Year in Review 2014-2015

H A RVA R D

U N I V E R S I T Y

SOUTH ASIA INSTITUTE YEAR IN REVIEW 2014-2015

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 HEC Higher Education Commission of Pakistan HGHI Harvard Global Health Institute HGSE Harvard Graduate School of Education HGVP Harvard Gender Violence Project 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 RIAS Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study RISD Rhode Island School of Design SAI Harvard South Asia Institute SEAS Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences WCFIA Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

COVER PHOTO CREDIT Dinesh Mehta Taken at the Kumbh Mela, Allahabad, India, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS DIRECTOR’S LETTER

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ABOUT US

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HIGHLIGHTS

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KUMBH MELA

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FACULTY 14 STUDENTS 40 IN REGION

46

COMMUNITY 50 PUBLICATIONS 52 IN THE NEWS

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BUDGET 56

MISSION The Harvard University South Asia Institute (SAI) serves as a platform for faculty, students, and regional partners to work together to advance interdisciplinary research and scholarship on South Asia.

Tarun Khanna speaks to students at SAI’s Welcome Back Chaat Party in September

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South Asia Institute

DIRECTOR’S LETTER Dear Friends, This year has seen unprecedented growth and new beginnings for the Harvard University South Asia Institute (SAI). Only two years into being formally elevated from an initiative to a university-wide research and academic institute, SAI has actively engaged over 500 regional stakeholders, and an equal number of faculty and students from Harvard’s twelve degree-granting schools, making it the hub of innovative programming, knowledge production, and research pertaining to a vast and complex region.

Home to over a quarter of the world’s population, some of the most critical issues being debated on the global stage today find resonance in South Asia. As a result, the region is a laboratory for entrepreneurship, technological advancement, and cultural diversity.

In 2014-2015, SAI hosted over 50 seminars in Cambridge, New York, San Francisco, New Delhi, Dhaka, Karachi, Lahore, and Mumbai on issues spanning the humanities, social science, and natural sciences; awarded over 50 student and eight faculty grants toward fieldwork in the region; hosted five Graduate Student Affiliates (GSA), two postdoctoral fellows, and three research affiliates; released its second annual publication, The City and South Asia, with essays from leading urban planners, architects, designers, anthropologists, and healthcare professionals; launched Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Megacity as the culmination of a multiyear, multidisciplinary research; established a presence in New Delhi; and introduced numerous academic initiatives, including a HarvardX module Societies of the World, an extension of my course “Contemporary South Asia: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems” with modules in urbanism, technology, health, and humanities.

Building on the success of the Kumbh Mela 2013 interfaculty research (as elaborated in prior Year in Reviews), SAI has engaged several cross-school partnerships to advance adolescent education, the social utility of mobile technology, emergency response and disaster management, Partition studies, and the arts. As we continue to address these issues in 2015–2016, I am pleased to elaborate on our latest programs, namely, the Partition Project, and Arts at SAI. The Partition Project is an interdisciplinary academic initiative, led by Dr. Jennifer Leaning, in which a team of faculty, students, and regional partners has been conducting assiduous research on the demographic and humanitarian consequences of the 1947 Partition of British India. Despite abundant historical and political scholarship on the Partition, and a growing literature of personal reflection and fiction, limited research on the immediate humanitarian impact has been conducted using archival records of British India and the three countries that evolved from Partition.

The project aims to specify what actually happened to the millions of people who were forced to migrate. The first phase involved delineating the demographic consequences of Partition and a reanalysis of the censuses of India and Pakistan (1931– 1971); while the second phase is now exploring the British government’s role, the post-independence Indian administration’s activities, and the relief efforts of international humanitarian agencies, through archival in research libraries in the UK and the US.

In 2014, SAI partnered with the Partition Project to roll out the next phases of the project as the study moved from the British archives to those in the subcontinent. It will involve reviewing and analyzing all available records at the national, state, and city levels of administration from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. SAI has helped establish research sites in Delhi, Kolkata, Amritsar, Karachi, and Dhaka.

In the inaugural year of SAI’s arts initiative we hosted a talk by Nandita Das on the role of art in social change, followed by a group exhibit South Asia Exchange, which explored the concept of exchange in the myriad ways goods, ideas, and aesthetics travel across regions. Additionally, SAI hosted award-winning photographer Pablo Bartholomew, from India, who discussed his experiences covering the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, delivered a lecture on Indian photography from 1880 to 2010, and exhibited a series of ethno-anthropological photographs of tribes and people of the hills and valleys of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur, taken from 1989 to 2000.

The region is a laboratory for entrepreneurship, technological advancement, and cultural diversity.

Moving forward, SAI is looking to radically expand its arts programming through the long-term initiative Arts at SAI, to address some fundamental gaps in South Asia’s cultural economy. While there is no shortage of artists, art production, or art consumption in the region, there is an urgent need to emphasize and strengthen the network of curators, critics, managers, archivists, collectors, and patrons essential to a rapidly growing art ecosystem. Arts at SAI focuses on a highly specialized but diverse set of training workshops geared toward building institutional capacity, conducting research, and advancing cultural management.

SAI began as a demonstration of Harvard University’s commitment to pursue the most challenging issues emerging from South Asia.

Rapidly, the institute has grown into an intellectual clearinghouse where practitioners and scholars from the region come together with Harvard University’s faculty and students in countless configurations to better our understanding of this diverse region as a microcosm of the world. I am grateful to our staff, students, faculty, and the community for their ongoing participation and commitment, without which none of our achievements would be possible.

Regards,

Tarun Khanna Director, Harvard University South Asia Institute Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School

A Year in Review 2014-2015

ABOUT SAI SAI’s administration of staff and students, based both in Cambridge and in South Asia, supports SAI’s mission and its day-to-day operations.

FINANCE TEAM SHARED WITH OTHER ASIA RELATED CENTERS

STAFF

Tarun Khanna Director, SAI; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, HBS

Meena Sonea Hewett Executive Director

Nora Maginn

Meghan Smith

Program Manager

Communications and Outreach Coordinator

Sarah Gordon Director of Finance and Administration

Kathryn Maldonis Senior Financial Associate

Karen Christopher Robyn Provost Financial Associate

Financial Associate

IN REGION STAFF

STUDENT COORDINATORS

Ghazal Gulati EdM Candidate, HGSE

Abhishek Raman MDiv Candidate, HDS

Divya Sooryakumar

Mehjabeen Zameer

EdM Candidate, HGSE

EdM Candidate, HGSE

INTERFACULTY PROJECTS RESEARCH ASSISTANTS Arts at SAI:

Mustafa Samdani Teri McGuane Staff Assistant

Harvard University Office 1730 Cambridge Street, 4th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Namrata Arora Associate Director, Mumbai Office, India

Payal Narain Program Consultant, Delhi Office, India

Mumbai Office

The Aman Foundation, Plot # 333, Korangi Township Near Pakistan Refinery Ltd., Karachi Pakistan

Bangladesh Location BRAC Centre, 75 Mohakhali, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh

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South Asia Institute

Anisha Gopi Visiting Researcher, Gender Violence Program, HLS

Adnan Ahmed EdM Candidate, HGSE

Mariam Chughtai

Delhi Location

Pakistan Location

Gender Violence:

The 1947 Partition of British India

Piramal Tower, 704, 7th floor, Peninsula Corporate Park, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai - 400013 India Nischay Education, 201, 2nd Floor, Mercantile House, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001

MA, Performance Studies, Brown University

EdD Candidate, HGSE

Sarib Hussain Fuad H. Mallick SAI Partner, BRAC University, Bangladesh

Zahra Parekh Program Consultant, Karachi

Undergraduate, Harvard College

VISITING SCHOLARS SAI fellowships allow scholars to continue their research at Harvard.

The South Asian Studies Fellowship supports recent PhDs in humanities and social science fields related to South Asia. Research topics can cover any period of South Asian history or contemporary South Asia.

The Aman Fellowship supports doctoral and advanced professional degree holders working on issues related to Pakistan’s development.

John presents at SAI’s Symposium in 2011

In Memory of John Briscoe John Briscoe, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering and Environmental Health, SEAS, and SAI Steering Committee member, passed away on November 12, 2014.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW IN SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

ANAND VAIDYA

Anand Vaidya received his PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University in 2014. His research is on environmental politics and the law in contemporary India. Vaidya’s project is an ethnographic and historical study of India’s Forest Rights Act, a landmark 2006 law that recognizes the land rights of the country’s many landless forest dwellers. Studying the law together with the movements that were crucial in pushing for it—and which continue to be central in implementing it—he seeks to understand the many, and often contradictory, political projects that the law has enabled in relation to the political struggles that produced it. His work has also been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Fulbright-Nehru program.

AMAN FELLOW

ATIYA KHAN Atiya Khan is a historian of modern South Asia.

Her first project recovers the untold story of progressive politics in Pakistan from the consolidation of the efforts to carve a Muslim majority state out of British India in 1940 until the fracture of that state with the Bangladesh War in 1971. She argues that the vicissitudes of the socialist left, its defeats at key historical moments altered the vector and the conditions of possibility for democracy in Pakistan. She is also working on a monograph that focuses on the historiography of South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago.

Her research interests include decolonization in South Asia, difficulties of democracy and development in postcolonial South Asia and the Muslim World, and history of the international New Left social movements.

RESEARCH AFFILIATES Research Affiliates contribute to the academic study of South Asia on campus by bringing their expertise on a wide range of issues to the university.

Fauzia E. Ahmed Assistant Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies, Miami University of Ohio Ahmed investigates how intersections of gender and globalization impact governance and workers’ wellbeing in the garment industry in various countries in South Asia.

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boston College Kruks-Wisner’s research focuses on issues of political participation, local governance, and social welfare in developing countries, with an emphasis on South Asian and Indian politics.

Hasna Moudud Former Visiting Fellow, Ash Center, HKS

John was a passionate scholar with a deep dedication to water issues and development, especially in South Asia, and spent a great amount of time working in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.

In April 2014, John was named the 2014 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate for his unparalleled contributions to global and local water management issues.

“One of the things that we will remember most about John is the way he advised us to think of our work as not bound by borders, but rather that issue-based thinking can span geographies and regions to enrich learning and teaching. This is what John did with his water project, an issue with an immediate urgency for many parts of the world. His approach and perspective will live on in the way that SAI brings together faculty, students, and regional experts across disciplines and borders.”

- Meena Hewett, SAI Executive Director “John was an extremely dynamic individual who combined theory with practice and with a deep sense of the issues of water policy especially in the developing world. He was known world wide as ‘water Briscoe’ and the go-to person on matters of water policy. He was my office neighbor for 5 years and I saw first hand what a dedicated teacher he was. There were always dozens of students from different parts of the campus waiting to see him! A truly wonderful colleague and a very special friend! I will miss him greatly.”

- Venkatesh Narayanamurti, SEAS, HKS “Professor John Briscoe was a teacher, a guide, a mentor, and a dear friend. To us, his students at Harvard, whom he led on field study trips of the Indus in Pakistan, he was ‘JB’. His warmth and care infected us and motivated many of us to do advanced studies in water management and development. He taught us to see that as bad as we thought things were, the glass was always ‘half full’. You will be missed John, and we will endeavor to build on your legacy, for those deprived of the full potential of their water resources.”

- Erum Sattar, SJD Candidate, HLS

Moudud’s research at SAI focuses on the Silk Road through South Asia, which traverses China as well as Tibet, India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.

Year in Review 2014 - 2015

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STEERING COMMITTEE SAI’s Steering Committee provides guidance and advisement to SAI, and represents schools from across the university.

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL

Ali Asani

Homi Bhabha

Tarun Khanna

William Kirby

Nicholas Burns

Martha Chen

Professor of IndoMuslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, FAS; Director, AISP

Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Department of English, FAS; Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University

Director, South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, HBS

Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, HBS; T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies, FAS

Sultan of Oman Professor of the Practice of International Relations, HKS; Director, Future of Diplomacy Project, HKS

Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS; Affiliated Professor, GSD; International Coordinator, WIEGO Network

Diana Eck

Venkatesh Murthy

Akshay Mangla

Asim Khwaja

Anthony Saich

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

Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, FAS

Assistant Professor of Business Administration, HBS

Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development, HKS

Daewoo Professor of International Affairs; Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, HKS

HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN

HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

Parimal G. Patil

Diana Sorensen

Rahul Mehrotra

Fernando Reimers

Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Committee on the Study of Religion, FAS; Chair, DSAS

Dean of Arts and Humanities, James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature, FAS

Professor of Urban Planning and Design and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, GSD

Ford Foundation Professor of International Education; Director, International Education Policy Program, HGSE

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South Asia Institute

ADVISORY COUNCIL The SAI Advisory Council, a team of distinguished volunteer leaders, provides strategic counsel and support to SAI. HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Syed Babar Ali, AMP ‘73 KP Balaraj, HBS MBA ’97 Sumir Chadha, HBS MBA ’97 Purander and Kuntala Das Jo Forman and Mark Fuller, AB ‘75, MBA ‘78, JD ‘79 Meera Gandhi Vikram Gandhi, MBA ‘89, ExEd ‘00 Mala Haarmann, AB’91, MBA ‘96

Jacqueline Bhabha 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 Chair, Department of Global Health and Population; Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, HSPH

Anuradha and Anand Mahindra, AB ‘77, MBA ‘81 Karen AB ’82 and Sanjeev Mehra, AB ‘82, MBA ‘86 Victor Menezes Arif Naqvi Dalip and Chandrika Pathak Mukesh AB ’93 and Chandni Prasad Sribala Subramanian and Arvind Raghunathan Rajiv and Anupa Sahney Gaurav, MBA ’80, and Parul Swarup Arshad Zakaria, AB’85, MBA ’87

Sue Goldie

Jennifer Leaning

Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management, HSPH; Director, Global Health Education and Learning Incubator

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

Venkatesh

From left to right: Anand Mahindra, Sribala Subramanian, Mark Fuller, and Dalip Pathak at an at the annual Advisory Council meeting

Narayanamurti Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy and Professor of Physics, SEAS; Director Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, HKS

Year in Review 2014 - 2015

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HIGHLIGHTS

Sarah Bolivar, MLA candidate, GSD, in Surkhet, Nepal while on a SAI summer internship grant at Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School.

Participants at the “Using Cellphones to Change Societies” workshop hosted by the Radcliffe Institute in August.

Nandan Nilekani discusses implementing Aadhaar in India at SAI’s Mahindra Lecture in November.

