casionally surprising, ways in which people find solutions to public health problems in South Asia. Our contributors are seasoned professionals in the region, highly regarded professors who have tackled these issues for decades, younger faculty who represent the next generation of thinkers, and graduate students who are in the formative stages of their professional development. The Harvard South Asia Institute aspires to develop interfaculty relationships between the different departments and schools at Harvard and to introduce Harvard faculty to their colleagues at other universities; to foster student-teacher relationships; to connect professionals working in South Asia with the Harvard community; and to cultivate cross-region collaboration in South Asia. In these pages you will encounter a young woman from Karachi writing about improvements to the city’s ambulances and emergency-response systems; an American physician working to help road-accident victims in Bangladesh; a humanitarian aid worker creating a graphic novel about survivors of war-torn Sri Lanka, and in turn becoming inspired to document the plight of Somali migrants and Syrian refugees; an MIT professor working to restore sight to blind children in India; a writer in Bangalore analyzing the effects of Indian medical patent law on South Africa and Brazil; an Indian-born New York physician grappling with real-time epidemiology at the world’s largest human gathering—the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad; and others writing about ideas and initiatives ranging from health care financing to low-tech design to gender-violence prevention. In the final section of this publication, you will experience a little shift in perspective—a look at the notion of suffering and disease according to the Buddha; a literary vision of healing and sovereignty; and a wry, fictional depiction of medicine and the body politic. The coda flips the focus to the longue durée of the South Asian past. The nation states in this region are young, the population even younger, but the civilizational memory is as old as anywhere in the world. Here, we look forward to the future of health in South Asia through the eyes of what the past has seen and understood. A small section for taking notes is included in the print volume. It is our hope that you will actively read these essays, feel free to comment and develop your own ideas, and connect with the pieces, places, and people you find in these pages. Regards,
Tarun Khanna Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Director, Harvard South Asia Institute
Harvard South Asia Institute 3