BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP

 

Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste

By Diane Coffey and Dean Spears (Noida: HarperCollins, 2017)

 

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

 

Kathak Recital

By Divya Dikshit from Delhi, disciple of Smt Yogino Gandhi and Shri Munna Shukla

 

ART MATTERS

In conversation with Paramjit Singh

 

(Collaboration: The Raza Foundation)

How to make sense of the Global Economy alongside a failing WTO?

Speaker: Dr. Mohan Kumar, Vice-Dean and Professor of Diplomatic Practice, OP Jindal School of International Affairs; Vice Chairman, RIS

 

Chair: Shri Shyam Saran

 

The WTO is clearly in the ICU! For years, the mantra in the West was that if a country followed principles of free trade espoused by the GATT/WTO then it was bound to become prosperous. More importantly, free trade was supposed to be a win-win and it was simply a matter of time before the benefits trickled down to all within the country. This thesis has been severely tested for the last decade or so. Curiously, it is precisely over the last decade or so that countries like China (and to a lesser extent India) have exploited both the WTO and Globalization to lift millions out of poverty. Interestingly, both the Global Economy and the WTO are at a crossroads

 

IIC Annual Day 2018

 

Qawwali
By Dhruv Sangari (Bilal Chishty), Sufi singer and Rooh Ensemble

 

FILMS ON WILDLIFE AND ENVIRONMENT

 

Life/Death (52 min; 2012; dvd; English)

Director: Sayantan Chakrabarti

 

Millions of lives are at stake in the extensive Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plains due to arsenic contamination of ground water. There is no figure to put to the number of lives already lost. Arsenic contamination has flourished notwithstanding high level action committees and detailed master plans. At one glance, it seems a predicament of epidemic proportions. On closer scrutiny, however, it becomes a farce featuring thirty years of collective failure – a failure of which all stakeholders are guilty

 

(Collaboration:  World Wide Fund for Nature-India)

 

MUSIC APPRECIATION PROMOTION

 

The Magic of the Flute

A presentation by Sunit Tandon

 

The illustrated talk will be an exploration of the themes, the symbolism, the philosophy and the revolutionary musical genius of Mozart’s fairy tale opera Die Zauberflöte or The Magic Flute 

 

Sunit Tandon is a media and theatre person. He is currently President of the Delhi Music Society and Director of the Yatrik theatre group. He was recently the Festival Director of the 48th International Film Festival of India

 

The Collected Poems of Keshav Malik

Release of collected works in five volumes published by Authors Press

 

Chief Guest:  Dr. Lokesh Chandra, President ICCR

 

Speakers: Dr. Sitanshu Yashaschandra, eminent writer and critic; Dr. Sukrita Paul Kumar, formerly Aruna Asaf Ali Chair, University of Delhi; and Prof. Aditya Malik, Nalanda University

 

Readings from the collection by Dr. H. K. Kaul, Dr. Sukrita Paul Kumar, Prof. Aditya Malik, and Shri Subroto Bondopadhyay

 

(Collaboration: The Poetry Society, India)

 

DELHI MATTERS

 

Police: Security, Crime and Women’s Safety

Speakers: Sanjay Baniwal, Special Commissioner of Police, Delhi Police; Krishna Menon, Professor, Gender Studies and currently Dean, School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi; and Dr. Kalpana Viswanath, Co-Founder Safetipin who has worked on issues of gender 

 

Chair: Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath, Founder & Director, WISCOMP

 

Wither Pakistan? The Rise of the Barelvi Movement in Pakistani Politics and Jinnah's Pakistan

Speaker: Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; Visiting Professor Government College University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012)

 

Chair: Ambassador T.C. A. Raghavan, former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan

 

There is a liberal-left constituency in Pakistan which argues that Jinnah wanted to create a secular state. The speaker will  argue that irrespective of what Jinnah wanted Pakistan was bound to be a Muslim/Islamic state. He mobilized the Barelvi ulema and pirs (custodians of Sufi Shrines) to win support of Muslims to the cause of Pakistan. They supported him and Pakistan on the assumption that Pakistan will be an Islamic state based on the Islamic law, Sharia. Now they enjoy political initiative in Pakistan and want their version of Islam to become state ideology. The struggle is going to be over what it means for the rights of citizens and especially the minorities