon with Sanjay Kumar, The Mittal Institute India Country director, marking the official opening of the The Mittal Institute New Delhi, India office
Harvard’s New “Embassy” in India
The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s (The Mittal Institute) new India office, in the heart of the beautiful Lutyens-designed part of New Delhi, has officially opened, marking a new era of Harvard’s direct engagement with the region. “Harvard would not be what it is if it was not capable of attracting the best brains from all over the world,” said Mark Elliott, Vice Provost for International Affairs and the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History, to the Times of India newspaper. “We intend to create a small embassy at the institute, which will help the students and researchers to study at Harvard.”
“We believe that our Delhi office will enable us to grow our collaborations with Indian academic and cultural institutions, contribute to the development of outstanding research across the sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities, and further strengthen our already close ties with numerous Harvard alumni who live in India and across South Asia.”
Professor Elliott officially inaugurated the new office on Friday, March 16, 2018. In his speech, he made it clear that a greater regional presence is vital for the university’s future scholarship.
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“South Asia has played a dynamic and influential role in the development of our world since the very first civilizations,” said Lakshmi Mittal, chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company. “Ensuring that we fully understand its history and unique dynamics is a critical enabler in helping to shape a successful future.”
NOTEWORTHY NEWS
Students, Faculty, Staff and Friends of SAI celebrate The Mittal Institute Renaming at the Harvard Faculty Club
Mittal Family Donates $25 Million to the South Asia Institute, Renamed The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University On Tuesday, December 5, 2017, faculty, administrators and friends of The Mittal Institute gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club to celebrate the renaming of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University. The renaming of the Institute follows the generous gift of $25 million from Lakshmi Mittal and his family to create an endowed fund for the institute. “International centers like the South Asia Institute at Harvard University serve as a vital conduit between the University and the world we study,” said Harvard President Drew Faust. “The generous support from the Mittal family is a testament to both the important work being done by this community of scholars and students and the continuing impact it will have in the region.” “We are so grateful for the Mittal family’s support and what it will enable us to learn and share — across the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities — and the many people and institutions it will allow us to engage,” said Tarun Khanna, Director of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute and Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School.
Members of the Harvard community who have been integral to the development of The Mittal Institute gave remarks and toasted to the future of the institute. Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School, shared how the Partition Project has been personally meaningful since both of his parents grew up 10 miles on opposite sides of the present-day India and Pakistan border. He also reflected on how the Kumbh Mela project all began at a dinner party at Rahul Mehrotra’s house. Nohria marveled at how a simple idea transformed into “a stunning project that gives us a truly One Harvard view of the Kumbh Mela.” He ended his comments by saying, “I hope that with this endowed gift, this tradition will continue for a long, long time and that there will be people who in the same way that I can say today, feel magically touched by all that this institute does.” Tarun Khanna remarked on his excitement for the future of The Mittal Institute and his commitment to the founding principles of the Institute.
“I think we are just at the beginning of a wonderful journey. I will continue to emphasize the two principles around which we have founded the institute. One is to be open and inclusive to everybody. In a very deep and profound sense, I intend for this institute to be content agnostic. Not be mistaken for being empty of content, it should be interpreted as what it is, a philosophical commitment to an incredible openness. The second is a trend that Harvard will increasingly recognize over time, the idea of having people actually physically present in different locations. We take very seriously the idea that you should be part of the intellectual fabric of the places where you want to work.” - Tarun Khanna
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Highlights Summer 2017
Fall 2017
Winter 2017
Crossroads students pick up their name tags at the start of the program
ACSAA Symposium at Harvard University
Venkatesh Murthy talks to B4 Students
120 people attended over four days of The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) symposium at Harvard University. It was a combination of rich sessions on South Asian Art and visits to Boston and Cambridge museums. (p.23)
The South Asia Institute completed year two of its Nepal Studies Program. The 3-year program focuses on a different faculty-led topic of interest each year, and engages with scholars and practitioners both on the ground in Nepal and in Cambridge. (p. 28)
The Mittal Institute Executive Director Meena Hewett spoke at the launch of the student-run South Asia Engagement Forum (SAEF), an organization which hopes to address biases across borders in South Asia through their cross-regional and crosssector platform. (p.66)
The Mittal Institute supported 5 students to travel to South Asia for internships and conduct research 4 graduate students and 1 undergraduate student travelled to India, the UK and Germany. (p. 64)
The Mittal Institute launched our storygathering portal for our Partition Project, so we can collect as many personal recollections from around the world as we can. (p.20)
The India Seminar series launched, with the goal to help the Delhi office build a robust intellectual community. The first seminar was held by Professor S.V. (Subu) Subramanian. (p.73)
On Tuesday, December 5, 2017, faculty, administrators and friends of The Mittal Institute gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club to celebrate the renaming of The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University. (p.13)
25 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students from across India were selected to participate in a residential two-week workshop in ‘Genomics in Healthcare and Translational Research.’ (p.25)
FACULTY In June, The Mittal Institute Director, Tarun Khanna, discussed the Institute’s Partition Project at the World Economic Forum in China. During the summer, the Partition Project team presented seminars held in Lahore, Delhi and London. (p.20 and p.57)
STUDENTS Sakhi, winner of The Mittal Institute’s second Seed for Change Competition, began their year-long grant year working in India. Sakhi is developing high-quality, affordable, and environmentally safe menstrual cups for people in India. (p. 20 and p.63) The Mittal Institute awarded 16 grants to undergraduates and graduates for summer research, internship, and language study in Bangladesh, India, Bhutan and Nepal.
COMMUNITY In its inaugural year, the Harvard faculty-led Crossroads Summer Program brought 50 first generation college students from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa to Dubai. (p.17)
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Highlights
BY THE NUMBERS
Spring 2018
325,758 views have been accumulated on The Mittal Institute’s YouTube page.
4,366 people attended The Mittal Institute’s 76 events throughout the year. Ashok Gadgil (center) works on his Cook Stove project with The Mittal Institute and Tata Trusts
The Mittal Institute and Tata Trusts began a social enterprise partnership in India. A wide range of India-focused research, innovation and social entrepreneurship projects are underway, led by leading Harvard University scholars and academic colleagues from MIT and UC Berkeley. (p.26)
18,741 people follow The Mittal Institute on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
14,611 people have viewed the digital versions of The Mittal Institute’s annual publications.
On Wednesday, April 4th, The Mittal Institute hosted an opening reception for its Spring Art Exhibition, "Showcasing Research in South Asia Through Visual Arts." It featured 2D and 3D art and artifacts inspired by Harvard students who traveled to South Asia sponsored by The Mittal Institute travel grants. The show was curated by Sheliza Jamal, Graduate School of Education and Neeti Nayak, Graduate School of Design.(p.68)
28 students were funded by The Mittal Institute for internship, language study, and research grants in South Asia during the summer and winter sessions.
5,878 Through a grant initiative, The Mittal Institute sponsored four visiting artists to come the Harvard campus from March to May. The artists are from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and India. As part of their visit, the artists spent time displaying their work, attending courses, and giving lectures. (p.22) On May 4, The Mittal Institute hosted our eighth Annual Symposium: Knowledge Translation: Across Disciplines, Geographies, and Research to Action. (p.30)
people subscribe to The Mittal Institute’s weekly newsletter.
608 applications received for The Mittal Institute visiting scholar opportunities and grants.
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FACulty Over 150 faculty members at Harvard focus their research and teaching on South Asia. The Mittal Institute serves as a platform to connect these faculty members with students and regional partners. Karim Lakhani teaches a course during the 2017 Summer Crossroads Program
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2017 SUMMER CROSSROADS PROGRAM "The diversity in the program made me learn valuable information about other cultures and how they solved different issues, which made the experience very informative at the personal and career level." - 2017 Student of the Crossroads Program
2017 CROSSROADS FACULTY
A student participates in the 2017 Summer Crossroads Program
As part of the inaugural Crossroads Program, 50 students from Asia, Africa and the Middle East gathered in Dubai from August 11-14, 2017. Over the course of the program, these first-generation college students had a chance to learn about American universities and career development. The program covers the costs of international travel, boarding, lodging and class materials, for students who are the first in their families to attend college and may also be facing challenging financial and social circumstances that discourage them from applying to postgraduate schools. The successful cohort of 2017 included a young woman from a city in Pakistan with the country’s lowest female literacy rate and an Indian student who had worked as a garbage collector to pay his school fees. Students engaged with each other and faculty through the Harvard Business School case-study method of teaching and learning, exposing them to real, contemporary business scenarios. Executives from private and publiclyowned multinational companies visited the classroom to interact with students and offer their insight and experience.
This program is a collaboration between The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University, Harvard Business School Club of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Dubai International Financial Centre, with the support of Air Arabia, the Carlton Hotel, Dubai Future Accelerators, and Emirates Grand Hotel.
"I am very much impressed and motivated by all of the 3 professors and have managed to learn many things from them during this short period of time. This method helped students to be informed about several real issues in different parts of the world, analyze already existing solutions, think about new approaches by their own." - 2017 Student of the Crossroads Program
Tarun Khanna, Director of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School Karim R. Lakhani, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, the Principal Investigator of the Crowd Innovation Lab and NASA Tournament Lab at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the faculty co-founder of the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative Kristin E. Fabbe, Assistant Professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit
CROSSROADS EMERGING LEADERS PROGRAM 2018 The 2018 program is scheduled for September 23 – 28, 2018 at the DIFC Academy of the Dubai International Financial Centre (Dubai, UAE).
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SW47: Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems MODULE 1: INTRODUCTORY MODULE Taught by Tarun Khanna and Satchit Balsari, this introductory module explored several of the most salient challenges facing emerging market economies, highlighting political, economic and social institutional inadequacies (referred to as ‘institutional voids’ throughout the course). It also introduced a number of different ways of thinking about problem solving.
MODULE 2: THINKING LIKE A SCIENTIST
Tarun Khanna teaching SW47
COURSE OVERVIEW This unique and innovative course was open to all students across Harvard Graduate Schools and Harvard College. It provided a framework and multiple lenses through which to think about the salient economic and social problems of the five billion people of the developing world, and to work in a team setting towards identifying entrepreneurial solutions to such problems. The course was divided into five modules: an introduction reviewing salient approaches to development and the roles that entrepreneurs can play within these; followed by three thematic modules each led by a leader in their field; and then a concluding module which applied lessons learnt throughout the semester to specific problem contexts. The course introduced students to cases across the developing world with a particular focus on Africa, China, Latin America and South Asia.
“We realized that you cannot take one approach to entrepreneurship and you have to incorporate many different voices and perspectives to create a sustainable solution.” - Mariana Garza, Harvard College
Krzysztof Gajos guided students through the design process from the perspective of a scientist, engaging students in the method of entrepreneurial need assessment.
“The class pushed us to look at multiple iterations, and we went from one solution to the next. What was really important to learn was failing and failing again, trying things out and going somewhere different than we would have initially intended. ” - Swathi Srinivasan and Andrew Lim, Harvard College
Rahul Mehrotra established a lens for thinking about responsible entrepreneurship from the perspective of a planner, with a particular focus on system-wide thinking, the importance of time horizons, cultural preservation in the context of urban development, and participatory urban planning.
FACULTY Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor Harvard Business School Satchit Balsari, Fellow, Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Chief, Weill Cornell Global Emergency Medicine Division Krzysztof Gajos, Gordon McKay professor of Computer Science at the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning Graduate School of Design Doris Sommer, Ira Jewell Williams, Jr. Professor of Romance Languages and Literature, and of African and African American Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
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MODULE 3: THINKING LIKE A PLANNER
MODULE 4: THINKING LIKE AN ARTIST In this module, Doris Sommer empowered students to think creatively about how arts and the humanities can be used to change cultural norms, promote social cohesion, and ultimately improve economic development.
MODULE 5: APPLICATIONS TO DIFFERENT PROBLEMS AND CONTEXTS Guided by Tarun Khanna, the final module applied the various lenses discussed throughout the course to unique problem contexts in developing countries.
Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) HarvardX Course: Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies COURSE MODULES 1. Orientation and Introductions 2. Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies 3. Process Innovation and Scale: Tertiary Healthcare 4. Branding: Food Secuirty
COURSE OVERVIEW COURSE TEAM This business and management course, taught by Tarun Khanna, took an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and solving complex social problems. Students learned about prior attempts to address these problems, identified points of opportunity for smart entrepreneurial efforts, and proposed and developed their own creative solutions. The focus of this course was on individual agency—what can one do to address a defined problem? While the course used the lens of health to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, students learned how both problems and solutions are inevitably of a multi-disciplinary nature. The course drew on a range of sectors and fields of study.
“[The course] gave me a broad understanding on entrepreneurship, identifying institutional voids and opportunities created by these voids, the importance of considering factors that can impact on the implementation of a business opportunity, the continual review of progress to check if its in line with the target objectives and the need for flexibility. It also activated/ expanding my thinking and analysis of situations.” - Student who took the MOOC Course
Tarun Khanna, Lead Faculty, Harvard Business School Sarah Lockwood, Content Developer, Harvard Stefan Esposito, HarvardX Staff Becky Winn, Discussion Moderator and Content Developer, HarvardX Contractor Aaron Goldman, Discussion Moderator and Content Developer, HarvardX Contractor
5. Metrics and Action: Maternal Mortality 6. Creativity: The Role of Intellectual Property Rights 7. Partnering and Platforms: Mass Urbanization, Temporary Urbanization and Population Dynamics
GUEST CONTRIBUTORS Adam Frost, PhD student in History and East Asian Languages Satchit Balsari, Fellow, Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Chief, Weill Cornell Global Emergency Medicine Division Raj Choudhury, Assistant Professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit Sue Goldie, Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning
“I acquired a lot of knowledge in the past 3 weeks. Even though I live in India, I learnt a lot of things I didn't know about which were happening around me. This course will definitely influence my future entrepreneurial endeavors.” -Student who took the MOOC Course
2017 COURSE METRICS Enrollment: Total Enrollment: 44,826 Verified enrollment: 1,206 Earned a certificate: 768
Age: Median learner age: 28 Learners 25 and under: 37.0% Learners 26-40: 49.3% Learners 41 and over: 13.6%
Geography: 193 countries represented United States: 15% India: 9% Brazil 7%
8.06 - mean number of hours learners spent during each week they worked on this course
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The 1947 Partition of British India: Looking Back, Informing the Future
Jennifer Leaning and Yoqoob Bangash, in ITU, Karachi, Pakistan, Summer 2017
ABOUT
PROJECT ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS
RESEARCH THEMES
The 1947 Partition of British India is a multidisciplinary study that is examining questions not yet fully addressed by existing scholarship. Despite ample scholarship, and a growing literature of personal reflections, photo essays, oral history, and fiction, there remain gaps in our understanding of what transpired in the years prior to the Partition, during months of forced migration and conflict, and in the ongoing years of settlement and resettlement in the new states of India and Pakistan, and eventually Bangladesh.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH TEAM:
THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND HUMANITARIAN CONSEQUENCES OF THE PARTITION
The project has deployed new methods to extract further insights from existing texts, documents, maps of borders, border crossings, oral histories, and patterns of urban assembly and growth. Lessons from this project can inform current cross-border displacement and the corresponding growth of urban settlements.