SUMMER 2014

FALL 2014

FACULTY

FACULTY

On August 26 and 27, SAI hosted a workshop, “Gender, Civil Society, and the State in Contemporary South Asia: Preventive Approaches to Gender Based Violence,” which was sponsored by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Practitioners, researchers, government leaders, and academics from both the US and India reviewed the current research, policy, and practices preventing gender-based violence through innovative approaches to education in India. (p. 15)

On November 3, SAI hosted its annual Mahindra Lecture with Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, who spoke about his work designing and implementing Aadhaar, a national biometric identification project in India that has issued a unique twelve-digit number to 700 million Indians. (p. 20)

On September 4 and 5, SAI hosted a workshop, “Using Cellphones to Change Societies,” which was sponsored by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and which assembled a diverse group of academics, medical practitioners, business executives, and leading researchers to discuss the potential of mobile technology to enable economic and social mobility in the areas of health, banking, and education in South Asia. (p. 17)

STUDENTS SAI enabled 54 Harvard students to conduct a variety of internships and research projects in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. (p. 41)

COMMUNITY To contribute to the “Best of Harvard in India Series,” SAI and HBS India Research Center partnered with the Central Square Foundation to host a roundtable discussion on “Effective Implementation of Primary Education Policies in India” on August 1 in Delhi. Akshay Mangla, HBS, moderated the discussion. (p. 48)

STUDENTS Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS, co-taught the General Education course “Contemporary South Asia: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems” for the fourth year. Over 60 students from across Harvard’s schools delved into lessons on entrepreneurship and social and economic problems in South Asia. The course was co-taught by Sue Goldie, HSPH; Rahul Mehrotra, GSD; Parimal Patil, FAS; and Conor Walsh, SEAS. (p. 55)

COMMUNITY SAI’s webinar series focused on “Disaster Management and Emergency Response” in South Asia. The three webinars connected Harvard faculty with over fifteen universities in South Asia and focused on effective responses to address natural and man-made disasters. (p. 47)

On August 13, Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS, spoke in Bangalore to a crowd of technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, Harvard alumni, and thought leaders on “Mobile Technology: Spurring Social and Economic Enterprise in South Asia.” (p. 48) On August 19, Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS, spoke at BRAC University in Dhaka on “Developing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Emerging Economies.” (p. 48)

44,932

1,820

views have been accumulated on SAI’s YouTube page.

people attended SAI’s 54 faculty-led seminars this year.

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South Asia Asia Institute Institute South

5134

people globally follow SAI on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

From left to right: Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HLS, HKS, Akshay Mangla, HBS, and Poonam Muttreja discuss gender norms and adolescent education in Delhi in January.

Tarik Adnan Moon, Harvard College ‘15, conducts research on using cheap computing devices in education, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, while on a SAI winter grant.

Tarun Khanna, left, SAI, HBS, and Sajjan Jindal, JSW Group, at the India Conference at Harvard in March.

WINTER 2015

SPRING 2015

FACULTY

FACULTY

On January 9, SAI hosted an event in Delhi entitled “Addressing Gender Norms through Education: Developing and Implementing Adolescent Curriculum” with Akshay Mangla, HBS, Jacqueline Bhabha, HKS, HSPH, HLS, and Meena Hewett, SAI. The event was cosponsored by the Harvard FXB Center and the Population Foundation of India. (p. 49)

SAI’s fourth Annual Symposium, “South Asia: Local Solutions with Global Impact,” highlighted SAI’s interfaculty research on “Mobile Technology to Access Healthcare Services: Case Studies from the Global South,” “Role of South Asian Arts in Education,” “Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Megacity,” “Water and Poverty in Urban Slums,” and “Mental Health and Disasters.” (p. 21)

STUDENTS

STUDENTS

SAI awarded eighteen grants to support undergraduate and graduate student projects over the winter session. These included six undergraduates and twelve graduate students who traveled to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka for research and internships. (p. 41)

The India Conference at Harvard, “India’s Path to Global Leadership,” held in March, brought together business leaders, entertainment professionals, government officials, philanthropists, and many other leaders to engage in a conversation with faculty from Harvard, MIT, and other universities about India’s future. (p. 44)

COMMUNITY SAI’s second publication, The City and South Asia, released in January, sheds light on the paradoxes endemic to urban centers in South Asia. Contributors to this publication included urbanists from diverse disciplinary perspectives. (p. 53)

In March, the Harvard Pakistan Forum promoted discourse on “unity, faith, and discipline” with regards to addressing challenges in Pakistan. Business leaders, academics, artists, and students came together to discuss Pakistan’s foreign policy, the role of arts and literature, and entrepreneurship in Pakistan. (p. 44)

COMMUNITY In April, SAI launched an exhibit and book entitled Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MEGACITY, culminating SAI’s flagship multi-school research project on the world’s largest religious festival, which occurs every twelve years.

The project serves as a model of sophisticated interdisciplinary research at Harvard and looks at an extreme condition of urbanism through the lens of architecture, urban planning, business, health, religion, and social enterprise. (p. 12)

3162

people have viewed the digital versions of SAI’s two publications, Health and South Asia and The City and South Asia.

54

students were funded by SAI to support their research and internships in South Asia during the summer and winter sessions.

3386

people subscribe to SAI’s weekly email newsletter.

Year YearininReview Review2014 2014- 2015 - 2015

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KUMBH MELA: MAPPING THE EPHEMERAL MEGACITY PEOPLE

BACKGROUND The Kumbh Mela is a Hindu religious fair that occurs every twelve years at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers on the plains of northern India, and is the world’s largest public gathering, of 80 over million people. Because of its size and complexity, the 2013 Kumbh Mela inspired SAI’s flagship multi-year interdisciplinary research project in a number of complementary fields – business, technology and communications, urban studies and design, religious and cultural studies, and public health.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY SOUTH ASIA INSTITUTE Tarun Khanna, Meena Hewett, Deonnie Moodie, Jenny Bordo, Todd Mostak, Namrata Arora, Nora Maginn

TIMELINE 1

2

2012

3

4

6

5

2013

2014

7

2015

HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN Rahul Mehrotra, Alex Chen, Namita Dharia, Aneesha Dharwadker, Vineet Diwadkar, Oscar Malaspina, Alykhan Mohamed, José Mayoral Moratilla, Benjamin Scheerbarth, Johannes Staudt, Felipe Vera, James Whitten

1

APRIL 2012

Rahul Mehrotra, GSD, Diana Eck, FAS, HDS, Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS, and Meena Hewett, SAI, meet to brainstorm on the idea of a “One Harvard” project.

2

SEPTEMBER– DECEMBER 2012

The General Education seminar course “Pilgrimage: The Kumbh Mela” with Diana Eck, FAS, HDS, is offered by the Department of South Asian Studies.

3

JANUARY 2013

Over fifty Harvard professors, students, administrative staff, and medical practitioners make the pilgrimage to Allahabad, India, the Kumbh Mela site, to analyze issues that emerge in large-scale human gatherings.

FXB CENTER FOR HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS

4

AUGUST 2013

Jennifer Leaning, Gregg Greenough, Satchit Balsari, Pooja Agrawal, Aaron Heerboth, Dhruv Kazi, Rishi Madhok, Neil Murthy, Logan Plaster, Michael Vortmann

SAI hosts a workshop at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study in which faculty and students, alongside experts from India, convene to discuss the findings from their visit to the Kumbh.

5

SEPTEMBER 2013 – APRIL 2015

With plans to release a comprehensive book about research conducted at the Kumbh, SAI coordinates planning, design, and layout meetings with the Harvard team and publishers.

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APRIL 2015

The Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MEGACITY is released, and the exhibit, designed by Megan Panzano, studioPM, is launched at Harvard.

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AUGUST 2015 AND BEYOND

The book and exhibit to be launched in Delhi, India. Exhibit to travel within India, Europe, and the US.

HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Richard Cash, Candace Brown, Stephanie Cheng, Jukka-Pekka Onnela

HARVARD UNIVERSITY GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE Susan R. Holman, Amanda Brewster, Sue J. Goldie

HARVARD FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES AND HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL Diana Eck, Kalpesh Bhatt, Dorothy Austin, Isaac Dayno, Felix De Rosen, Anna Kneifel, Brenna McDuffie, Nicholas Roth, Leila Shayegan, Rachel Taylor, Ned Whitman

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL Tarun Khanna, John Macomber, Saloni Chaturvedi, Vaughn Tan, Tiona Zuzul

OTHER PARTNERS Indian Government Motilal Nehru Medical College The National Disaster Management Authority The Rotary Clubo of Mumbai Prakriti Foundation Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture

PEER INSTITUTIONS Columbia University Stanford University

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South Asia Institute South Asia Institute

FUNDING Harvard Provost Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration

$25,000

Harvard President’s January Innovation Fund

$25,000

Harvard Global Health Institute

$23,000

Harvard South Asia Institute

$10,000

Harvard University Center for the Environment

$6,000

Radcliffe Institute Exploratory Workshop

$20,000

Book and Exhibit (Private Donor)

$120,000

Total Project Cost

$229,000

OUTPUTS RELATED TO KUMBH MELA RESEARCH BOOK Over fifty Harvard professors, students, administrative staff, and medical practitioners made the pilgrimage to Allahabad, India, to the Kumbh Mela site in 2013, to analyze issues that emerge in any large-scale human gathering. The Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MEGACITY book consolidates research findings and serves as an example of interdisciplinary research conducted at Harvard.

TRAVELING EXHIBITION The main characteristics of the design for the exhibition emphasize interdisciplinary research on the Kumbh Mela completed by various Harvard groups. The design components of the exhibit are stretched fabric screens that produce passages or spaces when asThe traveling exhibition sembled together, and allow the show’s travel within the US, UK, and India.

The exhibit design is pre-programmed for ease of assembly and disassembly, which illustrates the trait of inhabitable components of the Kumbh Mela temporary city. Designed by Megan Panzano, studioPM, GSD.

HBS CASE STUDY

John Macomber, HBS, right, at the Kumbh

Business research from the Kumbh resulted in a case study published

by Harvard Business School, ‘Kumbh Mela: India’s Pop-Up Mega-City.’ The clinical study looks at the structure and governance of the Kumbh in order to understand how large scale urban infrastructure can be deployed in reasonably short amounts of time.

ANALYSIS OF CELL DATA The team used a novel methodology to study the festival, based on the analysis of anonymized cell phone communication metadata of millions of people who attended the Kumbh.

This approach can be used in a numJP Onnela, HSPH, speaks at ber of contexts where large numbers RIAS in August 2013 of people have gathered together.

While the Kumbh is obviously a very carefully planned event, the approach is also suitable to study misplaced populations such as those that might result from natural disasters like earthquakes or floods. These types of analyses shed light on large-scale crowd behavior and could be helpful in understanding and predicting crowd movement and thereby helping with crowd control to avoid congestion and stampedes.

URBANISM The architecture and urban planning team systematically documented the various sectors at the Kumbh site, revealing a rich and sophisticated urban typology—the components of which can be useful in the future for more precarious contexts relating to disasThe GSD team at the Kumbh ter response, public health, and sustainability. From exploring the extreme temporal landscape of the Mela, we can learn about planning and design, reflect on flow management and infrastructural deployment, and also explore cultural identity and elasticity in the urban condition.

DISEASE SURVEILLANCE TOOL The team worked closely with the festival’s health administrators, local public health students, and volunteers to understand the spread of disease at the festival. They used iPads to keep Gregg Greenough, HSPH, left, at the Kumbh track of medical records and map disease outbreaks. The disease surveillance tool developed by the team is now in its next iteration, and will have advanced real-time analytic capabilities.

It is expected to be deployed at the next Kumbh Mela, and in other humanitarian and disaster settings thereafter.

RESEARCH AND TEACHING TOOLS

The HSPH and HGHI team at the Kumbh

Research from the Kumbh has inspired a deeper understanding of public health at mass gatherings. SAI worked with HGHI to develop teaching and educational tools about the festival.

RELIGION AND CULTURE One of the major outcomes for the team studying religion and culture was observing the concern many people at the Kumbh had about the pollution produced throughout the course of this festival. One group gathered data on Diana Eck, right, at the how flowers are used in worship and Kumbh reflected on the burgeoning concern at the Kumbh Mela, but also in India more generally, about the effects of religious practices on the environment.

Year YearininReview Review2014 2014- 2015 - 2015

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FACULTY Over 100 faculty at Harvard focus their teaching and research on issues and subjects directly related to South Asia. SAI serves as a platform to connect these faculty members with students and regional partners. Interfaculty initiatives include research projects, which bring faculty from various Harvard schools together to engage in multidisciplinary scholarship. The SAI seminar series highlight faculty research in a variety of disciplines, through special events, conferences, and seminars.

Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HLS, HKS, right, and Akshay Mangla, HBS, center, discuss gender norms and adolescent education in Delhi in January

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INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH PROJECTS ADOLESCENT EDUCATION IN INDIA The goal of the Harvard Gender Violence Project (HGVP) is to elevate the status of South Asian women by engaging societies to reject violence and foster respect for all people. The HGVP is a collaboration between SAI, HLS, HBS, and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and regional experts working in the area of gender violence prevention and intervention programs. This interdisciplinary group of faculty, students, and administrators with relevant past experience works with partners in South Asia to develop ideas and synergies that will advance educational, social, emotional, and economic achievements of girls and women in South Asia.

FACULTY DIRECTORS: Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Center, HSPH, HLS, HKS Akshay Mangla, HBS HARVARD PARTNERS: FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard Harvard Business School Harvard Gender Violence Program, HLS PARTNERS IN INDIA: International Center for Research on Women Ministry of Human Resource Development, India Population Foundation of India National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights MV Foundation Hyderabad Central University World Bank Tanya D’Lima, World Bank, presents at the RIAS workshop in August, 2014

On August 26 and 27, 2014, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study sponsored a workshop titled “Gender, Civil Society, and the State in Contemporary South Asia: Preventive Approaches to Gender Based Violence.”

The team looked at the relation between gender and violence and focused on current legal reforms and the role of civil society and its changing norms.

In the Indian context, it was identified that there is a need to examine what sexuality, puberty and gender roles mean for violence against women. The participants confirmed that education is a key enabler in changing norms that are detrimental to a woman’s agency.

NEXT STEPS

Left to right: Kanchan Mathur, Shobhita Rajagopal, and Ravi Verma at “Addressing Gender Norms” in New Delhi, January

The Government of India has initiated targeted interventions to enhance access to education and retention of girls in school. One innovative and apparently successful intervention has been the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalaya (KGBV) scheme, which established residential upper primary level schools for vulnerable, out of school girls from marginalized groups.

Moving forward, SAI and the HGVP plan to study the impact of the KGBV scheme on the educational progress and socio-economic advancement of female students.

