International collaborations and fieldwork will be an essential part of the program. In addition to the NSF arrangement, Brown has already developed relationships with institutions abroad, including the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. CSDS will support Brown faculty and graduate student research in India, and Brown will in turn host faculty and students affiliated with CSDS.

Brown’s Graduate Program in Development will stress interdisciplinary approaches to understanding inequality. Training will also emphasize policy-relevant research. Brown faculty are currently engaged in a variety of research projects on issues of inequality in India. The NSF grant will provide support for these and new initiatives. On the topic of economic markets and inequality, Professor of Economics Andrew Foster is collaborating with the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi to study how the emergence and integration of markets is changing income distribution and mobility in rural India. Foster is also studying how air quality regulations disparately impact people from different social classes in New Delhi.

Kaivan Munshi, professor of economics, and Nancy Luke, assistant professor of sociology, are collaborating on two studies on public health and inequality. They have researched how resource disparities between sexual partners influence risk behavior and overall health in India and Kenya. Munshi and Luke are also developing a project to evaluate how communities in India respond to the failures of market institutions and the public health system to provide basic health services. Brown faculty also study the relationship between governance and inequality in India. Associate Professor of Sociology Patrick Heller researches how forms of local governance affect the participation of the poor in Brazil, India, South Africa. Professor of Political Science Ashutosh Varshney is leading a four-country collaborative study on political engagement and ethnic strife.

The Graduate Program in Development will be housed at the Watson Institute and directed by Barbara Stallings, the William R. Rhodes Research Professor, and Heller.

By Year of India Coordinator Anastasia Aguiar ’09.

Read the University’s press release here.

12/14/09:

During the discussion, titled “South Asia Rising,” Professor of Political Science Ashutosh Varshney, Professor of Sociology Patrick Heller, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Shayoni Mitra and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Meera Viswanathan debated the extent to which the sub-continent was actually rising. ”Politically and economically speaking, I think it would be wrong to say that South Asia is rising,” Varshney said to the dozens of students and faculty assembled in the Joukowsky Forum. “It would be more accurate to say that India is rising, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have an opportunity to rise, while Pakistan remains mired in internal troubles,” he continued.

India’s economic boom — that will continue to be stimulated by high investments and savings–has fueled the country’s rise, which has been further facilitated by India’s remarkable status as a democracy, he said. The end of the civil war in Sri Lanka and the tentative economic and democratic progress in Bangladesh has strengthened the potential for development in those two countries, he added.

Heller described himself as “agnostic” in terms of whether South Asia is rising, and zoomed in on the strengths and troubles in the Indian narrative, in which he specializes. While he commended the Indian political system, he said that its democratic principles are resulting in a fragmentation of parties, as members of marginalized groups are increasingly defecting from larger parties to form their own. “There is a lot of churning, a lot of effervescence in contemporary Indian civil society,” Heller added. But this effervescence in the Indian economy has failed to materialize for many of India’s economically underprivileged citizens. Income and educational inequality are growing, according to Heller, who noted that 47 percent of Indian children suffered from malnutrition and stunted growth between 2001 and 2004. And yet, Heller added, the dynamism of the Indian democracy and civil society have the potential to seal these growing gaps.

Mitra examined the vitality of the Indian art and film arena, and highlighted their role in forging an Indian identity. “The new Indian state started institutionalizing culture,” she said, as a means for the nation to share a heritage. But much of this culture used to be shared within the sub-continent, and the Partition of 1947 therefore resulted in a harsh cultural divide, Mitra added. National identities have now “ossified,” she said, in part also due to the emergence of mass media, often at the expense of traditional live performance.

When introducing the panel, Viswanathan (pictured above) focused on the evolution–and creation–of South Asian identity. Growing up as the lone South Asian in California classrooms, she said she regularly ticked the “other” box in race censuses and fielded questions from friends about chicken curry. But gradually, South Asian identity began to be recognized in the U.S., though Viswanathan said it remained an “amorphous” concept. “It’s always shifting ground… it’s a patchwork,” she added.

By Watson Institute Student Rapporteur Alexandra Ulmer ’11.

Watch a video clip of the panel here.

“South Asia is a region of great strategic, political, and economic importance and its politics are of immense relevance to contemporary studies of democracy, inequalities, international security, identity politics, and the politics of economic development and growth,” said Brown Political Science Professor Ashutosh Varshney, who is spearheading the University’s work on the series. Varshney is collaborating with Prerna Singh of Harvard’s Government Department and Vipin Narang of MIT’s Political Science Department. Associate Professor Patrick Heller of Brown’s Sociology Department will also be a co-director of the seminar series.