WORKSHOPS: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (May 2017), Delhi (Summer 2016 and August 2017), Lahore (Summer 2016 and August 2017)
US, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan
EIGHT-PART THE MITTAL INSTITUTE SEMINAR SERIES Exploring the Multiple Themes Related to Partition EVENTS HIGHLIGHTING THE PARTITION RESEARCH: Karachi, Lahore, Delhi, London, New York City, Harvard University, Brown University, World Economic Forum, Dalian
ONLINE AND PRINT PUBLICATIONS: Podcasts, Website, Peer-reviewed Articles, Edited Volume, Teaching Tools, and Blog Pieces
Jennifer Leaning, Professor, Director, Department of Global Health and Population, FXB Centre for Health and Human Rights of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
CITIES AND SETTLEMENTS: IMPACT OF PARTITION ON URBANIZATION OF THE SUBCONTINENT Rahul Mehrotra, Professor, Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL RHETORIC AT THE TIME OF PARTITION LEADING TO PRESENT TIMES Prashant Bharadwaj, Associate Professor, Economics Department, University of California, San Diego Asim Khwaja, Professor, International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
CROWD-SOURCING MEMORIES: PARTITION STORIES PROJECT Tarun Khanna, Director, The Mittal Institute; Professor, Harvard Business School Karim R. Lakhani, Professor, Harvard Business School
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The 1947 Partition of British India: Looking Back, Informing the Future
At the Asia Society Event in New York, From left: Shubhangi Bhadada, Diane Athaide, Karim R. Lakhani, Tarun Khanna, Prashant Bharadwaj and Asia Society New York Executive Director Boon Hui Tan
1947 PARTITION PROJECT TEAM PROFESSORS
INDIA TEAM
BANGLADESH TEAM
Jennifer Leaning, Professor, Director, Department of Global Health and Population, FXB Centre for Health and Human Rights of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Insitute; Professor, Harvard Business School Prashant Bharadwaj, Associate Professor, Economics Department, University of California, San Diego Asim Khwaja, Professor, International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School of Government Karim R. Lakhani, Professor, Harvard Business School Rahul Mehrotra, Professor, Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Sanjay Kumar, Country Director India, Harvard South Asia Institute Mihir Bhatt, Director, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, India Uma Chakravarti, Professor, History Department, Miranda House College for Women, Delhi University, India Mandvi Dogra, Co-Founder, SnapPeas, India Rimple Mehta, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India Jhuma Sen, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, India Srikant Singh, Freelance Researcher Navsharan Singh, Researcher, History Department, Delhi University, India
Omar Rahman, Vice Chancellor, Independent University, Dhaka, Bangladesh Rita Yusuf, Assistant Professor, Social Development and Policy Department, Habib University, Pakistan Ornob Alam, Lecturer, Life Sciences Department, Independent University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
CAMBRIDGE TEAM
Mariam Chughtai, Pakistan Programs Director, Harvard South Asia Institute Shahram Azhar, Assistant Professor, Social Development and Policy Department, Habib University, Pakistan Yaqoob Bangash, Assistant Professor, History Department, Information Technology University, Pakistan Nadhra Khan, Assistant Professor, Humanities and Social Studies Department, Lahore University of Management Studies, Pakistan Ali Raza, Assistant Professor, History Department, Lahore University of Management Studies, Pakistan
Meena Hewett, Executive Director—The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute Nabil Khan, Research Fellow, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard/The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute Shubhangi Bhadada, Research Fellow—The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute Saba Kohli Dave, Research Associate—The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute Rasim Alam Research Associate—The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute Ajay Kumar, Research Associate,The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute
PAKISTAN TEAM
PARTITION ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, Professor of History, Harvard University Urvashi Butalia, Writer and Publisher Yasmin Khan, Official Fellow, University Lecturer; Associate Professor in British History, Department for Continuing Education, Faculty of History, University of Oxford Ian Talbot, Professor of Modern British History, University of Southampton Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, Associate Professor of History, Brown University
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Arts at The Mittal Institute The Arts program connects South Asia’s artists with Harvard faculty and students to support research that advances the understanding of social, political, cultural, and economic issues of the world through art.
Visiting Artist Program Supported by the Arts Advisory Council and the Dean of the Division of Social Science’s Donald T. Regan Lecture Fund, The Mittal Institute’s Visiting Artist Program brings emerging artists from South Asia to Harvard’s campus to engage with Harvard students, faculty, and community members. During their time on campus, artists attend courses, meet with student groups, give a lecture, and display their work.
FACULTY DIRECTOR Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture South and Southeast Asian, Harvard University
ADVISORY COUNCIL Dipti Mathur (Chair) Shanay Jhaveri (Program Advisor) Archan Basu and Madeline Jie Wang (Incoming) Poonam Bhagat Anurag Bhargava Radhika Chopra Aparajita and Gaurav Jain Chandrika Pathak Pinky and Sanjay Reddy Omar Saeed Sana Rezwan Sait Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani Osman Khalid Waheed
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Imran Channa discusses his work at the Visting Artists Seminar
Rajyashri Goody at the Visiting Artists Exhibition Reception
SPRING 2018 IMRAN CHANNA
SPRING 2018 RAJYASHRI GOODY
PAKISTAN
INDIA
Channa’s art practice interrogates the intersection between power and knowledge. His primary focus is on the documentation and dissemination of historical narratives and events. He explores how fabricated narratives can override our collective memory to shape individual and social consciousness and alter human responses.
Goody’s art practice revolves around the complexities of identity seen through the lens of larger social, political, economic, and religious structures at play, and consequently the tug between power and resistance that manifests itself within minority communities. Her interests lie within the interpretation of caste in India, particularly the strengthening voice of Dalit resistance since the 1920s.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
2018 FACULTY GRANT FOR THE ARTS JINAH KIM
Kabi Raj Lama (far left) discusses his lithography at the Visiting Artists Exhibition Reception
Faiham discusses his work in his seminar "Tea Tales of Bangladesh"
SPRING 2018 KABI RAJ LAMA
SPRING 2018 FAIHAM EBNA SHARIF
NEPAL
BANGLADESH
Lama is a contemporary print-maker based in Kathmandu, who primarily works with lithography and the Japanese mokuhanga (woodcut) medium. His work examines themes of natural disasters, trauma, and religion. Lama sees the complexities of natural disasters as multidimensional — affecting both tangible and intangible worlds. His exhibition, “From Kathmandu to Tokyo” in 2014 reveals the trauma of his experience in Japan where he witnessed and lived through the catastrophic tsunami that struck Japan in 2011.
Sharif is a freelance multimedia journalist and photographer, who has several years of experience working as a reporter, newsroom editor and presenter in national electronic media. His areas of research include colonialism, climate change, ethnic minorities, film, human rights, indigenous people, labor rights, migration, popular culture, refugees, Rohingya crisis, sports, tea industry and underprivileged children.
Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, received an The Mittal Institute Faculty Grant to organize The American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) symposium at Harvard University. One hundred twenty people attended over four days of ACSAA. The symposium was a combination of rich sessions on South Asian Art and visits to Boston and Cambridge museums. It was also an opportunity for colleagues to meet, re-connect with mentors and graduate school cohorts, and share current research in the field. Panelists explored new methodological directions. A number of papers took interdisciplinary approaches and excavated new historical meaning with clear historiographical awareness. The ACSAA symposia occur in alternating years, and serves senior scholars to graduate students, to gather share knowledge on South Asian arts. The ACSAA Symposium was organized by The Mittal Institute in conjunction with Professor Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture, and Laura Weinstein, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) with the generous support of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University; Harvard Art Museums; MFA, Boston; Asia Center, Harvard University; The Committee for the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities; and the Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities.
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Boston Bangalore Biosciences Beginnings (B4) Program
About The B4 program aims to build a scientific research corridor between India and the US by engaging scientists from India and Harvard through exchange programs. This program is a collaboration between the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bangalore, India, and the Harvard South Asia Institute, Cambridge, MA. The program is supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and the Department of Information Technology & Biotechnology and Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka.
B4 Science and Technology Fellowships at Harvard
(left to right) Venkatesh Murthy, Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology, B4 fellows: Gayatri Ramakrishnan, Ramya Purkanti, and Parvathi M Sreekumar at IBAB, Bangalore
B4 Fellows PRAVEEN ANAND, Computational Biology
RAMYA PURKANTI, Evolutionary Cell Biology
Four Science and Technology Fellowships from Fall 2016–Fall 2017 were offered in fields related to the biosciences at Harvard University and other institutions in the Boston area. In the inaugural year of the B4 program, the four Fellows selected from a pool of 52 applications worked in laboratories at Harvard and Boston related to their field such as bioinformatics, biomedical engineering, genomics, neuroscience, synthetic biology and more.
FACULTY DIRECTORS Venkatesh Murthy, Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Anand’s work at the Eddy/Rivas Laboratory leverages recent advances in machine learning to gain insight into the problem of predicting how RNA and binding proteins will combine. These layers of abstract allow the neural network to learn complex features of the input data.
Purkanti is interested in how complexity arose at a cellular level through evolutionary processes. During her fellowship, she explored the relationship between frequency of mutators and dynamics of adaptation across different conditions.
PARVATHI MADATHIL SREEKUMAR,
GAYATRI RAMAKRISHNAN,
Plant Abiotic Stress Physiology/Molecular and Cell Biology
Computational Biology
Sreekumar proposed to develop simple and robust systems that will circumvent obstacles associated with gene therapy and expression and open new therapeutic strategies in medical sciences, in line with the research thrust of her host lab.
Tarun Khanna, Director of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
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Ramakrishnan researches the structural basis of DNA-binding specificity of transcription factors. Her study aims to understand and analyze rules that aid interactions between DNA and certain biomolecules known as transcription factors (that “activate” a gene); and rules (mutations) that could potentially damage such interactions. The inferences from such a study are valuable in directing experiments on genetic diseases in human and cancer research.
B4 Young Scientist Development Course Participants in Bangalore
B4 Young Scientist Program Another component of the B4 program was the Young Scientist Program (YSP) on neuroscience, a two-week immersion course run by The Mittal Institute and IBAB to introduce Indian students to the excitement of neuro science. From a pool of 220 applications from undergraduate and graduate students from across India, 25 students were selected to be the second batch of the YSP. The aim of the Genomics workshop was to “introduce talented Indian students to the emerging area of genomics and enable them to explore the power and excitement of Next Generation Sequencing technologies to address clinically relevant research questions,” said Professor M. Vijayalakshmi, IBAB, who co-developed the curriculum. Distinguished faculty and postdoctoral fellows from institutions such as Boston University, Harvard, Broad Institute, Boston, ACTREC (Mumbai), IGIB (Delhi), CCMB (Hyderabad), IISC and NCBS (Bangalore) trained the participants on both the experimental aspects of genomic sequencing and computational analysis of sequencing data through didactic research lectures and hands-on sessions. The workshop concluded on December 23
with a valedictory event that included a panel discussion on “Genomics: Trends and Opportunities.” Following the workshop was the valedictory event of the first phase of B4. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. VijayRaghavan (Secretary, DBT) who highlighted the current and future study and practice of Bio Sciences in India. He emphasized the need to build a science-based ecosystem that is sensitive to the nation’s needs. Dr. VijayRaghavan’s talk was followed by a panel moderated by Professor Venkatesh Murthy, Chair of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard University, and lead faculty of the B4 Program. The discussion focused on the impact of the program in India. Panelists included Aditya Murthy, Faculty from IISC, and three B4 fellows, Parvathi Sreekumar, Ramya Purkanti, and Gayatri Ramakrishnan, who had recently returned their B4 Fellowship at Harvard.
PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOR Savitha Ananth, Program Coordinator, Bangalore
PROGRAM PARTNERS Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bangalore, India Department of Biotechnology, Government of India Department of Information Technology & Biotechnology and Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka
The closing vote of thanks was delivered by Professor N. Yathindra, Director, IBAB, who spoke of the value of the B4 Program for the young Indian scientists and the bridge created between academic institutions in the US and India. He also emphasized the value of translation of knowledge from academia to practice. YEAR IN REVIEW
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Multidisciplinary Approach to Social Enterprises in India
Chris Duggan, HMS and Rebecca Mam
THE MITTAL INSTITUTE AND TATA TRUSTS SOCIAL ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP Drawing on resources from top researchers at U.S.-based academic institutions, the Tata Trusts project is working to provide social enterprises that can solve issues contributing to the nation’s cycle of poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy. Initiatives supported through this program will address significant challenges for populations most in need. Populations that are impacted by this program’s developments will range from individual families, and communities in the urban, semi-urban, and rural areas across India.
Satchit Balsari, FXB
“We have a lot to learn from challenges on the ground while sharing what we as academics uncover through our deep dive research on issues affecting entrepreneurship in India. This partnership with the Tata Trusts is laying the foundation for innovative knowledge exchange between academia and practitioners.” – Professor Tarun Khanna, Director, The Mittal Institute, and Professor, Harvard Business School
To develop effective solutions, taking a multidisciplinary approach is essential, and The Mittal Institute and Tata partnership started by developing solutions for health and healthcare delivery, girls’ education and womens’ safety, and livelihood creation. The program acts as a catalyst in the current efforts initiated by the government, civil society organizations, academia, and select corporations for the economic empowerment of Indian masses — and initiating social enterprise.
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A group of women test out Ashok Gadgil's Cook Stoves
“We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership with The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University, which has a unique capacity to gather together the best minds from a wide variety of disciplines, all dedicated to solving the most complex social problems in India.” – Manoj Kumar, Head of Innovation, Tata Trusts
Principle Investigators AFFORDABLE SOFT WEARABLES FOR DISABILITIES Conor Walsh, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences The development of a series of consumer-oriented, affordable, wearable devices, to address physical disability in India.
COOK STOVE Ashok Gadgil, Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Chair Professor of Safe Water and Sanitation, UC Berkeley Berkeley has stove designs that reduce fuel consumption per meal by 50%, cost US $20, and produce 50% less smoke than a traditional biomass fire.
DEFLOURIDATION WATER FILTERS Ashok Gadgil, Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Chair Professor of Safe Water and Sanitation, UC Berkeley India has over 66 million people facing risk of developing fluorosis and it is also home to the 5th largest bauxite deposit (3037 million tonnes). This study systematically investigates the factors governing performance of diverselysourced bauxite ores.
SANITATION INFRASTRUCTURE
PROJECT PRAKASH Pawan Sinha, Professor of vision and computational neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Treatment for curably blind children, illuminating fundamental questions regarding the brain and learning.
TASK-SHIFTING, TRAINING AND TECHNOLOGY: VALIDATING THE 3T MODEL Satchit Balsari, Research fellow at Harvard FXB
Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Planning and Design, GSD, Harvard University
This project will prototype the 3T model for primary healthcare delivery, through the use of mobile and digital health technologies
An examination of the issue of public sanitation in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s slums and informal settlements.
UNPACKING PREVENTION: COMMUNITY-LEVEL STRATEGIES TO BUILD CHILD PROTECTION AND RIGHTS IN INDIA
MODEL MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH AND NUTRITIONT
Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Director of Research; Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School; Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
Chris Duggan, Professor in the Departments of Nutrition and Global Health and Population, Harvard University Nutrition and food industry would come together and learn from global experts in the field to design and fund new industries and/or new commercial products that are well-designed for mothers and children.
Field research in West Bengal, Bihar and Telangana.
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Nepal Studies Program A three-year program that engages Harvard faculty, scholars and practitioners, on the ground in Nepal, other countries in South Asia, and in Cambridge, to come together to undertake research on areas critical to Nepal’s development. Generously funded by Mr. Jeffrey Smith, Principal Shareholder, Law Firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP.
Professor Leonard van der Kuljp presents his work
Year 2 (2017-2018): Buddhism in Nepal, Past and Present JANUARY 5, 2018 KATHMANDU, NEPAL This past year, professor Leonard van der Kuijp, Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, led a group to discover the spread and development of Buddhism within the IndiaNepal-Tibet corridor. The Kathmandu Valley houses both public and private libraries, countless Buddhist manuscripts that are no longer available in India that were divided, destroyed or fell into disuse and disappeared. In that sense, Nepalese Buddhism has played a very important role in not only the preservation of late Indian Buddhism, but also, earlier forms of Indian Buddhism that played a role in the transmission of Indian Buddhism to Nepal and then from Nepal to China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. This means that for academic and historical research, building relationships is incredibly important — not only to access books and manuscripts — but to actively preserve them and have them as future resources. To ignite these partnerships, van der Kuijp helped
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organize two conferences, one in Nepal and one in the U.S. The overarching theme was Buddhism in Nepal based on how the Neymar perceived it, and also the Tibetan-Nepal interface. Kurtis Schaffer, chairman of the religion department at the University of Virginia, spoke about the 18th century itinerant yogi in Northern Nepal who wondered whether he was really Tibetan or Nepalese. It was a very interesting autobiography where he was constantly wondering about his own ethnicity because his feet were firmly planted in Tibetan Buddhist but he was from the Northern Himalayas. From a religious and anthropology background, Todd Lewis, Professor at Holy Cross, examined the religious life of one area in Kathmandu where he lived and did field work for about five years. The final speaker was Naresh Man Bajracharya, and he discussed the foundation of the Lumbini University and the Buddhist monastery that the neighbors built in Ngubeni. Overall, this year’s program helped strengthen relationships between Harvard and the Nepalese Buddhist community, showing that Harvard is paying attention to what Buddhists do in Nepal, and how academia can support their initiatives.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
YEAR 1 (2016-2017) Almost two years after the Gorkha earthquake, a group of disaster specialists, lead by Jerold Kayden, Professor of Urban Planning and Design, travelled to Kathmandu, Nepal, for a “Rapid Planning Exercise” on preparing for another earthquake. The program focused not only on the recovery, but also potential bottlenecks for future initiatives. As an overall outcome, the participants will have a collaborative work product designed to guide future thinking, actions, and global partners.
YEAR 3 (2018-2019) Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, will lead an exploration of aspects of Hindu religion in Nepal, especially of various rituals. This too will be based on medieval documents and modern practice. Special attention will be placed on their co-existence and the mutual influences with related Buddhist rites.