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EMERGENCY RESPONSE AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN PAKISTAN South Asia is particularly vulnerable to disasters, from terrorist attacks, to flooding, to earthquakes that can affect large populations. In order to address these humanitarian crises, the fundamentals of mass casualty management are critical. A plan for disaster response in the region must include the following: training for senior decision makers in government and for response agencies (police, fire, civil service, etc.) to help build a coherent and coordinated system-wide strategy for response; and preparing frontline responders to clinically and psychologically manage the complex patients and issues they face on a daily basis in emergency casualty areas and in Emergency Medical Services settings.

HARVARD TEAM: Satchit Balsari, HHI, Weill Cornell Medical Center Shawn D’Andrea, HMS, HHI Stephanie Kayden, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, HHI, HMS Jennifer Leaning, FXB Center, HSPH Usha Periyanayagam, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, HMS PARTNERS IN PAKISTAN: Aga Khan University Hospital Al Abassi Hospital, Chakwal Aman Foundation Health Department, City of Karachi Health Department, Sindh Province Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Center Karachi Civil Hospital Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) In collaboration with the Aman Foundation and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a team from Harvard conducted trainings at Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi for emergency rooms and hospital workers. The Harvard team trained three ambulance services personnel operating in Karachi to improve coordination and communication between the services. Furthermore, the team worked with pre-hospital providers, such as the navy, police, security personnel, and ambulance drivers to formulate a disaster plan. The goals of the training was to address how to effectively communicate between hospital administrators so that mass casualty responses are better coordinated and services are efficiently provided to the survivors of the disasters.

Participants in an emergency response training exercise in Karachi, Pakistan

The Harvard team has conducted webinars with the teams in Pakistan and focused on themes of incident command, mass casualty triage, and planning and debriefing for future disasters.

See page 47 for more information on the webinars.

Left to right: Junaid Razzak, Aman Foundation, Jennifer Leaning, Shawn D’Andrea, Usha Periyanayagam, and Satchit Balsari, at SAI’s 2013 Annual Symposium workshop on Disaster Response and Mental Health

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USE OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE SOCIETIES IN SOUTH ASIA The use of mobile technology is ubiquitous and fills the gap of information, communications, and access to social services for large populations. The technological devices are proving to be powerful tools to promote growth, restructure societies, and social relationships. India ranks second after China in the mobile phone market. Approximately 76% of the 1.25 billion people have access to mobile phones in India, and the device has potential to favorably impact the lives of many.

FACULTY LEADERS: Satchit Balsari, FXB Center, Weill Cornell Medical Center Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS JP Onnela, HSPH PARTNERS: Berkman Center for Internet and Society Bharti Airtel, India BKash, Bangladesh Datadyne IBM Flowminder.org Jana Care, India mDhil, India Multinet Pakistan Private Limited, Pakistan Interactive Health Solutions, Pakistan Roshan, Afghanistan Telenor, Norway USAID World Bank Right to left: Tarun Khanna, HBS, Joseph Ziskin, IBM, Kerstin Trikalitis, Out There Media, and Clayton Sims, Dimagi, MIT at the RIAS workshop in September, 2014

Use of mobile technology could successfully change societies if technology and regulations can keep pace with each other, and users adapt their behavior patterns to avail of its potential benefits.

On September 4 and 5, 2014, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study sponsored a workshop, “Using Cell Phones to Change Societies,” where Harvard faculty and partners from the US and South Asia came together to explore the potential of technology to enable economic and social mobility across sectors.

Discussions have led to conducting further research with a team of faculty, students, and partners in India to examine the use of mobile technology in providing services to a vast population, and find linkages and opportunities for transferability of interventions across the various services.

NEXT STEPS

Ashwin Khubchandani, Blue Pine Capital, along with Marc Mitchell, HSPH, co-facilitates a session on “Transferability of Interdisciplinary Interventions” during the September workshop

The project was awarded Harvard’s President’s Innovation Fund for International Experiences (PIFIE), which will fund a summer course for Harvard students to spend time in India to understand the use of mobile technology by interacting and gathering data from local producers, regulators, investors, and end users of the technology.

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THE 1947 PARTITION OF BRITISH INDIA: THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND HUMANITARIAN CONSEQUENCES Despite abundant historical and political scholarship on the 1947 Partition of British India, and notwithstanding a growing literature of personal reflection and fiction, very little has been done, even after 67 years, to research the extensive archival records of British India and the three countries that evolved from the Partition to determine what actually happened to millions of people who chose to or were forced to move to another country in that very short period of time.

FACULTY DIRECTOR: Jennifer Leaning, FXB Center, HSPH RESEARCH COORDINATOR: Mariam Chughtai, EdD Candidate, HGSE HARVARD RESEARCH ASSISTANTS: Adnan Ahmed, EdM Candidate, HGSE Sarib Hussain, Harvard College Mehjabeen Zameer, EdM Candidate, HGSE PARTNERS: All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, Ahmadabad, India Aman Foundation, Karachi BRAC University Dhaka, Bangladesh Citizens Archives of Pakistan, Karachi CONSULTANTS: Mihir Bhatt, Ahmadabad, India Uma Chakravarty, Delhi, India Sana Mahmood, London, UK Swaleha Shahzada, Pakistan The ambition of the project is to develop a rich and empirically grounded understanding of the Partition. The project hopes to answer the following questions: How many people chose to or were forced to move? Where did they leave from and where did they go? How many people died and where did they die? How many people suffered and what efforts were made by the government and civil society to mobilize relief and mitigate severe consequences resulting from the Partition?

Sikhs escaping violence across the IndoPakistani Punjab border in 1947

NEXT STEPS Three research teams located in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan will work with the Harvard team to conduct archival research and develop a database of information on the historic event.

The team will analyze the data relying on a varied collection of documents from government archives in the US, UK, and South Asia, and privately collected documents and oral histories.

We hope that findings from the Partition project will inform the work of the contemporary humanitarian community that delivers relief to populations trapped in natural and man-made disasters.

The Wagah border between India and Pakistan in 2014

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ROLE OF SOUTH ASIAN ARTS IN EDUCATION With support from the Harvard Division of Social Science’s Donald T. Regan Lecture Fund, the SAI Arts Initiative was launched this year to serve as a resource for students and faculty across all disciplines for exploring critical issues in South Asia through the lens of art and design.

FACULTY DIRECTORS: Jinah Kim, FAS Mukti Khaire, HBS Megan Panzano, GSD Doris Sommer, FAS

PARTNERS: Harvard Art Museums Harvard Business School Harvard Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Harvard Extension School Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard Graduate School of Design Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Photographer Pablo Bartholomew gives an over view of Indian photography at an event in November

Nandita Das, Actor, Director, and Advocate of Social Issues, speak at a SAI Arts event on the role of Arts and Film in Social Change in October, 2014

Faculty and administrators from across Harvard formed an SAI arts council to identify the purpose of the arts at SAI which includes supporting the work of emerging artists who use art as a medium to address social issues in South Asia, conducting trainings on conservation and preservation of art and architecture in South Asia, and developing training programs with partners in South Asia to focus on the management of art and culture of South Asia.

Through the Cultural Agents of Change program, SAI recognizes and showcases the works of individuals who use the arts as a medium to address some of South Asia’s most critical problems. This program hosted artists from South Asia at Harvard, giving them the opportunity to participate in interactive sessions with students and discuss the role of art in a liberal arts education, as well as exhibit their work and participate in a faculty-chaired seminar about their artistic journey.

A rich set of symposia, exhibitions, and lectures provides a platform for South Asian artists to contextualize, exhibit, and discuss their work with the Harvard community and with South Asia museum administrators and executives in the region.

Visitors take in Pablo Bartholomew’s exhibit ‘Coded Elegance’ in November, 2014

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SPECIAL EVENTS HARISH C. MAHINDRA LECTURE The Harish C. Mahindra lecture series, inspired by his passion for education, is an important component of SAI events that fosters our knowledge of the challenges facing South Asia, and provides an ideal forum for the SAI community, including the next generation of global leadership, to come together.

November 3, 2014

UNIQUE BIOMETRIC ID: CREATING A LARGE SCALE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM USING THE AADHAAR EXPERIENCE Nandan Nilekani, Former Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India; CoFounder of Infosys; Author of Imagining India During his tenure as chairman of UIDAI, Nilekani designed and implemented Aadhaar, a national biometric identification project wherein each Indian is issued a twelve-digit number that is unique to him or her.

In his lecture, Nilekani discussed the personal and national benefits of Aadhaar, which he referred to as the “world’s largest social project.” His arguments in favor of the initiative gave the audience fascinating insight into the creation and structure of the world’s largest national identification system.

During the enrollment process, Aadhaar collects the name, address, gender, fingerprint, and iris scan of each enrolled individual. Under Nilekani’s leadership, Aadhaar enrolled 700 million Indians in five years and he has continued to advocate on its behalf, arguing that digital identity is essential not only for oversight and accountability, but also for social inclusion and personal empowerment.

Nandan Nilekani

When explaining Aadhaar’s importance, Nilekani emphasized both the need for digital identity in the modern era and the multiple applications of the project’s ID. The government’s interest in Aadhaar originated from a desire to identify fraud that is perpetrated easily in the absence of clear, unique identity status. This makes it easier to collect benefits, preserve public and medical records, and protect a basic right to sole possession of one’s own identity.

Excerpt from an article written by Siddarth Nagaraj, MALD Candidate, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. View the full article at: http:// southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/2014/11/creatingunique-digital-identities/

Over 100 people attend the annual Mahindra Lecture

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ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

SOUTH ASIA: LOCAL SOLUTIONS WITH GLOBAL IMPACT The 2015 Annual SAI Symposium, held on April 16 and 17, brought together scholars and practitioners for a series of workshops on SAI’s ongoing research projects. The symposium also saw the launch of an exhibit and the book Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MEGACITY, SAI’s flagship multiyear, multi-school research project.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Friday, April 17, 2015

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY TO ACCESS HEALTHCARE SERVICES: CASE STUDIES FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH

KUMBH MELA: MAPPING THE EPHEMERAL MEGACITY BOOK AND EXHIBITION LAUNCH

Satchit Balsari, Harvard Humanitarian Initia-

Welcome: Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS

tive; Cornell Weill Medical Center

Jennifer L Chan, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Jill Shah, Associate Consultant, Vera Solutions Nathan Sigworth, Director, PharmaSecure Lack of access to basic health care in indigenous and rural communities, low expenditure on research and development, and rising instances of epidemics have become a pressing cause of concern. Mobile technology, with its wide reach and lower costs, may be the panacea to these common global health challenges. This workshop presented innovative mobile technology solutions from South Asia to improve access to affordable health care, in a comparative context with solutions other regions in the global south. Speakers also discussed transferability of knowledge and technology and what it would take for countries to implement these solutions at scale.

ROLE OF SOUTH ASIAN ARTS IN EDUCATION Jinah Kim, FAS Mukti Khaire, HBS Megan Panzano, GSD Stephanie E. Rozman, Harvard Art Museums

Doris Sommer, FAS The process of artistic production has been conceptualized as comprising both the actual physical creation of the artwork itself and the cognitive production of belief among society in the aesthetic and economic value of the work. This panel explored how civil society and art worlds interact and intersect in the South Asian social, political, and cultural context through an examination of the artworks and the institutional fields that have existed through history and need to exist in the current context.

Comments by: Meera Gandhi,CEO and Founder of The Giving Back Foundation, SAI Advisory Council member Remarks by Drew Faust, President and Lincoln Professor of History, Harvard University

WATER AND POVERTY IN URBAN SLUMS Heather Arney, Water.org Shafiqul Islam, Director, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Sharmila Murthy, Suffolk University, HKS Ramnath Subbaraman, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Liza Weinstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University

ONE HARVARD: WORKING ACROSS DISCIPLINES Diana Eck, FAS, HDS Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, HMS Rahul Mehrotra, GSD Chair: Jorge Dominguez, Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico, Department of Government; Vice Provost for International Affairs, Office of the Provost, Harvard University Faculty leaders discussed lessons learned from the Kumbh Mela project, an example of sophisticated cross-school research, documented in the publication Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MEGACITY. Because of its size and complexity, the Kumbh Mela inspired interdisciplinary research in a number of complementary fields at Harvard – business, technology and communications, urban studies and design, religious and cultural studies and public health. On the broad sandy flats left after the rainy season by the receding waters of the meeting rivers, a temporary city was created for the 2013 Kumbh Mela. Over fifty Harvard professors, students, doctors, and researchers, along with 80 million visitors, made the pilgrimage to the Mela site.

For a rapidly urbanizing South Asia with competing – and often conflicting – demands for water, which problems, when addressed, have the greatest potential to make an impact? Building on the 2014 SAI symposium panel “Water from SAARC to Slums,” this session focused on the challenges of expanding water access in urban slums. Drawing on case studies of urban water poverty from South Asia and other regions, the panelists — and the audience — engaged in a conversation about how to diagnose, characterize, and intervene to address water poverty in urban slums.

MENTAL HEALTH AND DISASTERS Ruth Barron, HMS Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, HMS John Torous, Brigham and Women’s and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, HMS Because of their extremely high levels of stress, there is a tremendous amount of turnover among crucial emergency personnel. This creates a knowledge gap in proper response methods, which increases the risk of psychological trauma and mental health distress in emergency and disaster response situations. Using examples from their work, panelists discussed the acquisition of knowledge about the emotional impacts of overwhelming events, research on acute disasters around the world and how to address people’s mental and physical health in such situations.

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FACULTY GRANTS SAI offers research and travel grants for Harvard faculty working in fields related to South Asia. The purpose of these grants is to promote South Asian studies across the University, and to stimulate interdisciplinary research.

2014-15 FACULTY GRANTS Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HKS, HLS Champions Project: Access of disadvantaged girls in India to higher education

Richard Delacy, Preceptor in Hindi-Urdu, Department of South Asian Studies, FAS

Politics, Pleasure, and Culture Production: Writing about Hindi Fiction in Post-Liberalization South Asia

Jinah Kim, FAS Garlands of Visions: Painted Palm-leaf manuscripts and the tantric vision practices in medieval South Asia

FACULTY GRANT SPOTLIGHT: THE CHAMPIONS PROJECT Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HKS, HLS Goals: A collaboration between the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University and the Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur, the goal of the Champions project is to probe the enduring challenge of female educational disadvantage in India. The research generates an evidence base for enhancing the access of disadvantaged girls to education and to the social, economic and psychological benefits that education is known to bestow. “Champions” (CHs) are defined as female students in their second year of undergraduate studies whose parents have completed a primary school education or less. A ‘Positive Deviance’ study was conducted in 10 districts in Maharashtra and 5 districts in Rajasthan.

