Mittal Institute Year in Review 2022-2023

THE LAKSHMI MITTAL AND FAMILY SOUTH ASIA INSTITUTE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

YEAR IN REVIEW 2022-23

Cover Credit: Nilima Sheikh Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams (Detail) 2003-10 Canvas scroll painted on both sides in casein tempera 120 x 72 inches / 305 x 183 cm Nilima Sheikh was the inaugural Distinguished Artist Fellow 2022-23 at the Mittal Institute.

Year in Review July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023

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Contents

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Letter from the Director 06 2022-23 Highlights 08 75 Years of Azadi 10 FACULTY Research New Climate Change Platform on South Asia 14 The Lancet Citizens’ Commission 18 Program for Scientifically-Inspired Leadership 20 Platforms Arts at the Mittal Institute 22 Scienspur 26 India Digital Health Network 28 Research Faculty Grants 30 Faculty Grant Spotlight: Building Baby Brains in Pakistan 31 Teaching Interfaculty Teaching at Harvard 33 Book Talk 34

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STUDENTS Research, Language and Internship Grants 38 Student Spotlight: Arshaya Sood 40 SCHOLARS Fellows, Artists, Affiliates and Student Associates 46 Fellow Spotlight: Ajmal Khan Areethala 54 Events and Seminars 56 ADMINISTRATION

Letter from the Director: “The Un-Partitioned Heart”

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his academic year has been among the most memorable during my tenure at the Mittal Institute. Just when we all needed to be together again – after the COVID-19 pandemic kept fellows from traveling to our office and students spent too long Zooming into class – the South Asia community at Harvard showed up in an unforgettable moment of oneness.

At Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre, which has hosted such luminaries as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Winston Churchill, South Asia at Harvard took over for one momentous evening in remembrance of 75 years since the Partition of British India and in celebration of the “un-partitioned heart” across the region. You can read more about this night

– which featured Harvard alum and global singing sensation Ali Sethi, as well as Prof. Amartya Sen and Syed Babar Ali – later in this report. It was quite something to see Harvard students and faculty on their feet dancing together!

What followed from there was nothing short of extraordinary. Hitesh Hathi, the Mittal Institute’s Executive Director, has now been in his position for a full year and is supported by growing teams, both in Cambridge and in New Delhi. Together, we have been focusing on expanding the Institute’s reach across the region and making new impacts here at Harvard. You can read about many of them in the pages that follow – from launching a new Climate Change in South Asia Platform to welcoming our first-ever Distin-

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guished Artist Fellow Nilima Sheikh to hosting some of the world’s pre-eminent scholars focused on South Asia.

We have also made significant strides in our ambitious, collaborative platform on achieving Universal Health Care (UHC) in India with the Lancet Citizens’ Commission. The platform has now become a hub for policymakers and practitioners alike, and an important convening place for dialogue on key issues around UHC. Several other faculty-led initiatives have expanded our work in the region, including Prof. Dominic Mao’s Program for Scientifically Inspired Leadership (PSIL) and Prof. Venkatesh Murthy’s Scienspur initiative aimed at bringing STEM to India’s public colleges.

Year in Review 2022-23

It’s amazing to look back and see all we’ve achieved over the last few years, and I hope you will join us as we look ahead to the future. We are committed to expanding this remarkable community across the region and to providing new and exciting avenues for extraordinary scholarship on South Asia.

TARUN KHANNA Director, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School

2022-23

Highlights SEPTEMBER 2022 - May 2023 OCTOBER In one of the most extensive efforts of its kind, the Lancet Citizens’ Commission initiated a survey of 50,000 Indian citizens across 28 states to understand their experiences and expectations from the Indian healthcare system.

Page 18 The Mittal Institute’s long-term project on the Partition of British India resulted in a new edited book, The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and Its Reverberations. Book launches were held in India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and at Harvard.

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NOVEMBER The Mittal Institute held a two-day conference on Pakistan at 75 with 45+ speakers from across the globe.

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SEPTEMBER The academic year kicked off with the commemoration of “75 Years of Azadi” to mark the region’s independence from British India. Students from across South Asia filled Harvard’s Sanders Theatre for an event featuring luminaries Syed Babar Ali, Amartya Sen, and Ali Sethi.

Page 10 The State of Architecture program launched with a popular virtual lecture series highlighting the work of two dozen young architects from across South Asia, creating a unique cross-border community and exchange of ideas.

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Watch Mittal Institute’s event videos by scanning here:

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APRIL Renowned artist Nilima Sheikh, the Mittal Institute’s inaugural Distinguished Artist Fellow, spent two weeks at Harvard interacting with students, faculty and friends. Sheikh's paintings deal with some of the most pressing issues in the region through her brilliant visual language.

Page 23

MARCH The Mittal Institute embarked on a major climate change initiative focused on South Asia, with an inaugural Climate Change Workshop held in New Delhi.

Two multi-year grant awards from Harvard in 2022 helped launch and catalyze this new climate change research in South Asia.

Page 14 President Ranil Wickremesinghe joined the Harvard community virtually from Sri Lanka for a discussion moderated by professors Tarun Khanna, Harvard Business School, and Asim Khwaja, Harvard Kennedy School.

Page 54 Year in Review 2022-23

MAY This year’s Annual Cambridge Symposium focused on the theme of “resiliency” with a focus on climate, health and culture’s role in the future of South Asia.

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75 Years of Azadi:

The Mittal Institute Reflects August 15, 2022, marked 75 years since the end of British rule on the South Asian subcontinent. To commemorate this momentous year, the Mittal Institute launched a series of events, and many faculty and affiliates reflected on the occasion.

Sanders Theatre Rocks with the “Un-Partitioned Heart” The Mittal Institute kicked off the commemoration of “75 Years of Azadi” on September 14, 2022, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre with a once-in-a-lifetime conversation between Pakistani philanthropist Syed Babar Ali and Nobel-laureate Amartya Sen—both of whom were born in undivided British India, lived through the Partition, and went on to become giants of civil society. They were joined on stage by Brown University Prof. Leela Gandhi, who probed key moments and themes of the last 75 years.

sation, then captivated a sold-out crowd with his hit song, “Pasoori,” which was said to be “uniting India and Pakistan.”

The theater was filled with students from across South Asia, reflecting a unity that transcends borders. Or as Sethi said, “the un-partitioned heart.”

“It was an absolutely magical night,” said Prof. Asim Khwaja.

“It brings hope that even as we remain separate nations, we can remember and rekindle the love and camaraderie that exists between us all.”

Ali Sethi ’06, the Pakistani-American singer and global sen-

Ali Sethi ’06 performs to a sold-out crowd at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

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Conference on Pakistan at 75 In November 2022, the Mittal Institute held a two-day conference that brought together 45+ speakers from across the globe, including remarks by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., Sardar Masood Khan, and a keynote by Justice Qazi Faez Isa of Pakistan’s Supreme Court. The event was spearheaded by Yaqoob Khan Bangash, a Fulbright fellow at the Mittal Institute, and Prof. Asim Khwaja, in collaboration with the American Institute of Pakistan Studies and the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (U.S. Department of Defense) with support from Harvard’s South Asian Studies Department.

The conference’s panels focused on a wide range of topics, including: The Intellectual Inheritance; The Long Shadow of the 1947 Partition and State Building; Internal Security: Policing, Geopolitics and Countering Violent Extremism; From the ‘Peripheries,’ Religion and Society; Postcolonial Predicaments; Reimagining Education; Pakistan’s Political Parties; Media and Its Discontents; and Youth and the Future of Pakistan.

“This was a landmark event in this historic year–the biggest conference yet to reflect on Pakistan at 75 with such a deeply interdisciplinary lens from the next generation of scholars and leading figures in the field,” said Fulbright fellow Bangash.

Faculty on 75 Years of Independence In November 2022, Prof. Jennifer Leaning and LMSAI Research Fellow Shubhangi Bhadada launched their new co-edited book, The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and Its Reverberations, the culmination of a long-term interdisciplinary research project at the Mittal Institute. Executive Director Hitesh Hathi joined Prof. Leaning for the South Asia book tour events in Amritsar, Dubai, Lahore, and New Delhi.

Year in Review 2022-23

Prof. Tarun Khanna and Prof.

Vikram Patel, co-chairs of the Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining Health Care in India (see pages 18-19), along with other commissioners, published a “Comment” in the Lancet, one of the world’s leading health journals, calling on this historical moment to make significant progress toward reimagining India’s health system for the future.

Prof. Satchit Balsari, who has been working on health and technology as well as COVID-19 measures in India, wrote an op-ed in the Times of India that called for India to look toward India@100 with a new approach for improving health and well-being in the country.

Faculty

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The Mittal Institute supports faculty-led multidisciplinary research projects and ­programs in the disciplines of arts and humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Year in Review 2022-23

RESEARCH

New Climate Change Platform on South Asia The Mittal Institute has embarked on a major climate change initiative focused on South Asia, which includes research projects, training programs as well as exchange fellowships for senior and junior academics, scientists and policymakers. / HARVARD FACULTY LEAD CAROLINE BUCKEE SATCHIT BALSARI TARUN KHANNA JENNIFER LEANING PETER JOHN HUYBERS RAHUL MEHROTRA DANIEL P. SCHRAG

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outh Asia is home to nearly two billion people and commonly regarded as “ground zero” for climate change. The region is experiencing severe flooding, heat waves and droughts, forcing millions to adapt to their changing environments or move. Such migration must be anticipated and planned for, and contextual, reliable, and accessible empirical data on climate change is needed to drive evidence-based policymaking on these major challenges.

ecosystem in South Asia. The project

Mittal Institute Faculty Awarded Grants

advance climate adaptation research

Two multi-year grant awards from Harvard in 2022 helped launch and catalyze this new climate change research in South Asia with these key projects:

Climateverse: Data-Driven Responses to Climate Change in South Asia This project aims to develop a transformative, open-access climate and population health data-monitoring

will “democratize” essential data and be foundational to understanding the impact of the changing climate on the world’s most populous region. Digitization of data in the public and private sectors will make it possible to begin monitoring important micro-level local developments.

