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Newsletter-April 2008
[[CONTENTS]]
12th B.N.Ganguly Memorial Lecture at CSDS
Rethinking Collectivities: Institutional Innovations in Group Farming,
Community Forestry and Strategic Alliances
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk @ Sarai
"Koi Acchi Kitab": Transnational Markets and the Indian Publisher
By Rashmi Sadana
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Film @ Sarai
Myself Sandeep
A film by Uddhav Ghosh, Curated by Azam Q.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Readers,
April like March has a light schedule, but interesting enough for you to make your way to Sarai. We have the yearly B.N.Ganguly Memorial Lecture at CSDS on the human capabilities of bringing about environmental sustainability; a talk at Sarai which showcases the the competitive relationship between transnational (English) and local (Hindi) publishers to attain legitimacy at the national level; and a film screening where humor is used to show the protagonist’s trials and tribulations to reach the upper echelons of society.
Hope you will make yourself available for the events and access the particulars announced.
Best,
Mitoo Das
Programme Coordinator
Sarai, CSDS
Email me at: mitoo@sarai.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12th B.N. Ganguly Memorial Lecture at CSDS
Rethinking Collectivities: Institutional Innovations in Group Farming,
Community Forestry and Strategic Alliances
Speaker: Professor Bina Agarwal
Chair: Professor Niraja Goyal Jayal
Date: 11th April 2008, Friday
Time: 5:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS
B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lectures are instituted in memory of the distinguished economist-intellectual Professor B.N. Ganguli, former Chair CSDS Board of Governors. Earlier speakers in the series include Professors Charles Taylor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Raimundo Panikkar, Bhikhu Parekh, Ernest Gellner, Ali Mazrui, Roberto Unger, Michael Walzer, John Keane, Amit Bhaduri and Giorgio Agamben.
Bina Agarwal is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. She has written on a range of subjects: land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; law; and agriculture and technological change. Among her books are Cold Hearths, Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World and A Field of One's Own: Gender andLand Rights in South Asia. Her writings have been used extensively in framing policy by governments, NGOs and international agencies. She has participated in the formulation of several of India's Five Year Plans. She was conferred the Padma Shri in 2008.
Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She is the author of Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India and Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk @ Sarai
"Koi Acchi Kitab": Transnational Markets and the Indian Publisher
Speaker: Rashmi Sadana
Date: 17th April 2008, Thursday
Time: 4:00 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS
This paper begins with a provocation about the framing of Indian literature in the transnational marketplace, and then turns to a discussion of Ravi Dayal and the Hindi publishers of Ansari Road. I frame my interviews with literary publishers as an intellectual history of the present in order to ask : How did Hindi and English language publishers position themselves in the decades immediately after Independence? And, what might that tell us about the ways in which the two languages having been vying for national legitimacy ever since? The paper will juxtapose these transnational (London-New York) and local (Delhi) narratives of how to make "good books" in order to spark a larger discussion about how literature is produced, texts are interpreted and audiences cultivated.
Rashmi Sadana received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003 and, from 2003 till 2007, was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Anthropology at Columbia University. She is now based in Delhi, completing a book manuscript about the intersection of language politics and Indian literary production and is co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Film @ Sarai
Myself Sandeep
A film by Uddhav Ghosh
Length: 60 mins
Language: Hindi, English
Cast: Akhil Banga, Kartike Kapoor, Sakshi Gulati
Curated by: Azam Q
Date: 25th April 2008, Friday
Time: 4:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS
The film is a light comedy focusing on the aspirations and values of the “middle class of contemporary Indian society” and the extent to which people are willing to go to, to achieve the same. The protagonist of the film is Sandeep Singh, hailing from the heartlands of Punjab, carrying with him the middle class value system. A Media manager in an advertising agency, he battles his life in the cut throat competition world which Delhi has to offer. He lives a nightmare in search of the “Great Indian Dream”. He wants the big car, the house, the trophy wife...and yet has no means of achieving them. So he builds a web of lies around his life, to convince people that he's almost made it! That is...till he meets Tanya Batra, the woman of his dreams. She is elegant, beautiful and sophisticated...the only hitch is she's the boss’ daughter. Sandeep realizes that he can make his dreams come true by marrying Tanya. But the class difference is such a deterrent that he almost gives up. And then he meets Prince, the black sheep of his family, chucked out by his father, down on his luck. But he has what Sandeep desires...Class. And therein starts the transformation, from Sandeep Singh to Sandy, from moaning over the girl of his dreams, to roaming hand in hand with her. Fate conspires to change Sandeep’s life. But fate has a twisted sense of humor…
Uddhav Ghosh has a master’s degree in Journalism and works in the advertising sector. Besides writing and making short films, he does quite a bit of travelling too.
Azam Q has done his graduation in Mass media from Jamia Millia Islamia. His passions are theatre and film making. He has been hugely involved in theatre and writing for the last 5 years. He now works as a theatre instructor for the blind at the National Association for the Blind, Haus Khas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]
The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme,
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net
Info: dak@sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to
newsletter-request@sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
Directions to Sarai: We are 10 minutes from Delhi University, and 5 mins. from the Civil Lines Metro Station.