Successes: This research shows that with the right support, even those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds can forge a path to personal empowerment through education that would have been unimaginable for their mothers’ generation. The project found several examples of successful improvements: •

Rahul Mehrotra, GSD

Urban India Atlas and South Asian Cities Project •

AMAN FACULTY GRANTS SAI awards Aman Grants to faculty for work in fields related to Pakistan:

Shawn D’Andrea, Instructor of Medicine, HMS; Fellow, HHI

Mass casualty incident and disaster response and preparedness capacity building for medical first responders and emergency department personnel in Karachi, Pakistan

Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS

Research on Use of Mobile Technology in Pakistan

Jennifer Leaning, HSPH

Meeting Disaster Risks in Karachi, Pakistan

•

• • •

Challenges and Opportunities: Several opportunities were drawn from empirical evidence that can address the challenges facing young women from disadvantaged backgrounds striving to attain a college education: • • •

•

Rahul Mehrotra, GSD Contemporary South Asian Cities Project

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Intergenerational Shift: Of the 713 second year students who completed a screening questionnaire across the 13 government colleges, more than half came from households where neither parent had completed the 10th standard. The fact that daughters from these families are in college represents a significant shift in one generation: a manifestation of upward mobility in modern India.

A Cohort of Leaders: 97% of CHs plan to pursue professional occupations such as teaching and civil service jobs. They aspire to help more young women overcome the manifold socio-economic barriers to educational advancement.

Government Social Schemes: At the household level, on average CH families were more likely to have benefited from government assistance in the form of food, pensions and health care than NC families. This confirms that alleviating poverty through household programs at the family level can positively impact girls’ education.

Empowerment through Education: Statistics reflect the well-established virtuous cycle between continued educational attainment and girls’ sense of personal empowerment.

Shifting Norms for Violence against Women: Both CH and NC groups expressed more progressive social views than peers.

Violence in Schools: Notably, on average those participants that attended government schools reported lower levels of peer violence and teacher absenteeism than their counterparts attending low cost private schools.

•

Familial Support: The primary triggers of CHs’ success are family support, teacher mentorship and personal resilience.

Government Education Schemes: Increased transparency and quality assistance at the school level could help more low income families take advantage of government scholarship programs.

Mentoring: Encouraging and rewarding teachers for time invested in supporting female students from economically and educationally deprived backgrounds, both in their engagement with academic school pursuits and with the college application process, could facilitate a more equitable system.

Harassment in the Public Sphere: For many women and girls, exposure in public spaces is perilous and fraught with dangers of stigma, community censure and sexual harassment. Enhancing public safety for young women should include: safer transportation, open more schools with residential areas for girls, install CCTV cameras at crucial public spaces, discuss harassment incidents in school, and establish women’s police stations in all districts.

Technology: Investment in programs in government schools to train young women in computer literacy at the secondary level could help address the national technical skill shortage while also ensuring that these young women have the training necessary to participate in the knowledge economy.

SEMINAR SERIES SOUTH ASIAN ARTS Part of SAI’s new South Asian Arts initiative, the Arts seminar series serves as a resource for students and faculty across all disciplines to explore critical issues of South Asia through the lens of art and design.

Cara Moyer-Duncan, left, with Nandita Das

Pablo Bartholomew’s exhibit, “Coded Elegance” on display at Harvard

Pablo Bartholomew, right, with Bridget Corbett Hanna

September 19, 2014

November 4, 2014

November 5, 2014

THE ROLE OF ARTS IN SOCIAL CHANGE

ANATOMY OF A MAN-MADE DISASTER: THIRTY YEARS LATER, REMEMBERING THE BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY

A PERSONALIZED HISTORY OF INDIAN PHOTOGRAPHY, 1880 TO 2010

Pablo Bartholomew, Photojournalist

Chair: Dalia Linssen, Assistant Professor, RISD

Nandita Das, Actor, Director, and Advocate of Social Issues

Cara Moyer-Duncan, Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College Chair: Mukti Khaire, HBS Das and Moyer-Duncan discussed the ability of art, cinema, and documentary film to comment on, and engage radically with societal issues in Africa and South Asia, including issues of female incision and slum eviction in Africa and homosexuality and domestic violence in India.

Cosponsored with The Cultural Agents Initiative, HHI, and the Cultural and Humanitarian Agents seminar at the Mahindra Center for the Humanities

Pablo Bartholomew, Photojournalist

Discussant: Bridget Corbett Hanna, Postdoc, Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University Chair: Ajantha Subramanian, FAS In December 1984, a gas leak at the Union Carbide Factory, now owned by Dow Chemicals, caused the deaths of thousands of inhabitants of Bhopal and incapacitated the living who are yet to be fully compensated. Photographer Pablo Bartholomew, then aged 29, recounted his experiences of what it was like covering the disaster and its aftermath.

Photographer Pablo Bartholomew, whose career spans over 40 years, introspected on his personal collection of historical photographs as well as works by other photographers from the pre- and post-Independence era, rounding off by elaborating on contemporary practices of photography.

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EDUCATION South Asia poses unique challenges and opportunities for ensuring quality and access to education. SAI’s Education seminar series, led by Akshay Mangla, HBS, brings leading scholars, leaders, and activists in the education field together to examine how education from primary schools to higher education can improve and affect South Asia’s social and political makeup.

Pramath Raj Sinha, center, with Akshay Mangla, right

Shridhar Venkat

Tara Béteille

September 30, 2014

November 5, 2014

October 30, 2014

THE FUTURE OF INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION: FOUR CASE STUDIES

A CONVERSATION WITH SHRIDHAR VENKAT

POWERPLAY: TEACHER TRANSFERS IN INDIA

Shridhar Venkat, CEO, Akshaya Patra

Tara Béteille, World Bank

Pramath Raj Sinha, Founding Dean of

Foundation; Eisenhower Fellow

Chair: Akshay Mangla, HBS

the Indian School of Business and a founder of Ashoka University Chair: Akshay Mangla, HBS The case studies of the Indian School of Business, Ashoka University, Indore Institute of Science and Technology, and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies provided examples of several recent experiments that are attempting to challenge the status quo and transform existing higher education institutions in India.

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South Asia Institute

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is the world’s largest NGO-directed school meal program, feeding 1.4 million children every day. It has been nationally and internationally recognized for decreasing malnutrition, increasing school attendance and academic performance, and instilling post-graduation aspirations in participating students.

Cosponsored with the International Education Policy Program, HGSE

Despite admirably high enrollment rates, the quality of education in India is dismally low. One of the factors impacting learning levels is high teacher absenteeism and low accountability in the public school system. Through her research, Béteille has uncovered the murky world of politically motivated teacher transfers in three states: Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh.

GENDER AND SOUTH ASIA South Asia is a place where women have made tremendous gains, but there is still work to be done. Recent high-profile sexual assault cases in India have unleashed a torrent of media attention on pervasive genderbased violence across South Asia. SAI’s Gender seminar series brings together experts from many disciplines to examine how to elevate the status of women in South Asian society.

Left to right: Jacqueline Bhabha, Jennifer Leaning, and Brian Heilman

Left to right: Kanwal Bokhary, Dan Grant, and Kanwal Bokhary

Ramnath Subbaraman, left, with Sharmila Murthy

October 29, 2014

November 12, 2014

November 17, 2014

GENDER AND VIOLENCE: NEW RESEARCH FROM ROMA AND PAKISTAN AND THE IMAGES SURVEY

WOMEN RISING: EMPOWERING THE WOMEN OF PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN

ACCESS TO TOILETS AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, HMS

Dan Grant, Deputy Assistant to the Admin-

Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HKS, HLS

istrator, Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, USAID

Brian Heilman, Gender and Evaluation Specialist at the International Center for Research on Women

Cosponsored with the FXB Center for Health and Human, HSPH, and Academic Ventures, RIAS

Parnian Nazary, Advocacy Manager at Women for Afghan Women (WAW)

Kanwal Bokhary, Economic Growth Officer, USAID in Pakistan Chair: Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HKS, HLS The women of Afghanistan and Pakistan have achieved astonishing gains in the past decade, but much work is left to be done. USAID plays a lead role in implementing the U.S. government’s strategy for assistance to women in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the areas of health, education, economic development, women’s rights, and political empowerment.

Subhadra Banda, Research Associate,

Centre for Policy Research; MPP Candidate, HKS

Ramnath Subbaraman, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Chair: Sharmila Murthy, Suffolk University, HKS Of the 2.5 billion people in the world who still lack access to adequate sanitation, nearly onethird live in India. Tragic events last summer in rural India further raised awareness of access to toilets as a women’s issue. Drawing on their experiences in urban and rural India, the speakers explored the challenges of improving access to sanitation on the subcontinent, addressing the public health, gender, policy, and legal dimensions of this complicated issue.

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GLOBAL HEALTH The Global Health seminars series focus on the challenges to health care and delivery in South Asia and innovative solutions developed to address these challenges.

Arthur Kleinman, Thomas Vallely, and Dr. Parveen K. Parmar

February 25, 2015

HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA Thomas Vallely, Senior Advisor, Mainland Southeast Asia, Ash Center, HKS

Dr. Cynthia Maung, Director, Mae Tao

Omar Ishrak, left, with Tarun Khanna

Clinic, Thai-Burmese Border

Dr. Parveen K. Parmar, HHI, Community Partners International

Phyu Phyu Saan, Senior Researcher, Global Justice Center, New York Chair: Arthur Kleinman, Harvard Asia Center, FAS, HMS Panelists discussed future opportunities for improving health for the people of Burma, who have been disenfranchised as a result of decades of conflict and militarization. Despite significant human rights and health improvements in Myanmar, serious problems remain. Recent ceasefire agreements have helped by reducing human rights violations, decreasing people being displaced, and allowing people to move freely. Further, these ceasefire agreements have meant that it is now possible to deliver health services to many areas that were previously inaccessible because of the ongoing conflict.

Cosponsored with the Harvard Asia Center

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March 3, 2015

ADDRESSING HEALTHCARE NEEDS IN SOUTH ASIA: INNOVATION TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES, EXPAND ACCESS AND INCREASE AFFORDABILITY Omar Ishrak, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Medtronic Discussant: Conor Walsh, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, SEAS Chair: Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS Over the last several decades, advancements in medical technology advancements have steadily improved the standard of care for patients in many areas of the world. At the same time, a huge disparity in access to high-quality, cost-effective healthcare continues to exist for billions of people. The need in South Asia is particularly acute, with access to care limited to less than 10% of an estimated population of nearly two billion people. Innovation must address significant barriers, including a lack of patient awareness, infrastructure, and training for healthcare professionals. Medtronic has started a unique program in India using a new business model to target a specific disease, define the full care continuum and build an ecosystem approach to address populations with little to no access to healthcare.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE The Social Enterprise seminars series showcase organizations and individuals in South Asia, as well as domestically, that strive to create a better life for the citizens of South Asia through innovative solutions to intractable problems across the private and public sectors.

Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia

May 4, 2015 Geeta Pradhan, left, with Rohini Nilekani

TRANSFORMING INDIAN CITIES: A GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Chairperson, Board of Governors, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) Chair: Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS

Amartya Sen, left, speaks with Rohini Nilekani

November 18, 2014

THE USE OF PHILANTHROPY AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE IN SOUTH ASIA AND THE USA

Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia is a renowned Indian economist, with wide experience in the fields of economic growth, productivity, industrial and trade policy reforms, and urban planning and development. She is currently Chairperson on the Board of Governors for the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), a leading think-tank based in New Delhi engaged in policy oriented research.

At ICRIER, Dr Ahluwalia is leading a major research and capacity building programme on the challenges of urbanisation in India. She was awarded Padma Bhushan by the President of India in the year 2009 for her services in the field of education and literature.

Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Arghyam; Author of Uncommon Ground: Dialogues between Business and Social Leaders

Geeta Pradhan, Associate Vice President for Programs, The Boston Foundation Chair: Alnoor Ebrahim, Associate Professor of Business Administration, HBS This event explored challenges and successes of private and corporate philanthropy in South Asia in a comparative lens to philanthropy in the US. India is the first country to have corporate social responsibility legislation, mandating that companies give 2% of their net profits to charitable causes. Panelists discussed the enabling factors in the US that promote philanthropy, and how these compare to India’s enabling factors. They addressed how the landscape of corporate philanthropy has changed, and what lessons the US and South Asia can learn from each other.

Cosponsored by the Hauser Institute for Civil Society at the Center for Public Leadership

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MUSLIM SOCIETIES IN SOUTH ASIA The Muslim Societies in South Asia seminars series, led and chaired by Ali Asani, FAS, AISP, are cosponsored by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, and seek to address various issues of Muslim Societies within South Asia, and relationships with other Muslim societies across the globe.

Asad Ahmed, center

October 17, 2014

THE RATIONAL SCIENCES AND THEIR CONTEXTS IN 19TH CENTURY INDIA Munis Faruqui, right, with Ali Asani

Asad Ahmed, Associate Professor of Arabic

September 23, 2014

and Islamic Studies, University of California– Berkeley

PRINCES OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE

Chair: Khaled el-Rouayheb, FAS, AISP

Munis Faruqui, Associate Professor, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California–Berkeley For almost 200 years, the Mughal emperors ruled supreme in northern India. How was it possible that a Muslim, ethnically Turkish, Persian-speaking dynasty established itself in the Indian subcontinent to become one of the largest and most dynamic empires in the early modern period? Using the figure of the Mughal prince, Munis D. Faruqui offered a new interpretive lens through which to comprehend Mughal state formation.

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Taking up the example of a theological debate on the finality of the Prophet, this lecture examined how reformist and established scholars deployed various technical tools in rationalist scholarship (especially logic) to argue for the validity of their position on this issue. In the process, they breathed new life into several subfields of the rationalist disciplines. This brief period of focus on the relevant technical tools did not result from some predictable orientation of texts, but was the product of the complex layers of the cultural, social, political, and technological landscapes of nineteenth-century Muslim India.

Samira Sheikh, right, with Ali Asani

Anna Bigelow, right, with Ali Asani

April 2, 2015 March 12, 2015

SUFI SHRINES AND THE SECULAR STATE Anna B. Bigelow, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies, North Carolina State University Sufi tomb shrines in India are well-known for their multi-religious constituencies. Yet the status of these sites is contested and ambivalent, with some groups lauding and celebrating them while others seek to undermine their diverse appeal.

This presentation compared cases of cooperation and conflict at two sites in Karnataka to explore the pragmatics of state secularism as well as local strategies of accommodation and competition.

EMPIRE FROM THE EDGES: SHI‘I AND MESSIANIC CHALLENGES TO MUGHAL AUTHORITY Samira Sheikh, Associate Professor of

History; Associate Professor of Asian Studies Program; Affiliated Faculty, Islamic Studies Program; Co-Director Vanderbilt History Seminar, Vanderbilt University Shi‘i and messianic groups in Gujarat evolved an often uncomfortable coexistence with Mughal political authority, one that was eased by occasionally imperial diktat but was regularly punctuated by bouts of violence and repression. This talk examined Mughal relations with three such groups from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth, paying attention to local politics and raising the question of whether Akbar’s supposed “tolerance” and Aurangzeb’s assumed “bigotry” are useful frames for discussion of empire, religion, and region.