Climate Adaptation in South Asia This interdisciplinary project seeks to and implementation at the household, community, state and federal levels in South Asia, particularly in the context of climate-driven migration. The project team will work closely with in-region partners to identify, co-create, test, and bring to scale climate adaptation strategies. This includes technological, health, financial, policy and educational interventions that anticipate, mitigate or support migration when livelihoods and habitats are impacted by droughts, floods, and sea-level rise.

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Harvard Faculty and Mittal Institute New Delhi team members pose at the inaugural workshop on climate change in March 2023.

Inaugural Climate Change Workshop March 2023 To launch the initiative, the Mittal Institute hosted an inaugural Climate Change Workshop in March 2023 in New Delhi. The sessions convened an interdisciplinary group of experts, policymakers and academics to identify key challenges in climate mitigation and adaptation, and to seek inputs on research and academic priorities for this collaborative platform focused on South Asia.

The workshops began with an overview of India’s energy strategy. Tarun Ka-

Year in Review 2022-23

poor, Advisor to the Prime Minister’s office, outlined the Government’s ambitious goals for renewable energy, the challenges of managing its massive grid, and the complex transition India faces in the transportation and cooking sectors.

In a panel discussion moderated by Prof.

Tarun Khanna, India’s leading green technology innovators shared how their work addresses the climate challenge.

This included India’s largest electric battery-swapping network, a supply chain business that slashes food waste, India’s first electric ride-hailing platform, a Pune-based e-bike company, and a farm-

to-fashion sustainable textiles manufacturer.

Reema Nanavaty, Director of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), delivered the event’s keynote address, highlighting that poor women are particularly vulnerable to climate change given the social and economic disadvantages they already face. However, their lived experience and adaptation efforts offer valuable insights. “For poor women, innovation is their survival or coping strategy. It's not a luxury for them. We only need to leverage what the poor are already doing,” said Nanavaty.

Workshop participants also discussed the detrimental effects of the escalating frequency of heat waves, monsoons, tropical cyclones, and flooding in South Asia, and shared the myriad ways in which communities are adapting. Panelists also emphasized the critical importance of a bottom-up, just energy transition that fosters participatory decision-making.

Q&A with Director Tarun Khanna about the Mittal Institute’s Climate Focus

Despite the immense challenges South Asia faces, the panelists agreed that embracing a visionary approach to climate readiness is not just about safeguarding communities—it's a chance for South Asia to lead, showcasing robust strategies for climate adaptation and resilience. Harvard Professor Dan Schrag noted: “The more we focus the conversation about how to protect ourselves, how to protect our homes, how to protect our communities, people will ultimately come to accept that it's worth solving because the vulnerability is too great. And I think that's a path forward.”

Asia to be more cognizant of climate change’s effects. That’s one piece of it.

Watch Climate Conference Videos here:

Why is climate change such a critical focus for the Mittal Institute?

TK: Climate change has become an essential issue for everybody, but particularly so for six of the eight billion people who live in less-advantaged settings. And we’ve seen South Asia become “ground zero” for a lot of these issues, with the floods that swept through Pakistan and the scorching heat waves that impacted India. These events have elevated the issue among policymakers, academics, and society in South

The second is that at the COP 27 meeting in 2022, there was a symbolic, if not adequately substantive, breakthrough with something called the “Loss and Damage Fund.” This is the first time that the developed world has, in effect, agreed that it will compensate developing countries for the damage to the environment that has mostly been done by the developed world.

Third, on the Harvard side, the creation of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability as a convening structure has created an impetus for more longer-term projects on climate change research.

The Mittal Institute’s Climate Change Workshop in New Delhi was LMSAI’s first in-region, multi-day collaboration on climate change research. What were your motivations in building the panels?

TK: This is just the latest in a long line of multi-faculty interdisciplinary projects that tackle big issues. We brought together academics—since we are a research institute—but also policymakers, activists, the government, the private sector, etc. It’s quite unusual to have everybody under the same roof, learning from each other and communicating with each other.

Something else unique about this workshop is that we partnered with two NGOs, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India and BRAC in Bangladesh, who both have very long and storied histories. These NGOs in-region are experiencing the effects of climate change. In fact, the SEWA team is doing research on responses to heat stress. With the recent heat waves, this is crucial fieldwork, and enables data collection of a very novel sort that we wouldn’t be able to get sitting comfortably in our offices in Cambridge.

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Can you share more about the research that the two Harvard grants will enable?

TK: We have an immediate project focus on these two grants, which are quite different. The Climate Change Solutions Fund grant is focused on an open data repository that will facilitate research. The Climate Research Clusters grant from the Salata Institute is to study migration as a form of adaptation to climate distress. That includes floods or extreme heat, where people are forced to move. Or with extreme heat, some people are simply unable to move because they lack the means to do so—and then they suffer more. So we are looking at both involuntary migration and then the inability to migrate. We are confident this work will catalyze understanding, and, of course, further research.

This is just the latest in a long line of multi-faculty interdisciplinary projects that tackle big issues. We brought together academics—since we are a research institute—but also

­

policymakers, activists, the government, the private sector.

Prof. Tarun Khanna moderates a panel at the workshop.

Year in Review 2022-23

— PROF. TARUN KHANNA, LMSAI DIRECTOR

RESEARCH

The Lancet Citizens’ Commission: Reimagining India’s Health System The Lancet Citizens’ Commission is gathering insights from a wide variety of stakeholders to lay out a roadmap for achieving Universal Health Coverage for the people of India.

/ CO-CHAIRS TARUN KHANNA VIKRAM PATEL KIRAN MAZUMDAR-SHAW GAGANDEEP KANG

/ COMMISSIONERS YAMINI AIYAR SANDRA ALBERT INDU BHUSHAN VIJAY CHANDRU MIRAI CHATTERJEE SAPNA DESAI ARMIDA FERNANDEZ RAKHAL GAITONDE ATUL GUPTA PREETHI JOHN NACHIKET MOR ARNAB MUKHERJI POONAM MUTTREJA THELMA NARAYAN BHUSHAN PATWARDHAN SUJATHA RAO SRINATH REDDY SHARAD SHARMA DEVI SHETTY S.V. SUBRAMANIAN LEILA E. CALEB VARKEY SANDHYA VENKATESWARAN

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espite the progress made by India in improving healthcare over the last 75 years, much remains to be done to achieve the goal of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The Lancet Citizens’ Commission (LCC), launched in December 2020, is examining the structural barriers to realizing UHC and exploring the strategies to move towards it in the coming decade in India.

The LCC brings together diverse voices from across India’s fragmented healthcare landscape, including the private and public sectors, allopathic and traditional medicine, and aficionados and skeptics of the role of technology in attaining UHC. The Commission’s work is structured across five workstreams: financing, governance, human resources, technology, and citizens’ engagement. Its network includes 25 commissioners, over 100 fellows, and 20 partner institutions.

Major activities in 2022-2023 To mark the 75th anniversary of Indian independence, members of the Commis-

sion wrote a comment in the Lancet entitled “Reimagining India’s Health System: A Lancet Citizens’ Commission,” explaining the historic opportunity for India to reform its healthcare structure and achieve UHC, and the role the Commission can play in helping reach this goal. It promised that the Commission will base its recommendations on a consultative and participatory effort that brings together key stakeholders across India's healthcare landscape.

In one of the most extensive efforts of its kind, the Commission conducted a survey of 50,000 Indian citizens across 28 states between October 2022 and April 2023 to understand their experiences and expectations from the Indian healthcare system. This survey is complemented by three additional studies: The first is a mixed-methods study in six overlapping districts across low, medium, and high-performing Indian states that have been identified by a UHC index prepared by the Commission.

The second is an online survey of allo-

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pathic and AYUSH doctors in both the private and public sectors to understand their current practices and attitudes regarding their role in achieving UHC. This study is being conducted in partnership with the Swasth Alliance.

• Reimagining India’s Health

System: Technology Levers for Universal Health Care By Vijay Chandru, Sharad Sharma & Raghu Dharmaraju, J Indian Inst Sci 102, 743–752 (2022)

The Commission report is expected to be published in 2024 in the Lancet, laying out its recommendations for the achievement of UHC in India.

Finally, the Commission has interviewed 38 public health experts in India, including commissioners, bureaucrats, academics, and thought leaders, on the reasons for failure to achieve UHC and to gather their thoughts on effective strategies moving forward. Together, these three studies provide a rich treasure trove of primary data to help build a roadmap for achieving UHC that is grounded in the voices of the stakeholders who are often ignored.

• Lessons for Developing Countries From Outlier Country Health Systems By Nachiket Mor, Frontiers in Public Health 10 (2022)

In addition to the ground-breaking research, the Commission has become the “go-to” platform for UHC-related discussions in India with over 100,000 website views within 18 months of launch.

Since May 2020, it has also hosted 19 webinars with 80+ speakers/panelists and 6,500+ attendees. The Commission, in its endeavor to make its work accessible to as many people of India as possible, has translated the main pages of its website into Hindi.

Work from the Commission is also being published as journal articles or white papers and will form the basis of the final report. Some of the recent work has included: Year in Review 2022-23

• Political motivation as a key driver for universal health coverage

By Sandhya Venkateswaran, Shruti Slaria, Sampriti Mukherjee, CSEP Working Paper (2022) • The Political Journey of Healthcare in Select Indian States By Sandhya Venkateswaran, Mayank Mishra & Nikhil Iyer, CSEP Working Paper (2022)

A Go-To Healthcare Platform

Students In-Region

Program for Scientifically-Inspired Leadership In 2023, the Program for Scientifically-Inspired Leadership (PSIL) launched its third iteration.

