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Category : India

Unraveling the Partition’s History Through First-Person Stories

Aug 8, 2019 | Announcements, In Region, India, News, Partition, Students

Unraveling the Partition’s History Through First-Person Stories

The Mittal Institute’s 1947 Partition of British India project seeks to unravel the history behind one of the world’s largest forced migration events, allowing us to understand the implications of mass dislocations across geographies. Despite the amount of established historical and political scholarship on the Partition, there is still much to uncover through oral accounts from minority groups within India — specifically, from Muslim families who did not migrate to Pakistan.

The New B4 Science Fellows Arrive in Cambridge from India

Aug 8, 2019 | Announcements, B4 Program, In Region, India, News

The New B4 Science Fellows Arrive in Cambridge from India

The Building Bharat-Boston Biosciences (B4) Program, run by the Mittal Institute and funded by the Department of Biotechnology within the Government of India, aims to connect the scientific institutions of India and Boston to collaborate, share research, and build new knowledge in the field of biosciences. As part of the program, the Mittal Institute brings five scientific fellows from India to Cambridge to work in labs with faculty mentors across Harvard University and other local institutions. This week, our five visiting B4 fellows and some of their mentors came together over a lunch hosted by the Mittal Institute with Professor Venkatesh Murthy, faculty lead of the B4 program and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, to kick off the B4 fellowship.

Electrifying Rural India with Solar Energy

Jul 10, 2019 | Alumni, Announcements, In Region, India, News, Students

Electrifying Rural India with Solar Energy

In 1979, an organization named Gram Vikas emerged in Odisha with the goal of supporting marginalized communities in India — from providing cleaner ways to access water and sanitation, to the construction of schools and renewable energy sources. Today, Gram Vikas is working on a project to revive a solar micro-grid in Maligaon that had broken down in 2013 after its power source became depleted. Without improvement of the micro-grid, electricity in the community is unstable, and blackouts can last months at a time. Eshaan Patheria, a Harvard College ’18 alumnus, joined the organization as an SBI Youth for India Fellow in 2018, and now oversees the micro-grid renewal project in Maligaon. In partnership with the local community, Patheria’s team is using modern technologies to improve quality of life throughout the district.

Gramhal: Breaking the Cycle of Debt for India’s Farmers

Jun 13, 2019 | Announcements, In Region, India, News, Students

Gramhal: Breaking the Cycle of Debt for India’s Farmers

Every 30 minutes, a farmer in India commits suicide. That haunting fact is the inspiration behind a new social enterprise and digital platform called Gramhal, which will streamline the work of smallholder farmers in India, while increasing their income. Co-founders Vikas Birhma, originally from a village in Northern India, and Pankaj Mahalle, from a small village in Central India, met and became friends at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. “We both had lived experiences of agrarian hardships and poverty, which became a strong undercurrent of our friendship,” Birhma said.

Meet: Rebuilding Trust in India’s Job Market

May 28, 2019 | Announcements, Faculty, In Region, India, News, Students

Meet: Rebuilding Trust in India’s Job Market

“The pathway from education to employment for Indian youth is, simply put, failing them,” says Vish Srivastava, co-founder of India’s newest employment app, Meet. Alongside co-founder Ankit Chugh, the two have built a platform to address the difficulties that India’s job market presents, with 30% of Indians aged 15-29 either unemployed or not enrolled in an educational institution or skills training program.

Transforming Mumbai’s Indigenous Settlement Infrastructure

May 17, 2019 | Announcements, Faculty, India, News, Students

Transforming Mumbai’s Indigenous Settlement Infrastructure

Over the Spring semester, Professor Rahul Mehrotra of the Harvard Graduate School of Design challenged his students in an Option Studio to examine the sanitation infrastructure of Mumbai. They were given one ultimate goal: to build a wide-ranging strategy that would upgrade the indigenous settlements of the Koli or fishing community and integrate them into the broader urban system through sanitation infrastructure.

We’re Hiring! Communications Manager: New Delhi Office

May 14, 2019 | Announcements, In Region, India, News

The Mittal Institute engages in interdisciplinary research to advance and deepen the understanding of critical issues in South Asia and the region’s relationship with the world. It holds regular events on issues relating to South Asia; offers fellowships and grants to further the study of the South Asian region; produces research and programs on social, economic, scientific, and political issues in South Asia; and much more. We are seeking a Communications Manager to handle content, communications, press relations, and event outreach in our New Delhi office.

Riskboard: Using Tech and Social Media to Protect Human Rights

May 14, 2019 | Announcements, In Region, India, News, Students

Riskboard: Using Tech and Social Media to Protect Human Rights

Each year, the Mittal Institute’s Seed for Change competition invites Harvard students to propose projects that can positively impact societal, economic, or environmental issues in India and Pakistan, helping to develop innovation and entrepreneurship in the two countries. This year, a close competition provided grants to one winning team and two runners-up to develop their projects. Riskboard, a runner-up, is an app in development by four Harvard students that will harness online data via social media and open source media data sites to monitor political risk and human rights abuses in India.

Powering the Personal Health Record: Catalysts and Barriers in India

Apr 11, 2019 | Announcements, Faculty, In Region, India, News, Social Enterprise

Powering the Personal Health Record: Catalysts and Barriers in India

On April 3rd, the India Digital Health Net (IDHN), a multidisciplinary research and development initiative established to support an Application Programming Interface-enabled (API) federated health data architecture in India, convened a workshop in New Delhi to learn from the several initiatives across the country that are building components of what may ultimately become India’s health tech grid.  The workshop was organized with support from the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute and the Asia Center. Dr. Satchit Balsari (Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) and Professor Tarun Khanna (Harvard Business School) served as co-chairs of the event.

5 Ways to Promote Scientific Advancement in India

Apr 11, 2019 | Announcements, In Region, India, News

5 Ways to Promote Scientific Advancement in India

Are we doing enough to promote science in India? Do we understand its link to the economy? And what needs to be done to promote learning and collaboration in India?

These were some of the questions we set out to answer during our first-ever Annual India Symposium, “Science & Society,” in New Delhi on April 4, 2019. We brought together five panel sessions containing Indian and foreign scientists, government representatives, and industry leaders to discuss, debate, and brainstorm ideas that can advance scientific learning and understanding in India.