April 13, 2015

PERSPECTIVES Rohail Hyatt, Producer, Coke Studio; Actor; Film composer; Rock music artist; Keyboardist Hyatt discussed the laws of nature in contrast to the current state of global music standards. Like genetically altered food, our sense of what is considered ’musical’ seems to have been altered too.

In the eastern world, music is considered to be the ’food for the soul’. Do we know what we are feeding our souls lately? Has organic music completely died, or will there be a resurgence in this field as in the case of the food industry?

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SOUTH ASIA WITHOUT BORDERS Focusing on the humanities and culture, broadly, the South Asia Without Borders seminar series seek to break down traditional borders, whether they be disciplinary, geographical, or temporal. The series is led by Parimal Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Chair of the Department of South Asian Studies, FAS, and is cosponsored by the Department of South Asian Studies.

Atiya Khan

James Manor, right, with Parimal Patil

S. Mukherjee, left, with Rahul Mehrotra

November 7, 2014

November 14, 2014

November 18, 2014

DICTATORSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT: THE DILEMMA OF THE LEFT IN PAKISTAN, 1950S TO 1960S

AS HIERARCHIES WANE: EXPLAINING INTER-CASTE ACCOMMODATION IN RURAL INDIA

ART, COMMUNITIES, AND MUSEUMS

Atiya Khan, Aman Fellow, SAI

James Manor, Professor at the School of

Chair: Asad Ahmed, FAS

Oriental and African Studies, University of London

This presentation addressed the failure of democratic politics in Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s by examining the role of the left in accepting the martial rule of Ayub Khan and ways in which leftist organizations wrestled with the social political contradictions of their own context.

Chair: Parimal Patil, DSAS, FAS

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This talk explained the logic of inter-caste accommodations between Dalits and one set of ‘higher’ castes, the formerly dominant landowning groups. It focused briefly on the repertoire of actions which Dalits use to indicate their rejection of caste hierarchies, and then on the often difficult realities which landed castes face – and on their perceptions of them. It also looked at the negotiating processes which lead to accommodations – and of potential threats to those processes.

S. Mukherjee, Director General & Secretary, Board of Trustees, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, GSD Mr. Mukherjee’s presentation included an overview of issues concerning museums in South Asia, and he discussed his experience transforming Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, into a civic node for all types of civic events and discussions. He conveyed that the challenge for building India’s art and culture is not lack of talent, but an absence of leadership.

Anand Vaidya

Hasna Moudud, left, and Roderick MacFarquhar, center

Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, left, with Parimal G. Patil

April 3, 2015 February 23, 2015

March 24, 2015

“THE WATER, FOREST, AND LAND BELONG TO US”: COLLECTIVE ACTION AND PROPERTY IN AN INDIAN FOREST

THE SILK ROAD TO SOUTH ASIA THROUGH BANGLADESH Ash Center, HKS; Research Affiliate, SAI

Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi,

Anand Vaidya, South Asian Studies Fellow,

Chair: Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Research Professor of History and Political Science, FAS

Assistant Professor of History, Karnataka State Open University Chair: Parimal G. Patil, DSAS, FAS

This seminar examined the Tea Horse Road, from Yunnan tea country to Tibet and India, via Myanmar and Bangladesh, which was once one of the oldest and major trade routes, but is now forgotten. The recent excavations in Bangladesh—and evidence from archaeological, iconography, and literary sources—indicate a closer and greater exchange between China and South Asia.

The seminar focused on the vacanas of Allama Prabhu, the 12th century mystic. More specifically, the seminar discussed Allama’s attitude towards language, especially its ability to describe the transcendental, and his distinctive mode of composing vacanas.

April 24, 2015

April 27, 2015

May 1, 2015

THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM IN INDIA

SOUTH ASIA WITHOUT BORDERS SEMINAR

INDIA’S PROSPECTS AND POLICY CHALLENGES

Prasannan Parthasarathi, Professor of

Matthew Hull, Department of Anthropology,

History, Boston College

University of Michigan

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Former Deputy

SAI Chair: Ajantha Subramanian, FAS Looking at these contradictory interpretations of the Forest Rights Act, Vaidya made two linked arguments: First, that collective action, whether by crowds or by the police, is necessary to establish the meaning of laws. Secondly, Vaidya argued that these collective contests over people’s property relations with their environment are simultaneously contests over people’s relations with other people.

Amit Basole, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Boston Discussant: Sanjay G Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics and Co-Academic Director of the India-China Institute, The New School for Social Research

LANGUAGE OF METAPHYSICS, LANGUAGE FOR POLITICS: SOME LESSONS FROM ALLAMA PRABHU’S VACANAS

Hasna Moudud, Former Visiting Fellow,

Cosponsored with the Social Anthropology Colloquium

Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Republic of India Chair: Rohini Pande, Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy, HKS

Chair: Parimal G. Patil, DSAS, FAS

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URBANIZATION Postcolonial urbanization in South Asia has seen some of the largest and fastest growing urban centers in the world. Rapid growth brings new challenges and opportunities for small, medium, and mega cities. The Urbanization seminar series is led by Rahul Mehrotra, GSD, and is cosponsored with the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD).

Vikram Bhatt Photo courtesy of the Crimson / Jennifer Yao

November 10, 2014 October 21, 2014 - October 23, 2014

THE SECRET LIFE OF CITIES

JUGAAD CITY Vikram Bhatt, Professor, School of Architecture and Director, Minimum Cost Housing Group, McGill University Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, GSD

Suketu Mehta, Author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found Suketu Mehta’s lecture series looked at the urban human being, exploring themes of migration, loneliness, and community in the world’s cities.

Mehta is author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

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Jugaad is a Hindi word meaning a clever improvisation or making do with what you have. It has also come to mean grassroots innovation to overcome any constraint. Since the informal sector is virtually the only delivery vehicle that has had any success in providing appropriate, low-cost solution to the shelter problem of the urban poor, a sympathetic understanding of these makeshift settlements, or juggad city, can help us reconsider and reimagine contemporary urbanism. The best way to chart our way forward is to consider the jugaad urban production on its own merits and try to understand—decipher—its workings.

This is essential as this production defies conventional planning orthodoxy. Although these settlements appear temporary there is nothing ephemeral or short-lived about these communities because, from the users’ perspective, they are conceived and built on generational compacts.

Maristella Casciato, center

March 31, 2015

TRANSNATIONAL URBANISM AND POSTCOLONIAL CHALLENGES PLANNING AND DESIGN PROCESSES UNDER THE AEGIS OF TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: CASE STUDIES IN INDIA AND IN THE SOUTHEAST ASIA REGION Maristella Casciato, Associate Director, Research – Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, GSD The lecture shed light on the complex processes of decolonization after WWII, which ushered in a new obligation for recently formed countries to oversee the social and material welfare of their people.

While nations independently responded to these issues, a variety of global actors intervened, crossing political, economic, and social boundaries to pioneer methods in territorial planning, as well as urban and architectural design.

With the end of WWII in Western countries and the violent struggles for independence across large regions in East Asia, the Mediterranean, and Sub-Saharan Africa, a transnational planning and design expertise emerged that operated within networks far more diverse than those of the colonial era. Planners, urban designers, architects, and engineers transitioned towards broader transnational practices, designated by terms such as “technical assistance” and “development aid,” whose strong paternalistic agenda was at the time discreetly endorsed. Within this multi-layered scenario, missions, reports, and projects commissioned by transnational organizations, such as the United Nations, and NGOs such as the Ford Foundation and Red Cross, in addition to state-owned planning offices and companies, took place against the backdrop of the Cold War.

April 14, 2015

CONCEPTUALIZING THE URBAN CIVIC REALM: INSIGHTS FROM THE INDIAN CITY Prem Chandavarkar, Managing Partner, CnT Architects Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, GSD It is necessary to distinguish between “civic space” and “public space”: the former must embrace interpersonal engagement, whereas the latter need not go beyond the spectacle of the city. The failure to adequately discriminate between the two types of space has led to a global problem: the degeneration of the urban civic realm, with public space largely reduced to the spectacle of leisure and consumption.

Third places (as defined by Ray Oldenburg), which formed a strong element of civic glue, are declining as they are getting outpriced in a world of globalized capital flows.

April 21, 2015

BUILDING STOREYS: AN ARCHITECT’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE INDIAN LANDSCAPE Brinda Somaya, Architect and Urban Conservationist Chair: Rahul Mehrotra, GSD Brinda Somaya’s talk took the audience through the enormous changes that India has gone through since independence in 1947 and the challenges it continues to face today with a population of over 1.2 billion people catalyzing rapid urbanization. Her works include the rehabilitation of an earthquake-devastated village, restoration of an ancient cathedral as well as twentieth-century Louis Kahn buildings, creation of educational and information technology campuses, collaboration on the tallest residential tower in India, and the conversion of massive garbage dumps into beautiful and usable community parks and plazas.

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BOOK TALKS AND FILM SCREENINGS SAI’s book talks showcase important issues through literature, and allow the community to engage with celebrated authors. Film screenings offer a varied mix of contemporary films, documentaries, and historic works from South Asia.

Jocelyne Cesari Photo courtesy of the Crimson / Shunella Grace Lumas Moeed Yusuf

September 9, 2014

October 7, 2014

INSURGENCIES AND COUNTERINSURGENCIES IN SOUTH ASIA: THROUGH A PEACEBUILDING LENS

THE AWAKENING OF MUSLIM DEMOCRACY: RELIGION, MODERNITY, AND THE STATE

Moeed Yusuf, Editor of Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Challenge; Director of South Asia Programs at the US Institute of Peace Chair: Adil Najam, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University In this talk, Yusuf drew upon his two most recent edited volumes, Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies in South Asia: Through a Peacebuilding Lens and Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Challenge, to discuss the experience of South Asian countries with insurgencies, causes of their onsets, and the effectiveness of various strategies to counter them. He applied these lessons to Pakistan’s current predicament. With 180 million people, the world’s fifth largest nuclear arsenal, a festering insurgency internally, and serving as a hub for cross-border militancy regionally, Pakistan remains a crucial security challenge for the US.

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October 2, 2014

CHINA, INDIA, AND THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR OIL IN SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN Luke Patey, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies Discussants:

Rohit Chandra, PhD candidate, HKS Ahmad Al-Mahi, MPA candidate, HKS The lecture discussed the overseas investments of Chinese and Indian national oil companies, their close ties with their respective governments in Beijing and New Delhi, and experiences with political and security risks in Sudan and South Sudan. Beyond examining the economic and political impact of Chinese and Indian engagement in Sudan and South Sudan, the book argues that the two Sudans are examples of how Africa is shaping the rise of China and India as world powers.

Jocelyne Cesari, Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Visiting Associate professor in the Department of Government, Georgetown University; Director of Islam in the West, Harvard University Chair: Asad Ahmed, FAS In this book, Jocelyne Cesari explores the relationship between modernization, politics, and Islam in Muslim-majority countries. She contends that nation building in these environments has produced national ideologies rooted in the politicization of Islam, rather than liberal democracies following the Western model. Cesari’s historical examination covers the post-WWII period to the Arab Spring and informs the book’s consideration of the role of Islam in contemporary Middle Eastern emerging democracies.

Rohini Mohan

November 4, 2014

THE SEASONS OF TROUBLE: LIFE AMID THE RUINS OF SRI LANKA’S CIVIL WAR Rohini Mohan, Author

September 18, 2014

V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan, Bunting

FILM SCREENING: BAWANDAR

Chair: Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, HDS

Based on a true story that sent shock waves through India in 1992, this drama concerns Sanwari (Nandita Das), a lower-caste woman with a husband, Sohan (Raghuvir Yadav), and two children, who is raising her family in a rural village.

Cosponsored with HISG

Fellow, RIAS; Author of Love Marriage

Mohan’s searing account of three lives caught up in the devastation looks beyond the heroism of wartime survival to reveal the creeping violence of the everyday. The Seasons of Trouble is a startling, brutal, yet beautifully written debut from a prize-winning journalist. It is a classic piece of reportage, five years in the making, and a trenchant, compassionate examination of the corrosive effect of conflict on people.

December 1, 2014

BROKEN MEMORY, SHINING DUST The film is about “women in wait” for their loved ones, who went missing in the conflict-ridden valley of Kashmir, India, in the last two decades. Woven around the life of Parveena Ahanger, a Kashmiri mother, and other women like her, the narrative of the film interweaves their memories of loss, pain, struggle, and separation. Their resistance movement hopes to trace a clue about their missing family members.

Cosponsored with the Harvard Asia Center

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BOOK TALKS AND FILM SCREENINGS CONT’D

Ayesha Jalal, center, with Ali Asani and Atiya Khan

December 3, 2014

THE STRUGGLE FOR PAKISTAN: A MUSLIM HOMELAND AND GLOBAL POLITICS Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History; Director, Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, Tufts University Discussant: Atiya Khan, SAI Chair: Ali Asani, AISP, FAS Attentive to Pakistan’s external relations as well as its internal dynamics, Jalal showed how the vexed relationship with the United States border disputes with Afghanistan in the west, and the conflict with India over Kashmir in the east, have played into the hands of the generals who purchased security at the cost of strong democratic institutions. Combined with domestic ethnic and regional rivalries, such pressures have created a siege mentality that encourages military domination and militant extremism.

Cosponsored with AISP

Sanchita Saxena, right next to John Quelch and Fauzia Ahmed

February 17, 2015

MADE IN BANGLADESH, CAMBODIA, AND SRI LANKA: THE LABOR BEHIND THE GLOBAL GARMENTS AND TEXTILES INDUSTRIES Sanchita Saxena, Director of the Chowd-

hury Center for Bangladesh Studies, UC–Berkeley; Executive Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, UC–Berkeley

Fauzia Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies, Miami University; Research Affiliate, SAI

Chair: John A. Quelch, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, HBS; Professor in Health Policy and Management, HSPH By analyzing the garment sector through the lens of domestic coalitions, Made in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka: The Labor Behind the Global Garments and Textiles Industries presents new and innovative ways of conceptualizing the garment and textile industries that include the possibility for change and resistance from a vantage point of cooperation among key groups, rather than only contention. The book uses the established policy networks framework, which has traditionally only been applied to the United States and European nations, but expertly adapts it to countries in the Global South.