The initiative brought together Harvard undergraduates and Osmania University students with high school students from public high schools in Telangana, India, for a crosscultural experience.

Prof. Dominic Mao leads the Program for Scientifically-Inspired Leadership.

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n January, 2023, five Harvard undergraduate students traveled to Telangana, India, to meet with local undergraduates and high school students as part of the Program for Scientifically-Inspired Leadership (PSIL), led by Prof. Dominic Mao. Over the course of five days, the Harvard undergraduates taught lectures to more than 100 local underprivileged students alongside college-level teaching assistants from the area. It exposed the Indian students to Western-style liberal arts and sciences philosophy with the goal of fostering critical thinking and leadership skills. At the same time, the Harvard students and local assistants learned how to become effective teachers. An extracurricular program further enhanced the cultural immersion and broadened the worldview of each of the three groups.

The group consisted of Harvard students Kate Condra, who spoke on “The

Art of Communication”; Jaylen Cocklin, who gave a talk on the history of scientific racism; PK Vincze, who taught how observation and questions are key fundamentals of the scientific method; Shefali Prakash, who presented “The Essentials of Entrepreneurship”; and Sarah Ramberran, who talked about how cinema can be a gateway to social change. They were assisted by Osmania University students Satya Aravind Pandavula, Siliveru Laxmi Tanuja, Meghana Dhanraj More, Gaali Gaurav Krishna, and Neha Surampalli.

In the following Q&A, Dominic Mao, Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies for two of Harvard’s life science concentrations and lecturer in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, talks about the goals and history of the program, which receives funding and administrative support from the Mittal Institute.

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While the Harvard students are with the Indian students, my friend and colleague, Andi Wright and I will run a pedagogy workshop for the high school teachers. This will ensure the impact of the program extends beyond our time there and the pedagogy tools we use in the program become a staple in their classrooms.

­— PROF. DOMINIC MAO

What learning gaps does the program address?

Dominic Mao (DM): The high school students get exposed to a curriculum based on the liberal arts and science philosophy.

This is extremely important because in India, students typically pick a “stream” – science, arts, or commerce – after their 10th grade, and there are very limited opportunities for students to receive formal education on topics that are outside their stream. We build the curriculum focusing on skills and knowledge they would not normally get in their classrooms.

What did it take to develop the program?

DM: The Mittal Institute and Harvard provided the seed funding to pilot, explore, and experiment. We were successful in running and optimizing the program for two years in Manipur because of internal support. Two bureaucrats from Telangana came across the PSIL webpage while they were at Harvard, liked the work we were doing, and connected me to key people within their network. This is what has made the work in Telangana possible, including a forthcoming fourth version. Many have said this before: do Year in Review 2022-23

the work and do it well, make sure the work is visible, and eventually, you will find like-minded people who can take it to new levels.

Can you talk about the interactions between the three student groups and what you envisioned that each would gain from the other?

DM: There is a lot of information transfer and expansion of world views. The Harvard students dispel a lot of myths for both groups of Indian students. For example, there is a popular myth that only privileged individuals attend Harvard.

Learning about the funding opportunities at Harvard and that the college meets 100% of demonstrated financial need comes as a huge surprise to everyone!

Among other things, Harvard students learn about jugaad – “frugal innovation” – in a real-world setting and get a meaningful service opportunity. Also, through PSIL, the Harvard team gets to step outside the Harvard bubble and comes back always more appreciative of the resources we have available.

What do you look for when choosing your instructors?

DM: I screen for well-rounded scholars who are passionate about teaching and equitable quality education. I also look for adaptability, creativity, resourcefulness, and individuals who welcome the challenge of teaching outside their comfort zone. Since I am a molecular biologist, we use the scientific process (questions, hypotheses, evidence, communication, etc.) as the backbone of the program. That said, I also look for breadth in our curriculum when selecting candidates.

Will there be anything new in the next program iteration?

DM: I am very excited to say my friend and colleague, Andi Wright, who is the Resident Dean of Elliot House and a lecturer on Anthropology, will be joining us. While the Harvard students are with the Indian students, Andi and I will run a pedagogy workshop for the high school teachers.

This will ensure the impact of the program extends beyond our time there and the pedagogy tools we use in the program become a staple in their classrooms.

PLATFORM

Arts at the Mittal Institute The Mittal Institute Arts Program continues to expand its programs and initiatives, and for the first time welcomed a Distinguished Artist Fellow to campus in 2023.

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he Mittal Institute continues its dedication to the scholarship and preservation of South Asian art, sculpture and architecture through research and training on conservation and collections management, the Visiting Artist Fellowship, an arts fund program, and numerous arts-related events.

The State of Architecture in South Asia Project The State of Architecture in South Asia project, led by Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is a multi-year project that looks to answer the fundamental questions related to architecture in South Asia today. The region is in a period of rapid change, and architecture and its different forms of engagement with society – whether preservation and reconstruction or new buildings – force societies to make choices for spatial organization but also identity formations and, more deeply, the representation of their aspirations.

Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and an LMSAI Steering Committee member.

Pranav Thole, co-chair, South Asia Student Group, GSD.

The program launched during the 20222023 academic year with a highly successful virtual 12-part series focused on emergent practices in the region. It hosted young architects under the age of 40 from Bangladesh to Bhutan and beyond, aiming to give a pulse on young professionals in the region. The series will be developed into a book to be launched in December 2023.

A second component of the project, a conference on “Architectures of Transition: Frameworks of Practices in South Asia,” will be held in New Delhi in December 2023. The third component will be a traveling exhibition that will start in the region, and, as it gathers information and expands, will then travel back to the U.S.

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History of Art & Architecture at Harvard.

“Having Nilima on campus provides a rare opportunity to be in conversation with a leading artist whose long career inspires us to contemplate on the significance of art in the conflict-stricken world.”

Photo credit to Sunday Guardian

Born in New Delhi in 1945, Sheikh joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Baroda in 1965, after studying history at Delhi University. Her work focuses on displacement, longing, loss, violence, the perception of tradition and ideas of femininity. She started exhibiting professionally in 1969 and recent solo exhibi-

tions include Lines of Flight: Nilima Sheikh Archive, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Terrain: Carrying Across Leaving Behind at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, 2017 and Gallery Espace at Bikaner House, New Delhi, 2018; Each night put Kashmir in your dreams at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago in 2014. In 2023, the Asia Society honored her at the Asia Arts Game Changer Awards India.

Distinguished Artist Fellowship (DAF) The Mittal Institute welcomed the inaugural Distinguished Artist Fellow (DAF), Nilima Sheikh, to the Harvard campus in April 2023.

MOTHER SEQUENCE-VIGIL (2016) Mixed tempera on sanganer paper 9.5 x 13.5in

The DAF program, which invites a senior visual artist from South Asia to the Harvard campus, is designed to bring forth critical issues relevant to South Asia through the lens of art and design.

Sheikh was selected by a committee composed of Harvard faculty and contemporary South Asian art experts.

At Harvard, Sheikh engaged with Harvard faculty, students, and the Mittal Institute’s broader community, and shared her work through public lectures, including at the Harvard Art Museums, and classroom visits.

“She is one of South Asia’s most prominent artists whose paintings deal with some of the most pressing issues in the region through her brilliant visual language of color and form,” says Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art in the Department of Year in Review 2022-23

EACH NIGHT PUT KASHMIR IN YOUR DREAM (DETAIL) 2003-10 Canvas scroll painted on both sides in casein tempera 120 x 72 inches / 305 x 183 cm

TERRAIN: CARRYING ACROSS LEAVING BEHIND (2016-2017) Casein tempera on sixteen canvas scrolls, wood, and metal scrolls 83.8 x 34.2in each

Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Harvard

Mapping Color in History Project The Mapping Color in History (MCH) project is a searchable, open database for existing and ongoing material analyses of pigments in Asian paintings.

Users can search a large collection of paintings by pigment and see where and when particular pigments were in use for what types of paintings, thereby tracing transcultural contact through the movement of colorants, artistic practices, and exchange across Asia.

Prof. Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Harvard, has embarked on this ambitious project to upend the traditional Western knowledge base.

“There is no baseline knowledge on the

MCH Mobile Heritage Lab in action: Professor Kim and MCH graduate student research assistants Victoria Andrews and Akarsh Raghunath examining 15th-century manuscript folios in the Bharat Kala Bhavan collection. Image courtesy of Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu University.

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Measuring 12th-century palm-leaf manuscript for condition report, MCH-India project at the Asiatic Society, Mumbai, November 16, 2022

history of pigments in South Asia; it’s all based on what is known from the Western art,” says Kim. The MCH platform aims to change that. It consists of a truly interdisciplinary team of collaborators that includes research assistants, scientists, curators, conservators, specialists in conservation science and art history, and software engineers.

The project has received support from the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard, the Mittal Institute, the Radcliffe Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities – and continues to grow and expand. While initial data collection is focused on Asian materials, in order to address the existing lacuna in the knowledge about historical pigments, the project will aim to accommodate data from any geographic location and culture.

Year in Review 2022-23

Anjali Jain (MCH-India project coordinator/ conservator) examines the early 16th-century manuscript under the optical microscope, part of the MCH Mobile Heritage Lab, Dec 6, 2022.

MCH Mobile Heritage Lab in action: Early 16th-century manuscript being examined under Dynolite digital microscope, Nov 28, 2022, Asiatic Society, Mumbai

PLATFORM

Scienspur: Free STEM Program Reaches 250 Students Launched in 2021 with a faculty grant from the Mittal Institute, Scienspur continues to grow its efforts to teach free courses to students at Indian public colleges.