Meritocracy Project Funded by the Harvard China Fund, Harvard University.
Meritocracy Workshop with Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Meritocracy + Talent: China and India From its start in 2015, the Meritocracy Project has examined and discussed the state of “Meritocracy” in India and China, from both historical and conceptual viewpoints. Through a variety of workshops and presentations, this initiative continuously works to understand and potentially reshape how these two countries think about talent. Currently in these societies, many individuals are limited by historical societal classification systems, leaving a large portion of populations lacking proper education, talent development, and promotional opportunities. Ultimately, The Meritocracy Project is working to illuminate the relationship between the idea of merit and talent organization in China and India, and how power and influence are divided in these countries. Participants are working to understand and potentially change how policies evaluate talent. Over the course of presentations and workshops, attendees have worked to evaluate the philosophical conceptions of talent and merit, historical and contemporary issues related to meritocracy, as well as prospective policy directions.
Over the past year, the project has expanded its efforts, and held summits in Shanghai, Delhi, and Cambridge. These discussions focused on India’s influence of caste on meritocracy, China’s exam structures, and the impact of the quota system in both countries. In addressing these questions and ideas, The Meritocracy Project hopes to grow opportunities for all members of both societies and reduce global poverty.
"The workshops draw on humanists, social scientists, lawyers, and engineers, among others, to discuss the manner in which the two countries nurtured and allocated talent, and the extent to which these systems were residues from decades, even centuries, past. It’s hard to think of something more central to a university like Harvard than the idea of meritocracy.” - Tarun Khanna
FACULTY Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University Michael Szonyi, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
PARTNERS Bill Kirby, Director, Harvard China Fund Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President, Centre for Policy Research, India Duan Peijun, Academic Dean, Philosophy Department, Central Party School, Beijing Qian Yingyi, Dean, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University Bernard Yeung, Dean, NUS Business School
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The Mittal Institute Annual Symposium The Mittal Institute’s eighth Annual Symposium featured a discussion on translational knowledge across the subcontinent, from the perspectives of humanities, science and social science.
2017 SAI Symposium: Life Sciences Panel with Parvathi Sreekumar, Venkatesh Murthy and Muhammad H. Zaman
KNOWLEDGE TRANSLATION: ACROSS DISCIPLINES, GEOGRAPHIES AND FROM RESEARCH TO ACTION
John Naslund, Research Fellow in Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
MAY 4, 2018
Chair: Vikram Patel, MBBS, PhD, Pershing Square Professor of Global Health, Harvard Medical School
SESSION I: MATERIAL, SCIENCE, AND ART: STUDY AND CONSERVATION OF SOUTH ASIAN ART IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY Francesca Bewer, Head of the Materials Lab, Research Curator for Conservation and Technical Studies Programs, Harvard Art Museums Katherine Eremin, Patricia Cornwell Senior Conservation Scientist, Harvard Art Museums Narayan Khandekar, Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture South and Southeast Asian, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
SESSION III: SEED FOR CHANGE PRESENTATIONS Introductions by Tarun Khanna, Director, The Mittal Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
SESSION IV: SCALING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN EMERGING ECONOMIES Ashok Gadgil, Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Chair Professor of Safe Water and Sanitation, UC Berkeley Discussant: Asim Khwaja, Professor of International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School
SESSION II: HOPELESSNESS: YOUTH CAPABILITIES AND MENTAL HEALTH IN SOUTH ASIA Shubh Agrawal, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
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MAY 3, 2017
HIGHLIGHT FROM THE 20162017 ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM During the Life Sciences panel, Parvathi Sreekumar shared what she referred to as her “enriching experience” as a B4 fellow. She connected the main theme of the symposium, Migration and Transformation, to the mission of the B4 Fellowship Sreekumar commented that with the B4 fellowship, young emerging researchers are given opportunities to come to a scientifically rich environment, be transformed as they imbibe new skills and return to their own niche and implement that new knowledge. Sreekumar connected the lack of opportunities in many parts of the world to the urge to migrate in order to seek opportunities elsewhere. Access to opportunities is synonymous with access to the possibility of transformation.
Mahindra Lecture The Harish C. Mahindra lecture series is given in honor of the late Harish C. Mahindra, a distinguished alumnus of Harvard College and a visionary leader of business and industry in India.
Arun Jaitley
2018 ANNUAL MAHINDRA LECTURE India's Tax Reforms Arun Jaitley, Current Finance Minister and Minister of Corporate Affairs in India Discussant: Tarun Khanna, Director of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Insitute, Harvard University; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School In a country of where most people prefer to conduct transactions in cash, Arun Jaitley, India’s Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, unpacked the need for a reform in the taxation system as well as the government’s rationale for the controversial demonetization policy. To do away with the traditional system of indirect taxation separately levied by the central and state governments, the Goods and Services Tax policy in India, streamlines 17 of these indirect taxes into one system of taxation. Jaitley said that despite this increase, 95% of the registered tax payers still pay fairly negligible amounts. Thus, the culture of paying taxes has yet to be inculcated. This renders the nation largely a non-compliant state and takes away from government revenue, and causes shortages in providing better services for education, health, and national security.
in the tax base, the Goods and Services Tax was a way for the government to make substantial increases in the tax base. The government has also tried to incentivize people to join the direct tax-paying base by encouraging them to pay lower rates of taxes of 5% and through their income savings schemes. The largest increase in the tax base in the recent months have not come through the increase of registered businesses, but through an increase of individual tax-payers. The government also followed gradual steps to decrease the siphoning off of assets overseas. According to Jaitley, the demonetization policy was an effort on the government’s part to reduce the anonymity that came with conducting transactions in cash and ensuring that an identity could be affixed to the flow of money in the economy. In order to ensure that the government is also held accountable to accurately collect the taxes that people owe, the Goods and Services Tax Policy was implemented. Jaitley added this tax streamlining process is an effort to rid the government tax collection department of corruption and ensure that the necessary revenue flows in. It also facilitates economic integration of the whole country and the free flow of goods and services across state borders.
PAST SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of Defense, Government of India. India’s Security Perspective, 2006 P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister, Government of India. Poor Rich Country: The Challenges of Development, 2007 Nirupama Rao, Foreign Secretary of India. India’s Global Role, 2009 Dr. A.P.J Kalam, 11th President of India. Empowering Three Billion People, 2011 Raghu Rai, Photographer and Photojournalist 2013 Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC. Poverty and Development in South Asia, 2014 Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder of Infosys. Aadhaar Unique Identification, 2015 TM Krishna, Carnatic Vocalist, 2017
During his lecture, Jaitley explained that the tax base of the country needs to increase, but in the last several decades, deliberate attempts to increase it substantially have not taken place. To ensure that the government moves away from making marginal increases YEAR IN REVIEW
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Faculty Grants The Mittal Institute offers short-term travel grants for work in fields related to South Asia. These grants range from $2,000–$5,000 and are intended to support travel, preferable for junior faculty.
Nepal Earthquake Museum Proposal Funded by the Harvard University Asia Center
In the spring of 2015, Nepal suffered the latest in an historical sequence of major earthquake damaging significant parts of the country. Even as the country is currently repairing structures and lives affected by the 2015 earthquakes, it simultaneously needs to prepare itself for future earthquakes.
Parent Meeting, photo by Hridbijoy Chakraborty
2018 FACULTY GRANT SPOTLIGHT EMMERICH DAVIES Emmerich Davies is an Assistant Professor of International Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and teaches courses at Harvard on the politics of education. Emmerich received a research grant from the South Asia Institute to travel to India, between August and December in the year 2017, in order to study a grass-roots intervention by the Ministry of Education in New Delhi to increase community based participation in government schools. Their intervention specifically targets School Management Committees in Delhi, and targets two main goals: recruiting the best candidates for representation in the committees and representation from disenfranchised sections of the community, particularly women or lower caste people.
2017–18 FACULTY GRANTS
Melani Cammet, FAS Diversity and Accountability: Intergroup Cooperation and Public Goods Provision in India Emmerich Davies, HGSE Power to the Parents: Local Community Participation in Delhi Schools
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The museum would have four main areas: •
Exhibits and experiential amenities the nature of earthquakes and specific cases in Nepal.
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A research center for scientists from all around the world and with various backgrounds.
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A policy and research gathering place for Nepali scientific and policy experts.
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A memorial and commemorative function for Nepalis.
Jinah Kim, FAS ACSAA Conference
The larger project will follow members of School Management Committees over their two year tenure and seeks to understand how parents engage with schools and other parents. The long-term aim of this project is to contribute to an emerging literature on the impact of community based participation in welfare, politics and citizenship. Emmerich aims to understand not only the material benefits of greater citizen participation but also the changes it induces in underlying social dynamics, with relation to power and political efficacy. This intervention also seeks to understand the impact on the perception of political citizenship, through deliberate engagement by political parties.
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Jerold Kayden and Rahul Mehrotra, professors at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, proposed a plan for an earthquake museum and institute in Kathmandu, Nepal.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
The initiative would involve preliminary planning and design project that would reveal to Nepali government officials, civil society representatives, and members of the public the possibilities and challenges of an earthquake museum and institute. It would incorporate three main phases: research on tourism in Nepal; visiting the country to examine possible sites, prepare designs, and present preliminary ideas; and then finalize the project at Harvard.
EVENTS The Mittal Institute strengthens South Asia-related research in a variety of disciplines through seminars, workshops and multi-faculty research projects and programs. Partition Researchers Rasim Alam and Saba Kohli Dave and The Mittal Institute Fellow Raile Rocky Ziipao enjoy the samosas and wine reception for The Mittal Institute Visiting Artist Exhibition Reception and seminar YEAR IN REVIEW
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Arts at The Mittal Institute This lecture series brings artists, scholars, and historians together to showcase South Asian art. The varying mediums include film, performance, sculpture, and paintings all centered around historical and political themes of the region.
Seema Kohli delivers an artist talk on her practice
David Dean Shulman discusses Kudiyattam
Performers demonstrate Kudiyattam during a workshop
OCTOBER 23, 2017
NOVEMBER 8, 2017
NOVEMBER 8, 2017
In Silence, The Secret Speaks
Kudiyattam Lecture
Nepatha: Kudiyattam, Sanskrit Theater Workshop
David Dean Shulman, Hebrew University Seema Kohli, Artist Chair: Richard Cash, Senior Lecturer on Global Health, Department of Global Health and Population, T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health.
Seema Kohli merged storytelling into her artist talk by reading poetic reflections on her artistic practice from a scroll. As she spoke, a slide show played of over 200 separate art pieces. The art included drawings, paintings, installations and sculptures that she has created over the past several decades. Her art celebrates the lost feminine narrative and engages with a wide circuit of references like religious iconography, world mythology, philosophical and literature.
Chair: Richard Wolf, Professor of Music and South Asian Studies Dean Shulman discussed Kudiyattam, the last living performance tradition of Sanskrit theater in the world. Kudiyattam combines ancient Sanskrit theater with Koothu, a tamil performing art. This visually powerfully tradition is recognized by Unesco as preserving “masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.�
The audience watched several students learn how to perform traditional Kudiyattam at the Agassiz Theater in a workshop led by the troupe Nepathya. Blodgett Distinguished Artists with support from the Department of Music, the Provotial Fund for the Arts and Humanities and the Elson Family Fund.
Nepathya performs a full Kudiyattam show at Harvard
NOVEMBER 9, 2017
Kudiyattam Performance The troupe Nepathya, from central Kerala in South India, performed Kudiyattam at the Agassiz Theater.
Blodgett Distinguished Artists with support from the Department of Music, the Provotial Fund for the Arts and Humanities and the Elson Family Fund.
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Arts at The Mittal Institute
David Dean Shulman gives a lecture
Sonal Kullar and Jinah Kim
Doris Sommer leads participants through Pre-Texts
NOVEMBER 10, 2017
NOVEMBER 30, 2017
MARCH 9, 2018
Outer Beauty and Inner Silence
Southern Lights: Art History
Pre-Texts with Doris Sommer
David Dean Shulman, Hebrew University
Sonal Khullar, Associate Professor, Art History, University of Washington
Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Chairs: Parmil G. Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Harvard University Richard Wolf, Professor of Music and South Asian Studies, Harvard University This lecture offered readings from one extraordinary section of the Tamil text, Kampan’s twelfth-century Irāmāvatāram, the Cittirakūtap patalam, when the heroes enter into their new home in the wilderness. The question that was addressed: What is the poet telling us about this tensile moment, and, above all, what has he left unsaid?
Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture In her seminar, Sonal Khullar explored postcolonial museum practices in the display of South Asian Art, using the 2017 Documenta exhibition of Indian painter Amrita SherGil as a case study. In the Documenta exhibition, Sher Gil’s work was exhibited alongside that of American filmmaker Maya Deren (1917-1961), presumably to highlight affinities in their feminism, primitivism, and cosmopolitanism.
With the activities of Pre-Texts, we gather lessons of philosophy, pedagogy, and art — including vernacular arts — to offer high order learning in low-resourced communities. In collaboration with partners in the Indian education and public health sectors, Cultural Agents hopes to contribute to development in India with Pre-Texts by engaging local strengths to promote: literacy, innovation, and citizenship.
Co-sponsored with the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University.
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Arts at The Mittal Institute
Murad Khan Mumtaz explores manuscript paintings
Faiham Ebna Sharif discusses his work on tea workers
Jinah Kim introduces Dr. R. Siva Kumar
APRIL 6, 2018
APRIL 12, 2018
APRIL 13, 2018
The Sufi in the Garb of a Yogi: Articulations of Sanctity under Muslim Patronage in Early Modern Indian Painting
Tea Tales of Bangladesh
From Interlocutor to Painter: Rabindranath Tagore and Modern Indian Art Visiting Artist Seminar
Murad Khan Mumtaz, Artist and Researcher
Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University This talk focused on 16th and early-17th century album and manuscript paintings made for Muslim patrons where the Nāth yogi appears as an emblem and surrogate for the Islamic spiritual path of tasawwuf (Sufism), an archetype for the mystical traveler (sālik) and a figure of spiritual longing.
Faiham Ebna Sharif, The Mittal Institute Visiting Artist Chair: Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University The Mittal Institute Visiting Artist Faiham Ebra Sharif is a freelance multimedia journalist and photographer. He discussed his current project, Cha Chakra: Tea Tales of Bangladesh, which sheds light on the plight of the tea garden workers of Bangladesh who are among the lowest paid and most vulnerable laborers in the world, yet are strangely invisible to the global media. Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Co-sponsored by the Prince Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University.
Dr. R. Siva Kumar, Professor of History of Art, Visva Bharati University Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture Dr. R. Siva Kumar gave an illustrated talk on Rabindranath Tagore’s contribution to the evolution of modern Indian art and his emergence as a painter. While Rabindranath began to paint in 1928 when he was 67 years of age, his interest in art goes back to the last decades of the 19th century and he established the art school at Santiniketan in 1919. Through his encounters with world art, Rabindranath had initially believed that it was beyond him to become an artist, discovered himself as an artist. Co-sponsored by the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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Arts at The Mittal Institute
From left: Faiham Ebna Sharif, Rajyashri Goody, Kabi Raj Lama and Imran Channa discuss their art practice
Kabi Raj Lama creating a woodblock
APRIL 17, 2018
APRIL 27, 2018
Visiting Artist Seminar: Revelations: Reclaiming South Asian Narratives
Japanese Woodblock Print Demonstration
The Mittal Institute Visiting Artists: Imran Channa, Rajyashri Goody, Kabi Raj Lama, and Faiham Ebna Sharif. Chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Department of History of Art and Architecture This seminar marked the opening of exhibition “Revelations: Reclaiming South Asian Narratives”. The works of The Mittal Institute Visiting Artists Imran Channa, Rajyashri Goody, Kabi Raj Lama, and Faiham Ebna Sharif unravel challenging social issues that often fall outside of the limelight, and explore possibilities that lie in making traditionally invisible stories and narratives visible, from tea garden workers in Bangladesh; personal accounts of trauma and healing after disasters in Nepal; Dalit resistance in India; and the fallibility of memory during the Partition in Pakistan.
In collaboration with Harvard’s Bow and Arrow Press, The Mittal Institute's Artist in Residence Kabi Raj Lama led a three-hour demonstration and workshop on Japanese Woodcut Printmaking that was open to the public. The workshop began with Kabi Raj sharing his lithography and woodcut prints. He discussed his print-making journey and then demonstrated how to make prints by hand using water-based inks and a special tool. After the tutorial, participants were able to make their own print. The Visiting Artists Program is funded by The Mittal Institute Arts Council.
The Visiting Artists Program is funded by The Mittal Institute Arts Council.