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South Asia Institute

Below left to right: Jacqueline Bhabha, Diane Rosenfeld, Beena Sarwar, and Lakshmi Iyer

March 26, 2015

SILENCING INDIA’S DAUGHTER Lakshmi Iyer, Associate Professor of Business Administration, HBS

Diane Rosenfeld, HLS Beena Sarwar, Editor, Aman ki Asha, Jang Group Pakistan; former Nieman Fellow and Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, HKS Chair: Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HKS, HLS India’s Daughter is a documentary by Leslee Udwin about the brutal gang rape and murder of a young medical student on a bus in Delhi in 2012, and the protests and movement it ignited in India. The screening was followed by a panel discussion examining the documentary and its subsequent ban by the Indian government, through the lens of law, media, politics, and gender.

Omar Shahid Hamid

March 27, 2015

THE PRISONER Omar Shahid Hamid, Author Chair: Anila Daulatzai, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Islamic Studies, HDS A thinly veiled fictional interpretation of real-life events, the novel follows Constantine D’Souza, a Christian police officer charged with rescuing kidnapped American journalist Jon Friedland (a.k.a., 2002 captured Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl). With no leads, D’Souza recruits Akbar Khan, a rogue cop imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit (modeled on Pakistan’s famed take-no-prisoners officer Chaudhry Aslam Khan).

Caught between Pakistan’s militant ruling party and the Pakistani intelligence agencies, D’Souza finds himself in a race against time to save a man’s life—and the honor of his nation.

April 29, 2015

May 4, 2015

ASTU – SO BE IT

REMAKING A NATION: NEPAL’S TRYST WITH PEACE, CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY

Dr. Mohan Agashe, actor, psychiatrist, and consultant in mental health

Arthur Kleinman, Harvard Asia Center, FAS, HMS

Diana Eck, HDS, FAS Dr. Ruth Barron, HMS Directed by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar, and starring Dr. Mogan Agashe, the film focuses on a retired Sanskrit professor who suffers with Alzheimer’s and goes missing while travelling with his daughter.

Cosponsored with the Harvard Asia Center

Prashant Jha, Associate Editor, Hindustan Times Chair: Madhav Khosla, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Theory, Department of Government, FAS This talk explored the achievements as well as the challenges and failures of Nepal’s political process. It looked at the difficulty of writing a broadbased constitution in an intensely competitive, fragmented polity. Jha examined the role of the regional powers—especially India—in the internal political evolution of Nepal. Other related questions included how the rebels changed the system and how the system changed them; how politics of identity complicated the post-conflict setting but also deepened democracy; and whether Nepal would succeed in its tryst with constitutionalism and institute a degree of systemic stability or remain functional but without framing commonly accepted rules of the game.

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COSPONSORED EVENTS SAI partners with interfaculty centers, institutes, and student organizations across Harvard on programs that bring multiple global viewpoints on issues relevant to South Asia.

Ambassador Olson, left, with Nicholas Burns

December 11, 2014

THE FUTURE OF US-PAKISTAN RELATIONS November 3, 2014 September 25, 2014

THE EDGES AND BEYOND: SHEDDING LIGHT ON SHANGRI LA Kevin Bubriski, Documentary Photographer; Director of Documentary Studies, Green Mountain College; 2010-2011 Robert Gardner Visiting Artist, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology

BUILDING STORIES: SPECULATION AND RECONSTRUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY MUMBAI Vyjayanthi Rao, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research in New York Chair: Asad Ahmed, FAS

Richard Olson, US Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan Chair: Nicholas Burns, HKS Ambassador Richard Olson reflected on his experience heading one of the largest US embassies in Islamabad and his views on the US-Pakistan relationship.

Cosponsored with the India & South Asia Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS

Cosponsored with the Harvard University Social Anthropology Colloquium

Discussants: Frank J. Korom, Professor of Religion and Anthropology, Boston University

Jinah Kim, FAS From the sacred temples and congested streets of Kathmandu to the remote mountain villages of the Karnali Zone, photographer Kevin Bubriski has documented Nepal and its people since 1975. Bubriski shared his remarkable images of the country’s four-decade evolution from a traditional Himalayan kingdom to a globalized republic.

Cosponsored with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard University Asia Center

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September 30, 2014

October 1, 2014

CLIMATE CHANGE DIPLOMACY: THE ROAD TO PARIS 2015

THE WAKHIS AT MUSICAL CROSSROADS OF TAJIKISTAN AND PAKISTAN

Jairam Ramesh, Economist, Member of the Indian National Congress, Fisher Family Fellow, HKS

Richard Wolf, Department of Music and

Cosponsored with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Cosponsored with the Harvard Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies

South Asian Studies, FAS

From left to right: Asma Jahangir, Arthur Kleinman, Jennifer Leaning, and Asad Ahmed

From right to left: Shivshankar Menon, Nicholas Burns, and Tanvi Madan

March 4, 2015

March 25, 2014

PAKISTAN: FROM CRISIS TO CRISIS

THE POLITICKLE PICKLE: A CONVERSATION ON INDO-US RELATIONS

10th Annual Asia Center Tsai Lecture

Asma Jahangir, Advocate, Supreme Court

of Pakistan; Partner, AGHS Law Associates; former President, Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan; former Chairperson, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Discussants: Asad Ahmed, FAS

Jennifer Leaning, HSPH, HMS Chair: Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University Asia Center, FAS, HMS Jahangir highlighted efforts that needed to be taken to bring Pakistan out of this series of crises: redefining the foreign policy enabling the state to become a part of the international community, marginalizing the military establishment, and strengthening the legal system of the state. The lecture presented Asma Jahangir’s argument that in Pakistan, there was a state within a state. She stressed the need for greater clarity about the nature of the Pakistani state.

Cosponsored with the Asia Center and AISP

Tanvi Madan, PhD Fellow, Foreign Policy

Director, The India Project, The Brookings Institution Shivshankar Menon, Former Indian NSA and Foreign Secretary Chair: Nicholas Burns, HKS

The exhibit on display at the DRCLAS office

The United States does not view a strong, rising India as a threat, but rather as a potential strategic partner, said Madan. However, Menon believes that a lot of work is needed to truly nurture this improving relationship.

Cosponsored with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the WCFIA Fellows Program.

Supported by the Hindustan Times and the South Asian Art Council – Boston.

March 27, 2015

MYANMAR’S DELICATE IMBALANCE: THE PREDICAMENT OF THE SHORT GAME VS THE LONG GAME IN A COMPLICATED NEIGHBORHOOD (OR, WHY THE ‘ENVIRONMENT’ GETS A BACK SEAT) Robert Anderson, Development & Sustainability Program, Faculty of Environment, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Late this year Myanmar will stage elections, again. There are welcome changes which make this time quite different from the earlier two contests. Anderson reviewed some of the factors which brought about the new political phase (2010-2014), and analyzed the next phase of Myanmar’s political future.

Cosponsored with the Harvard Asia Center

The exhibit on display at SAI’s office

April 22, 2015

THE EPHEMERAL CITY: LOOKING AT TEMPORARY LANDSCAPES OF RELIGION IN SOUTH ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA The exhibit was displayed at the office of SAI and DRCLAS, and showed the transformation of urban environments in response to festivals celebrated in South Asia and Latin America.

What is the role of the “ephemeral city” in the broader discussion about urbanism globally? During the lecture, Rahul Mehrotra, GSD, moderated a conversation across disciplines about ephemerality in the landscapes of South Asian and Latin American cities. The panel featured Harvard scholars Felipe Hernandez (GSD), Marianne Potvin (FAS), and Luis Valenzuela (GSD).

Cosponsored with DRCLAS

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STUDENTS SAI awards grants to students across Harvard for internships, research, and the study of South Asian languages. SAI sponsors student events organized by the nineteen student groups at Harvard.

Left to right: Harvard undergraduates Aaron Markowitz, Jacqueline Ma, Annie Rak, Louise Eisenach, and Julia Canick traveling in India while on a SAI internship summer grant in Bangalore

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STUDENT GRANTS SAI offers a variety of learning opportunities in South Asia for Harvard students through its grants program. Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to apply for research grants to support independent research and thesis field work. SAI has partnered with over 50 organizations in South Asia to offer internships to Harvard students.

SAI has awarded 54 grants this year for summer and winter research, internship, and language study.

WINTER SESSION GRANTS GRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS Arthur Bauer, MPA-ID, HKS Assessing microfinance’s effectiveness in alleviating poverty, India Jeffrey Bryant, MPP/MBA, HKS & HBS Research Position with HKS Evidence for Policy Design India Team, India Ishani Desai, MPA-ID, HKS Understanding the factors that influence adoption: A study on menstrual practices and sanitary pad adoption in Gujarat, India Hardeep Dhillon, History, PhD, GSAS History of the Indian women’s movement in the 1970s-80s through the eyes of women activists Joshua Ehrlich, History, PhD, GSAS The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, 1772-1835, India Michael Haggerty, M.Arch, GSD Vernacular Construction for Urban Housing: New Structures for Architectural Practice to Deliver Sustainable Housing, Bangladesh Madiha Irfan, MTS, HDS Debates over the “Islamization” of Divorce Law, Pakistan Rakesh Peter Dass, ThD, HDS Why Hindi? Translation Choices and Vernacular Literature Among Indian Christians, India Jonathan Phillips, Government, PhD, GSAS Who Implements Programmatic Education Policies? Researching Surprising Patterns in Indian States, India Sarika Ringwala, PhD in Public Policy Empowering Citizens Through Service Delivery Reforms, India Divya Sooryakumar, EdM, HGSE Creation of an SMS-based solution to an information gap for mothersto enhance their early childhood education and development practices for infants, India Hector Tarrido Picart, MAUD & MLA, GSD Remote Sensing Mumbai, India Maria Qazi, MPA-ID, HKS Social protection and state legitimacy – the Case of Benazir Income Support Program, Pakistan

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH GRANT Tarik Adnan Moon, Mathematics and Computer Science, 2015 Research on changing education in the developing countries using cheap computing devices, Dhaka, Bangladesh

SUMMER GRANTS UNDERGRADUATE INTERNSHIP GRANTS Chesley Ekelem, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Health Policy, 2017 Internship with St. Jude ChildCare Centres, Mumbai, India Angela Leocata, 2018 Little Stars Internship to Develop English and Writing Program, Varanasi, India Fei (Michelle) Lin, Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology, 2017 Heal Asia, with Sri Lanka Medical Relief Program, Sri Lanka Ministry of Health, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka Jacqueline Ma, Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology and East Asian Studies, 2016 Heal Asia, with Sri Lanka Medical Relief Program, Sri Lanka Ministry of Health, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka Ishani Premaratne, Anthropology and Health Policy, 2015 GrowLanka and completion of partnership with Sri Lankan Youth Ministry, Vavuniya, Sri Lanka

GRADUATE LANGUAGE STUDY Joshua Ehrlich, History, PhD, GSAS Mughal Persian language study, American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow Neelam Khoja, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, PhD, GSAS Punjabi language study, American Institute of Indian Studies, Chandigarh Jason Smith, Religion, ThD, HDS Tamil language study, American Institute of Indian Studies, Madurai Tyler Richard, South Asian Studies, PhD, DSAS Tamil language study, Field Study, Tamil Nadu

GRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS Mou Banerjee, History, PhD, GSAS Subaltern Bengali Muslims and Christian Conversion Controversies in the 19th Century Rohit Chandra, Public Policy, PhD, GSAS Evolution of India’s Coal Sector Fletcher Coleman, History of Art and Architecture, PhD, GSAS Issues in Indian Ascetics: Early Chinese Buddhist Visual Programming through the Lens of Central Asian and Gandharan Religious Practice Sutopa Dasgupta, Religion, PhD, GSAS The Annandmangal: Religion and Court in an Early Modern Epic from Bengal Hardeep Dhillon, History, PhD, GSAS Archival research in Delhi related to Maulana Abul Kalam Madiha Irfan, MTS, HDS Divorce Law and Religious Authority in Pakistan Asad Liaqat, Public Policy, PhD, GSAS What drives elite behavior in Pakistan? Testing Knowledge and Inter-Elite Obligation Maung Nyeu, PhD, HGSE Lost in Translation: Evidence from Oral Narratives in Mother Tongue and Written Narratives in the Language of Instruction Mircea Raianu, GSAS The TATA Business Empire and the Ethics of Capital in Modern India, ca. 1870-1960 Priyasha Saksena, HLS Sovereignty and Empire in the Indian Ocean Rim Jigyasa Sharma, HSPH Evaluation of the Effectiveness of WHO’s Safe Childbirth Checklist in Reducing Prenatal Mortality in Rural Rajasthan Niharika Singh, Public Policy, PhD, GSAS Understanding Patterns of High Educational Attainment but Low Labor Participation of South Asian Women Lydia Walker, History, PhD, GSAS Self-Determination for Whom? Nationalism, Internationalism and 1960’s Decolonization

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GRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATES SAI supports doctoral students from across Harvard whose research focuses on South Asia. The GSA program is led by Parimal Patil, FAS, DSAS. The goal of the program is to establish a community of peers and support original and independent research on South Asia. GSAs participate in monthly workshops in which they present their thesis research to one another and receive feedback from their peers.

GRADUATE INTERNSHIP GRANTS Madhav Khosla, Political Theory, PhD, GSAS Modern Constitutionalism and the Indian Founding Muhammad Zia Mehmood, HKS Understanding Mechanisms Underlying Extremist Influence: Peer Effects in the Presence of Extremists Shweta Suresh, HKS Evidence for Policy Design - Confederation of Indian Industries Compliance Angela Thurston, HDS Empowering Girls and Strengthening Communities in the Slums of Mumbai

UNDERGRADUATE INTERNSHIP GRANTS Joanne Koong, Computer Science & Economics, 2017 Jana Care, Software Engineering Internship, India Eleni Apostolatos, 2018 Harvard-Bangalore Science Initiative, Internship, India Mariam Chughtai, center, presents at a GSA Workshop

Tamara Fernando, History of Art and Architecture & Economics, 2016 Chunkikuli Ladies College, Internship, Sri Lanka

UNDERGRADUATE INTERNSHIP GRANTS (CONT’D) Mariam Chughtai EdD, HGSE

Kavya Pathak, Neurobiology and Health Policy Harvard-Bangalore Science Initiative, Internship, India

Religious Nationalism and History Education in Pakistan

Leena Raza, Organismic & Evolutionary Biology and Health Policy, 2016 PUKAR, Internship, India Julia Versel, Neurobiology, 2017 Harvard-Bangalore Science Initiative, Internship, India

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY SUMMER PROGRAM (UNDERGRADUATES) Joshua Ehrlich

Neil Davey, Chemical and Physical Biology, 2018

History, PhD, GSAS

Vinay Iyengar, Computer Science, 2018

The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, 1772-1835

Diane Jung, Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology, 2017 Kais Khimji, Social Studies, 2017 Pranay Nadella, Economics, 2017 Pradeep Niroula, Computer Science and Physics, 2018 Eshaan Patheria, Social Studies, 2017 Parth Thakker, Economics, 2017

Neelam Khoja Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, PhD, GSAS Connecting South Asian Histories: IndoPersian Folk Romances in Regional Historiography, 1650-1850

Dinyar Patel History, PhD, GSAS The Grand Old Man: Dadabhai Naoroji and the Intellectual Foundations of Indian Self-Government

Lydia Walker History, PhD, GSAS Stillborn States: Failed Nationalism in Nagaland and South West Africa, 19601966

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STUDENT EVENTS SAI 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.