/ Project Team VENKATESH MURTHY NAGARAJU DHANYASI VINAY VIKAS / Instructors MAYA ANJUR-DIETRICH JONATHAN BOULANGER-WEILL

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uilt on the philosophy of igniting scientific curiosity, Scienspur offers free STEM courses to economically disadvantaged college students across India. Students receive training in cutting-edge scientific concepts and techniques in the field of biology and life sciences, but also practical guidance such

as communicating science effectively, proposing a hypothesis, and best practices for research. In addition, mentorship opportunities guide participants as they decide on their future career paths.

Since its launch in 2021, facilitated by a Mittal Institute Faculty Grant, the program has continually grown and become

RUDRA NAYAN DAS RAJESH GUNAGE FARAH HAQUE SIDDHARTH JAYAKUMAR AISHWARYA KRISHNAMOORTHY KUMARESH KRISHNAN TARUN KUMAR KAMALESH KUMARI RUBUL MOUT ANUP PARCHURE MOSTAFIZUR RAHMAN MADHUMALA SADANANDAPPA SHIVAPRASAD SATHYANARAYANA SANJEEV SHARMA PARIJAT SIL RAJAN THAKUR

Indian students doing technical experimenting in a laboratory at the college.

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Scienspur founders (left to right) Nagaraju Dhanyasi, postdoctoral researcher in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology; Jacob Vinay Vikas Konakondla, a biotech professional; and Prof. Venkatesh Murthy, LMSAI Steering Committee member.

Very few programs have an interest in helping others with their career, without any profit…it has inspired

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my classmates and me to give back.

— EBINESH, SCIENSPUR PARTICIPANT FROM MADRAS, INDIA

more established. In its initial version, 60 undergraduate and master’s students enrolled in courses in cell biology and neurobiology taught by 20 instructors from leading universities in the U.S. In the summer of 2022, courses expanded to accommodate 100 student participants and newly included developmental biology and molecular genetics. In 2023, numbers skyrocketed and now have reached more than 250 students across India’s publicly funded colleges and universities, and women are for the first time a majority of one cohort.

Year in Review 2022-23

As the number of enrolled students has climbed, so has the number of instructors. The two project founders, Nagaraju Dhanyasi, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, and Vinay Vikas, a biotech professional, under the leadership of Venkatesh Murthy, Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a member of LMSAI’s Steering Committee, recruited and brought together an ever-growing, all-volunteer team of post-doctoral and independent researchers from world-class institu-

tions across Europe, India and the U.S., including at Harvard University.

Ideas for future growth include growing to 100 instructors to be able to accommodate a larger number of students, but also shift from virtual courses to in-person lessons. Although the virtual format, held via Zoom a few hours per week for 12-15 weeks, has allowed more students across a wider swath of the country to participate, a two-week, in-person program would allow for closer interaction with students.

PLATFORM

India Digital Health Network The India Digital Health Network (IDHN) advances the science and practice of digital health implementation in India. It comprises distinguished scientists and domain experts spanning the fields of healthcare, informatics, computer science, law, business and policy. / Key Personnel VERGHESE THOMAS St. John’s Research Institute ABIJEET WAGHMERE St. John’s Research Institute BHARAT KALIDINDI St. John’s Research Institute TONY RAJ St. John’s Research Institute SATCHIT BALSARI Harvard Medical School / Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center SUNITA NADHAMUNI Arghyam ARUN SANJAY Dell Technologies

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he India Digital Health Network (IDHN), led by Professor Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is a research and policy collaborative working towards advancing digital health implementation science and practice in India. Key partners include government agencies, healthcare enterprises, technologists and researchers from India and the US. Key focus areas of IDHN’s work include evaluating and optimizing India’s national digital health platform for non-communicable chronic disease management, developing training curricula in digital health implementation, and establishing real-world clinical sandboxes to validate promising digital health interventions.

The Vinyasa Tool for mHealth solutions The Vinyasa Tool was developed to comprehensively and efficiently elicit inputs

from the end users of India’s National Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) Portal. The tool was developed by distilling a large body of mHealth research into a structured framework that was used to unpack end users’ experiences of these complex systems. Using the tool, the team elicited several environmental, user-related and technological factors that affected adoption and use of the NCD portal. These findings were triangulated with findings from other research methods and used to improve the NCD portal design. As digital health implementations expand, the team hopes the Vinyasa tool can be used to improve mHealth use and health outcomes in India and similar countries.

Non-Communicable Disease Software Solution Optimization The screening, prevention, control and management of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) is a key priority program launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Government of India. To strengthen the continuum of NCD care from the community

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IDHN team works to advance digital health implementation in India.

Digital health innovation teams continue to struggle to develop contextually intelligent solutions, precluding interventions from scaling beyond pilots. Frontline clinicians, community health workers and the communities themselves are seldom at the design board.

health worker to tertiary centers, the NCD program is anchored around a software solution that will promote, nudge and guide diagnosis, referral, and management for a range of NCDs, including hypertension, diabetes, oral, cervical, and breast cancer.

The IDHN team recently designed a study to examine the clinical impact and health outcomes of such digital health Year in Review 2022-23

­— PROF. SATCHIT BALSARI

interventions in managing NCDs. The study is being conducted by St. John’s Research Institute (SJRI) and Health Technology Exploration Centre (HTEC) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a Harvard teaching hospital, in collaboration with the NCD division of MoHFW, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Karnataka; National Health Systems Resource Centre, a think tank for MoHFW; Digital

Lifecare by Dell Bengaluru, a modern digital platform with mobile, cloud and analytics applications; and Tata Trusts.

RESEARCH

Faculty Grants Each year, the Mittal Institute supports faculty research with grants to fund a variety of fields, disciplines and regions related to South Asia.

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he Mittal Institute annually supports faculty research projects that unite scholars from different fields and regions whose research relates to South Asia.

Interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as projects that catalyze connectivity between scholars at Harvard and those in South Asia, are a funding priority.

For the 2023-2024 academic year, the Mittal Institute has awarded some of the highest individual funding amounts in the institute’s history. Recipients include:

Cambridge Based Projects Vikrant Dadawala Lecturer, History and Literature, Harvard College The Decades of Disillusionment: India and the Cold War

Teren Sevea Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Harvard Divinity School Exilic Journeys and Lives: The Transregional Paths of Saints, Soldiers and Rebels from North India, 1850s-1940s Richard Wolf Professor of Music and South Asian Studies, Harvard University Department of Music Pots of Millet, Faces of Gold (a film)

Jinah Kim George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art, Department of History of Art & Architecture Mapping Color in History [MCH] Mobile Heritage Lab: Towards Collaborative OnSite Pigment Research in South Asia Adaner Usmani Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies, Department of Sociology History of Punishment in India

India Based Projects Satchit Balsari Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Women Workers Negotiating the Pandemic in India: An Online Archive

Emmerich Davies Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education The Impact of Jio on Electoral Politics

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Faculty Grant Spotlight: Harvard Medical School Professors Alexandra Harrison, MD, and Elizabeth Levey, MD

Building Baby Brains in Rural Pakistan As one of the 2022 LMSAI faculty grant winners, Building Baby Brains explores ways to reverse stress levels in pregnancy and early life to decrease the mortality of children in rural Pakistan. It trains lady health workers who provide pre- and postnatal care to better support mothers during pregnancy and improve the infant-caregiver relationship.

Alexandra Harrison, MD (Photo credit: BPSI)

Elizabeth Levey, MD Year in Review 2022-23

Dr. Elizabeth Levey, how does early exposure to toxic levels of stress harm both mother and child?

EL: Brain plasticity is greatest during the prenatal period and early infancy. Glucocorticoid exposure during this period can alter the volume of certain brain regions, and it impacts glucocorticoid sensitivity across the lifespan. Prenatal exposure to maternal stressful life events and maternal mental illness have demonstrated effects on cognition and mental health into adulthood, as well as changes in brain microstructure. Maternal anxiety or depression during pregnancy is associated with decreased performance on executive functioning tasks, measuring impulsivity

and attention. Maternal anxiety predicted poorer working memory, and maternal depression also predicted lower IQ. Maternal depression during pregnancy also predicted offspring depression and anxiety in adulthood.

Resilience is particularly important in an environment where children are likely to face adverse exposures. The capacity for resilience begins before birth and continues to develop across the life course. Stress during pregnancy impacts neuroendocrine development in utero, which is critical to the development of regulatory capacities in infancy and early childhood. After birth, the development of resilience goes hand in hand with re-

lationship development. Sensitive and consistent caregiving in infancy continues to support the development of affect regulation, which is a key building block for resilience.

What does the Building Baby Brains training look like for lady health workers? What are they learning and who is instructing them?

EL: The Building Baby Brains (BBB) training attempts to strengthen infant resiliency and support maternal mental health by filling a knowledge gap among lady health workers, whose primary training focuses on immunization and nutrition. BBB includes current scientific information about pregnancy, the transition to parenthood, infant development, and a clinical method for strengthening the infant-parent relationship, Thula Sana (Cooper et al., 2009; Valades et al., 2021). Thula Sana begins with prenatal

visits focusing on the mother’s health and on helping her prepare for delivery and the postnatal period. Postnatal visits involve assessing the baby’s behavior and interactivity through a series of maneuvers eliciting the infant’s strengths and sensitivities, such as demonstrating the infant’s motor strength and responsiveness to the caregiver. In revealing to the mother her infant’s competencies and behavioral cues, the intervention aims to increase the mother’s sensitivity to the baby and strengthen the infant-parent relationship.

a rural area with limited resources. We are working with a team of Pakistani physicians who have contacts at Nishtar Medical University, and we are collaborating with researchers there. The BBB training was conducted in two-hour sessions twice per week over four weeks.

BBB training was delivered in the form of remote lectures given by a child psychiatrist in the US, supported by a Pakistani child psychiatrist practicing in the US. An onsite Pakistani pediatrician also supported the training and provided consecutive translation.

What region do you focus on and why?

What is next for your research?

