This summer, the Mittal Institute’s New Delhi office hosted a series of impactful events and visits, fostering intellectual engagement, artistic exploration, and dialogue on critical issues across various fields.
The Mittal Institute’s CommunityHATS project, funded by Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, was conceptualized as a way to address a major gap in the data related to heat impacts. Often macro-level data on temperature fails to capture the impacts on the most vulnerable, including informal workers who labor in exterior spaces without protection from extreme temperatures. This summer, two members of the CommunityHATS team traveled to Ahmedabad City in Gujarat, India, to work with the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in deploying sensors to collect temperature data from poor working women and their environments. Their work occurred concurrently with one of the most extreme heatwaves India has ever faced.
In an op-ed in The Indian Express, members of the Mittal Institute’s climate team + partners working on climate change adaptation in South Asia write on heatwaves and the need for a detailed understanding of how different communities are impacted by and react to the heat.
The burden of climate mitigation needs to be borne by all countries globally and equitably, but South Asia urgently needs to focus on adapting to the impacts of climate change the region is already seeing. In 2023, with the goal of increasing focus on adaptation, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute (the Mittal Institute) launched a climate platform.
As the summer approaches, the Mittal Institute extends a warm invitation to Harvard’s community to visit the New Delhi Office. Whether using the office space to conduct research, participating in scholarly discussions, or immersing oneself in the vibrant academic milieu of the region, the office offers a unique opportunity to engage with South Asia’s rich cultural heritage and scholarly legacy. The office has planned several events that will connect Harvard with India’s intellectual scene. Come and be a part of it!
Dr. Bharat Vatwani, one of the speakers at LMSAI’s Annual Cambridge Symposium: Science and Technology – the Future of South Asia, is a psychiatrist based in Mumbai who has dedicated much of his professional career to aiding the mentally ill. Together with his wife, Dr. Smitha, he founded Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation in 1988, an NGO dedicated to treating mentally ill and unhoused individuals in India. He shared more about his life’s work in the Q&A below, and previewed what attendees can expect at his fireside chat.
The multimedia exhibition HUM SAB EK (We Are One) launched this past week at CGIS South (read an interview with project leader Dr. Satchit Balsari here). Ahead of the April 15 Opening Reception, we spoke with some of the students who volunteered their time to make this exhibition a reality. Few had prior experience bringing an exhibit to life, yet they all pitched in to make it a reality. They hail from departments and schools across Harvard, with a variety of academic backgrounds and interests. Together they created something powerful, and look forward to bringing their immersive show to sites around the U.S. in in South Asia.
Vellai Mozhi – Frankly Speaking is a powerful first-person account of a hijra-thirunangai-transfeminine experience in southern India. A. Revathi enacts her life as a Tamil trans woman, stringing stories about finding community, navigating family relationships, encountering violence, building solidarities, finding and losing love, and discovering the joys of writing and performing. A. Revathi previewed the upcoming April 18 event for us in a Q&A.
April 15 will mark the launch of a new multi-media exhibition on the Harvard campus, titled HUM SAB EK (We Are One). The project leader is Dr. Satchit Balsari, Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and LMSAI Steering Committee member. In this Q+A, Satchit Balsari talks about the ideation of the exhibition, what difficulties the curatorial team came across, and the lessons that public health can learn from poor working women in India.