September 8, 2014

CHAAT WELCOME BACK PARTY SAI held its annual Welcome Back Chaat party to celebrate the start of the school year. Over 200 students, faculty, and Harvard affiliates enjoyed delicious South Asian food, and learned more about SAI’s internship and funding opportunities.

October 4, 2014

HUNGAMA Hungama, the largest South Asian dance party on campus, was hosted by Dharma, Harvard’s Hindu Student Association. The celebration brought three types of Indian dance: garba, raas, and bhangra.

Students at the Chaat Welcome Back party were asked to describe South Asia in one word

October 17, 2014

DIWALI CELEBRATION Hosted by the Harvard India Student Group, the event brought together attendees from across Harvard to enjoy music and dance performances.

November 5, 2014

NURTURING YOUNG INNOVATORS TO LEAD CHANGE IN NEPAL Pukar Malla, Senior Research Fellow, HKS Nepal’s history points to the need for a mindset change in its citizenry, from passive acceptance to active participation, from dependency to collaboration, and from desperation to innovation. Malla focused his talk on the possibilities of building a new Nepal by leveraging the collective talent, passion, and energy of local and global Nepali youth.

Organized by the Committee on South Asian Relations, HKS

Tarun Khanna addresses students at the India Conference at Harvard

November 19, 2014

INTERPRETING CULTURES Siddhartha Das, Designer This illustrated lecture looked at projects in the realm of culture and heritage interpreted through an effective scenography. Das presented his own projects including those for the historic Jal Mahal, Jaipur; an art museum complex, J D Centre of Art, Bhubaneswar; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum Rietberg, Zurich; and the Wellcome Collections, London.

Organized by the India GSD

HISG at the Diwali celebration

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STUDENT EVENTS, CONT’D January 9-10, 2015, Delhi

HARVARD-US INDIA INITIATIVE ANNUAL CONFERENCE Keynote speakers included Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy in the Government of India, Mirai Chatterjee, Director of Social Security, SEWA, and Shri Jairam Ramesh, MP Rajya Sabha, former Cabinet Minister. Over 350 youth from across India and Harvard attended.

Participants at the India Conference, in March.

Speakers at the Harvard-US India Initiative Annual Conference in Delhi

March 3, 2015

TEA WITH ASMA JAHANGIR The Harvard Pakistan Student Group, with the support of SAI and the Asia Center, organized a tea with Asma Jahangir, human rights lawyer and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan.

March 5, 2015

EXPLORE CAREERS IN SOUTH ASIA Russell Mason, Harvard College ’10, HBS ’16, Mahindra & Mahindra, Mahindra Lifespace Developers, Ltd., Co-Founder and Co-President, Harvard Club of Mumbai Rahul Anand, HBS ’09, CEO & Founder, Hopscotch.in Duncan Smith-Rohrberg Maru ’02, MD/PhD, Physician at Children’s Hospital, Instructor in Medicine at HMS (Dept. of Global Health & Social Medicine), CoFounder and Chief Programs Officer at Possible Health Pushpi Weerakoon, HKS ’15, Peacebuilding Policy Specialist, Sri Lanka This panel and mixer allowed undergraduate to learn more about career opportunities in South Asia.

Organized by the Harvard Office of Career Services

Rahul Bose speaks to students about life beyond Harvard.

March 12–13, 2015

TRANSITIONS: STATES & EMPIRES IN THE LONGUE DURÉE This conference brought together graduate students and faculty from Harvard and other universities across the world to discuss the pivotal moments of transition between empires and other international orders.

Organized by the Committee for the Harvard Graduate Student Conference on International History

March 7-8, 2015

March 30, 2015

INDIA CONFERENCE

REDISCOVERING A NATION: HARVARD COLLEGE PAKISTAN WEEKEND

The India Conference at Harvard is one of the largest India conferences in the US, and brought together business leaders, entertainment professionals, government officials, philanthropists, and many other leaders to engage in a conversation about India’s path to global leadership.

Organized by HISG

March 9, 2015

BEYOND HARVARD: A CONVERSATION WITH RAHUL BOSE Rahul Bose, Actor, Director & Social Activist Chair: Richard Delacy, DSAS Welcome by Rakesh Khurana, Dean of Harvard College Actor Rahul Bose encouraged students to be open-minded when thinking about their future after Harvard. Bose is the founder of The Foundation, which works in the areas of education and child sexual abuse.

Cosponsored with HISG

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The conference provided a platform for a discussion on Pakistan’s future, with a focus on public policy, entrepreneurship, and the role of arts, culture, and literature.

Organized by the Harvard Pakistan Student Group and the Harvard College Pakistan Students Group, with support from SAI and the Aman Foundation

April 4, 2015

BEING ASIAN IN AMERICA: PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS This symposium examined the trials and lessons of Asians in America. The panelists discussed the challenges facing Asian immigrants and how to overcome these challenges in careers.

Organized by the Harvard Students Asian Pacific Coalition

Asma Jahangir, right, speaks with Mariam Chughtai, HGSE, at tea with the Harvard Pakistan Student Group.

April 9, 2015

THE PEOPLE’S HERO? JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN RECONSIDERED Mircea Raianu, PhD Candidate, Harvard History Department; Graduate Student Associate, WCFIA Benjamin Siegel, Assistant Professor of History, Boston University; former Predoctoral Fellow, Harvard Academy for Area Studies; former Graduate Student Associate, SAI Anand Vaidya, South Asian Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, SAI; former Graduate Student Associate, SAI Lydia Walker, PhD Candidate, Harvard History Department; Graduate Student Associate, SAI and WCFIA Cosponsored with WCFIA

April 11, 2015

GLOBAL HEALTH CHALLENGE 2015: HEPATITIS IN SOUTH ASIA The Global Health Challenge is hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Global Health Forum (HUGHF), an entirely student-run organization that provides the Harvard undergraduate community with a comprehensive view of global health issues alongside opportunities to actively address them through field work.

April 14, 2015

THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY IN LAHORE: RESULTS FROM A SHORT STUDY BASED ON SITUATION ANALYSIS Muhammad Faraz, Lahore University of Management Sciences Cosponsored with the LGBTQ Caucus and the Pakistan Caucus, HKS

STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS There are nineteen student organizations across Harvard that bring together diverse student interests from the various schools and host cultural and educational events on issues affecting South Asia, as well as social events such as bhangra and biryani parties.

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.

INDIA GSD, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN 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.

HARVARD BHANGRA, 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.

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.

HARVARD INDIA STUDENT GROUP* The Harvard India Student Group provides a platform for communication and collaboration among students and faculty on India-related topics.

HARVARD MIRCH Harvard Mirch is a co-ed South Asian a capella group aiming to bring together the best of the South Asian and Western pop music.

HARVARD PAKISTAN STUDENT GROUP* HPSG is a Harvard University–wide group that mobilizes intellectual, activist, and entrepreneurial interest in Pakistan across thirteen schools.

HARVARD PROJECT FOR ASIAN AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HPAIR organizes Harvard University’s largest annual student conferences in the Asia-Pacific region. Since 1991, HPAIR has continuously gathered a growing pool of international students from top universities, renowned academics, business professionals, and political leaders to engage in our rigorous educational events.

HARVARD SANGEET, HARVARD COLLEGE 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.

HARVARD SOUTH ASIAN ASSOCIATION, HARVARD COLLEGE The Harvard South Asian Association brings the Harvard community closer to South Asia and its Diaspora through academic, political, social, outreach, and cultural initiatives.

HARVARD SOUTH ASIAN MEN’S COLLECTIVE, HARVARD COLLEGE The South Asian Men’s Collective works to strengthen a sense of brotherhood between members and to create a supportive arena for dialogue and discussion.

HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS FOR MYANMAR HUSM serves the purpose of raising awareness about the country of Myanmar (Burma) and aims to promote conversations about Myanmar from a deinstitutionalized perspective.

HARVARD US-INDIA INITIATIVE, HARVARD COLLEGE The Harvard US-India Initiative is a student-run organization that aims to create dialogue between Indian and American youth to address some of India’s most pressing social, economic, and environmental issues today.

PAKISTAN STUDENT ASSOCIATION, HARVARD COLLEGE The Harvard College Pakistan Student Association aims to create a vibrant community of students at Harvard with a deep interest in Pakistan.

SOUTH ASIA BUSINESS ASSOCIATION STUDENT GROUP, HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL 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.

SOUTH ASIA CAUCUS, HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL 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.

SOUTH ASIAN 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 ASIAN STUDENT ASSOCIATION, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION The South Asian Student Association serves to promote South Asian culture awareness within the HGSE community.

SOUTH ASIA STUDENT ORGANIZATION, 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.

STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION OF MEDICALLY ORIENTED SOUTH ASIAN STUDENT GROUP (SAMOSA), HMS SAMOSA is student group focused both on South Asian issues in the healthcare arena and in building a community of students interested in South Asian issues. *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: http://southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/student-organizations/

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IN REGION With SAI representatives in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, SAI supports Harvard faculty and student research, teaching, and field experience. SAI has sponsored numerous events in region, including student- and alumnifocused events, faculty-led symposia, and other academic events that strengthen the relationship between Harvard and South Asia.

Poonam Muttreja, Population Foundation of India at “Addressing Gender Norms� in New Delhi, January, 2015

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WEBINARS DISASTER MANAGEMENT AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE SERIES SAI hosts webinars throughout the year, which give faculty the chance to interact with students and academic leaders and the broader community across South Asia and engage on critical issues. Through software provided by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC), the webinars connected students from over fifteen universities in South Asia to Harvard faculty.

This year’s webinar series focused on “Disaster Management and Emergency Response” and highlighted strategic ways to improve responses to emergencies in urban settings.

For full recordings of the webinars, please visit: http://southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/sai-webinars/

October 1, 2014 March 10, 2015

INCIDENT COMMAND

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Shawn D’Andrea MD, Instructor of Medicine, HMS; Fellow, HHI Dr. D’Andrea explained that understanding the concept of Incident Command is important not just for those in the medical community, but those in government and in the community who work in hospitals and on sites of disasters.

An Incident Command System (ICS) is, by definition, a tool used for the command, control, and coordination of emergency response. It is a set of personnel, policies, procedures, facilities, and equipment, integrated into a common organizational structure designed to improve emergency response operations of all types and complexities. ICS allows individuals from different organizations to work together when responding to a disaster. Dr. D’Andrea explained that like the military, ICS is based on a system of hierarchy.

November 19, 2014

MASS CASUALTY TRIAGE

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Usha Periyanayagam International Emergency Medicine Fellow, Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital; HMS Dr. Periyanayagam explained that “triage” is not treatment—it is a method of sorting injured people and deciding who gets treatment first.

The goal of triage is to do the greatest good for the greatest number, rather than doing everything you can for every patient. In many places in the developing world, including South Asia, inefficient triage can lead to patients dying who could have otherwise been saved. Proper triage would treat those who are most injured first, but are the ones who often cannot vocalize that they need help.

PLANNING AND DEBRIEFING FOR FUTURE DISASTERS Payal Modi, MD, MPH, Fellow, Brigham & Women’s Hospital; International Emergency Medicine Fellowship, HMS Dr. Modi explained that the core principles of preparing for disasters include planning, drilling, debriefing, and editing. Planning takes place at a supervisory level with all stakeholders, and should be put in writing so that responsibilities are clearly delineated. Through several case studies of planning for disasters, including the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2010 Chile earthquake, 2005 Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Dr. Modi illustrated that the key factors for any efficient response in an emergency are communication, organization, and leadership/ accountability.

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IN REGION EVENTS

Akshay Mangla, center right

August 1, 2014, Delhi

EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF PRIMARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN INDIA

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Akshay Mangla HBS As part of the “Best of Harvard in India” Series, SAI and HBS partnered with the Central Square Foundation (CSF) to host a roundtable discussion focused on how to promote deliberation and learning within the state; how to recognize, adapt, and upscale best practices; and how to strengthen the public educational institutions. Several key problems were identified by the group of experts, ranging from lack of leadership in public schools, teacher absenteeism, lack of an accountability and monitoring system, and an absence of innovation and incentives.

August 13, 2014, Bangalore

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY: SPURRING SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ENTERPRISE IN SOUTH ASIA

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Tarun Khanna SAI, HBS Professor Khanna posited that while developing mobile technology is important, what remains the most compelling and complex are the needs and the behaviors of the societies that the mobile technologies are aiming to serve. Professor Khanna used examples of mobile projects centered on health and banking to provide insights into what makes mobile solutions successful and scalable.

Examples cited included India’s Novopay, Bangladesh’s bKash, and Kenya’s M-pesa that provide mobile banking solutions; India’s Jana Care; and Bangladesh’s Grameen phone that use mobile technology to deliver healthcare solutions.

Hosted by Rajiv Mody, HBS alum and the Chairman and Managing Director of Sasken Communication Technologies, the event drew an eclectic audience of technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, Harvard alumni, and thought leaders from the tech industry.

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Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb , left, with Tarun Khanna

August 19, 2014, Dhaka

DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEMS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS Professor Khanna’s talk focused on the importance of developing ecosystems and the critical role played by entrepreneurs in furthering a nation’s economy. Entrepreneurs in emerging markets must compensate for limitations of the environment in which they find themselves.

Hosted by BRAC University, the audience at the lecture was comprised of distinguished Bangladeshi academics, entrepreneurs, and university students from Dhaka.

Dinyar Patel

January 13, 2015, Mumbai

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DADABHAI NAOROJI Dinyar Patel, PhD candidate, Department of History, Harvard University; Graduate Student Associate, SAI Shobhita Rajagopal, left, and Ravi Verma

January 9, 2015, Delhi

ADDRESSING GENDER NORMS THROUGH EDUCATION: DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING ADOLESCENT CURRICULUM Jacqueline Bhabha, HSPH, HLS, HKS

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Akshay Mangla HBS Meena Hewett, SAI

Chaired by Pheroza Godrej and hosted at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai, Patel drew on over three years of intensive research in India, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, to present a detailed examination of Dadabhai Naoroji’s career.

