WHEN
Thu, Jul 19, 2018 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm
VENUE
Annexe Building, Lecture Room 1, India International Center, New Delhi
India’s coal industry is highly contested today. Between the immediacy of coal shortages, the transition to renewable energy, and air pollution problems, the long history of the coal industry and India’s deep economic and social dependence on the fuel gets lost in conversation. In this talk, Rohit will give a brief historical sketch of the […]
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Tue, Nov 5, 2019 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm
Economic corridors — ambitious infrastructural development projects throughout Asia and Africa — are dramatically redefining the shape of urbanization. As these corridors cut across croplands, the conversion of agricultural lands into new urban uses has erupted in volatile land conflicts. This talk will focus on urbanization along the first economic corridor built in India, the […]
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Thu, Oct 24, 2019 from 04:00am — 06:00am
VENUE
India International Centre
This talk-cum-demonstration will focus on the development of the Soft Robotics STEM kit for students designed by researchers at Harvard Biodesign Lab.
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Wed, Oct 23, 2019 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm

After the 1880s, Mysore was established as the home of the royal family. Despite its interrupted and uncertain status as a “capital” city, it became the site of an experiment in ornamentalism by the 20th century. It was among the first cities in India to have a City Improvement Trust in 1903, a few years after the Bombay Improvement Trust was set up in 1898. In the Trust’s negotiations with the municipality on the one hand, and the Palace establishment on the other, we see a specific form of material and temporal “ordering” that drew as much on the sovereign power of the monarch — though mediated by an increasingly powerful bureaucracy — as on a creative adaptation of the diverse forces, techniques, and devices more properly associated with “governmentality.” How does the invention of Royal Mysore challenge existing conceptions of the colonial city as a site of modernity?
Speaker:
Janaki Nair, Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University
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Fri, Oct 25, 2019 from 04:00pm — 05:30pm
Delusional States is the first in-depth study of state-making and social change in Gilgit-Baltistan, a Shia-majority region of Sunni-dominated Pakistan and a contested border area that forms part of disputed Kashmir. Ali will discuss how Gilgit-Baltistan’s image within Pakistan as an idyllic paradise overlooks how the region is governed as a suspect security zone and dispossessed through multiple processes of state-making, including representation, militarization, and sectarianized education.
Speakers:
Nosheen Ali, Karti Dharti, Institute for Ecological Studies, Pakistan
Ali Asani, Harvard University, will moderate the discussion
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Thu, Sep 19, 2019 from 05:00pm — 07:00pm

The panel will discuss the recent events in Jammu and Kashmir, including the lead-up to the dissolution of its special autonomous status, the current situation on the ground, and the greater geopolitical implications of the recent change in status. Speakers include:
Salil Shetty, Former Secretary General of Amnesty International and Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School
Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University
Prerna Singh, Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Ashwaq Masoodi, Nieman Fellow, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University
Beena Sarwar, Affiliated Faculty, Emerson University; Editor, Aman Ki Asha
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Tue, Sep 24, 2019 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm
In India, subaltern groups must resort to the universalizing vocabulary of citizenship in order to stake claims for redistribution and recognition. But on what basis do they do this — especially under severe coercion? Alf Nilsen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pretoria, will explore this question by investigating movement patterns in the Bhil heartland of western India, where Adivasi communities have organized and mobilized against the tyranny of the local state.
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