Each school will host three to four seminars in the coming academic year. The first of the series, “On the Construction of Judicial Authority: Courts and Public Reason in India,” will feature  Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a leading political philosopher in India, president of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, and member of NYU Law School’s Global Faculty. It will take place 4-6pm on Thursday, September 24, at the Watson Institute.
Subsequent events will include:

• “Dalit Politics after the 2009 Elections: Reflections on the BSP,” with Christophe Jaffrelot, senior research fellow at CERI, Paris, and visiting professor of political science at Columbia University, 2-4pm, Friday, October 9, to be held at Harvard
• “In but not Of the State: Claims to Social Citizenship in Western India,” with Niraja Gopal Jayal, professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and visiting professor at Princeton University, 4-6pm, Thursday, October 29, to be held at Brown
• “Reconciling with the Taliban? Toward an Alternative Grand Strategy in Afghanistan,” with Ashley Tellis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 4-6 pm, Thursday, November 5, to be held at MIT
• “Peace through Development: Local Institution Building in Rural Afghanistan,” Fotini Christia, assistant professor of political science at MIT, 4-6pm, Thursday, November 19, to be held at Harvard

Over the course of the coming year, additional events will be listed here.

The University has expanded its partnership with St. Stephen’s college, which includes student and faculty exchanges dating back to 1991. A new agreement increases to 15 the number of Brown students who may go to St. Stephen’s each year and for the first time will bring a master’s candidate from St. Stephen’s to Brown annually.
Brown has also signed a new memorandum of understanding with the Confederation of Indian Industry to encourage new collaborations between Brown and Indian businesses. Brown will partner with Indian businesses on research and will also facilitate student work with Indian companies. Infosys Technologies Ltd., whose founder, Narayana Murthy, spoke at Brown in March, will host a Brown undergraduate intern for the first time this summer through the University’s CV Starr Program in Commerce, Organization and Entrepreneurship (COE).

Next year, the University will begin offering a PhD in Sanskrit Language and Literature in the Classics Department, as well a new PhD in South Asian Religions in the Religious Studies Department. A new program on inequality in the Global South, based at the Watson Institute for International Studies, will also expand India-related doctoral training. The program, supported by a prestigious grant from the US National Science Foundation, will focus on four countries in the midst of rapid change – Brazil, China, India, and South Africa – working with such partners as the Centre for Developing Societies in Delhi.
Also at the Watson Institute, an Indian channel on the upcoming Global Conversation website will provide a forum for continued dialogue among students, faculty, and alumni. Ashutosh Varshney, professor of political science and chair of the Year of India faculty committee, will become Dupee Faculty Fellow at the Institute beginning July 1. Anthropologist Bhrigupati Singh, whose research focuses on inequality, power, and religious and secular modes of aspiration, has accepted an appointment as a visiting fellow to beginning in January 2011.

In the midst of all these new developments, older resources will also continue to support the study and teaching of India at Brown. These range from fellowships that allow undergraduates to work in India on projects ranging from community health to information technology services; to the Library’s extensive collection of Indian census data; to the Medical School’s partnerships with the Y.R. Gaitonde Center for AIDS Research and Education in Chennai.
In the words of Dean of Faculty Rajiv Vohra, the Year of India “is neither the beginning nor the end of Brown’s engagement with India.”

Institutes foster networks among young scholars, while providing them with opportunities to develop their research. This summer’s topics are Climate Change and its Impacts, Development and Inequality in the Global South, Towards a Critical Global Humanities, and Technology Entrepreneurship and Management.
Read more about BIARI here.

6/8/10: This summer, Brown undergraduate fellowship recipients will work in India on projects ranging from community health to information technology services. Six Brown undergraduates will participate in the fifth year of the CV Starr Program in Commerce, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship’s (COE) internship in India program. They will have the opportunity to develop their own workplace skills and to learn more about the industry, business, and culture of their host companies.

In Bangalore, Kevin White ’12 will work at LimberLink Technologies, an internet and mobile services company. Jose Rodriguez ’12 will work at Infosys Technologies Ltd., a global information technology services company, whose founder, Narayana Murthy, delivered an Ogden lecture at Brown in March. Graham Ahokas ’12, Shin Hin Lawrence Chung ’12, Melanie Friedrichs ’12, and Naomi Inoshita ’12 will all travel to Mumbai to intern at Arshiya International, Ltd., an integrated supply chain and logistics infrastructure solutions provider.