12th B.N.Ganguly Memorial Lecture at CSDS
Rethinking Collectivities: Institutional Innovations in Group Farming,
Community Forestry and Strategic Alliances
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk @ Sarai
"Koi Acchi Kitab": Transnational Markets and the Indian Publisher
By Rashmi Sadana
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Film @ Sarai
Myself Sandeep
A film by Uddhav Ghosh, Curated by Azam Q.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Readers,
April like March has a light schedule, but interesting enough for you to make your way to Sarai. We have the yearly B.N.Ganguly Memorial Lecture at CSDS on the human capabilities of bringing about environmental sustainability; a talk at Sarai which showcases the the competitive relationship between transnational (English) and local (Hindi) publishers to attain legitimacy at the national level; and a film screening where humor is used to show the protagonist’s trials and tribulations to reach the upper echelons of society.
Hope you will make yourself available for the events and access the particulars announced.
Best,
Mitoo Das
Programme Coordinator
Sarai, CSDS
Email me at: mitoo@sarai.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12th B.N. Ganguly Memorial Lecture at CSDS
Rethinking Collectivities: Institutional Innovations in Group Farming,
Community Forestry and Strategic Alliances
Speaker: Professor Bina Agarwal
Chair: Professor Niraja Goyal Jayal
Date: 11th April 2008, Friday
Time: 5:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS
B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lectures are instituted in memory of the distinguished economist-intellectual Professor B.N. Ganguli, former Chair CSDS Board of Governors. Earlier speakers in the series include Professors Charles Taylor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Raimundo Panikkar, Bhikhu Parekh, Ernest Gellner, Ali Mazrui, Roberto Unger, Michael Walzer, John Keane, Amit Bhaduri and Giorgio Agamben.
Bina Agarwal is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. She has written on a range of subjects: land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; law; and agriculture and technological change. Among her books are Cold Hearths, Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World and A Field of One's Own: Gender andLand Rights in South Asia. Her writings have been used extensively in framing policy by governments, NGOs and international agencies. She has participated in the formulation of several of India's Five Year Plans. She was conferred the Padma Shri in 2008.
Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She is the author of Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India and Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk @ Sarai
"Koi Acchi Kitab": Transnational Markets and the Indian Publisher
Speaker: Rashmi Sadana
Date: 17th April 2008, Thursday
Time: 4:00 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS
This paper begins with a provocation about the framing of Indian literature in the transnational marketplace, and then turns to a discussion of Ravi Dayal and the Hindi publishers of Ansari Road. I frame my interviews with literary publishers as an intellectual history of the present in order to ask : How did Hindi and English language publishers position themselves in the decades immediately after Independence? And, what might that tell us about the ways in which the two languages having been vying for national legitimacy ever since? The paper will juxtapose these transnational (London-New York) and local (Delhi) narratives of how to make "good books" in order to spark a larger discussion about how literature is produced, texts are interpreted and audiences cultivated.
Rashmi Sadana received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003 and, from 2003 till 2007, was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Anthropology at Columbia University. She is now based in Delhi, completing a book manuscript about the intersection of language politics and Indian literary production and is co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Film @ Sarai
Myself Sandeep
A film by Uddhav Ghosh
Length: 60 mins
Language: Hindi, English
Cast: Akhil Banga, Kartike Kapoor, Sakshi Gulati
Curated by: Azam Q
Date: 25th April 2008, Friday
Time: 4:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS
The film is a light comedy focusing on the aspirations and values of the “middle class of contemporary Indian society” and the extent to which people are willing to go to, to achieve the same. The protagonist of the film is Sandeep Singh, hailing from the heartlands of Punjab, carrying with him the middle class value system. A Media manager in an advertising agency, he battles his life in the cut throat competition world which Delhi has to offer. He lives a nightmare in search of the “Great Indian Dream”. He wants the big car, the house, the trophy wife...and yet has no means of achieving them. So he builds a web of lies around his life, to convince people that he's almost made it! That is...till he meets Tanya Batra, the woman of his dreams. She is elegant, beautiful and sophisticated...the only hitch is she's the boss’ daughter. Sandeep realizes that he can make his dreams come true by marrying Tanya. But the class difference is such a deterrent that he almost gives up. And then he meets Prince, the black sheep of his family, chucked out by his father, down on his luck. But he has what Sandeep desires...Class. And therein starts the transformation, from Sandeep Singh to Sandy, from moaning over the girl of his dreams, to roaming hand in hand with her. Fate conspires to change Sandeep’s life. But fate has a twisted sense of humor…
Uddhav Ghosh has a master’s degree in Journalism and works in the advertising sector. Besides writing and making short films, he does quite a bit of travelling too.
Azam Q has done his graduation in Mass media from Jamia Millia Islamia. His passions are theatre and film making. He has been hugely involved in theatre and writing for the last 5 years. He now works as a theatre instructor for the blind at the National Association for the Blind, Haus Khas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]
The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme,
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net
Info: dak@sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to
newsletter-request@sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
Directions to Sarai: We are 10 minutes from Delhi University, and 5 mins. from the Civil Lines Metro Station.