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Book Talks & Film Events The Mittal Institute’s book talks showcase important issues through literature, and allow the community to engage with celebrated authors. Film screenings offer a myriad of contemporary films, documentaries, and historic works from South Asia.
Aman Hingorani discusses his book
Baghban movie poster
From left: Jinah Kim, Deepa Mehta, David Hamilton and Durba Mitra
NOVEMBER 6, 2017
NOVEMBER 14, 2017
NOVEMBER 20, 2017
Unravelling the Kashmir Knot
Baghban
Earth
As part of the Aging in Asia film series, The Mittal Institute co-sponsored a screening of the landmark Hindi drama film Baghban (2003). An elderly couple wish their children to care for them in their old age, but their children see and treat them as a burden, and they must struggle to regain their worth and dignity to themselves and others.
Deepa Mehta, Filmmaker
Aman Hingorani, Author Chair: Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University In this book talk, Dr. Aman Hingorani offered his narrative on the Partition of India, specifically the controversy surrounding the states of Jammu & Kashmir. He provided a historical perspective on India’s provinces and the way boundaries and borders were created. He examined the role of British policy in the division of India. Through discussion of policy and legislation, Dr. Hingorani debunked the “two-nation” theory and delved deeper into factors that led to the continued Jammu & Kashmir dispute.
Co-sponsored by the Asia Center.
Co-chair: Jinah Kim, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Department of History of Art and Architecture Co-chair: Durba Mitra, Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute; Assistant Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Filmmaker Deepa Mehta joined us for a screening of her film Earth (1998), the third and final film in her acclaimed Elemental trilogy. A discussion followed the screening, giving a wide array of students, scholars, and community members a chance to interact with the filmmaker. The conversation included Jinah Kim, Durba Mitra and Deepa Mehta's longtime producer, David Hamilton. Deepa Mehta fielded many questions about her artistic process, including her casting choices, as well as the way she chose to portray Partition atrocities. Support for this program was provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund. Cosponsored by Harvard Art Museums.
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Book Talks & Film Events
Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey discuss their book
Tushar Madhav and Sarvnik Kaar answer questions about their film
Muhammad H. Zaman talks about his book
MARCH 19, 2018
APRIL 9, 2018
APRIL 13, 2018
Cleaning Up India? Challenges and Obstacles
Soz: A Ballad of Maladies
Bitter Pills: The Global War on Counterfeit Drugs
Tushar Madhav, Director Assa Doron, Australian National University Sarvnik Kaur, Writer Robin Jeffrey, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore Chair: Martha Chen, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India (Harvard UP, 2018) examines national assets and obstacles for achieving a cleaner India. The authors argued that obstacles that appear unique to India are volume, density, and the caste system. The authors also discussed India’s assets, including old practices of frugality; recycling; global experience and science; and dynamic entrepreneurs, officials, NGOs, and citizens.
Chair: Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University This film is a portrait of poets, musicians, and artists who have turned their art into weapons of resistance during periods of heightened state repression and violence in Indian-administered Kashmir. By evoking the collective memory of a people and unwinding threads of their folk history, the featured artists and musicians in this film negotiate with questions of survival, resistance, and freedom — all deeply embroiled in the complex conflict of Kashmir. Combining animation, folk music and street plays with casual conversations at street corners, expert analyses and stump speeches, this was a documentary about a nation, a people and one extraordinary idea.
Muhammad H. Zaman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University Long the scourge of developing countries, fake pills are now increasingly common in the United States. The explosion of Internet commerce, coupled with globalization and increased pharmaceutical use has led to an unprecedented vulnerability in the U.S. drug supply. In this talk, Zaman gave special attention to the science and engineering behind both counterfeit and legitimate drugs, and the role of a "technological fix" for the fake drug problem. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Bookstore, possible through a grant from the Asia Center.
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Fellows Seminar While conducting research at Harvard, The Mittal Institute fellows give a lecture about their area of study and expertise.
Saad Azmat discusses financial inclusion in Pakistan
Raille Rocky Ziipao explains Infrastructure in North East India
Imtiaz ul Haq talks about mobile money
NOVEMBER 27, 2017
MARCH 29, 2016
APRIL 23, 2018
Financial Inclusion in Pakistan
The Question of Tribes in Northeast India
Building Resilience through Mobile Money
Saad Azmat, Babar Ali Fellow 2017; Associate Professor of Finance, Lahore University of Management Science
Raile Rocky Ziipao, Arvind Raghunathan and Sribala Subramanian South Asia Visiting Fellow
Imtiaz ul Haq, Aman Visiting Fellow; Assistant Professor of Economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
The session focused on how different modes of financial inclusion have helped or hindered poverty alleviation in Pakistan. There was further discussion of the role played by regulations in alleviating or increasing poverty in the country. Factors include the psychology of the households and the institutional environment of the country, which may affect the effectiveness of policies geared towards poverty alleviation.
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Chair: Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Harvard University
Chair: Shawn Cole, Professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School
During this talk, Raile Rocky Ziipao posited that road building has always been an act of power, which has at different times been leveraged to smooth relationships, secure borders, (dis)connect people, enable trade, create spaces of contestation, or dilute boundaries between varied ethnic groups.
Imtiaz ul Haq asked the question, Can mobile money help the rural poor become more resilient to climate change shocks? He presented new evidence using satellite data from the world’s most successful mobile money market, Kenya, and discussed how the findings translate to South Asia.
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Health in South Asia Health in South Asia lectures examine the state of healthcare, population health, and what the future holds for the region.
From left: Vikram Patel and Devi Shetty
From left: Priya Moorjani, Richard Meadow, Michael Witzel, David Reich and Venkatesh Murthy
OCTOBER 10, 2017
APRIL 23, 2018
Affordable Healthcare: Together We Can Do It
Are South Asians a Single Population? Insights from Culture, Genetics, and Disease
Dr. Devi Shetty, Chairman and Executive Director of Narayana Health Discussant: Vikram Patel, Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow; Harvard Medical School; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Public Health Foundation of India; London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK Chair: Tarun Khanna, Director of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School During his seminar, Dr. Shetty discussed the advantage of having a hospital in the Cayman Islands, considering the proximity to the U.S. without the same regulations. He hopes that the U.S. will see the advantage to the low-cost model and adopt it, since many countries look to the U.S. as a model. Since healthcare is not limited by any finite resource, Dr. Shetty sees healthcare education as imperative.
Richard Meadow, Director, Zooarchaeology Laboratory, Peabody Museum of Harvard University Priya Moorjani, Assistant Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development, University of California, Berkeley David Reich, Professor, Harvard Medical School Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University Chair: Venkatesh Murthy, Professor and Chair of Molecular and Cellular Biology During this interdisciplinary discussion, the four panelists examined the ways that cultural practices and social structures intersect with biomedicine and genetics. Specifically, they looked at the ways that endogamy and caste structures in South Asian contexts have produced implications for health practices and medical predispositions. Co-sponsored with the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute; Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University; Possible through a grant from the Harvard Asia Center.
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Joint Seminar Series on South Asian Politics Co-sponsored with MIT, the Watson Institute at Brown University, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, this series brings together scholars to examine South Asian politics. The organizing committee includes Ashutosh Varshney (Brown), Emmerich Davies (Harvard), Vipin Narang (MIT) and Prerna Singh (Brown).
Saad Gulzar
Arjun Subramanian
Attendees listen to Tara Beteille
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
OCTOBER 20, 2017
NOVEMBER 17, 2017
Why do Citizens Become Politicians? Experimental Evidence on Candidacy
War and Conflict in Contemporary India
The Contentious Politics of Teacher Transfers in India: A Way Forward
Saad Gulzar, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University Chair: Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University Saad's research interests lie in the political economy of development and comparative politics, with a regional focus on South Asia. He explored the determinants of politician and bureaucratic effort toward citizen welfare in his presentation.
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Arjun Subramanian, Visiting Fellow at Harvard Asia Center Chair: Vipin Narang, Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam (Retd) is a fighter pilot-scholar author who recently retired from the Indian Air Force after 36 years in uniform. He is an experienced fighter pilot with command, staff and instructional experience. A P.h.D in Defence and Strategic Studies from the University of Madras, India, he is a prolific writer, strategic commentator, and military historian and writes in the public domain for reputed journals, magazines and newspapers.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
Tara Beteille, Senior Economist at the Education Global Practice at the World Bank Chair: Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education The education system in India assigns government teachers to schools across the country. The disregard of teachers’ location preferences leads to teacher transfers, used as a way to shortcut bureaucracy to get desirable stations. This system of teacher transfers is fraught with corruption, and plays a role in the educational disparities between urban and rural areas. In this talk, Tara Beteille used her own research to discuss the use of bribes and how they play into the collusive relationship between politicians and teachers.
Joint Seminar Series on South Asian Politics
Maya Tudor leads a discussion on nationalism
Adam Auerbach discusses broker selection in India
Nicholas Sambanis
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
MARCH 2, 2018
MARCH 16, 2018
Is Nationalism a Democratic Resource? Evidence from India and Malaysia
Client Preferences in Broker Selection: Competition, Choice, and Informal Leadership in India’s Urban Slums
Violence Exposure and Ethnic Identification: Evidence from Kashmir
Adam Auerbach, Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University
Chair: Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Dr. Maya Tudor, Associate Professor in Government and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University Chair: Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Director of the Brown-India Initiative Tudor’s research investigates the origins of stable, democratic and effective states across the developing world, with a particular emphasis on South Asia.
Chair: Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education Auerbach’s research interests include the political economy of development, local governance and representation, and comparative political institutions, with a focus on South Asia and India. This talk looked at his ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and original surveys designed and administered in two North Indian cities.
Nicholas Sambanis, Professor, Political Science, The University of Pennsylvania
Throughout his research, Sambanis has focused on civil wars, ethnic conflict, and international relations. In his talk, he examined how these topics applied to the Kashmir region.
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Joint Seminar Series on South Asian Politics
Alison Post talks about national infrastructure
APRIL 27, 2018
Infrastructure Networks and Urban Inequality: The Political Geography of Water Flows in Bangalore Alison Post, Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies; Co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Program Chair: Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education Alison Post studies comparative political economy, focusing on the politics of urban and regional development. In particular, her research examines the politics of regulating urban infrastructure and utilities investment in Latin America and South Asia.
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South Asia Without Borders Focusing on the humanities and culture, broadly, the South Asia Without Borders seminar series seeks to break down traditional borders, whether they be disciplinary, geographical, or temporal. The series is cosponsored by the Department of South Asian Studies.
Shehla Rashid Shora recounts her experiences
From left: Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, Francis Wade and Mohammad Mustak Arif
Participants listen to William Sax talk
OCTOBER 20, 2017
NOVEMBER 20, 2017
MARCH 20, 2018
Student Movements in India and Current Challenges
The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Mass Violence in a Changing Myanmar
Divine Kingdoms of the Western Himalaya: From Subjects to Citizens
Shehla Rashid Shora, Ph.D. student at the Jawaharlal Nehru University Chair: Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Social Anthropology; Program Director of Social Anthropology The prominent Indian activist Shehla Rashid Shora, a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, spoke in front of a packed audience at Harvard about the current challenges facing student movements in India, and the way in which national political debates are playing out on campuses there.
Francis Wade, Journalist and Author of “Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim ‘Other’” Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, Founder and executive Director of the Peace and Development Initiative (Kintha) in Rakhine State, Burma Mohammad Mustak Arif, founder of the Rohingya Society of Greater Nashua (RSGN) Moderator: Kate Cronin-Furman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center This panel provided a unique discussion of the Rohingya refugee crisis by bringing together three voices from different backgrounds. While all panel members have different experiences and areas of expertise, they have all undertaken extensive research on the ground in western Myanmar and were able to use their different perspectives to examine the causes of the crisis, the effects of state building and ethnic cleansing, as well as what the future holds for the Rohingya.
William Sax, Professor and Head of Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University Chair: Richard Wolf, Professor of Music and South Asian Studies, Harvard University Professor Sax discussed the pre-colonial society of the Western Himalayas, which consisted of small territories ruled by local devatas (Hindu deities) through their oracles. He provided ethnographic details of the system as it still exists, paying special attention to how it has adapted to the modern, secular Indian republic. Co-sponsored with the Harvard University Asia Center and the Department of South Asian Studies.
Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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South Asia Without Borders
Hasna Moudud talks about her travels on the Silk Road
A group of panelists and attendees examine citizenship
MARCH 27, 2018
APRIL 3, 2018
The Silk Road to South Asia: From Mongolia to Bangladesh
Citizenship of the Outcastes
Hasna Moudud, The Mittal Institute Research Affiliate; Author of “Mystic Poetry of Bangladesh” and “Where Women Rule: South Asia”
Suraj Yengde, W.E.B. Du Bois Nonresident fellow, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University; Research Associate, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Chair: Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science, Harvard University Ancient records of early Buddhism, recovered from Tibet, identify five great centers of learning a thousand years after the birth of Prince Gautama Buddha. Of the five, two are amongst the four hundred Buddhist sites in Bangladesh; Somapura Mahavihara (Paharpur) and Jaggadala. These centers could not have thrived without patronage and proximity of the Silk Road which brought trade and Buddhism close together. Hasna discussed a trip she took in 2015 and 2017 to Mongolia in search of a connection between Mongolia and India via Bangladesh. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center.
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Rajyashri Goody, Visiting Artist, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University
Raile Rocky Ziipao, Arvind Raghunathan and Sribala Subramanian South Asia Visiting Fellow, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University Chair: Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The panel discussed conceptions of “citizenship” in India as related to caste and indigeneity. The discussion was an opportunity to explore the ways that citizenship and belonging have been constructed through exclusion and marginalization based on social, political, and ethnic lines. Co-sponsored by the Committee on Ethnicity Migration and Rights (EMR) and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
Urbanization Postcolonial urbanization in South Asia has seen some of the largest and fastest-growing urban centers in the world. Co-sponsored by the GSD, the Urbanization seminar series is curated by Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning, GSD.
Sanjeev Vidyarthi explains India’s development approach
Ranjish Wattas discusses trees in urban design
Avijit Mukul and Rohan Shivkumar talk about their film
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
OCTOBER 31, 2017
Understanding India’s New Approach to Spatial Planning and Development
City in Garden: Trees as Element of Urban Design
Nostalgia for the Future
Rajnish Wattas, Former Principal, Chandigarh College of Architecture
Rohan Shivkumar, Architect
Sanjeev Vidyarthi, Author; Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy, The University of Illinois at Chicago Moderator: Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Planning and Design and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design Sanjeev Vidyarthi’s, first book, “One Idea, Many Plans: An American City Design Concept in India,” tracks the adoption of the elite-led shift in planning approaches in India at the national-level and implementation in the city of Jaipur. The lecture brought up important questions regarding the kinds of spatial planning post the liberalization of the Indian economy, financing the spatial development agenda and new approaches to planning. He also highlighted the important role of the emergence of the Indian middle class and shifts in land use, post liberalization.
Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Planning and Design and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design Most people in India and over the world would describe Chandigarh as Le Corbusier’s ultimate canvas, mostly associated with its poetic buildings and planning. Professor Wattas, an avid tree lover as he calls himself, eloquently elaborated on the magnificent city’s emphasis on landscape. He demystified claims of Corbusier only being influenced by built form. The material presented anatomized the history and philosophies which led to the forming of the garden city. He specifically analyzed Corbusier’s sketches and their applications in the city. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Avijit Mukul, Filmmaker
Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design The collaboration between Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar emerges from the intersection of their respective disciplines – architecture and documentary film. The film opens these disciplines to self-critique and looks at the way they imagine and construct a nation and its citizen. After the film screening of Nostalgia for the Future, Avijit and Rohan discussed the overall themes. The film focused on the idea of home placed in three different settings: the body, city, and nation. Many students asked about the process of making the film, exploring the archetypes of modern man, and the stylistic jittery mood of the cinematography.
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Urbanization
Patrick Heller discusses inequity, inclusion, and basic service distribution acros Delhi
Sanjoy Chakravorty explains India’s development approach
FEBRUARY 7, 2018
MARCH 28, 2018
Cities of Delhi: Differentiated Citizenship in the Capital City
Colossus: Delhi in Theory
Patrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at Brown University Chair: Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design Drawing on fieldwork in a range of communities in Delhi, Patrick Heller documented inequity, and exclusion within basic service distribution across the city. These exclusionary practices have both a formal character built into policies that differentiate citizenship rights across settlement types and an informal character driven by political arrangements.
