Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971. To mark 50 years of Bangladesh’s independence, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University held a virtual conference, “Bangladesh @ 50: Looking Back, Looking Forward” on March 3 and 4, 2021. The conference highlighted the arc of Bangladesh’s history from the Language Movement through the Liberation War to the present – and the future.
The Mittal Institute’s April 7 talk, “The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan,” is headlined by Ian Talbot, Mittal Institute Research Affiliate and Professor in History and Director of the Centre for Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, University of Southampton. Ian has written extensively on the themes of the colonial Punjab, the Partition of India, and the political history of Pakistan, and is the author of a 2021 book, The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan. The Mittal Institute caught up with Ian to discuss his early education, research motivations, and his new publication.
The Biden Administration Must Democratize International Education. This article, by Mittal Institute Research Affiliate Dinyar Patel, originally appeared in Foreign Affairs.
The Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System is an ambitious, cross-sectoral initiative to lay out the path to universal health coverage in India. Its guiding principle is that structural change toward universal health coverage can only be achieved through consultative and participatory engagement with the diverse sectors involved in healthcare and, most importantly, with India’s citizenry.
This event aimed to introduce the Commission to the Harvard community and invite students, researchers, faculty, and alumni to participate in the initiative. It consisted of a panel discussion featuring several of the Commission’s co-chairs and commissioners, who are leading voices from across India’s healthcare landscape. They discussed the Commission’s five work streams (citizens’ engagement, financing, governance, human resources, and technology) and ways to get involved.
By Keya Lamba and Shweta Bahri, Harvard College ‘20. Earth Warriors is an early childhood education curriculum that uses play-based learning and a solutions-oriented approach to teach young children (3-7 years old) about climate change and sustainability. Climate change, pollution, and unsustainable levels of waste have led to an environmental crisis that can no longer be denied, and it is crucial for people to start building sustainable habits and reducing waste production from a young age to combat it. Yet, less than five countries in the world have climate change as part of their mandatory education curriculum, and none have it as part of their early curriculum.
In the third episode of The COVID Chronicles podcast, Dr. Satchit Balsari speaks with Manoj Mohanan, Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Mohanan’s team’s recent paper, published in Lancet Global Health, reports that seroprevalence (the number of individuals in a population who test positive for a specific disease based on serology specimens) in Mumbai varies from 55–61% in the slums, to 12–19% in non-slum settings.
We spoke with one of the experts who participated in the “Economic Development: From ‘Basket Case’ to Emerging Economy” panel, Sajeda Amin, Senior Associate at the Population Council in New York, about her years of work with women’s empowerment in Bangladesh. Sajeda Amin conducts intervention research on empowerment programs for girls and women and writes about the role of education and work opportunities in girls’ and women’s lives. She has designed and implemented interventions to prevent violence and child marriage by empowering adolescent girls and has studied their outcomes in Bangladesh, India, Mali, Malawi, and Niger.