EL: We focus on the Punjab province because Pakistan’s under-five mortality rate is 67 deaths per 1,000 live births, the 22nd highest out of 193 countries, and 37% of children experience stunting, severe growth restriction associated with malnutrition. South Punjab is

EL: We will finish collecting data for this pilot intervention so that we can share the findings and hopefully conduct a larger study in the future.

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TEACHING

Interfaculty Teaching at Harvard The Institute supports the creation of curricula that explores solutions to complex challenges in the developing world, providing interdisciplinary courses taught by Harvard faculty to students and the virtual global community.

GenEd 1011 Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems

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or over a decade, this unique and innovative course has been open to undergraduate and graduate students across Harvard. The course, started by Prof. Tarun Khanna, Mittal Institute Faculty Director, provides an interdisciplinary framework and multiple lenses through which to think about the economic and social problems that affect five billion people in the developing world. Taught by multiple Harvard faculty members across schools, case-study discussions cover challenges and potential solutions in fields as diverse as health, education, technology, urban planning, arts and the humanities.

Starting with an introductory module taught by Professor Khanna that reviews salient approaches to development and the roles that entrepreneurs can play within these, the course is co-taught

Year in Review 2022-23

by Professors Satchit Balsari, Krzysztof Gajos, Rahul Mehrotra and Doris Sommer. Students are introduced to cases across the developing world, with a particular focus on Africa, China, Latin America, and South Asia. Throughout the course, students work in teams to design entrepreneurial solutions that address one of the many problems identified, thinking about complex issues from perspectives and disciplines different from their own.

edX Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies In a virtual business and management course on edX taught by Mittal Institute Faculty Director Tarun Khanna, hundreds of thousands of participants from around the world have enrolled to explore how entrepreneurship and innovation can tackle complex social problems in emerging economies.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, the course delves into the prior attempts to address these issues across emerging markets, and students identify points of

opportunity for entrepreneurial efforts and propose and develop their own creative solutions. The goal of the course is to make students aware of their own individual agency, exploring what they themselves can do to address a seemingly intractable problem.

Throughout the course, students investigate financing, scaling up of operations, branding, management of property rights and how to create the appropriate metrics to assess the progress and social value of their entrepreneurial endeavors.

From issues of healthcare and online commerce to fintech and infrastructure, students examine the diverse geographic regions of Africa, China, Latin America and South Asia to better understand the entrepreneurial opportunities in these emerging markets.

Book Talk Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi

In July 2022, Professors Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School, and Director of the Mittal Institute, and Michael Szonyi, Frank Wen-Hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History and Former Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, released their edited volume. The launch was followed by a book talk at Harvard in September 2022.

Tarun Khanna

Michael Szonyi

What can India and China, the world’s most populous countries, teach us about meritocracy?

In Making Meritocracy, Professors Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi gathered over a dozen experts from a range of disciplines – political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics – to discuss how these two societies have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. India and China’s attempts at developing meritocracies in the past, present, and future hold lessons for both one another and for the rest of the world – including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

Speakers at the launch of Making Meritocracy (l. to r.): Ajantha Subramanian, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, a contributor to the book; Prof. Tarun Khanna; Prof.

James Robson, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, moderator; on screen, Prof. Szonyi.

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Book Talk The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and Its Reverberations Jennifer Leaning and Shubhangi Bhadada

In October 2022, Jennifer Leaning, Mittal Institute Steering Committee member and Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and Shubhangi Bhadada, Mittal Institute Fellow, released their edited volume. It contains 10 chapters written by 19 authors from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The launch was followed by book talks in India, Dubai, Pakistan and at Harvard.

Jennifer Leaning

Shubhangi Bhadada

Hitesh Hathi (left), Mittal Institute’s Executive Director, welcomes panelists at the launch of the 1947 Partition of British India book release in New Delhi. Book launches were held in Amritsar and New Delhi, India; Dubai, UAE; Lahore, Pakistan; and Cambridge, USA.

Year in Review 2022-23

The 1947 Partition of British India remains the largest instance of forced migration in recorded human history. The book casts a somber yet uplifting light on the enormous challenges the Partition imposed on societies struggling to emerge from generations of colonial rule into a post-war world depleted of resources and a future of uncertain prospects. It is the first collection of chapters related to the Partition studies wherein experts of various disciplines from the three major modern nation-states affected by this cataclysm-Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan-have closely collaborated to develop a nuanced understanding of the consequences of Partition and its impact on the people of the region.

Students

Top and bottom left: Image courtesy of Ghungroo Top right: Photo by Robert Guliani The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

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The Mittal Institute supports Harvard undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in their South Asia-related research and internships, entrepreneurial projects, and oncampus student group activities.

Year in Review 2022-23

STUDENTS

Research, Language and Internship Grants The Mittal Institute supports the work of undergraduate and graduate students focused on deepening their academic engagement with issues facing South Asia through our grants.

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he Mittal Institute provides funding to students for their pursuit of research, language studies, or internships focused on South Asia during the winter and summer recesses.

Winter 2022-2023 Grants Raghunath Akarsh Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2026 Coastal Encounters of Buddhism and Saivism (India) Victoria Andrews Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2025 Tethers to a Land Beyond: Transcultural Currents between Medieval Himalaya and Eastern India Mahdi Chowdhury Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2027 Research Grant for London-based Archives

Camilla Gray Harvard Divinity School, 2023 Engaging with Religious Actors to Improve Gender Inequity in Rohingya Refugee Camps (Bangladesh) Elizabeth Hentschel Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2026 The impact of socioeconomic status on ECD through the pathway of responsive caregiving in Pakistan Seema Kumari Harvard College, 2025 Arunodaya: Sunshine for Blindness (India)

Brian Zhou Harvard College, 2025 Mental Health Research Internship with Sangath in Goa (India) Kiana Rawji Harvard College, 2023 Thesis Film Production on the Indian diaspora in Nairobi (Kenya)

Summer 2023 Grants

Pranav Moudgalya Harvard College, 2026 Studying the Mechanisms of Food Insecurity NGOs in India: Akshay Patra and the Midday Meal Akila Muthukumar Harvard College, 2023 Serving with SEARCH and Sankara Nethralaya (India)

Alvira Tyagi Harvard College, 2025 Global Public Health Internship with SOCHARA (Bangalore, India)

Abhinav Ghosh Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2026 Examining Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in Action (India) Andrew Gordan Harvard College, 2024 Prof. Delacy Guided Program (India)

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Ashutosh Bhuradia Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2026 Misperceptions about Caste and Attitudes toward Affirmative Action among College Students in India Atul Bhattarai Harvard Divinity School, 2024 Exploring Theravada Buddhism in Nepal as a Religious Identity (Nepal) Clare Anderson Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2024 Tropical Agriculturists: The British Colonial Office, Imperial Agriculture, and the Global Tropics (Sri Lanka) Ilgin Nas Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2028 Urdu Language Study through the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) (India) Johanne Donovan Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2028 Sanskrit and Tibetan Study (Nepal) John Lyons Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2023 Prof. Delacy Guided Program (India) Year in Review 2022-23

Joseph Archer Harvard Divinity School, 2024 Prof. Delacy Guided Program (India)

Sciences, 2024 Imaging Motherhood: Representations of the Mother Goddess in South Asia

Kartik Srivastava Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2026 Job referrals and occupational segregation (India)

Student Organization Grants

Meghana Mishra Harvard Medical School, 2024 Prof. Delacy Guided Program (India) Muskaan Arshad Harvard College, 2025 Prof. Delacy Guided Program (India) Poorna Swami Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2028 Ham Kyaa Chahtein?: Feminist Discourses in Hindi-Urdu Print Culture (India) Raghav Chopra Harvard College, 2024 Summer Program: AIIS Lucknow (India) Shruti Gautam Harvard College, 2025 Prof. Delacy Guided Program (India) Vaishnavi Patil Graduate School of Arts and

The Mittal Institute offers grants to undergraduate and graduate student organizations for projects relating to either individual countries or spanning the region of South Asia.

Select student organizations and events funded and partnered with in 2022– 2023 include: — Harvard Ghungroo — Harvard Bhangra — Harvard Pakistan Student Group — South Asian Women’s Collective

Student Spotlight: Arshaya Sood

On Greening Underserved Communities in Mumbai Arshaya Sood, a Master’s student at Harvard Graduate School of Design, was a recipient of a Mittal Institute Summer 2022 Student Grant. She completed a 10-week internship at World Resources Institute in Mumbai, India, exploring a program that works with the city and state governments and the community to improve greening efforts within underserved areas of Mumbai.

Mittal Institute: What were your goals for your work?

What was your role at Mumbai World Resources Institute?

AS: My goal was to understand the power of a design background to better inform how policies play out on the ground in an international development setting. This is the reason I chose to house my internship at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and complete my research for my dissertation. WRI is an international think tank, and the Mumbai WRI office, specifically, advised the government on the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) and assisted with the implementation projects, so it was the perfect fit.

AS: My role was very versatile and included urban planning and policy with a focus on environmental sustainability, health, and community engagement.

During the internship, I consulted the Maharashtra government on the Climate Action Plan, while simultaneously coordinating efforts on the ground by working with local NGOs in Mumbai slums across the city. This work was focused on greening efforts around Mumbai to satisfy funding given by the Caterpillar Foundation and to reach the Climate Action Plan goals set by

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(Top and right) Lullubhai compound. Photos by Arshaya Sood.

the Maharashtra government. My role at WRI was to go beyond planting trees and address trash management, water sourcing, and food production within local underserved slum and resettlement communities.

I worked within three resettlement slums of Mumbai, including Cheeta Camp, Ambojwadi, and Lullubhai Compound.

What were your site visits like?