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Sanjoy Chakravorty, Professor of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University and Visiting Fellow, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania Chair: Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design India’s National Capital Region now includes parts of four states and about 30 million people. It is in the vanguard of global urban change of a particular type — the rise of the colossal metropolis. What do we know and can say about its spatial structure (and change) and social structure (and change)? How well does existing “urban theory” prepare us for Delhi? To what extent does Delhi prepare us for a new “urban theory”? How much of it is global, how much Indian, and how much just Delhi itself? This lecture addressed each of these questions, and posited what is in store for the metropolitan region.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
Muslim Societies in South Asia The Muslim Societies in South Asia seminar series, led and chaired by Ali Asani, FAS, Director, PABT, is cosponsored by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program and seeks to address various issues of Muslim societies within South Asia, as well as relationships with other Muslim societies across the globe.
Danish Husain performs Dastangoi, an ancient form of Urdu storytelling
SEPTEMBER 21, 2017
Qissebaazi: A Multilingual Storytelling Orbit Directed by Danish Husain Danish Husain, Poet, Actor, Filmmaker and Theater Director Chair: Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University Husain is one of the people who have helped revive the lost art form of Urdu storytelling, Dastangoi, and is a columnist with India Today’s opinion website Daily O. In this performance, Qissebaazi expanded and built upon traditional storytelling. A multilingual platform with multiple performers, it was theatrical in presentation but still, distinctively, storytelling.
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Co-Sponsored Events The Mittal Institute partners with interfaculty centers, institutes, and organizations across Harvard and the globe to support academic initiatives, affiliated events, and informative lectures on South Asian culture, politics, history, environment, and technology.
Dr. Arjun Subramaniam talks about his book
Nandan Nilekani gives an overview of Aadhaar
David B. Wilkins discusses the history of the Indian legal profession
SEPTEMBER 22, 2017
SEPTEMBER 25, 2017
SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971
Aadhaar, India’s Biometric, Unified Payment Interface and the India Stack: Technology at Scale for Development
The Indian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalization
Dr. Arjun Subramaniam, Asia Center Fellow; former Faculty Member, National Defence College, New Delhi; retired Air Vice Marshal, Indian Air Force Chair/Discussant: Professor Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University Dr. Arjun Subramaniam is the author of three books including the well-received “India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971” that has been published in India by Harper Collins and has been recently published in the US by the US Naval Institute Press. His other books are titled “Reflections of an Air Warrior” and “Wider Horizons: Perspectives on National Security, Air Power & Leadership.” In this talk, he reviewed India’s military history, and the impact of the country’s involvement in these conflicts. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center.
Nandan Nilekani, Former Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI); Non-Executive Chairman of Infosys Discussant: Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, spoke at length about the social development benefits the Aadhaar can and is yielding in the public and private sectors in India by encouraging financial inclusiveness and the elimination of middle-men when implementing public sector schemes. Nilekani also spoke about the Aadhaar model being replicable in a favorable political environment and addressed questions around the effectiveness, cryptic nature, and data security of the technology involved. Co-sponsored by the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
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T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
Speakers: David B. Wilkins, Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School Vikramaditya S. Khanna, William W. Cook Professor of Law, University of Michigan School of Law School Commentator: Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School; Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University The book, which is the pinnacle of the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, six-year research project on the topic, is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of globalization on the Indian legal profession. This talked focused on the research project’s main findings, and on the history of the Indian legal profession. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession.
Co-Sponsored Events The Mittal Institute partners with interfaculty centers, institutes, and student organizations across Harvard on programs that bring multiple global viewpoints on issues relevant to South Asia.
Reba Som, author of “Margot,” talks about Sister Nivedita and her life’s work
Poster of Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)
Huang Yinghong
OCTOBER 12, 2017
OCTOBER 15, 2017
NOVEMBER 13, 2017
Sister Nivedita’s Narrative of Inclusiveness
Bollywood Screening at Harvard Art Museums
Land Acquisition in India and China
Reba Som, Historian and Author of “Margot” (2017)
To coincide with the biennial symposium of the American Council for Southern Asian Art at the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, the Harvard Art Museums screened two landmark Bollywood films, Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) and Chak De! India (2007). The screening is timed also with the centennial of when Ananda K. Coomaraswamy became the first curator of Indian art in North America (at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), an appointment that set in motion the collecting and study of South Asian art at Harvard.
Huang Yinghong, Associate Professor, School of International Relations, Sun Yat-sen University
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Art Museums.
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Yenching Institute and the Harvard University Asia Center.
Chair: Professor Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
Apart from educating women, Sister Nivedita wrote valuable treatises on Hindu thought and Indian culture, inspiring nationalist sentiment and unity. She won over leading national figures of the day with her fierce intellect, and even influenced the ending of Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, Gora. Over the course of this talk, attendees learned about the life of Nivedita, her commitment to India, and work within society.
Chair: Professor Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University Over the course of this presentation, Yinghong discussed the active role of the state and its compulsory measures towards land acquisition in India and China.
Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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Co-Sponsored Events
Erum Sattar
From left: Andrew Gordon, William Kirby, Sophie Lemière and Ronak Desai
From left: Sunita Narain, Sunil Amrith and Jody Freeman
NOVEMBER 16, 2017
NOVEMBER 30, 2017
DECEMBER 4, 2017
Boston Water Group
Asia Responds to Trump in Asia
Contested Realities: India’s Environmental Movement and the Politics of Change
The Mittal Institute hosted the Boston Water Group, a diverse group of researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and civil-society, who are based in the Greater Boston region, but work across the U.S. and around the world to address problems that involve water. Erum Sattar presented her co-authored paper comparing the Indus River with the Colorado River Basin in the Michigan Journal of Law Reform written. The piece seeks to spur the evolution of the Indus River Basin’s water institutions by offering a comparative perspective of the Colorado River Basin. Convener: Erum Sattar, Teaching Assistant – Legal Research, Writing & Analysis, Visiting Fellow, Islamic Legal Studies Program.
Moderator: Andrew Gordon, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University Chair: Karen Thornber, Victor and William Fung Director, Harvard University Asia Center; Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University Panelists Ronak Desai, Law and Security Fellow at New America in Washington D.C. William Kirby, M. Chang Professor of China Studies and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University Sophie Lemière, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Scholars Program. Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute Tae Gyun Park, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University. 2017-18 Kim Koo Visiting Professor The panelists discussed Donald Trump’s first visit to Asia as president, and the political ramifications of the trip from the perspective of the Asia-Pacific. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Korea Institute, Harvard University.
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Sunita Narain, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, Harvard University Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law and Director, Environmental Law Program, Harvard Law School David S. Jones, A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine, Harvard University Moderator: Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School The Indian environmental stories that are making international headlines are the ghastly air pollution and the nation’s inability to control filth, garbage and sewage that are overwhelming its cities, rivers and fields. As part of this panel, Narain asked: Can India beat the pollution game by following the trajectory of the western world? Won’t capital and resource-intensive methods of environmental management simply add to the burden of inequality, and so to unsustainability? Co-sponsored by the Program of Science, Technology and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Co-Sponsored Events
Arupjyoti Saikia
A large crowd eats lunch and listens to the seminar
Shalini Singh
FEBRUARY 14, 2018
MARCH 23, 2018
APRIL 2, 2018
Unwilling Hosts: Partition, Assam and Entangled History of People
The Supreme Court of India: The Beginnings
Reporting on Asia: A Discussion with Four Nieman Fellows
Arupjyoti Saikia, Professor in History & Suryya Kumar Bhuyan Endowment Chair on Assam History Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Chairs: Professor Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University Professor Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, Harvard University Arupjyoti Saikia, Suryya Kumar Bhuyan Endowment Chair on Assam History in the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India, presented his paper, which focuses on the Assam state, postcolonial South Asia, and the events of the Partition. Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University Mitra Sharafi, Associate Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin School of Law Vasujith Ram, LLM Student, Harvard Law School This seminar discussed the book "Supreme Court of India: The Beginnings" (George H. Gadbois, Jr., edited and introduced by Vikram Raghavan & Vasujith Ram, Oxford Univ. Press, Feb. 22, 2018) Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Harvard South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA).
Glenda M. Gloria, Managing Editor and CoFounder of Rappler, Philippines social news network Shalini Singh, Features Reporter, New Delhi, India; former reporter for The Week and the Hindustan Times; founding trustee at the People’s Archive of Rural India Bonny Symons-Brown, Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Former TV news anchor, Jakarta, Indonesia Edward Wong, The New York Times; Former New York Times Beijing Bureau Chief and Iraq Correspondent Chair: Professor Karen Thornber, Victor and William Fung Director, Harvard University Asia Center; Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University This year's fellows discussed their various research projects and the state of media coverage in South Asia. Topics included the evolution of democracy and journalism; collecting stories of lives and culture; the intersection of Islam, democracy, and human rights; and visual storytelling. Asia Center Seminar Series; co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard University Asia Center.
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Co-Sponsored Events
Ankit Chadha performs Dastangoi
Tariq Modood
Tarun Khanna joins fellow current Asia-related Center Directors in conversation
APRIL 9, 2018
APRIL 12, 2018
APRIL 13, 2018
Dastangoi
Islamophobia and the Struggle for Recognition
Asia Center 20th Anniversary Celebration
Tariq Modood, Founding Director, Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, Bristol University
This spring marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Harvard Asia Center. To celebrate, the Center hosted a day of talks and panels featuring students, current and former Asia Center directors, and other distinguished speakers who have been instrumental in the work of the Asia Center.
Performance by: Ankit Chadha Chair: Hajnalka Kovacs, Preceptor in Hindi and Urdu, Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University Dastangoi, the lost art of Urdu storytelling, developed in 8th century CE around the adventures of an Arab hero, Amir Hamza. These stories became very popular in 19th century North India. With the demise of the last known exponent of the art form in 1928, Mir Baqar Ali, the form also died with him. The modern revival has seen not just the performance of the traditional stories from the Hamza dastan, but also the adaptations of more local and contemporary themes.
In 1997, the Runnymede Trust in London recognized Tariq Modood's alternative definition of Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism in the context of a multicultural society. In this presentation, Modood argued that Islamophobia and Muslim studies should not marginalize Muslims as a group that stands apart from the society within which they live.
Co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies.
Ankit Chadha, a writer and storyteller, has been a practitioner of Dastangoi since 2010. His writing varies from biographical accounts of personalities like Kabir, Rahim, Dara Shikoh and Majaaz to modern folk tales on corporate culture, internet and mobile technology. Ankit also has works for young audiences and has worked on Urdu adaptations of children’s classics; including Alice and The Little Prince. He is the author of the award-winning book for children, My Ghandhi Story, and the recently released, Amir Khusrau – The Man in Riddles. Possible with a grant from the Harvard University Asia Center. Co-sponsored by the Department of South Asian Studies.
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Tarun Khanna joined his fellow Harvard Asiarelated Center Directors to discuss Asia in the next two decades. The event was capped by a keynote address delivered by the Honorable Kevin Rudd.
Co-Sponsored Events
Ali Asani
Ajmal Qureshi
Satchit Balsari discusses forced migration
APRIL 14-15, 2018
APRIL 19, 2018
APRIL 20, 2018
Symposium on Islam and Sectarian De-escalation
Seventy Years on: Pakistan’s Perils to Democracy
In conjunction with serious attempts to place different Muslim faith traditions in conversation, it is equally pressing that the U.S. policy making world and scholarly community is objectively informed and knowledgeable of the relevant issues and perspectives needed for conflict resolution. The First Annual Symposium on Islam, Dialogue, and Sectarian De-escalation at the Harvard Kennedy School gathered leading scholars, religious authorities, civic community leaders, and policy makers to push forward analytical understanding and dialogue on the pressing topic of sectarianism in the Muslim world.
Ajmal Qureshi, Senior Fellow, Harvard University Asia Center; former Representative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Uganda and China
Asia Beyond the Headlines Seminar: Forced Migration in South Asia: Past and Present
The symposium was convened by the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs’ Iran Project and co-sponsored by Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies, the Asia Center, and the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program.
Chair: Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science, Emeritus
Asia Center fellow, Ajmal Qureshi, discussed his research regarding Pakistan's pathway to democracy.
Asia Center Fellows Seminar Series; cosponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center.
Satchit Balsari, FXB Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Faculty, Emergency Medicine, HMS/BIDM Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School; Director, The Mittal Institute Moderator: Yee Htun, Clinical Instructor at the Harvard Law School
This discussion focused on the effects of forced migration, the 1947 Partition of British India, and how moving large groups of people across borders affected countries such as present-day India and Pakistan. This seminar also tied in research from The Mittal Institute's ongoing research related to the Partition.
Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center.
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Co-Sponsored Events
Piyush Tewari
Dave Engerman
Dhaka, Bangladesh
APRIL 30, 2018
MAY 9, 2018
MAY 12, 2018
Road Safety for All: Innovations in Road Traffic Injury Prevention and Response
The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India
Bangladesh Rising: Conference at the Harvard Kennedy School
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Dean Michelle Williams started off the program with opening remarks. The symposium featured two keynotes, delivered by Piyush Tewari, MPA and Adnan A. Hyder, MD, MPH, PhD, and two panels of experts on Road Traffic Injury Prevention and Response. Co-sponsored by the Save Life Foundation and the Harvard University Global Health Institute.
David Engerman, Ottilie Springer Professor of History, Brandeis University; Center Associate, Davis Center Engerman discussed his book, “In The Price of Aid,� in which he argued that superpowers turned to foreign aid as a tool of the Cold War. India, the largest of the ex-colonies, stood at the center of American and Soviet aid competition. Drawing on an expansive set of documents, many recently declassified, from seven countries, Engerman reconstructed a story of Indian leaders using Cold War competition to win battles at home, but in the process eroding the Indian state.
The conference hosted practitioners, academics, and high-level government officials to discuss the ways that Bangladesh can advance further and avoid pitfalls. It included topics such as financial inclusion, foreign investment, generation and provision of electricity, and sustainable development goals, among others.
Co-sponsored by the Davis Center, Harvard University.
Bijoy Misra
MAY 13, 2018
Annual Poetry Reading At the Annual India Poetry Reading, dozens of poets of South Asian gathered. This year marked the 22nd year since the India Poetry Reading group was formed. The event was hosted by The Mittal Institute and the DSAS of Harvard University.
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Partition Seminars As part of its research initiative on the 1947 Partition of British India, The Mittal Institute held talks and workshops on related topics, study findings, and how the region is dealing with the effects today.
Tarun Khanna discusses crowd-sourcing memories
Jennifer Leaning facilitates a discussion
From Left: Jennifer Leaning, Yaqoob Bangash, Ali Raza
JUNE 27, 2017
AUGUST 4, 2017
AUGUST 7, 2017
Crowd-sourcing Memories Presentation
Implications of Mass Dislocation Across Geographies
Implications of Mass Dislocation Across Geographies
HABIB UNIVERSITY, KARACHI WITH THE FAIZ
THE ALI INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, LAHORE
THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, CHINA Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Professor Tarun Khanna presented on the Partition Oral Stories aspect of The Mittal Institute’s Partition Project, titled Crowdsourcing Memories. He expanded on how the project seeks to preserve and enrich the historical knowledge of Partition in crowd proportions, as well as analyze the different yet merging trends of the mass migration. Khanna emphasized that by utilizing mixed sampling methods, the scope of the research can be expanded to include broader social and cultural themes related to the beliefs and attitudes of those impacted by Partition, looking particularly at minorities and those who have historically been unable to share their stories. The presentations and audience interactions led to productive dialogue and different perspectives of data collection and analysis.
FOUNDATION Facilitated by Jennifer Leaning, FrançoisXavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights. Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Moderator and Discussant: Dr. Asif Farrukhi, Habib University The aim of the research and discussion was to focus on the relief efforts and rehabilitation of refugees by all level of government and by local and national organizations. A burgeoning facet of the project seeks to understand the multiplex links between narratives, history, memory and geopolitical mobilization. .
Facilitated by Jennifer Leaning, FrançoisXavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights. Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights
Hum Dekhein Gey Performers: Adeel Hashmi, Mira Hashmi, Asad Anees As a continuation of its Partition research, The Mittal Institute held a discussion and performance in Lahore. The roundtable explored fertile ground for building scholarship not only on the Partition, but also more generally on mass migrations, forced population displacement, and other emerging research areas relating to involuntary population movement. The performance consisted of the two narrators (Adeel and Mira) reading selected passages from the writings of Alys and Faiz. It also included poems written on the Partition.
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Partition Seminars
Jennifer Leaning discusses Partition
Participants discuss Partition
Participants discuss Partition
AUGUST 10, 2017
SEPTEMBER 10, 2017
SEPTEMBER 25, 2017
Implications of Mass Dislocation Across Geographies
Looking Back, Informing the Future: The 1947 Partition of British India
Crowd-sourcing Memories: The 1947 Indian Partition
BIKANER HOUSE, NEW DELHI
KING'S INDIA INSTITUTE, LONDON, UK
STS CIRCLE AT HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL
The Mittal Institute and The Critical Collective held a program on the 1947 Partition of British India. All were invited to special Partition events – the discussions, exhibitions and performances are free and open to the public.