The Swearer Center for Public Service’s CV Starr Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship will support three health and community development projects in India. The fellowship provides undergraduate students with funding, training, and mentoring to support their efforts to develop and assess new approaches to advancing social change.

Gaurie Tilak ’11, an economics and biology concentrator, and Cara Smith ’11, a human biology concentrator, will continue to develop their organization, AIDS Relief International, which works to increase the effectiveness of AIDS treatment and prevention programs. They launched their first program earlier this year with Sion hospital in Mumbai.

Nikilesh Eswarapu ’12, an economics and development studies concentrator, will also work on health issues in India with the support of a CV Starr Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship. While AIDS Relief International currently has an urban focus, Eswarapu’s organization, the Milana Foundation, aims to improve health outcomes in rural India.

Eli Crumrine ’11 will work with Rainwater for Humanity, a social enterprise that seeks to provide clean water, empower women as entrepreneurs, and boost community health in Kerala, India. The organization, founded by Christina Tang ’09, is a partnership between Brown and RISD students and Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala. They inaugurated their first rainwater harvesting tank earlier this year.

The Howard Swearer International Fellowship will support Aliza Kreisman ’10.5 in her internship at CORO, a community development organization in Mumbai. Kreisman, a development studies concentrator, will document the Centre for Leadership, CORO’s fellowship program for grassroots leaders. She will conduct interviews and site visits across Maharashtra, providing CORO with important documentation for their internal analysis and program evaluation.

Sarah Kay ’10, a modern culture and media concentrator, will focus on a grassroots education project in Gurgaon. Kay will document the story of Pragati, a grassroots public school for underserved children. Sarah is one of eleven students in the University’s first cohort of AT&T New Media Fellows, a group which will help to launch the Watson Institute’s new Global Conversation website later this summer.

12/8/09:

This past Saturday, December 5, their first rainwater harvesting tank (above) was inaugurated, in a ceremony attended by community leaders and members of Mahatma Gandhi University . The Hindu’s article on the inauguration is available here.

Read more about the Rainwater for Humanity project at the Rainwater for Humanity website.

Watch a video of their performance here.

6/8/10:

The Brown in India program, organized by Brown’s Office of International Programs, allows students from Brown and other institutions to study alongside Indian students at St. Stephen’s, and at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi. The new agreement between Brown and St. Stephen’s increases to 15 the number of students who may go to St. Stephen’s annually and for the first time will bring a master’s candidate from St. Stephen’s to Brown each year.

Students who have participated in the program in the past frequently comment on the way the experience challenged previously held views, and changed their understandings of India. Samuel Mencoff, an economics concentrator at Brown, studied at St. Stephen’s in the fall of 2009. While in Delhi, he also interned at The Economic Times, a leading business newspaper. Reflecting on his time in Delhi, Mencoff said that while Westerners tend to think of India as an exotic place, the ‘real’ India is that which one finds on the ground. “The real India is whatever is happening in India,” he said.
Mencoff is critical of Western students and professionals who are strictly development focused and go to India to work at NGOs without learning the language or culture. “It’s a silly concept: people who don’t understand the culture want to fix it,” he said. Mencoff was pleased with the Brown in India program, and in particular with the opportunity to experience life at an Indian college. He also appreciated the language learning component of the program, which includes a month-long immersion course in Mussoorie and regular language instruction in Delhi.

Rita Bullwinkel, a Brown junior concentrating in religious studies and anthropology, also embarked on the Brown in India program in the fall of 2009. She pointed to two ways that Americans generally view India: as a haven of spirituality and peace, or as a place sunk in poverty and disease. Both of these views, however, are overly simplified. To recognize the nuance and complexity of the country, one should dig deeper, live with the people, and learn the language, she said. Bullwinkel said that students who are planning to participate in the Brown in India program or another similar study abroad opportunity should be extremely flexible and ready to absorb new things. The students who got the most out of the program were the ones willing to socialize, interact, and just listen to people.

Anastasia Aguiar, who studied abroad at St. Stephen’s during the fall of 2007 and is now the coordinator for the 2009-2010 Year of India at Brown, agreed that it was important to be open to new people and new ideas. Although American students did spend time with each other, they also made an effort to immerse themselves in the life of the college through academic, extracurricular and social activities, she said. It was sometimes difficult to reconcile her day-to-day experiences in India with classroom learning about the country. She realized “the tremendous size of the diversity in the country,” which can be overlooked when India is treated as a unit.
“Being there, in some ways, I always felt like I didn’t know anything,” she said. “I appreciated the opportunity to keep re-thinking my understandings of India.”

By Watson Institute Rapporteur Samura Atallah ’11