Aaj Kavita
 

Astbhuja Shukla (Basti); Shankaranad (Khagaria); Jitendra Srivastava (Delhi); and Poonam Arora (Delhi)

 

(Collaboration: The Raza Foundation)

The Poetry Society (India) Annual Lecture

 

Does Poetry Redress Anymore?

Speaker: Shri K. Jaykumar, well-known Malayali poet and former Chief Secretary, Government of Kerala

 

Chair: Dr. Lakshmi Kannan

 

(Collaboration: The Poetry Society, India)

Understanding Anxiety Disorders
 

Speakers: Dr. Nand Kumar, psychiatrist, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS); and Ms Manavi Khurana, Founder & Counselling Psychologist, Karma Center for Counselling & Wellbeing

 

Moderator: Shubha Menon

 

(Collaboration: You, Me & Mental Health)

 

Fake News and the Lok Sabha Elections
 

Speakers: Shri R. Sukumar, Editor, The Hindustan Times; Shri Justice A.K. Sikri, Judge, Supreme Court of India; Ms Ankhi Das, Director-India, South Asia and Central Asia, Facebook (tbc); Ms Divya Spandana, Social Media Head, Indian National Congress (tbc); and Shri Amit Malviya, Social Media Head, Bharatiya Janata Party (tbc)

 

Moderator: Shri Tobby Simon, Founder President, Synergia Foundation

 

An incumbent national leadership that must win at all costs or face political humiliation and oblivion. A national party that must reclaim its fading glory or be banished for another 5 years in the political wilderness. Regional satraps whose soaring ambitions see themselves as being more than just kingmakers. The world’s largest electorate population of more than 900 million, riven by caste and communal considerations. Add to this incendiary mix fake news and you have the making of a brutal, no-holds-barred, and potentially violent Elections 2019. The discussion will focus on finding the most appropriate solutions—technological, regulatory, and informed citizenry—to combat the bane of fake news or at the least minimize its impact on the country’s general elections

 

(Collaboration: Synergia Foundation)

 

 

THE IIC DOUBLE BILL MUSIC CONCERT

 

Sitar Recital

By Soumitra Thakur from Delhi, disciple of Pt. Kushal Das

 

 

AT 19:00

Hindustani Vocal Recital

By Shubhankar Chatterjee from Kolkata, disciple of Pt. Kumarprasad Mukherjee

 

Landscapes of the Thar Desert
 

Speaker: Shri Pradip Krishen, naturalist, environmentalist, author of Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide and Jungle Trees of Central India. He has also directed some well-known films like Massey Sahib and In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones

Chair: Shri Pranney Lal, Journalist

 

Pradip will speak on how the Thar Desert in West Rajasthan isn't just an undifferentiated sandy 'wasteland' but a collection of distinct landscapes that have to do with the complicated geological evolution of the western desert. Photographs of several of these distinctive landscapes will be shown and he will explain how they relate to the plants found in each of them

 

BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP

 

Economics of Religion in India

By Sriya Iyer (London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018)

 

Discussants: Prof. Rajeev Bhargava, former Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan, Professor, Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Prof. Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University

 

Chair: Shri Jairam Ramesh, former Union Minister, Environment and Forests

 

FILMS ON WILDLIFE AND ENVIRONMENT

 

Living with Disasters (40 min; dvd; English)

Over the past 20 years four million of the world's people have been killed by drought, flood, earthquakes, and hurricanes and close to half the population of the planet have suffered some form of disruption to their lives. Living with Disasters' casts aside the familiar news headlines of misery and destruction to present the untold story - how relatively inexpensive investment can reap huge rewards; reducing the cost, both in reconstruction and in human suffering

 

Unnatural Disasters (24 min; dvd; English)

When a sea vanishes; when a cyclone takes thousands of lives; when a moist tropical forest ignites - we blame the weather. Whether human economic activity is causing more extreme weather conditions is still a matter of scientific uncertainty. What is in no doubt is that bad decisions have amplified human suffering and the economic costs of so-called 'natural' disasters. The disappearance of the Aral Sea, the coastal mangroves and the jungle, can be laid at the door of shortsighted and corrupt decision-making. This  'Earth Report' shows that it is poor communities worldwide who are the first to suffer from the decisions by the rich and powerful those are anything but sustainable

 

Films courtesy: Centre for Science and Environment

 

(Collaboration: World Wide Fund for Nature-India)

 

Seminar on Women Performers of the 16th – 20th Century

Indian history of Tawaifs and Baijis of North India. The seminar will address the issues of gender discrimination in performing arts and how it shapes the art for the future, their lives and their contribution to Indian music and dance

 

Conceptualised and Curated by Manjari Chaturvedi

 

AT 19:00 IN THE FOUNTAIN LAWNS

Uff Malka Jaan and the Velvet Courtesans!

Presented by Manjari Chaturvedi with Fouzia Dastango, and Neesha Singh

 

(Collaboration: Sufi Kathak Foundation)

 

HEALTHCARE IN INDIA

 

Regulatory Reforms for Meeting India’s Needs for Human Resources in Healthcare in India

Speaker: Dr. V.K. Paul, Member, NITI Aayog

Chair: Prof. K. Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India

 

Second in a new series of lectures on Healthcare in India