There is much to learn from the Partition about the complexities of large-scale human migration and resettlements. Such lessons can inform current cross-border displacement and the corresponding growth of urban settlements and cities.
Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
Panel Discussion “Trauma and History: Understanding Partition through Art”
Panelists: Sona Datta, Writer and Broadcaster
Facilitated by Gayatri Sinha, Critical Collective With artists Amar Kanwar and Sonia Khurana
Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
Roundtable Discussion “Implications of Mass Dislocation Across Geographies”
Jennifer Leaning, François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights. Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights
Facilitated by: Jennifer Leaning, FrançoisXavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights. Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights
Ian Talbot, Department of History, University of Southampton
Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
Discussant: Louise Tillin, Interim Director, King’s India Institute
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Yenching Institute
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Chair: Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
Tarun Khanna spoke about his research on The Partition of British India in 1947, specifically focusing on the Crowd-sourced Memories component of the larger research project. Khanna explained how the research team believes that crowd-sourced memories from first and second-generation survivors scattered worldwide will help build a better understanding of the event, when documentation is otherwise unavailable or unreliable. The generation that experienced the Partition is ageing rapidly, so it is a race against time. At the time of the seminar, the team had collected about 350 stories in the pilot phase and intended to collect 3000 stories in the subsequent months. Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
Partition seminars
Ashutosh Varshney and Tarun Khanna
From left: Jennifer Leaning and Ishtiaq Ahmed
From left: Tarun Khanna, Karim Lakhani, and Rahul Mehrotra
OCTOBER 24, 2017
OCTOBER 17, 2017
OCTOBER 24, 2017
Crowd-sourcing Memories: Lessons from The 1947 Partition of British India
Partition of the Punjab
WorldWide Week: Looking Back, Informing the Future: A Multidisciplinary Research Project on the 1947 Partition of British India
WATSON INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, BROWN UNIVERSITY. Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Professor Tarun Khanna presented The Mittal Institute’s research project ‘Crowd-sourcing Memories: Lessons from the 1947 Partition of British India’. He expanded on how the project seeks to preserve and enrich the historical knowledge of Partition in crowd proportions, as well as analyze the different yet merging trends of the mass migration. Professor Khanna emphasized that by utilizing mixed sampling methods, the scope of the research can be expanded to include broader social and cultural themes related to the beliefs and attitudes of those impacted by Partition, looking particularly at minorities and those who have historically been unable to share their stories.
Ishtiaq Ahmed, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; Visiting Professor, Government College University; Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore Chair: Jennifer Leaning, François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed shared the research and theoretical framework of his book “The Punjab: Bloodied, Partitioned, and Cleansed,” expanding on classical Hobbesian notions of individual and civic violence to partisan violence in the chaos of transition of state power. He critiqued the British for their hasty departure and at times willful ignorance of risks to stability associated with their departure, as well the Indian National Congress, Muslim League, and some of their leaders for their respective errors of calculation and limitations of vision.
Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Karim Lakhani, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Director Harvard Innovation Science Laboratory Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Principal, RMA Architects of Mumbai, India Panelists discussed the complexities of largescale human migration and resettlements. Such lessons can inform current cross-border displacement and the corresponding growth of urban settlements and cities.
The audience remained engaged and interactive throughout the question-answer period, leading to productive dialogue and different perspectives of data collection and analysis.
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Partition seminars
From left: Karim Lakhani, Diane Athaide, Prashant Bharadwaj, Tarun Khanna and Jennifer Leaning
Jennifer Leaning presenting on her work
Gustav Papanek discusses Partition
NOVEMBER 30, 2017
APRIL 11, 2018
Looking Back, Informing the Future: A Multidisciplinary Research Project on the 1947 Partition of British India
Why Was Partition Not Reversed? How Pakistan Created A Viable Economy
ASIA SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Karim Lakhani, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Director Harvard Innovation Science Laboratory Jennifer Leaning, François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights. Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Prashant Bharadwaj, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego Diane Athaide, Graduate Student, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University researchers on the Partition of British India 1947 presented their research-to-date at the Asia Society’s Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium. This event was part of Asia Society’s Viewpoints series, generously supported by Aashish and Dinyar S. Devitre. Jennifer Leaning emphasized three key takeaway points. First off, groups of people
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Gustav Papanek, President of the Boston Institute for Developing Economies; Professor of Economics Emeritus, Boston University organized a significant amount of the violence. Secondly, the death rate for this period is higher than conventionally assumed. Finally, there was an amazing collective of pioneering and heroic efforts at relief and rehabilitation. These efforts, while imperfect, were remarkable considering the challenges the new dominions faced. Prashant Bharadwaj shared his teams’ proof of concept. His team has been developing the use of machine learning for sentiment analysis of hate speech in India and Pakistan. Karim Lakhani channeled his expertise on crowd-sourcing in a Partition-era oral history collection project. Lakhani is working with The Mittal Institute Director, Tarun Khanna Lastly, researcher and graduate student Diane Athaide presented her work with Rahul Mehrotra. She shared with the audience the different effects of Partition on urban development in three pairs of cities: Dhaka and Kolkata; Delhi and Lahore; and Karachi and Mumbai. The research to date has noted the diverse resettlement policies used by the Indian government in terms of housing colonies in Delhi vis-a-vis Punjabi migrants and that of then-Bombay towards its influx of mostly Sindhi refugees. Co-sponsored by Asia Society, New York.
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
Chair: Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Partition left Pakistan almost bereft of manufacturing – importing most consumer goods, including matches, soap, cloth and yarn, and virtually all machinery. Gustav Papanek discussed how Pakistan, in 15 short years, developed the industrial entrepreneurs who turned the country from one without industry into a significant exporter of manufactured goods.
STUDENTS The Mittal Institute supports students by awarding grants for internships, research, and the study of South Asian languages during the summer and winter sessions. The Mittal Institute sponsors student events organized by the over thirty South Asia–related student groups at Harvard. Students look at artwork from The Mittal Institute Spring Art Exhibition, an exhibition showcasing artwork from students who have received The Mittal Institute Grants. YEAR IN REVIEW
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Seed for Change 2018
From left: Anshul Kumar, Jahnvi Singh, and Polly Lauer present at the Seed for Change Initial Presentation
ABOUT
INDIA FINALISTS
PAKISTAN FINALISTS
The Seed for Change Program (SFC) aims to develop a vibrant ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India and Pakistan through an annual competition run by The Mittal Institute, in which grant prizes are awarded to interdisciplinary student projects that positively impact societal, economic, and environmental issues in India and Pakistan. Projects in the early “seed� stages are prioritized rather than start ups that, while they may be in stages of infancy, have previously received substantial support.
GREEN SCREEN Proposes a zero-electricity, modular ventilation panel made from an agricultural waste by product to be used in the slums of New Delhi, India.
UMBULIZER Reliable, low-cost, and portable device that can provide continuous ventilation to patients in resource limited healthcare settings.
Teams must have at least one current Harvard student at the time of submission, which can include undergraduate students, graduate students, or postdoctoral fellows. The maximum number of people per team is four. All applicants submit a formal proposal and selected applicants are asked to participate in a pitch presentation in late March. The tiered review process involves an initial internal review feasibility, methodology, and ethical implications.
2018 JURORS: FINAL PITCH PRESENTATION: Sumir Chadha and KP Balaraj, Co-founders & Managing Directors at WestBridge Capital Partners, Bengaluru, India Mariam Chughtai, Associate Professor at Lums University, Lahore, Pakistan Pritha Chatterjee, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Fellow, Harvard University Tarun Khanna, Director, The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor Harvard Business School 62
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Team Members: Gina Ciancone, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Ramya Pinnamaneni, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; David Costanza, Materials Specialist/Engineer. PRE-TEXTS An educational pedagogy with the aim of raising literacy in low-resource communities thanks to local arts and languages that serve to interpret English language curricular material. Team Members: Anshul Kumar, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Jahnvi Singh, Cultural Agents; Polly Lauer, Cultural Agents. PARIVARTAN Addresses problems of water scarcity and absence of hand hygiene practices by introducing alcohol-based hand sanitizer (ABHS) to 10 villages in the town of Palghar in Northern Maharashtra, a water-deprived tribal region of India. Team Members: Alastair Fung, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Nithin Kondapuram, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Sujata Saunik, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Vivian Zhang, T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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Team Members: Shaheer Ahmed Piracha, Project Leader and Engineer; Ramya Pinnamaneni, Business Leader, Harvard Business School, Master in Business Administration; Sanchay Gupta, Clinical Lead, Harvard Medical School XYLA WATER Builds water filters based on plant tissues. Team Members: Syed Waqar Ali Shah, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Iqra Nadeem, MIT; Diane Delava; Ali Mannan Tirmizi, Lahore University of Management Sciences . SAVINGS 9 Creates a 'safety net' of first aid 'literate' citizens and robust emergency response systems. Team Members: Usama Javed Mirza, NYU; Muhammad Ovais Siddiqui, NYU; Zainab Zaheer, NYU; Raissa Chughtai, Harvard College.
Sutopa Dasgupta discusses the Sakhi Mentrual Cup
2017 WINNER
SAKHI This project addresses the significant challenges to menstrual hygiene management (MHM) in India by promoting and distributing menstrual cups that are high-quality, affordable, and environmentally safe in India. Team Members: Sutopa Dasgupta, PhD Student, Harvard University; Andrew Powell, CEO, Casco Bay Manufacturer; Rakhee Goyal, Independent Consultant; Usha Venkatachallam, CEO, Appropriate IT
“[Seeing] menstruating women as impure or taboo in many social contexts has a long history in South Asian culture and this continues to perpetuate stigmatization today. For example, women are prohibited from entering the temple during their periods and are prohibited from touching certain foods or being in certain spaces in their own homes.” -Sutopa Dasgupta
As a PhD student at Harvard, Sutopa Dasgupta found that the characterization of menstruation is as something inauspicious and polluting. Tackling the issue of menstruation in the real world was a natural progression of her research. The project, funded by The Mittal Institute, addresses the challenges menstruating women in India face today — with the idea that we cannot address issues of stigmatization without also helping women feel empowered in their menstrual health management. Thus, Sakhi has a two-fold approach: first, putting an environmentally sustainable and safe menstrual management product in every woman’s hand and secondly, by raising awareness around menstruation so that women feel empowered to manage their menstrual health and resist taboos that are detrimental to their safety, mobility, and agency. Additionally, Sakhi is building a social enterprise model where women will take these subsidized cups that the Seed for Change grant is funding, and sell them to establish an income for themselves. This last mile distribution model is key to raising awareness and putting women in charge of the sale and distribution of these products. A culturallyspecific training curriculum accompanies the distribution of the menstrual management kit—so there is plenty of support in place.
The Mittal Institute Seed for Change Competition, India is generously funded by KP Balaraj and Sumir Chadha.
The Mittal Institute Seed for Change Competition, Pakistan is generously funded by The Resource Group, Pakistan.
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Undergraduate & Graduate Student Grants Internship, Language Study, and Research
2017 Winter Session Grants UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS
"Rurality and Education in India"
"Rohingya, Muslim, or Bengali?: Media, Power and Public Opinion in Myanmar" Daniel Wood, '19
Cole Scanlon, Harvard College '18
GRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS "Creating Resilient and Robust Livelihoods for Urban, Informally Employed Home-based Workers using Network Theory of Economics" Neeti Nayak, Master in Design Engineering '18 "Cyanide & Gold : Family, Caste, the PostExtractive Economy at KGF" Ranjani Srinivasan, Master in Design Studies '18 "Preliminary Archival Research at the British Library" Divya Chandramouli, PhD Candidate in South Asia Studies '22 "The Calligraphy of Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh (1615-1659) and its Reuse in 18th Century India" Bronwen Gulkis, PhD Candidate in History of
"Senior Thesis on Perpetrator Motivations for Sexual Violence in the 1971 PakistanBangladesh War" Zuneera Shah, '19
GRADUATE LANGUAGE STUDY GRANTS "Intermediate Mughal Persian Summer Language Program in Lucknow, India" Peter Dziedzic, Masters of Divinity '19 "Language Grant for AIIS Tamil Summer Program" Yang Qu, Masters of Divinity '19 "Summer Sanskrit Intensive at the Ranjung Yeshe Institute, Kathmandu, Nepal" Louis Copplestone, PhD Candidate in Art & Architecture '23
Art and Architecture '19
Myanmar's Transition at the Margins" Courtney Wittekind, PhD Candidate in Anthropology '22 "State-Building after Democratization: The Effect of Electoral Competition on Governance" Natasha Murtaza, PhD Candidate in Government '21 "Territories of Belonging: A Peoples History of Borders in Modern South Asia" Aniket De, PhD Candidate in History '22 "The Value of Electricity Reliability and the Distributional Incidence of Power Outages in India" Kevin Rowe, PhD Candidate in Public Policy '21 "To See the Invisible Wonders: Vision, Place, and Writing in Tibetan Pilgrimage Literature" Catherine Hartmann, PhD Candidate in the Study of Religion '19 "We are all Actors in the Performance: Power, Law, and the Media in the India-Nepal Borderland" Kristen Zipperer, PhD Candidate in Anthropology '22
GRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS
2018 Summer Grants UNDERGRADUATE INTERNSHIP GRANTS "Business Development Internship at Impact Guru" Sahil Lauji, '21 "Cancer Patients Aid Association Internship" Jeyna Doshi, '20 "Internship at the Harvard Business School India Research Center" Frances Tercek, '21"
"Addressing the Severity and Geography of Child Protection Outcomes to Improve Health Equity: Lessons from Nepal using the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey" Amiya Bhatia, ScD Candidate '20 "A Literacy Intervention Using Cultural Resources of Linguistic Minority Indigenous Students" Maung Nyeu, EdD Candidate '20 "Becoming Rakhine: A Field Study of Religious and Ethnic Violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar" Cresa Pugh, PhD Candidate in Sociology and Social Policy '22 "Indians on the Move: Mobility, Dissent and Law in the Early Twentieth Century" Hardeep Dhillon, PhD Candidate in History '20
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"What is the New Dalit Middle Class, and What is its Relation to Development Discourses and Hindutva Politics?" Kanishka Elupula, PhD Candidate in Anthropology '19
GRADUATE INTERNSHIPS "Children's Art Museum of Nepal" Edwin Leonardo PĂŁrraga, Masters of Education '18 "The Bengal Institute for Architecture Landscapes and Settlements" Andy Lee, Masters in Urban Planning '19 "The Bengal Institute for Architecture Landscapes and Settlements" Ciara Stein Masters in Urban Planning '19
Student Events The Mittal Institute provides administrative and financial support to undergraduate and graduate student organizations at Harvard for programming pertaining to South Asia, both at Harvard and in the region.
A crowd gathers to feast on samosas and chai
The Ismaili students gather around Ali Asani and Karim Lakhani
Anne Blackburn gives a talk
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017
OCTOBER 29, 2017
NOVEMBER 16, 2017
Welcome Back Mixer
Conversation with Ali Asani
The Mittal Institute hosted a samosa and chai mixer to introduce students to the staff, fellows and faculty.
Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University
SAAD Lecture: Strangely Familiar: Reading Buddhist Texts Around the Indian Ocean
Over the course of the dinner, Ismaili students from all over Harvard University discussed what it is like to be a Muslim on campus and in America during this political climate. They also talked about how religion, culture, and community influence our daily lives and how they can use dialogue and conversation to bridge differences.
Anne Blackburn, Professor of Buddhist Studies and South Asian Studies, Cornell University Discussant: Charles Hallisey, Harvard Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Studies
A total of 25 graduate students and faculty assembled for the event, to discuss part of Anne Blackburn's new project Making Buddhist Kingdoms Across the Indian Ocean, 1200-1500. In conversation with Charles Hallisey, Blackburn presented her work to graduate students from South Asian Studies, the School of Education, and the Divinity School.
Past grant recipient Cresa Pugh shares her experiences in Myanmar
The Mittal Insitute Executive Director, Meena Hewett, talks to a student about the Institute's offerings
OCTOBER 3, 2017
OCTOBER 31, 2017
Wintersession Grant Funding for South Asia
CGIS Trick or Treat
The Mittal Institute hosted an information session for students. Past grant recipients shared information about their experience and gave advice about the application process.
The Mittal Institute served Pakora and spoke with students about The Mittal Institute's events, programs and funding opportunities.
