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Shedding Light on Economic Performance in South Asia

Shedding Light on Economic Performance in South Asia

Imtiaz ul Haq is a Financial Sector Consultant at the World Bank and a Research Affiliate at the Mittal Institute, formerly a Fellow at both the Mittal Institute and the Gui2de Initiative at Georgetown University. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Manchester. In this article, ul Haq delves into a new, unconventional method to measure economic performance in South Asia.

Architectural and Urban Ecosystems in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps

Architectural and Urban Ecosystems in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps

By Tommy Schaperkotter. This summer I traveled to Bangladesh to survey and conduct fieldwork in the Rohingya refugee camps located in the Ukhiya and Teknaf regions, adjacent to the country’s border with Myanmar. I am pursuing this research as a component of a publication and my master’s thesis at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, which addresses the architectural and urban patterns of refugee settlements created in the wake of forced migration that has engendered a humanitarian crisis heretofore unprecedented. This crisis is often explained as one of refugees, but not always as one of refuge, of architectural spaces where the voices, memories, and capabilities of people are held in abeyance, precluded from substantive participation in the creation of their own built environment.

Can Water Filtration Systems End Fluorosis in Rural India?

Can Water Filtration Systems End Fluorosis in Rural India?

Until recently, Jhabua — a district in the western part of Madhya Pradesh — was largely a tribal area. But despite its recent development, village communities in the area still lack access to basic resources, such as education, proper nutrition, and clean drinking water. In these communities, excess fluoride in the water has caused skeletal and dental fluorosis, which, at their most severe, can result in stunted, abnormal growth, and damaged joints and bones.

Students and Teachers Take on Robots in India

Students and Teachers Take on Robots in India

The Toolkit team develops low-cost Toolkits that can be used in underserved classrooms in India, their ultimate goal to educate students in cutting-edge soft robotics research through hands-on, cognitive learning. After years of development in the US, the team took its first step in India this week and conducted its first workshop in Delhi with a group of educators and students.

Defluoridation of Water: Innovative Tech Solutions for a Spreading Health Crisis

Defluoridation of Water: Innovative Tech Solutions for a Spreading Health Crisis

As part of our ongoing India Seminar Series, we put together a panel titled, “Tackling Fluorosis: Innovative Technology as a Solution to the Spreading Health Crisis”. The event was part of a project funded by the Tata Trusts-Mittal Institute initiative called “Multidisciplinary Approaches to Innovative Social Enterprises.” The project looks at scalable and affordable methods of removing fluoride from drinking water in fluoride heavy rural areas, where there is a dearth of access to even the very basic resources like proper nutrition, education, and clean drinking water.

Unspoken Story – A Conversation About Mental Health

As part of the India seminar series, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University partnered with Sangath and It’s Okay to Talk for an event titled ‘Unspoken Story’. The event was a conversation between Vikram Patel, The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health, Harvard Medical School and two young women on their personal journey and experiences with mental health.

Student voices: The Politics of Knowledge

“It takes a greater-than-normal effort of the imagination to travel from a manor house library on a Scottish island to a desert outpost in the Deccan,” writes Joshua Ehrlich, PhD candidate in history, who conducted archival research over the summer in the UK for his dissertation on the East India Company.