AS: The site visits were physically and emotionally intense. I went to many with my four teammates, and to some alone. The slum resettlement camps Year in Review 2022-23

were composed of informal building techniques and makeshift infrastructure, meaning they lacked connections to basic services, such as water and sewer systems. There were also no roads and most of the homes were composed of waste materials, such as cardboard, tin, and plastic. I went inside a few homes, and some had proper flooring and TVs inside! Despite the unorganized feel of the space, the slums managed, and I could feel the strong sense of community. Since it was the middle of monsoon season, the slums would be ankle deep with water, so the site visits were a bit messy; however, I was always welcomed by gracious community

members who gave me the run-down of the community’s needs.

The most impactful experience of my summer was having the opportunity to go into the slums and work directly with community members on challenges they faced, such as trash management, food shortages, access to clean water, managing floods from the monsoons, and the list goes on! After our site visits, we would take into consideration what we heard from the community members and work on solutions we could offer through creating maps, drawings, and thinking of ways to improve their livelihoods. We worked with

The community meeting at Lullubhai compound, one of Arshaya’s memorable moments. Photo by Arshaya Sood.

them throughout the whole process of design thinking and brainstorming till implementation.

What was the most memorable moment of your summer?

AS: The most memorable moment of my internship was at a community meeting at Lullubhai compound. We had been planning this community meeting since my first week at WRI, so it felt full circle to conduct the community meeting at the end of my 12 weeks in India. The meeting was at Lullubhai compound and I was shocked at the turnout. Over 20

community members came and voiced a variety of concerns, including lack of recreational spaces, green space, flooding risks, and trash management. When we are aware of the problems the community wants to be involved in improving, we can make more informed design decisions and plan more strategically for long-term interventions. The meeting got heated and I saw the passion in the community members’ eyes. I was excited to see the residents participate so actively in the community meeting. It showed me the work we do deeply impacts others’ lives, and it motivated me to continue this type of work.

What are your career goals?

AS: I want to work in urban policy and/ or consulting after I graduate, so this internship was impactful for my career trajectory. I was exposed to a level of poverty that I had never experienced, and it made me motivated to work on sustainable development and mitigation and adaptation efforts for climate change in developing countries within the private or public sector.

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Arshaya’s daily commute with a local train. Photo by Arshaya Sood.

The most impactful experience of my summer was having the opportunity to go into the slums and work directly with community members. We worked on solutions [like] creating maps, drawings and thinking of ways to improve their livelihoods.

­— ARSHAYA SOOD,

MITTAL INSTITUTE STUDENT GRANT RECIPIENT

Year in Review 2022-23

Scholars

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The Mittal Institute serves as an active platform for connecting faculty and students from across Harvard and other U.S. academic institutions with scholars, public and private organizations, and governments in South Asia.

Year in Review 2022-23

SCHOLARS

Fellows, Artists, Affiliates and Student Associates The Mittal Institute offers fellowships to scholars and practitioners to contribute to self-driven, independent research on South Asia within a variety of disciplines.

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he Mittal Institute provides ever-expanding opportunities for scholarly and artistic exchange between Harvard and South Asia. Each year, scholars from across South Asia as well as South Asia-focused scholars are welcomed to the Harvard campus to engage in scholarly research with some of the leading academics in their fields of interest. In addition, the Mittal Institute offers opportunities for in-region scholars to connect with Harvard’s exceptional resources and faculty while remaining in South Asia.

Fellowships The Syed Babar Ali Fellowship (Cambridge) is a semester-long appointment that supports advanced degree holders and recent PhD recipients in their continued research in areas related to Pakistan.

The Bajaj Visiting Research Fellowship (Cambridge) is a semester-long appointment that supports advanced scholars who have a research interest in India, with priority given to those who

have not previously had access to Harvard’s resources and have primarily been educated in South Asia.

The Mittal Institute India Fellowship (MIIF) (New Delhi) is an academic yearlong appointment that funds highly qualified postdoctoral researchers focused on India or connected with India to be based at the Institute’s New Delhi office and collaborate remotely with Harvard faculty.

The Pakistan In-Region Research Fellowship (Pakistan) supports outstanding junior faculty from reputable universities across Pakistan. Fellows are mentored remotely by a Harvard faculty member in their area of research.

The Raghunathan Family Fellowship (Cambridge) is an academic year-long residency that supports recent PhD recipients in the humanities and social sciences with their research on historical or contemporary South Asia.

South Asia to spend eight weeks on the Harvard campus. The fellowship is research-centered, providing artists with the vast resources of Harvard’s intellectual community to enhance their artistic practice while being mentored by a faculty member.

Research Affiliates The Mittal Institute’s Research Affiliates contribute to Harvard’s scholarship on South Asia through their wealth of expertise on the region, from political economy to public health.

Graduate Student Associates The Mittal Institute supports Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) from across the different schools at Harvard who conduct research focused on South Asia. This program aims to support graduate and Ph.D. students at Harvard and is centered on the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas.

The Visiting Artist Fellowship (Cambridge) is a unique opportunity for mid-career visual artists from around The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

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MAYANKA AMBADE Mittal Institute India Fellow India Ph.D. in Population Studies

AJMAL KHAN AREETHALA Raghunathan Family Fellow India Interdisciplinary Researcher on Environment, Development, and Climate Change

YAQOOB BANGASH Visiting Fulbright Scholar in Residence Pakistan Associate Professor, Centre for Governance and Policy at Information Technology University, Lahore

SHARBENDU DE Visiting Artist Fellow India Lens-based Artist, Academic, and Writer

KHEYA MELO FURTADO Bajaj Visiting Research Fellow India Associate Professor at Goa Institute of Management LIAQUAT CHANNA Syed Babar Ali Fellow Pakistan Professor of English, Balochistan University of I.T, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS), Quetta

MANJOT KAUR Visiting Artist Fellow India Visual Artist Year in Review 2022-23

AMREEN WASIF HUSSAIN Pakistan In-Region Fellow Pakistan Public Health Management Expert

NADHRA KHAN Pakistan In-Region Fellow Pakistan Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture, Lahore University of Management Sciences

DHARA MEHROTRA Visiting Artist Fellow India Visual Artist

AAMINA NIZAR Visiting Artist Fellow Sri Lanka Commercial and Documentary Photographer

TANIA SAEED Visiting Marie Curie Fellow in Residence Pakistan Associate Professor of Sociology, Lahore University of Management Sciences

SRISHTEE SETHI Mittal Institute India Fellow India Ph.D. in Sociology

IAN TALBOT Visiting Scholar in Residence United Kingdom Emeritus Professor in the History of Modern South Asia, University of Southampton

ANKUR TAMULI PHUKAN Mittal Institute India Fellow India Ph.D. in History

KHYATI TRIPATHI Bajaj Visiting Research Fellow India Psychologist and Anthropologist

MARIAM ZIA Syed Babar Ali Fellow Pakistan Assistant Professor and Coordinator in the Department of Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics

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KALAIYARASAN ARUMUGAM Research Affiliate USA/India Postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, Assistant Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, India

NAVEEN BHARATHI Research Affiliate USA Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CASI, University of Pennsylvania

Year in Review 2022-23

ATANU CHAKRABORTY Research Affiliate India Former Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Finance

ABDUL RAZAQUE CHANNA Research Affiliate Pakistan Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Sindh, Pakistan

SANJEEV CHOPRA Research Affiliate India Former Additional Chief Secretary to the Government of West Bengal, India, Departments of Industry, Commerce & Enterprises

MARIAM CHUGHTAI Research Affiliate Pakistan Associate Dean and Assistant Professor, LUMS School of Education; Pakistan Programs Manager, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

RONAK DESAI Research Affiliate USA Attorney, Paul Hastings, Washington

HARDEEP DHILLON Research Affiliate USA Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

SWAGATO GANGULY Research Affiliate India Consulting Editor, The Times of India

RAHUL GUPTA Research Affiliate India Chairman & CEO, JC Flowers Asset Reconstruction, India

CHANDRA MALLAMPALLI Research Affiliate USA Professor of History, Westmont College

AKSHAY MANGLA Research Affiliate United Kingdom Associate Professor in International Business, University of Oxford

DINYAR PATEL Research Affiliate India Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts, S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research

RAILE ROCKY ZIIPAO Research Affiliate India Assistant Professor of Sociology, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

SALIL SHETTY Research Affiliate United Kingdom Vice President, Global Programs, Open Society Foundation

VIDYA SUBRAMANIAN Research Affiliate India Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Jindal Global Law School

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TODD LEWIS Research Affiliate USA Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities, College of the Holy Cross

IMTIAZ UL HAQ Research Affiliate USA Assistant Professor of Economics, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan

Year in Review 2022-23

MICHAEL VAN HAVILL Research Affiliate New Zealand Healthcare Product Design Leader

VERONICA VARGAS Research Affiliate Chile Researcher and Independent Consultant, Harvard University and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)

ASHUTOSH VARSHNEY Research Affiliate USA Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences, Professor of Political Science, and Director at Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University

SURAJ YENGDE Research Affiliate UK/USA Columnist and curator of Dalitality, The Indian Express, London, United Kingdom

FATIMA ZAHRA Research Affiliate USA/Bangladesh Postdoctoral Research Scientist, New York University LAURA WEINSTEIN Research Affiliate USA Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

MUHAMMAD ZAMAN Research Affiliate USA Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Boston University

ROLUAH PUIA Research Affiliate India Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee

SARTHAK AGARWAL Graduate Student Associate PhD Candidate in Population Health Sciences, Harvard University

ASHUTOSH BHURADIA Graduate Student Associate PhD Candidate in the Education Policy, Harvard Graduate School of Education

AKSHAY DIXIT Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate of Political Economy and Government, Harvard University

RONAK JAIN Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in Economics, Harvard University

HANSONG LI Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in Government, Harvard University

NUSRAT JAHAN MIM Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design

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NATASHA MURTAZA Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Government, Harvard University

VAISHNAVI PATIL Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University

Year in Review 2022-23

PARIROO RATTAN Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

TYLER RICHARD Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in South Asian Studies, Harvard University; Assistant Professor of Instruction in Sanskrit and Tamil, University of Texas

SARAH SHAUKAT Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy, Tufts University

KARTIK SRIVASTAVA Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School

AKHIL THOMAS Graduate Student Associate Ph.D. Candidate at the Committee on the Study of Religion, Harvard University

Fellow Spotlight: Ajmal Khan Areethala

On Climate Justice for All Ajmal Khan Areethala, the Mittal Institute’s 2022-2023 Raghunathan Fellow, works at the intersection of the environment, development, and climate change. His research looks at how universal frameworks of climate justice negotiate with local and specific experiences of climate change in regions of South Asia.