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Student Events
Meena Hewett discusses the importance of crossborder initiatives in South Asia
Students mingle as they eat dinner
A panel discusses Human Rights Issues around the globe
NOVEMBER 17, 2017
DECEMBER 1, 2017 & FEBRUARY 25, 2018
JANUARY 27, 2018
Harvard South Asia Engagement Forum: Conversations About South Asia Students from India and Pakistan joined together to launch SAEF, the South Asia Engagement Forum, at the Harvard Kennedy School. The inaugural seminar was well attended by students and faculty at Harvard, as well as other academic institutions across the Boston area. The Mittal Institute Executive Director Meena Hewett spoke at the event, pledging The Mittal Institute’s support and emphasizing the importance of cross-border initiatives in South Asia.
Pakistani Mixer During the event, students interacted with each other over local music and food. Overall, this event helped students create connections and friendships that provided them that would benefit them in their social and professional lives. The hope is to continue hosting such events in the future to provide a platform for students to get to know each other and learn about Pakistan.
A student asks a question in one of the talks
JANUARY 14-21, 2018
Harvard College in Asia Program Conference HCAP serves as a platform for student exploration and development, connecting the world’s future leaders and strengthening the international relationships of tomorrow. In January, students from chosen partner schools come to Harvard to attend a weeklong, student-run conference. In late March, students from Harvard attended conferences at partner schools across Asia.
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Human Rights Symposium: Adapting to the Challenges of Our Times This year's Symposium was an opportunity for activists, scholars, and students to come together and discuss the common challenges facing human rights movements across the globe, and the potential for new coalitions. The event had panels on economic, social, and cultural rights, refugees and migrants, shared struggles of minorities, and the potential for new coalitions. Some of the most memorable moments were from those with personal stories, from a moving presentation on the suffering wrought by the war in Yemen, to the reflections of Christine Mungai on the impact of international economic policy on her own life in Kenya.
Student Events
A representative from Ankuri, Rachna Dushyant Singh discusses her internship site
Achim Steiner presents to a crowd
Students talk with Muhammad Ali
JANUARY 29, 2018
MARCH 24, 2018
MARCH 29, 2018
Summer Grant Open House
HKS Global Development Symposium
Take a Professor Out to Coffee Day
For over 20 years, the Global Development Conference has offered a world-class forum for the exploration of new trends in the international development world. This year, tracks focused on human development, technological revolution, and innovative financing. Keynote speakers included Achim Steiner, Kanni Waignaraja, and Shalini Unnikrishnan
Muhammad Ali, former chairman Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.
The Mittal Institute hosted an open house with chai and samosas for students to learn about summer grant and internship opportunities. Past grant recipients and internship sites shared information and gave advice about the application process.
Graduate students from the Harvard Pakistan Student Group discuss challenges and opportunities for public-private partnerships in Pakistan over an informal tea event. This event series serves as a platform for Pakistani graduate students across Harvard to learn from the wealth of insights that guest speakers — including scholars, practitioners, and change-makers from Pakistan — have to offer regarding their experiences.
Students capture one of the talks with their phones
FEBRUARY 10-11 2018
Harvard India Conference The India Conference is one of the largest student-run conferences focusing on India and the USA. It was hosted at the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School by the graduate students of Harvard University. With this year’s theme, “India — Disruptive Innovations,” attendees discussed technology advancements and the country’s path to global leadership.
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Student Events
The Mittal Institute grant recipient, Maung Nyeu, reads one of his children's books
Mr. Naeem Zamindar
APRIL 4, 2018
APRIL 23, 2018
The Mittal Institute Spring Art Exhibition
Energy Security and Regional Connectivity: The Future of South Asia
The Mittal Institute Spring Art Exhibition features 2D and 3D art and artifacts inspired by Harvard students who traveled to South Asia sponsored by Harvard The Mittal Institute travel grants. Some highlights included children’s picture books written in the Indigenous languages of Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, photographs of fallen mosques in Myanmar and candid photos of workers at a laundry service in Mumbai.
Organized by the South Asia Engagement Forum (SAEF). The round table-seminar provided an opportunity to discuss investment opportunities, evolving energy scenario, and geo-political and economic dynamics involved in recent projects aimed at regional connectivity including China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), TurkmenistanAfghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) and Chabahar Port. The discussion helped identify pathways to move towards sustainable cooperation for development and growth in South Asia. Speakers included: Mr. Naeem Zamindar, Minister of State and Chairman, Board of Investment, Pakistan Mr. Riaz Khan, Former Pakistani Ambassador to China and Foreign Secretary Mr. Salman Anees Soz, Former World Bank Group staff Member, an International Development Expert and Economic and Political Commentator Dr. Liu Chen, Senior Advisor to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Development & Reform Commission, and Ministry of Education Mr. Kinga Tshering, Former Member of Parliament in the Kingdom of Bhutan
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Student Organizations There are 36 student organizations across Harvard that bring together diverse student interests from the various schools and host cultural, social, and educational events on South Asia.
Asian American Dance Troupe For over twenty years, the Asian American Dance Troupe (AADT) has sought to spread an appreciation and awareness of Asian culture through the medium of dance.
Dharma
Harvard College Dharma, Harvard’s Hindu Students Association, provides Harvard students with the opportunity to learn about and participate in Hindu festivals and traditions on campus within a close-knit community of fellow students.
Harvard Asia Quarterly Harvard Asia Quarterly was established in 1997 by students at the Harvard Law School and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as an interdisciplinary journal of Asian affairs. They are affiliated with the Harvard Asia Center.
Harvard Bhangra
Harvard College Pakistan Student Association
Harvard Students for Myanmar
Their mission is to promote interest in and awareness of Pakistani culture and current affairs within the Harvard undergraduate community. Through events that bring Pakistan to the fore and stimulate further dialogue, HCPSA aims to cater to a diverse community interested in developing an understanding of Pakistan: it's culture, affairs and issues.
Harvard Students for Myanmar is an organization that serves the purpose of raising awareness about the country of Myanmar (Burma).
Harvard College
Harvard Deepam Harvard College
Deepam seeks to inspire enthusiasm for the vibrant, energetic and graceful tradition of Indian classical dance on campus and in the greater Boston area.
Harvard India Student Group* HISG is a university-wide student group that provides a platform for communication and collaboration among students and faculty on India-related topics.
Harvard College
Harvard US India Initiative Harvard College
The Harvard US India Initiative is a student run organization that aims to empower the youth and promote awareness about India’s most pressing issues.
HDS South Asia HDS
HDS South Asia serves as a valuable extension of academic learning about South Asia at HDS. It explores the richness of the social, cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions of lived experience in South Asia.
India GSD
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Harvard College
Harvard Bhangra exposes the Harvard community to the art form of Bhangra through campus performances, represents Harvard at competitions, and teaches Bhangra to interested individuals.
Harvard College for Bangladesh This is Harvard College’s official organization dedicated to celebrating the Bengali Culture and organizing outreach and fundraising events dedicated to Bangladesh.
Harvard Mirch Harvard College
Harvard Mirch is a co-ed South Asian acapella group aiming to bring together the best of the South Asian and Western pop music.
India GSD looks at design issues pertinent to the country and is an agency for understanding, provocation, and debates about the past, present, and future of design in India.
India Caucus Harvard Pakistan Student Group* HPSG is a Harvard University–wide group that mobilizes intellectual, activist, and entrepreneurial interest in Pakistan across thirteen schools.
HKS
The group’s mission is to bring India-centric events, opportunities, and resources to the students and faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
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Student Organizations
Islamic Society
Sangeet
South Asia Men’s Collective
Providing an open, inclusive environment to HBS Muslims while actively engaging the larger HBS community on issues related to Islam.
Harvard Sangeet serves to usher South Asian music to its deserved place among the other cultural and artistic establishments at Harvard, and to establish Harvard as a premier seat of South Asian musical leadership.
SAMC works to strengthen a sense of brotherhood between members and create a supportive arena for dialogue and discussion.
HBS
Pakistan Caucus HKS
Harvard College
South Asia Association Harvard College
The Pakistan Caucus at the Harvard Kennedy School seeks to present Pakistan’s culture and diversity, research and innovation, and importantly, Pakistan’s role within the international community.
The Harvard South Asian Association brings the Harvard community closer to South Asia and its Diaspora through academic, political, social, outreach, and cultural initiatives.
Pakistan Student Association
South Asia Business Association
The Harvard College Pakistan Student Association aims to create a vibrant community of students at Harvard with a deep interest in Pakistan.
The South Asian Business Association (SABA) provides a forum for students who want to participate and lead initiatives related to South Asia. Objectives include community unification, education, representation of South Asia on campus, and inclusion.
Harvard College
Harvard Business School
Pakistan Students
Harvard Graduate School of Education HGSE Harvard Pakistan Student Group creates opportunities for HGSE students to connect on activities and topics of interest related to Pakistan.
Raftaar
South Asia Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School of Government The HKS South Asia Caucus serves as a forum for all HKS students interested in South Asia to exchange political, economic, social, and cultural ideas impacting the region in general, or specific countries in the region.
Harvard College Harvard Raftaar (formerly South Asian Dance Company), as a dance team, aims to encourage creative expression through fusion of classical, folk, Bollywood, and modern South Asian dance styles with Western styles such as hip-hop and modern dance and to educate the community through workshops in these different areas.
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South Asia Engagement Forum Harvard Kennedy School The South Asia Engagement Forum was conceived to create spaces for dialogue, discussion and debate among students and scholars from countries in this region within Harvard and the wider community in Boston.
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Harvard College
South Asia Women’s Collective Harvard College
The South Asian Women's Collective aims to provide a cultural and social community for those interested in South Asian women's issues and to foster meaningful discussions, new friendships, and a sense of belonging and comfort on Harvard's campus.
South Asian Dance Troupe Harvard Graduate School of Education
To preserve and bring upon Bollywood and Bhangra classics and choreography while adding a contemporary spin to the Harvard campus via an official group/team. It is also to bring Harvard students who want to dance and learn, practice, and potentially perform at local events.
South Asian Student Association
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The HSPH South Asian Student Organization focuses on health issues affecting people of South Asian origin; collaborates with faculty, staff, alumni, and other student groups; and launches independent initiatives.
South Asian Students Association
Harvard Graduate School of Education The SASA's mission is to promote South Asian Culture awareness within the HGSE community.
Student Organizations
South Asia Law Students Association Harvard Law School
The Harvard South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA) provides a forum for those in the Harvard Law School community interested in South Asian American and South Asian legal issues.
South Asia Men’s Collective
Students for Nepal Society Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard Chan Students for Nepal Society brings together students, faculty, post-docs and staff to discuss research, policy and practice on health issues in Nepal, to promote knowledge and understanding about Nepal and the Nepali culture within the Harvard Chan community, and to support and foster relationships between Nepali and non-Nepali students within the Harvard community.
Harvard College
SAMC works to strengthen a sense of brotherhood between members and create a supportive arena for dialogue and discussion.
South Asia Women’s Collective Harvard College
*The Harvard India Student Group and the Harvard Pakistan Student Group are recognized by Harvard as university-wide initiatives. For links to these student group webpages, please visit our website: southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/studentorganizations
The South Asian Women's Collective aims to provide a cultural and social community for those interested in South Asian women's issues and to foster meaningful discussions, new friendships, and a sense of belonging and comfort on Harvard's campus.
South Asian Dance Troupe Harvard Graduate School of Education
To preserve and bring upon Bollywood and Bhangra classics and choreography while adding a contemporary spin to the Harvard campus via an official group/team. It is also to bring Harvard students who want to dance and learn, practice, and potentially perform at local events.
South Asian Student Association
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The HSPH South Asian Student Organization focuses on health issues affecting people of South Asian origin; collaborates with faculty, staff, alumni, and other student groups; and launches independent initiatives. YEAR IN REVIEW
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In-ReGion The Mittal Institute supports Harvard faculty and student research, teaching, field experience in the region through India Country Director, Pakistan Programs Director and affiliates in Bangladesh and Nepal. Dr. Sanjay Kumar and Vice Provost of International Affairs Mark Elliott in the new Mittal Institute Delhi 72
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Delhi Office Events The Mittal Institute India Office hosts a monthly seminar series. To launch the official opening, The Mittal Institute hosted a special series of events in March and April.
S V Subramanian gives a seminar
Dr. Sanjay Kumar introduces Dr. Richard Cash
Uma Chakrvarti and Urvashi Butalia give a seminar
JANUARY 15, 2018
FEBRUARY 22, 2018
MARCH 8, 2018
Child Stunting in India Lessons Learned & Future Directions
Goings and Comings: The Changing Patterns of Infectious Diseases in India and South Asia
1947 Partition of British India
S V Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography, Harvard University The Government of India has a target of reducing stunting and cases of underweight children by 2% per annum under National Nutrition Mission (NNM). Professor Subu shared major lessons that he has learned as a result of years of research on childhood stunting and how those lessons could help inform our future directions. The first major lesson is that the discourse around childhood stunting in India needs to go beyond the “maternal” perspective. Next, he discussed the need to focus more on direct indicators of nutrition (like what and how much people eat). To address stunting and child nutrition, there is a need to connect nutrition to a broader development and anti-poverty, sustainable livelihood agenda.
Richard Cash, Senior Lecturer on Global Health, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard University Dr. Cash began with a historical overview of the evolution of infectious diseases in South Asia during his 50 years working in the region. Smallpox, which once caused millions of deaths has disappeared, thanks to immunization. Mass immunization has also virtually eliminated neo-natal tetanus and polio and vaccines have dramatically decreased the incidence of measles and rubella. Dr. Cash focused on preventative measures to limit the development and spread of new and emerging infections. He compared India with neighbors like Sri Lanka to show how other countries have worked on communitybased initiatives and dealt with public health. Publicity, awareness and a centralized information system help communities to understand where the diseases come from and how they spread. Inequality and poverty in India are major risk factors and need to be addressed if the development and spread of new and emerging diseases are to be limited and controlled.
Uma Chakravarti is a feminist historian who taught at Miranda House, University College for Women, Delhi from 1966 to 1998. She is the Delhi project director for the The Mittal Institute Partition Project, ”The Demographic and Humanitarian Consequences of the Partition.”
Moderator: Urvashi Butalia is the author of “The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India,” which centers oral histories from subaltern communities and women who experienced the Partition. While discussing oral histories as a data collection tool for research, Butalia highlighted the challenges of trying to examine the Partition. Her goal was to locate a people's history of Partition by telling untold stories such as those of women, children, and Dalits. Butalia discussed the drawbacks of having a time lapse between the event and the study of Partition, in large part because many of the survivors have died. For survivors, the Partition studies have the potential to give them a sense of justice and redemption for the terrible experiences they lived through.
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Delhi Office Events
From left: Sugata Bose, Mark Elliott, Sanjay Kumar, Meena Hewett, and Gobind Akoi
Rohit Kumar Singh addresses a crowd
Dr. K. Thangaraj presents his research
MARCH 16, 2018
MARCH 22, 2018
MARCH 27, 2018
The Mittal Institute India Office Official Opening
Reviving Public-Private Partnerships in India: Highways Leading the Way
Human Origin, Health, and Disease: Genomic Perspectives
Mr. Rohit Kumar Singh is a Board Member (Finance) of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), which has a budget of USD 17 billion. He is also the CEO and Managing Director of the operations arm of the Indian Highway Management Company Ltd. Mr. Singh served as the Joint Secretary to the Government for 5 years and was responsible for the policy planning of public-private partnerships in National Highways.
Dr. K. Thangaraj is a Senior Principal Scientist and Group Leader at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad. His main research interests are the origin of modern humans, cardiovascular diseases, mitochondrial disorders, male infertility, sex determination, forensic genetics and the Genetic basis of Ayurveda prakritis.
The Mittal Institute's new India office, in the heart of the beautiful Lutyens-designed part of New Delhi, has officially opened, marking a new era of Harvard’s direct engagement with the region. “Harvard would not be what it is if it was not capable of attracting the best brains from all over the world,” said Mark Elliott, Vice Provost for International Affairs and the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History, to the Times of India newspaper last week. “We intend to create a small embassy at the institute, which will help the students and researchers to study at Harvard.” Professor Elliott officially inaugurated the new office on Friday, March 16, 2018. In his speech, he made it clear that a greater regional presence is vital for the university’s future scholarship.
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Delhi Office Events
Tarun Khanna and Shri Jayant Sinha
A crowd listens to Tarun Khanna and Shri Jayant Sinha
APRIL 5, 2018
Khanna said, “We strongly believe that encouraging entrepreneurship will help our nation develop by opening multiple avenues for younger generations. The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University is committed to disseminate knowledge, build capacity, inform policy, and engage with issues that are shaping South Asia today, by conducting research across South Asia region. Today’s open house is part of the monthly seminar series planned by The Mittal Institute to spur knowledge-sharing amongst thought leaders. I believe these events will encourage a fruitful exchange of views on crucial issues and inform policy making in a positive way.”