Today, Naoroji (1825-1917) is primarily identified as an early economic thinker, a leader of the moderate wing of the Congress, and the first Indian elected to the British Parliament. During his nearly six decades of active political work, Naoroji laid the foundations for much of the Indian nationalist movement and became a globally recognized antiimperialist figure.

The seminar brought together a group of partners representing government, researchers, non-government organizations, and academicians. Education is crucial to reorienting gender stereotypes and traditional gender roles, and has the potential to address gender-based discrimination and violence by altering patriarchal and repressive mindsets. Though there have been many attempts to create educational frameworks that address gender norms, a comprehensive nationwide program has yet to be implemented.

September 8, 2014, Chennai

There is a need for a framework that promotes healthy attitudes about gender and sexual health; empowers young people with accurate, age-appropriate, and culturally relevant information that is accessible and engaging; and develops skills to enable them to respond to situations in a gender-sensitive manner.

CHENNAI CELEBRATES HARVARD DAY

SAI hosted the seminar in partnership with the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Population Foundation of India (PFI).

Organized by the Harvard Club of Chennai, the event skillfully brought out threads of commonality between the iconic institution of Harvard, the oldest institute of higher education in the United States, and the historic city of Chennai, the oldest modern city of India. Through art and music, the event displayed how both have the potential to catalyze social change.

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COMMUNITY SAI forges connections with communities outside of Harvard interested in South Asian culture and studies, including alumni groups, K-12 schools, peer institutions, and community organizations. These partnerships inform current areas of interest and help identify need for further scholarship on issues relevant to the region.

Dr. Pooja Agrawal, Yale, HHI, speaks to K-12 teachers about the Kumbh Mela at the summer workshop “Visualizing Global Studies: A Mapping Workshop for Educators�

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South Asia Institute

COMMUNITY AND OUTREACH EVENTS May 17, 2014

SOUTH ASIAN POETS MEETING Organized by South Asian Poets of New England (SAPNE), this year’s topic was “Mother Tongue,” or Matrubhsha in Hindi. Twenty-seven poets from South Asia performed recitations in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Kashmiri, Kannada, Malayalam, and Oriya.

Panelists at the Bangladesh Development Conference

Summer 2014

SUMMER FILM SERIES 2014 Every Thursday during the summer, SAI screened a film from South Asia at Harvard, representing many countries and time periods. All of the screenings were open to the public and were attended by many community members. Films included Guide, Pakeezah, The Lady, Teesri Kasam, Josh, Promise Land, and Matir Moina.

June 14, 2014

GLOBALIZATION AND SUSTAINABILITY OF BANGLADESH GARMENT INDUSTRY The day-long conference had over thirty speakers, ranging from politicians to representatives from the garment industry. Over the course of six sessions, the speakers focused on different issues and topics relating to the garment industry.

Cosponsored with the Harvard College Students for Bangladesh, the International Sustainable Development Institute, the Harvard Center for Environment, and the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics

August 4-7, 2014, Cambridge

VISUALIZING GLOBAL STUDIES: A MAPPING WORKSHOP FOR EDUCATORS Dr. Pooja Agrawal, MD, MPH, Director, Global Health Education, Section of Global Health & International Emergency Medicine, Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, and Associate Faculty, HHI The workshop featured training in tools for data visualization, map creation, and map-based storytelling, as well as presentations by scholars and experts using these resources in their own work.

South Asia was represented in a talk by Dr. Agrawal, who spoke about her involvement as a researcher in SAI’s “Mapping the Kumbh Mela” project. Her team set out to understand the spread of disease and health outcomes at the festival by using technology.

The Legends of India Concert

August 28, 2014, San Francisco

February 24, 2015, San Francisco

EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO INDIA’S HEALTHCARE PROBLEMS

Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS A group of Harvard alums and SAI supporters gathered in Palo Alto for a conversation with Professor Khanna, who discussed SAI’s role as a bridge between Harvard faculty and South Asia, as well as his research on emerging markets and mobile technology.

September 20, 2014

LEGENDS OF INDIA CONCERT In partnership with the Shahid Parvez Khan Academy and Learnquest Academy, SAI cosponsored a concert that brought two world-class musicians of Indian classical music, sitar maestro Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, and tabla maestro Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, to Harvard.

October 6-14, 2014

SOUTH ASIA EXCHANGE: THOUGHTS, RESPONSES AND QUESTIONS SAI partnered with MIT Heritage Arts of South Asia (MITHAS) and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to present an exhibition at Harvard exploring contemporary dialogue about South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.

November 2, 2014

MUSIC STORIES OF BENGAL “Music Stories of Bengal” is an experiment in bringing live Bengali music of various genres together. This project is the brainchild of Dipankar Jojo Chaki, Indian National Award–winning music producer, and features folk minstrel Paban Das Baul. Paban is a world famous Indian folk singer based in Paris.

Manpreet Anand, Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Asia Bureau at USAID

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Tarun Khanna SAI, HBS Dr. Piya Sorcar, Professor at Stanford University, and Founder and CEO of TeachAIDS Hosted by Sumir Chadha, Managing Director at WestBridge Capital and member of SAI’s Advisory Council, the event explored the current ecosystem surrounding India’s healthcare system. Anand spoke about how USAID collaborates and partners to support innovation in India in the health sector as well as education, urban sanitation, energy, mobile, financial inclusion, and agriculture.

Sorcar discussed the financial and implementation challenges of implementing health care innovations on the ground. Sorcar’s organization, TeachAIDS, creates educational technology that addresses HIV/AIDS prevention around the world.

Professor Khanna highlighted several healthcare research initiatives coordinated by SAI. Cosponsored with USAID and the South Asian Healthcare Leadership Forum

October 31-November 2, 2014, Providence, RI

LOVE, WAR & OTHER LONGINGS: PAKISTANI FILM FESTIVAL The film festival at Brown showcased a variety of films from Pakistan, and conversations with directors. In correlation with Halloween, several horror films and films about war were screened.

Cosponsored with the Brown University India Initiative

Cosponsored with AISP, CMES, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, DRCLAS, Harvard Asia Center, and HGHI

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PUBLICATIONS In order to further its outreach efforts and connect faculties across the different departments and schools at Harvard, SAI’s publications series showcase SAI’s ability to connect faculty across many disciplines, and create new knowledge on issues critical to South Asia.

Construction in Mumbai. Photo by Vineet Diwadkar, GSD

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South Asia Institute

PUBLICATIONS SAI’s publica­tions series incorporate the work of faculty, students and profes­sionals from Harvard and around the region, and serves as a site for initiating discussions on issues relevant to South Asia.

HEALTH AND SOUTH ASIA Released January 2014 This publication presents a rich array of solutions to health challenges and present a wide representation of the important, and occasionally surprising ways, in which people find solutions to public health problems in South Asia.

THE CITY AND SOUTH ASIA Released January 2015

Experts from a variety of fields came together to hold up a cross-disciplinary lens to the paradoxes endemic to urban centers in South Asia.

KUMBH MELA: MAPPING THE EPHEMERAL MEGACITY Released April 2015 The book consolidates research findings from the 2013 festival and s e r v e s a s a n example of interdisciplinary research conducted at Harvard.

THE CITY AND SOUTH ASIA

“Forever Amber” Kaiser Haq, Professor of English, University of Dhaka

Released January 2015

“Housing in Karachi Today” Arif Hasan, Pakistani architect, planner, and writer

Chapters and Contributors: “Durga Pujo in Kolkata” Anirban Adhya, Associate professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Lawrence Technological University “The Beautification of Postwar Colombo” Harini Amarasuriya, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology of Development, Open University of Sri Lanka and Jonathan Spencer, Deputy Head of School and the Regius Professor of South Asian Language, Culture, and Society, University of Edinburgh “Decoding Dhaka” Farooq Ameen, Principal of City Design Studio “Digital Romance in the Indian City” Payal Arora, Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University, Rotterdam and Nimmi Rangaswamy, Adjunct Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology–Hyderabad “Modern Chandigarh” Maristella Casciato, Professor of Architectural History, School of Architecture “Aldo Rossi,” University of Bologna “The Season of Migration to the City” Namita Dharia, RIAS Graduate Student Fellow and Doctoral Candidate, Social Anthropology, FAS “Waste and the City” Assa Doron, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Department of Anthropology, School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University and Robin Jeffrey, Visiting Research Professor, Institute of South Asia Studies and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore “The Land and Tilism of Hoshruba” Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Pakistani-Canadian author, translator, and novelist

“Finding the Citizen in the City” Niraja Jayal, Professor, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi “Archaeology and the Ancient City” Nayanjot Lahiri, Professor of Archaeology, Department of History at the University of Delhi “Urban Planning in Bangladesh” Fuad H. Mallick, Pro Vice Chancellor, BRAC University; Professor and Chairperson, Department of Architecture, BRAC University, Aminur Rahman, Lecturer, Asia Institute, University of Virginia, and A. K. M. Sirajuddin, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture at BRAC University “Floating on Waste Islands” Venkata Krishna Kumar Matturi, recent graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Executive lead and Cofounder of [FEED]BACK, Boston “Impatient Capital and the Indian City” Rahul Mehrotra, Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design; Founder Principal of RMA Architects “The Changing Urban Space of Colombo” Jagath Munasinghe, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa in Katubedda, Sri Lanka “Whose City, Whose Art?” Romita Ray, Associate Professor of Art, Syracuse University “In Varanasi We Trust” Andy Rotman, Professor of Religion, faculty of Buddhist studies and South Asian studies, Smith College “From Pettai to Nagar” A. R. Venkatachalapathy, Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai The digital publication is available at http://southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/sai-annual-publications/.

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IN THE NEWS SAI activities are covered by the media, both at Harvard and at the global level. Some examples of recent news coverage are profiled here. For more information on SAI news, visit our website: http://southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/category/news/.

Students present final projects in the Contemporary South Asia course, cotaught by Tarun Khanna, SAI, HBS, Sue Goldie, HSPH, Rahul Mehrotra, GSD, Parimal Patil, FAS, and Conor Walsh, SEAS. Image courtesy of the Harvard Gazette.

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South Asia Institute

SAI IN THE NEWS

August 20, 2014

SEMINAR ON ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM IN BANGLADESH

Professor Khanna speaks to students in the Contemporary South Asia course, Fall 2014

The Daily Sun Professor Tarun Khanna, HBS, delivered a talk titled ‘Developing an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Emerging Economies’ on August 19. The talk was given at BRAC Centre, Mohakhali, to an audience of renowned Bangladeshi entrepreneurs, academics and corporate managers. Dr. Khanna, who is touring Bangladesh as a guest of BRAC University, highlighted the critical role entrepreneurs play to advance a nation’s economy and bring forth prosperity. Emerging economies, according to him, can benefit greatly if favorable circumstances that nurture and bolster entrepreneurial ventures prevail.

Read the full article at http://www.daily-sun.com/old_version/details_yes_21-08-2014_Seminar-on-EntrepreneurialEcosystem-in-Bangladesh_953_1_19_1_3.html#sthash. kK06LuR8.dpuf

November 19, 2014

SHAPING PROBLEM SOLVERS The Harvard Gazette

By Alvin Powell, Harvard staff writer “The existing system in many developing countries is not working for the masses, so almost by definition you need entrepreneurship,” Tarun Khanna said of the social and economic issues facing India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other nations of South Asia. Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the director of Harvard’s South Asia Institute, leads the Gen Ed course “Contemporary South Asia: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems.”

He was speaking just outside Sever 113, where his students were working furiously on plans for improving maternal mortality in one of two places — India’s state of Uttar Pradesh or the Pakistani state of Punjab. A few minutes earlier, they had been presented with two scenarios and a sheet of relevant data, and then given half an hour to brainstorm solutions.

Left to right: Alnoor Ebrahim, Rohini Nilekani, and Geeta Pradhan

November 19, 2014

PANEL HIGHLIGHTS PHILANTHROPY MODELS ACROSS NATIONS The Harvard Crimson

By Brett Dowling and Nathan P Press, Harvard Crimson contributing writers The United States and India have much to learn from each other about the development of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, according to panelists at a discussion hosted by the South Asia Institute at the Harvard Faculty Club on Tuesday.

Moderated by Harvard Business School associate professor Alnoor Ebrahim, the panel featured Rohini Nilekani, the founder and chairperson of the Arghyam Foundation, and Geeta Pradhan, an executive at the Boston Foundation.

Though the two work in different philanthropic landscapes, both emphasized the role that nongovernmental and philanthropic organizations play in tackling problems that governments and markets fail to address.

The scenarios weren’t Khanna’s, but those of Sue J. Goldie, the Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health and the director of the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard. Goldie is one of a handful of co-instructors who have joined Khanna this semester to lend their expertise in key fields.

While Goldie has addressed health issues, the Graduate School of Design’s Rahul Mehrotra has discussed challenges stemming from urbanism, Conor Walsh, an assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has looked at technology, and Parimal Patil, a professor of religion and Indian philosophy and the chair of the Department of South Asian Studies, is in the middle of four weeks of teaching about solutions enabled by the arts and humanities.

“I think it exposes students to wonderfully different voices,” Mehrotra, the chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, said of the interdisciplinary approach. “These are critical issues and linked to each other. You can’t talk about public health without talking about urbanization. … One critical question that [recurs] is the lack of capacity of government and other entities to respond.”

Khanna and officials at the South Asia Institute say that the cross-faculty approach of the course reflects the mission of the institute itself. The South Asia Institute supports Harvard scholarship in the region and fosters collaboration with scholars based there, according to Executive Director Meena Hewett. The institute, which also explores the region for lessons of broader global relevance, has supported the course and publicized it to students, Hewett said.

Read full article: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/11/shapingproblemsolvers/

Read the full article at http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/11/19/philanthropy-models-india-usa/

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BUDGET

FISCAL YEAR 2015

FISCAL YEAR 2016

INCOME

INCOME

Founders Gift Funds

$515,000

Founders Gift Funds

$538,000

New Gifts

383,000

New Gifts

190,000

Restricted Program Funds

327,000

Restricted Program Funds

311,000

Provost Support

246,000

Provost Support

182,000

Project Grants

151,000

Project Grants

TOTAL

1,622,000

EXPENSE

TOTAL

20,000 1,241,000

EXPENSE

Operations

540,000 396,000

Operations

522,000

Faculty Support

Faculty Support

262,000

Student Support

135,500

Student Support

135,500

FAS Gift tax

126,000

FAS Gift tax

100,000

South Asia Regional Programs

75,000

South Asia Regional Programs

Outreach/Community Programs

80,000

Outreach/Community Programs

TOTAL

56

1,352,500

South Asia Institute

TOTAL

75,000 55,000

1,149,500

Year in Review 2014 - 2015

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