Aditya Anand, a 2025–26 Mittal Institute India Fellow (MIIF), is exploring the growing intersections between climate change, landslide risk and community vulnerability in the Indian Himalayas. His research focuses on how changing rainfall and temperature patterns are reshaping landslide risks in the Garhwal Himalaya, with a particular focus on Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand.
Growing up in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India, Ritesh Deokar never imagined he would one day study at Harvard. After building a career in public service and development, he came to Harvard Kennedy School to deepen his understanding of public policy, graduating this past spring with a Master in Public Policy (MPP) degree. In this Q&A, he reflects on his journey from India to Harvard and how the experience has shaped his approach to policymaking and his hopes for India’s future.
In 2022, Electric Rehri (or e-Rehri for short) was named a winner of the Mittal Institute’s Seed for Change competition for its work to make street vending more sustainable and affordable. The project retrofits traditional Indian street carts with electric vehicle technology, helping vendors transport fresh produce more efficiently while reducing emissions. Since receiving the grant, e-Rehri has moved from an initial prototype to the deployment of a fleet of electric carts in Chandigarh, India. Founded by Gauri Nagpal, a 2023 graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and current doctoral candidate at Cornell University, the initiative demonstrates how community-driven ideas can lead to practical solutions that support local livelihoods and advance sustainable urban mobility. Below, Nagpal reflects on the project’s journey, its progress to date, and what comes next for e-Rehri.
Dr. Mir Sumira is a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, where she studies disaster risk reduction, climate resilience, and sustainable development, with a focus on vulnerable mountain regions. Her current research uses geospatial technologies to develop a GIS-based Digital Land Resilience Model (DLRM) to help assess climate risks and land resilience in rapidly growing metropolitan areas of the Indian Himalayas. In this Q&A, Sumira discusses her research, how the model works, and how it could help Himalayan cities better understand climate-related risks and plan for a more resilient future.
The Mittal Institute is excited to announce the release of the 2025–26 Year in Review report. As every year, the comprehensive Year in Review Report includes updates on all major faculty-led programs, lists awards and fellowships, highlights the work of students, student organizations, and scholars, and summarizes events and other achievements. The report offers valuable insights into the institute’s mission of connecting Harvard and South Asia.
What can life in an Indian village teach us about democracy? In the upcoming Oct 14 talk, “Why Democracy Needs Cultivation: Lessons from an Indian Village”, Professor Mukulika Banerjee of the London School of Economics and Political Science draws on more than 20 years of ethnographic research to explore the connections between democracy, citizenship, farming, and everyday village life. Professor Banerjee’s research focuses on democracy, elections, citizenship, and political life in South Asia. She is the author of Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India and Why India Votes?, and her work offers a close look at how democratic practices take shape in the everyday lives of citizens. We spoke with her about her research ahead of the talk, which is co-sponsored by the Mittal Institute and the Asia Center at Harvard University.
The Mittal Institute co-hosted a conversation with Punya Salila Srivastava, IAS, Union Health Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, on major developments in public health in India. Secretary Srivastava provided an overview of India’s healthcare landscape and recent progress, including reductions in maternal mortality and progress toward Universal Health Coverage. Drawing on examples from across India’s health system, she highlighted efforts to leverage technology to improve health outcomes, strengthen pandemic preparedness, expand access to affordable care, and engage communities in advancing health programs.
Dr. Animesh Bag, the Mittal Institute’s Raghunathan Family Fellow, is exploring how American print culture shaped perceptions of India and Indian immigrants in the early twentieth century. He is working with Prof. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University Department of History. Dr. Bag’s research examines newspapers, magazines, missionary publications, and revolutionary writings to trace how ideas about race, immigration, and belonging were produced and challenged across borders. We spoke with Bag about what brought him to this research, what he is uncovering in the archives, and what these histories can tell us about race, migration, and representation today.
As a Mittal Institute student grant recipient, Tara Hein, a PhD student at Harvard, spent summer 2026 in Kerala, India, conducting research for her project, “Seeing like a Citizen: Fragmented Citizenship in Santiago, Chile and Kerala, India.” Her research explores how people’s experiences with the state—particularly when government services and institutions are highly visible but unevenly delivered—shape how they understand and engage with citizenship. Building on interviews conducted in Santiago, Chile, she traveled to Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram to further develop her research through interviews with residents in Kerala. She shares more about her summer in her grant report.
From Mumbai to Kabul, Rahul Mehrotra, Mittal Institute steering committee member and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at Harvard GSD, showcased two sides of his work this summer. “Contextures” at TARQ in Mumbai explores the work of RMA Architects, while “The Architectures of Transition” in Kabul highlights 41 emerging architecture practices across South Asia and asks how architecture can respond to a region in transition.
Dr. Tulasi Srinivas, Professor of Anthropology, Religion and Transnational Studies at Emerson College and a Centenary Guggenheim Fellow, was a panelist at the Mittal Institute’s Annual Symposium, Living with Rivers, where she explored the relationship between rivers, design, and urban development. Drawing on her childhood in Bangalore, Srinivas reflects on how a waterway she knew only as a polluted drain was, in fact, a sacred river with deep historical and cultural significance. In the essay below, she traces her journey to uncover the lost Vrishabhavathi River—and reflects on how Bangalore’s transformation has turned a source of life and memory into a conduit for pollution.
Dr. Thiyagaraj Gurunathan is the Jamnalal Kaniram Bajaj Fellow for Fall 2026, working with Prof. David Jones, A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine and Chair of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. An early-career researcher at the intersection of health humanities and cultural studies, his work examines the cultural meanings of contagion in South Asia, particularly in India, with a focus on caste, disease, and outbreak narratives. During his fellowship at Harvard, he is drawing on his background in literature and cultural studies to advance his research toward the history of medicine. We spoke with Dr. Gurunathan about his research and his hopes for his fellowship.