Trust and Creativity: Fostering Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries Tarun Khanna, Director of The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor Harvard Business School Discussant: Shri Jayant Sinha, Hon. Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Member of Indian Parliament; Former Minister of State for Finance Tarun Khanna spoke about various aspects of encouraging entrepreneurship in developing nations. Shri Jayant Sinha took part in the discussion and moderated the question-andanswer session. For more than two decades at Harvard Business School, Khanna has sought to study the drivers of entrepreneurship in emerging markets as a means of economic and social development. He spoke about The Mittal Institute's commitment to studying and researching all aspects of South Asia, alongside its partnership with major Indian institutions in arts, social entrepreneurship and life sciences. Mr. Sinha spoke about how entrepreneurship can improve economic growth of developing nations like India.
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In Region Events The Mittal Institute supports Harvard faculty student research, teaching, field experience in the region through India Country Director, Pakistan Programs Director, and affiliates in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Emmerich Davies
Workshop participants
Tarun addresses guests
JULY 13, 2017
AUGUST 19-20 2017
NOVEMBER 20, 2017
India’s Education Policy and Market Reforms: Challenges and Opportunities
Workshop on the Liberal Arts in Higher Education
Harvard Club of Bengaluru Launch
ISMAILI CENTRE DUBAI, UAE
BENGALURU
The Mittal Institute Workshop on the Liberal Arts in Higher Education was a forum for faculty, administrators, and leadership from universities across South Asia, the Middle East, and neighboring regions (Central Asia and East Asia) to explore ways in which universities may develop a liberal arts education program for undergraduate students, while fostering such objectives as sustainable development; social inclusion and peace; and cooperation across national boundaries among individuals, institutions, and governments.
Harvard alumni gathered at the home of Prashant Deshpande to celebrate the launch of the Harvard Club of Bengaluru. The Mittal Institute Director Tarun Khanna attended and spoke about Harvard’s initiatives in South Asia.
Discussant: Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education This talk presented information about India’s education policy, what past challenges it has faced and where there are opportunities for educators and ministers.
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In Region Events
Leonard van der Kuijp gives a seminar
Sugata Bose leads a discussion
State of Housing Exhibition
JANUARY 5, 2018
FEBRUARY 7, 2018
MARCH 15-17, 2018
Buddhism in Nepal, Past and Present
Dhaka Art Summit
State of Housing Exhibition and Conference
YALAMAYA KENDRA: PATAN DHOKA: LALITPUR Naresh Man Bajracharya, Professor of Buddhist Studies and Vice Chancellor of Lumbini Buddhist University, Nepal Todd T. Lewis, Murray Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities, Professor of Asian Religions, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religion, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA Nirmal Man Tuladhar, Professor of Linguistics and Chair of Social Science Baha, Nepal Siddhartha Tuladhar, Senior Research Officer of New ERA, Pvt. Ltd., Nepal Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, Professor of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
SHILPAKALA ACADEMY BANGLADESH The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. Founded in 2012 by the Samdani Art Foundation—who continue to produce the festival—in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, DAS is hosted every two years at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.
MUMBAI, INDIA India is in the throes of a dramatic process of accelerated urbanization. The conference brought together varied interests, perspectives and contexts that go into an understanding of the state of housing in India. The conference accompanied an exhibition that was cocurated by Rahul Mehrotra, Harvard University, Ranjit Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta. The Mittal Institute was a co-sponsor of this exhibition.
Professor Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University, was on two panels at this year’s event: “Rising Oceans and Conflict: From Bangladesh to Planetary Scale,” as well as “Diving deeper into Bangladesh, the Oceans, the Pacific, and Forms of Justice.” Both of these talks examined how the ocean, art, and environmental studies can address natural destruction and political violence.
As part of the Nepal Studies Program, Leonard van der Kuijp, Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, led the conference in Kathmandu. Based on medieval documents and modern practice, this conference explored the spread and development of Buddhism in the India-Nepal-Tibet corridor. There will be a similar program of this conference at Harvard University on May 7, 2018.
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In the news The Mittal Institute activities are covered by the media, both at Harvard and globally. Some examples of recent news coverage are profiled here.
Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria speaks at the Mittal Institute's Renaming Celebration 78
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In the News
Lakshmi Mittal
Conor Walsh with his exosuit technology
Asim Khwaja
OCTOBER 11, 2017
JANUARY 23, 2018
JANUARY 24, 2018
Strengthening Harvard’s
Onwards and Upwards,
Some Translation Required
Ties To South Asia
Robots
Harvard Gazette
By: Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette
For more than a decade, the South Asia Institute at Harvard University has funded faculty research and student study across the region, and built a global academic community committed to better understanding the unique challenges faced by these many countries and diverse populations. Ongoing academic and cultural exchanges in fields ranging from science and social science to the arts and humanities — incorporating experts from across Harvard — complement the 143 South Asia-related courses taught on campus this year alone.
[Conor] Walsh’s exosuit technology has been licensed to ReWalk Robotics, whose plan to put a product in clinical trials this year is a first step in a strategy to bring the machine from concept to market in less than five years.
In an effort to ensure the Institute’s important work continues with the capacity to sustainably support faculty, students, and collaborators, Lakshmi Mittal and his family announced a $25 million gift to establish an endowed fund for the institute. In recognition of the Mittal Foundation’s generosity, the center will be renamed the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University.
“I see opportunities for types of things we’re doing to actually make a difference in people’s lives,” Walsh said. The medical applications of Walsh’s work — which includes devices to counter heart failure, improve arm function for patients with spinal-cord injury, and boost post-stroke mobility — owe to early and ongoing support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose focus is on an exosuit that might ease the burden of 100-pound troop packs. Soft exosuits combine properties of functional apparel with precise placement of cables and motors to strategically assist movement.
“South Asia has played a dynamic and influential role in the development of our world since the very first civilizations,” said Mittal, chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company. “Ensuring that we fully understand its history and unique dynamics is a critical enabler in helping to shape a successful future.”
“The concept of going with a soft system is you can make the system very lightweight, very nonrestrictive, that has a minimal impact on the biomechanics of a person while they walk and is able to deliver a boost in addition to what the wearer’s muscles are normally doing,” Walsh said. “The question then is … can we have a positive effect on a person’s mobility?”
Read the full article in the Harvard Gazette: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2017/10/mittal-family-gift-expandsopportunities-for-south-asia-engagement/
Read the full article in the Harvard Gazette: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2018/01/next-generation-robots-crawlrun-fly-real-world/
By: Allison Fisher-Pinkert, Colloquy: GSAS Alumni Magazine Asim Khwaja, Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at Harvard Kennedy School, co-director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD), and co-founder of CERP, says that poorer countries, like Pakistan, lack the appropriate infrastructure to translate data into policy that will improve the lives of citizens. A figure whose face is obscured by an umbrella points the way, but is surrounded by pieces of pie charts. “In rich, Western countries this happens without people even noticing: Governments use large-scale studies to optimize their welfare programs, health ministries use data to anticipate the paths of disease, tax departments use behavioral insights to increase compliance so the government can pay for social programs,” says Khwaja. The team surveyed more than 1,500 early and mid-career civil servants in Pakistan and India to assess how they use data. The respondents struggled to analyze quantitative data. When asked to interpret a 2 x 2 table, their answers were no more accurate than if they had guessed randomly. All civil servants in Pakistan must take a competitive exam to get their first job in civil service, but the exam doesn’t focus on mathematical literacy. Read the full article in the Harvard Colloquy: https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/colloquy/ winter-2018/some-translation-required
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In the News
Homi Bhabha
State of Housing Exhibition, co-curated by Rahul Mehrotra
New Delhi Office, From left: Dr. Sanjay Kumar, Meena Hewett, Farhana Siddiqui and Garima Aggarwal.
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
MARCH 16, 2018
MARCH 17, 2018
We Need a New Education
A Conspectus of Crisis
Harvard University Opens
System to Build a Civil
By: Mustansir Dalvi, The Hindu
Office in New Delhi
Society Interview with Homi Bhahba by: Kaveree Bamzai, India Today If you were made the HRD minister tomorrow, what you would like to do for the education system? It is very important to resource the education system better. But resources themselves don't hold the key. There has to be thorough infrastructural revision for the whole sector. I think we cannot even begin to think that re-structuring till you improve the large public universities in India. I studied at Elphinstone College, Mumbai. When I see the college today, I feel great despair. We have to create a kind of educational revolution and realise that the position we hold in the world now comes very much from how well our educational system served at least the upper and middle classes, despite the poverty of the country. Now I am saying that the decline been precipitous and that until we build good public universities which are public-private collaborations, are able to reinvent the curriculum and reinvent the syllabus, it will be very difficult to resolve the issue. Read the full interview in India Today: https:// news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/10/ mittal-family-gift-expands-opportunities-forsouth-asia-engagement/
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The ongoing State of Housing (SoH) exhibition on display at the Gallery MMB announces its ambition in its challenging sub-title ‘Aspirations, Imaginaries and Realities in India’. These key words, explored together, chart the pitted course housing in India has taken since Independence. Any production that attempts to unravel this would have to be both granular and multi-focused, and its curators (Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta) have attempted to do that without, very properly, seeking to dot ‘i’s’ and cross ‘t’s’ and wrap things into neat satisfying bundles. Indeed, the state of housing, 70 years on, is anything but satisfying. What began as an imperative for a nation overwhelmed by an unprecedented refugee crisis that needed the immediate intervention of a State (that was itself taking baby steps) has gone on to an equally uncertain present where the State makes its most pointed impact by its absence. "Despite this clear and present crisis’ write the curators in their note, ‘there is no sustained discussion on housing, whether in the nation’s public life or within the professions of architecture and planning." Read the full article in the Hindu: http:// www.thehindu.com/entertainment/art/aconspectus-of-crisis/article23273993.ece
T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
India Education Diary The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University, officially opened its new India headquarters in New Delhi. Professor Mark Elliott, Harvard’s Vice Provost for International Affairs and a world-renowned historian of China, inaugurated the headquarters at The Imperial Hotel, Janpath. Harvard historian and Indian Member of Parliament Professor Sugata Bose, The Mittal Institute Executive Director Meena Hewett and The Mittal Institute India Country Director Dr. Sanjay Kumar were also present at the event. The opening of the South Asia Institute’s India office marks the beginning of a new era of Harvard engagement with the region, committing additional major resources to the study of South Asia, which will permit students and faculty alike to deepen their research and gain invaluable new insights and experience. Mark Elliott, Vice Provost for International Affairs, Harvard University, said: “Harvard scholars have long held a strong interest in India’s past and present, and we are confident that the New Delhi office of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute will help us to further develop our strengths in this area and ensure that Harvard remains among the very best Universities where the study of India may be pursued. Read the full article in the India Education Diary: http://indiaeducationdiary.in/harvarduniversity-opens-office-new-delhi/
In the News
Sai Balakrishnan
Tarun Khanna and Dr. Sanjay Kumar meet attendees of the Open House
The Partition Team during a meeting
MARCH 24, 2018
APRIL 6, 2018
APRIL 6, 2018
Seeing Mumbai Through Its
[The Mittal Institute]
Getting to the Why Of British
Hinterland
organizes open house
India’s Bloody Partition
on “Trust and Creativity,
By: Alvin Powell, The Gazette
By: Sai Balakrishnan, Urban planning at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University Scholars often pose a puzzle of Indian cities: why do some of the richest cities in the country suffer from crumbling water pipes and pot-holed roads? (Varshney 2011; Bjorkman 2015) If India’s cities generate nearly 85% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), why are these urban revenues not invested in better urban public services? To some political scientists, the answer lies in India’s political–economic paradox: economic power is concentrated in cities, but political power resides in villages (Varshney 1995). The agrarian countryside may contribute less than 15% of the GDP, but it is also home to a populous 80%–85% of the electorate. Politicians cannot afford to ignore agrarian interests without grave negative losses at the ballot boxes. It is this configuration of political–economic power that explains why “for politicians, the city has primarily become a site of extraction, and the countryside is predominantly a site of legitimacy and power” (Varshney 2011). Read the full article in Economic and Political Weekly: http://www.epw.in/journal/2018/12/ review-urban-affairs/seeing-mumbai-throughits-hinterland.html
Fostering Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries EduNews Careers 360 “We strongly believe that encouraging entrepreneurship will help our nation develop by opening multiple avenues for younger generations,” Khanna said. “The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University is committed to disseminating knowledge, building capacity, informing policy, and engaging with issues that are shaping South Asia today, by conducting research across the South Asian region. This open house is part of the monthly seminar series planned by the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute to spur knowledge-sharing amongst thought leaders. I believe these events will encourage a fruitful exchange of views on crucial issues and inform policy making in a positive way.” Read the full article in EduNews Careers 360: https://news.careers360.com/lm-sai-harvarduniversity-organizes-open-house-trust-andcreativity-fostering-entrepreneurship
Since the fall of 2016, Harvard’s Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute has been taking a new look at Partition, which researchers say remains fertile ground for researchers despite prior work by scholars. “What we’re trying to capture is this moment in time,” said Jennifer Leaning, the FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It is an extremely important part of world history.” Researchers now can deploy tools enabled by advances in technology, computing, and data science, that let them ask fresh questions and take different approaches to answering old ones. In addition, research that relies on memories of eyewitnesses to the 70-year-old episode gains urgency with each passing year. “Obviously, it’s urgent because those who lived through this trauma inevitably won’t be with us much longer,” said South Asia Institute Director Tarun Khanna, whose family resettled from Pakistan to northern India at the time. “Partition is a super-extensively studied issue, but also it’s my perception that there are many angles that are utterly unstudied.” Read the full article in the Harvard Gazette: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2018/04/harvard-scholars-take-freshlook-at-the-partition-of-british-india-whichkilled-millions/
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The Mittal institute Budget Fiscal Year 2017-2018
Fiscal Year 2018-2019
INCOME + SAVED BALANCES
INCOME + SAVED BALANCES
Current Use Current Use‑ARTS Endowment Distribution
$1,207,659 $66,028 $102,140
Current Use Current Use‑ARTS Endowment Distribution
$861,901 $172,252 $1,126,869
TOTAL
$1,375,827
TOTAL
$2,161,022
EXPENSE
EXPENSE
Faculty Support Student Support Outreach + Community Programs The Mittal Institute Arts Programs South Asia Regional Programs Operations FAS Gift Fund Tax (15%)
$173,686 $216,476 $21,075 $30,000 $25,750 $616,862 $98,886
TOTAL
$1,182,735
Faculty Support Inter-faculty Research Support Student Support Outreach + Community Programs The Mittal Institute Arts Programs South Asia Regional Programs Operations FAS Gift Fund Tax (15%)
$249,248 $100,000 $115,390 $21,075 $69,000 $19,000 $799,710 $33,138
TOTAL
$1,406,561
Arts Fund: Fiscal Year 2017-2018
Arts Fund: Fiscal Year 2018-2019
INCOME
INCOME
Art Advisory Payments + Annual Interest
$90,000
Art Advisory Payments + Annual Interest
$90,000
Art Advisory Balance Forward
$81,658
Art Advisory Balance Forward
$84,865
Harvard Regan Fund Grant Balance Forward
-$943
Harvard Regan Fund Income
$5,000
TOTAL
$174,865
TOTAL
$175,715
EXPENSE
EXPENSE Visiting Artists Stipend + Travel + Honoraria
$38,000
Faculty Grants
$5,000
Visiting Artists Stipend + Travel + Honoraria
$38,000
Arts-related Programs on Campus
$4,000
Faculty Grants
$10,000
In-Region Workshops + Programs
$22,000
Arts-related Programs on Campus
$4,000
Administration
$20,700
In-Region Workshops + Programs
$17,000
Administration
$21,850
TOTAL
$89,700
TOTAL
$94,700
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T H E L A K S H M I M I T TA L S O U T H A S I A I N S T I T U T E , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y
ABBREVIATION KEY ABBREVIATION KEY
AISP
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Program for Islamic Studies
CMES
Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies
DRCLAS
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard
DSAS
Department of South Asian Studies
FAS
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
FXB
Franรงois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
GSAS
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
GSD
Harvard Graduate School of Design
HBS
Harvard Business School
HDS
Harvard Divinity School
HGHI
Harvard Global Health Institute
HGSE
Harvard Graduate School of Education
HHI
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
HISG
Harvard India Student Group
HKS
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
HLS
Harvard Law School
HMS
Harvard Medical School
HPSG
Harvard Pakistan Student Group
HSPH
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
SEAS
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
WCFIA
Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
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CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA southasiainstitute.harvard.edu