Mittal Institute: What sparked your interest in climate change and the environment?

AKA: I was born and grew up in a village called Anchachavadi near Nilambur in the state of Kerala and studied in vernacular government schools nearby.

I belong to a socio-economically and educationally backward community; from early on I did many odd jobs and supported my studies. I had realized the social change and mobility that education can bring to such communities, particularly education for girls, and I was involved in trying to support students to get educated from marginalized backgrounds in India, and I continue to do that. I will most probably be the first person from such a background to hold a fellowship at Harvard University, so thank you!

After my bachelor’s, I got the opportunity to study at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai from where I finished my master’s and Ph.D. in Development Studies. I then briefly taught at Ambedkar University and Ashoka University in Delhi and held a fellowship at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Growing up in a village in the middle of a river and hills, I was fascinated with the natural environment, but that gained my academic attention much later. Studying the natural environment and our interactions with nature and other species intrigued me, and this grew as a philosophical and political interest. In between, I also got an opportunity to work on research projects that were funded by organizations like the International Institute of Environment and Development in London and the World Resources Institute,

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India is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. The photo on the left shows barriers constructed with local technology and materials to prevent sea level rise in Sagar Island, West Bengal. Photos courtesy of Ajmal Khan Areethala

Washington DC. This further drew my attention to climate change, the environment, and climate justice. I was also deeply influenced and disturbed by the Anthropocene proposal and subsequent debates. Then, when you are in countries like India, it’s unlikely that you don’t notice the inequality that is blatant in everything and everywhere.

My Ph.D. research looked at India’s nuclear expansion plan and protest movements at locations where nuclear power projects are being planned and constructed, and the interfaces of environment, energy, and social justice. I conducted fieldwork in the largest nuclear power plant in India, Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, and the proposed world’s biggest nuclear power project in Jaitapur, Maharashtra. I demonstrate the trajectory of the protest movements and argue that they emerged on account of the growing understanding and awareness about nuclear power, its inherent vulnerabilities, and the local perceptions of risks by the fishers, farmers, and other locals.

Mittal Institute: What are you working on during your fellowship?

AKA: I am working on a manuscript that looks at climate justice within India, considering the unique socio-ecological hierarchies and inequalities in the sub-continent. The book pays closer attention to the experience of Dalit, Adivasi (Indigenous people), and Other Year in Review 2022-23

Backward Class communities – farmers, fisher people and women from these groups – to climate change. The book hopes to highlight the limits of the universal frameworks of climate justice in a society where unique forms of injustice, inequalities, and its multiple intersections and intertwined relationships determine and mediate the experience of climate change.

I also hope to observe and understand climate change and the disproportionate burden on the indigenous people, Afro-American, Latinx, and other vulnerable groups in the Americas. I am interested to also understand more about how industry and business engage in climate change here in the U.S., and the social implications of new technologies for carbon capture, geo-engineering, and renewable energy, etc.

Mittal Institute: Climate change is often called the most intractable problem of our time. What does India’s response look like?

AKA: Yes that is true. I was born after a year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed and by now the scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet.

Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future. Many parts of the global south and island na-

tions have already become uninhabitable and communities are moving. Climate change is a “civilizational” crisis, or more specifically, the crisis of the modern industrial civilization supported by fossil fuels, and we as a species must make a concerted effort to radically alter how we live, particularly in the global north, China and India. The world is looking at the Chinese and Indian leadership in terms of future emission reductions. However, we have to understand that around 70 percent of Indians live on less than 2 dollars a day, and half of India’s population is below the age of 25. Though India made considerable progress in solar power, the share of coal is likely to remain the same for the coming decades.

On the other end, India is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world with a huge share of the poor population and population that is dependent on natural resources. Any crisis will make catastrophic impacts at the societal level in India; for example, the world has witnessed what was going on during the COVID pandemic. Our public systems aren’t sufficient to cater to the needs of the people, and inequality exists at all levels within. Hence, India’s response—apart from the mitigation and adaptation targets—should also consider the majority of the poor and vulnerable populations such as Dalit, Adivasis, fisher people, farmers, urban poor, women, and other minorities.

SCHOLARS

Events and Seminars The Mittal Institute strengthens South Asia-related research in a variety of disciplines by providing platforms for scholars to present and discuss their research at our symposia, conferences, workshops, and seminars.

4

conferences

80+

talks and seminars

200+

speakers & panelists

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ach academic year, the Mittal Institute hosts a multitude of events covering topics in the arts, humanities, sciences, education, business, and more. In partnership with relevant organizations, student groups, and academic institutions, the Institute’s events provide platforms for faculty, scholars, industry leaders, and others to present their research, discuss developing issues, and deepen the public’s understanding of the critical issues that South Asia faces.

South Asia Centre at the London School of Economics. We also collaborated with many organizations, such as the Population Foundation of India and BRAC USA.

During the academic year of 2022–2023, these events brought together renowned speakers, including Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Supreme Court of Pakistan; Ranil Wickremesinghe, President of Sri Lanka; and Yamini Aiyer, CEO of the Centre for Policy Research.

Some of our co-sponsors and collaborators included a vast array of departments and programs from across Harvard as well as many universities, including MIT Center for International Studies, the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown Uni­ver­sity, and the

Yamini Aiyer, CEO of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, speaks to a full house.

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Event Series

Lancet Citizens’ Commission Seminars The webinar series intended to serve as a platform for public health discourse in India, and a means for academics, practitioners and the public to engage on substantive and timely issues regarding universal health coverage in India.

Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India Rajani Ved, Director of Health, India office of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) Andrea Wojnar, Country Representative, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

SESSION 1+2: Advancing Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: A step toward Universal Health Coverage (July 11 and Aug 23, 2022)

MIT-Brown-Harvard Joint Seminars

SESSION 3: Linking Public Policy to Impactful Governance: The Critical Role of Parliamentary Constituencies (Sep 26, 2022)

The Brown University, MIT, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University continue to co-host an annual seminar series on South Asian politics.

SESSION 4: Persuading (the low-spending) state governments to focus their limited resources on areas of maximum impact (Dec 12, 2022) SESSION 5: Improving the value derived by patients from out-of-pocket expenditures on health (Jan 24, 2023) Some of the diverse experts who joined the series included: P Kousalya, Founder, Positive Women Network Hwa-Young Lee, Senior Health Systems Researcher, Yonsei University, South Korea and Harvard University, USA

Year in Review 2022-23

SESSION 1: Housing as welfare: How subsidized home ownership generates social mobility through wealth, voice, and dignity in India (Oct 28, 2022) Tanu Kumar, Claremont Graduate University

SESSION 2: Rewriting the Grammar of the Education System: Delhi’s Education Reform (A Tale of Creative Resistance and Creative Disruption) (Nov 1, 2022) Yamini Aiyar, Centre for Policy Research SESSION 3: How Elite Risk Preferences Shape Democracy: Evidence from India and Pakistan (Nov 4, 2022) Vineeta Yadav, Penn State University

State of Architecture Lecture Series The 12-part virtual lecture series launched in the Fall of 2022. The popular series featured 24 young architects from across South Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh, to share their unique practices and to expand their networks.

Events Highlights SEP 19, 2022 REFLECTIONS ON INTERPRETATION AND SERVING IN THE JUDICIARY Intisar Rabb (Moderator) (Speakers) Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Stephen Breyer Co-sponsor: Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and Harvard Law School, International Legal Studies OCT 4, 2022 AI IN SOUTH ASIA - SOCIAL IMPACT Rem Koning (Moderator) (Speakers) Tanuja Ganu, Shalmali Joshi, Shama Karkal NOV 11, 2022 FICTION IN AFGHANISTAN (Speaker) Homeira Qaderi Co-sponsor: Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard FEB 2, 2023 SOUND ECONOMICS CAN ENRICH PAKISTAN Alnoor Bhimani, London School of Economics (Chair) (Speaker) Asim Khwaja Co-sponsor: South Asia Centre at the London School of Economics

FEB 24, 2023 US-CHINA-INDIA TRIPLE ENTENTE IN BANGLADESHD POLICY-MAKING IN INDIA? James Robson (Moderator) (Speakers) Anu Anwar, Michael Kugelman, Geoffrey Macdonald Co-sponsors: Harvard University Asia Center, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University MARCH 24, 2023 A CONVERSATION WITH RANIL WICKREMESINGHE, PRESIDENT OF SRI LANKA Tarun Khanna, Harvard Business School, and Asim Khwaja, Harvard Kennedy School (Moderators) (Speaker) Ranil Wickremesinghe, President of Sri Lanka Co-sponsors: Center for International Development, Harvard

MARCH 27, 2023 ART, AFFECT, ARCHIVE: UDAIPUR’S MONUMENTAL MONSOON MOODS, 1700-1900 Jinah Kim (Moderator) (Speaker) Dipti Khera Co-sponsor: Department of History of Art + Architecture APRIL 26, 2023 TELLINGS, TRANSLATIONS, AND THE UNCANNY: THINKING ABOUT DASTAN-E AMIR HAMZA Ali Asani (Moderator) (Speakers) Mariam Zia, Syed Babar Ali Fellow, Mittal Institute

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INTERROGATING THE INDIGENOUS IN NORTHEAST INDIA CONFERENCE question has become a shared language of social critique in Northeast India.

The conference began with a keynote lecture on “Indigeneity and Contemporary Northeast India: History and its Contingencies” by Professor Arupjyoti Saikia, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. The session then moved into two panel discussions: Vernacular Politics, Ethnic Sovereignties and Politics of Hills and Plains; and the Indigeneity and the Politics of Performance.

On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, the Mittal Institute hosted the “Interrogating the Indigenous in Northeast India: Political Movements, Cultural Poetics, and the Performative Capital” conference, which traced “indigenous” as a historical category, investigating how the indigenous

Year in Review 2022-23

Q&A with Northeast conference convener Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Mittal Institute India Fellow based in the Mittal Institute’s New Delhi office

Mittal Institute: Can you give us a brief overview of the history of the term “indigenous” as it arose in the 20th century, and the shift that’s taken place in recent times?

Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Mittal Institute India Fellow

ATP: The circulation of the idea of “indigenous” is a very recent phenomenon in Northeast Indian politics. Just ten years ago, you would have found terms or identity articulations like ‘tribal-local’ dominating the political and social psyche. However, at that point, there was a hesitant—but nonetheless serious—conversation aimed to create some sort of a space where the so-called “other,” or the “non-local” could also claim their membership within the structure of the mainstream Northeastern society. This has changed in recent times as a very rigid, simplistic binary of indigenous/settler, insider/outsider, or tribal/non-tribal has emerged as fundamental identity assertions in the area. Of course, there have been no more attempts of ethnic cleansing, rioting or intense insurgency and counter-insurgency operations like we witnessed in the past, but this strict and emerging binary has also triggered a different method of mobilization with a

rigidity that is sharp and constant. This is a change that I feel calls for serious academic engagement.

Why is it critical to interrogate indigeneity in Northeast India?

ATP: I believe indigenous identity—or any identity, for that matter—is not a phenomenon beyond time. It has its own time map and thus can be traced to historical shifts and changes. For instance, without British colonialism and their classificatory politics of space and people in this area, we would have something completely different in terms of locating our own identity, as well as others. If we believe in this foundational historical rationality, then tracing the historical and technological strategies of constituting a certain identity is significant in order to understand and, possibly, unsettle the existing politics and to collectively think for a different future.

We hope the conference will be a step in that direction.

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ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM MAY 2023: CULTURE, CLIMATE, HEALTH – A MORE RESILIENT SOUTH ASIA The next panel, “Pathways Towards Universal Health Coverage,” featured Prof.

Vikram Patel of Harvard Medical School and the Lancet Citizens’ Commission, who presented research on ways to achieve universal health coverage in India with leading experts.

Scholars, practitioners and students gathered for the Mittal Institute’s flagship spring event, the Annual Cambridge Symposium, to present work and discuss ideas central to South Asia. This year’s conference focused on the theme of “resiliency.”

The day opened with Harvard professor Maya Jasanoff in conversation with Reema Nanavaty of SEWA, discussing working on the ground with women in marginalized communities in the region.

Parimal Patil, chair of Harvard’s South Asian Studies department, moderated a panel that highlighted young scholars who are working at the forefront of a wide range of scholarship on South Asia.

Watch the Mittal Institute’s Annual Cambridge Symposium videos here:

The final panel on the arts in Afghanistan was moderated by Homi Bhaba, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities. The panel probed the ideas of loss, risk, triumph, and what each has sacrificed since the Taliban returned to power.

ANNUAL HARISH C. MAHINDRA LECTURE WITH MADHUR JAFFREY

Mittal Institute's 2023 Harish C. Mahindra Lecture featured Madhur Jaffrey (left), in conversation with Prof. Abhijit Banerjee of MIT (right).

Year in Review 2022-23

On the eve of the Annual Cambridge Symposium, Madhur Jaffrey gave Mittal Institute's Annual Harish C. Mahindra Lecture. Jaffrey is widely celebrated for having first introduced Indian food to the West, with over 15 cookbooks, including classics such as Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible and Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. She was in conversation with Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT, who has also

written on the delights of Indian food in Cooking to Save Your Life.

Watch the lecture here:

Administration EXECUTIVE COUNCIL Aditya and Megha Mittal (UK) Lakshmi and Usha Mittal (UK) KP Balaraj, MBA ’97 (India), Chair, Advisory Council Sumir Chadha, MBA ’97 (USA), Chair, Advisory Council Dipti Mathur (USA), Chair, Arts Council Tarun Khanna (USA), Faculty Director, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute

ADVISORY COUNCIL

ARTS COUNCIL

Chairs: KP Balaraj, MBA ’97 (India) Sumir Chadha, MBA ’97 (USA)

Faculty Director: Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of ­Indian and South Asian Art, Harvard University (USA); Chair: Dipti Mathur (USA) Arts Program Advisors: Shanay Jhaveri (USA), Meena Sonea Hewett (USA)

Aditya and Megha Mittal (UK) Lakshmi and Usha Mittal (UK) Syed Babar Ali, AMP ’73 (Pakistan) Kushagra Nayan Bajaj (India) Lucinda Bhavsar MBA ’97 (USA) Kuntala Das and Bharat Das ’08, s/o late Purandar Das (USA) Mark Fuller ’75, MBA ’78, JD ’79, and Jo Froman (USA) Meera Gandhi (USA) Vikram Gandhi, MBA ’89, ExEd ’00 (USA/India) Mala Haarmann ’91, MBA ’96 (UK) Rajiv Kothari OPM '14 (USA) Anuradha and Anand Mahindra ’77, MBA ’81 (India) Dipti Mathur (USA) Karen ’82, and Sanjeev Mehra ’82, MBA ’86 (USA) Victor Menezes (USA) Chandrika and Dalip Pathak (UK) Chandni and Mukesh Prasad ’93 (USA) Sribala Subramanian and Arvind Raghunathan (USA) Rajiv and Anupa Sahney (India) Gaurav ’96 and Falguni Shah (USA) Vimal MBA ’02 and Punyashree Shah (USA) Vijay Shekhar Sharma (India) Parul and Gaurav Swarup, MBA ’80 (India) Tom Varkey MBA ’97 (USA) Osman Khalid Waheed ’93 (Pakistan) Arshad Zakaria ’85, MBA ’87 (USA)

Archan Basu ’93 and Madeline Jie Wang ’97 (USA) Poonam Bhagat (India) Anurag Bhargava (India/USA) Radhika Chopra MPP ’96 (India) Sunil Hirani (USA) Chandrika Pathak (UK/India) Pinky and Sanjay Reddy (India) Omar Saeed (Pakistan) Sana Rezwan Sait (USA) Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani (Bangladesh) Shilpa Sanger (USA) Gaurav and Falguni Shah (USA) Osman Khalid Waheed ’93 (Pakistan)

FRIENDS OF THE INSTITUTE Nadeem Elahi MBA ’01 (Pakistan) Namita Luthra and Anil Shrivastava AB '90, MBA '96 (USA) Usha and Diaz Neesamoney (USA) Anwarul Quadir Foundation (USA)

INDIA ADVISORY BOARD Aditya and Megha Mittal (UK) Lakshmi and Usha Mittal (UK) Gobind Akoi GMP ’10 (India) KP Balaraj MBA ’97 (India) Sumir Chadha MBA ’97 (USA) Radhika Chopra MPP ’96 and Rajan Anandan (India) The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

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FACULTY CABINET Chair: Tarun Khanna, Faculty Director; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School; Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School Martha Chen, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School Asim Khwaja, Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art, Harvard University Jennifer Leaning, Senior Research Fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Professor of the Practice at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health

Ali Asani, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies; Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard University Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Member of the Faculty of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School Durba Mitra, Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor, Radcliffe Institute; Assistant Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Parimal G. Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Committee on the Study of Religion; Chair of the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University Ajay Singh, Senior Associate Dean for Postgraduate Medical Education, Harvard Medical School; Director, Master in Medical Sciences in Clinical Investigation (MMSCI) Program

Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Doris Sommer, Ira Jewell Williams, Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and in African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Venkatesh Murthy, Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University

Pawan Sinha, Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Vikram Patel, The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health, Harvard Medical School

Milind Tambe, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Research in Computation and Society (CRCS), Harvard University

Kristen A. Stilt, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School Conor Walsh, Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

FACULTY STEERING COMMITTEE * includes members of Cabinet

Year in Review 2022-23

Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science, Brown University; Director, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University Muhammad H. Zaman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health, Boston University

MITTAL INSTITUTE ADMINISTRATION Tarun Khanna, Faculty Director; Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Hitesh M. Hathi, Executive Director Mirela Vaso, Director of Finance and Administration

CAMBRIDGE Shubhangi Bhadada, Project and Research Director, Lancet Citizens’ Commission Carlin Carr, Communications Manager Ahva Davis-Shiva, Financial Associate Neha B. Joseph, Research Fellow Kellie Nault, Writer/Editor Selmon Rafey, Program Manager Sneha Shrestha, Arts Program Manager Danielle Wallner, Programs and Administrative Coordinator

IN-REGION India Amit Chaudhary, Administrative & HR Coordinator, Harvard Global Research Support Centre India Pooja Gupta, Communications Director, Lancet Citizens’ ­Commission Sweekruthi Kaveripatnam, Program Manager, Scienspur Sushma Mehta, Grant and Finance Manager, Harvard Global Research Support Centre India Namita Varma, Program Coordinator, Harvard Global Research Support Centre India Pakistan Mariam Chughtai, Pakistan Programs Director Nepal Pukar Malla, Nepal Programs Director Monika Setia, Associate Country Director, Harvard Global Research Support Centre India

The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

CGIS South, 4th Floor, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA B- 43, Middle Circle, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110001, India Lahore University of Management Sciences, DHA, Lahore Cantt. 54792, Lahore, Pakistan https://mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu/