Swati Maliwal, activist and Chairperson, Delhi Commission for women and Ruchira Gupta, activist, Emmy award-winning journalist and Founder, Apne Aap Women Worldwide in conversation on Girl Power & Bodily Autonomy

The programme will include release of Ruchira Gupta’s new book I Kick and I Fly
 

National Security Perspectives

Speaker: General M.M. Naravane, former Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army

Moderator of the series: Suhas Borker

Introduction: Vinay Kumar, Secretary General, Press Club of India (PCI)

The series of Conversations with Media is jointly organised by IIC and PCI; and is hosted by them alternately every month

Speaker: Dr. V.R.Devika, Founder and Managing Trustee, The Aseema Trust, a non-profit organization for linking traditional performing arts and education as well as Mahatma Gandhi and education. A well-known storyteller, she is the author of Muthulakshmi Reddy: Trailblazer in Surgery and Women’s Rights (Niyogi Books)

Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy was born on 30th July 1886 in Pudukkottai to Chandrammal who belonged to the Devadasi system and Narayasami Iyer, a Brahmin teacher. She was the first Indian girl to complete MBBS at the Madras Medical college, First Indian member of the Women’s India Association and First woman member of Madras Legislative Assembly. She fought for stopping the wet nursing system, for raising the age of marriage for girls, for widows’ remarriage, for equal property rights for women, for equal voting rights and for abolishing the dedication of young girls as Devadasis. She founded Avvai Home and the Adyar Cancer Institute.

This illustrated talk explores her life in a story telling mode.
 

Discussion based on the book The 2019 Parliamentary Elections in India: Democracy at the Crossroads (Taylor & Francis Ltd. : 2022)

co-edited by Rekha Saxena, Subrata Mitra and Pampa Mukherjee

Speakers: Prof. Ashutosh Kumar, Panjab University, Chandigarh and T.N. Seshan Chair, International Institute of Democracy and Election Management, New Delhi; Prof. Manisha Priyam, Professor of Education Policy, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi; and Dr. Rahul Verma, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research and Visiting Professor, Dept. of Political Science, Ashoka University

Introductory Remarks by the Editors: Prof. Rekha Saxena, Dept. of Political Science, University of Delhi; and Prof. Pampa Mukherjee, Head, Department of Political Science, Panjab University

Chair: Prof. E. Sridharan, Academic Director and Chief Executive, University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India, New Delhi 
 

Speaker: Dr. Jaisom Chopra, Senior Consultant Vascular Surgeon, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi

Varicose veins is the most common disease worldwide involving roughly 50 percent of the world’s population. One in every two persons suffer from venous problems at some point in their lives. The talk will present the latest advances practised worldwide
 

Speaker: Anurag Seth, Principal AI/ML Advisor at Amazon AWS. He has more than 25 years of experience in technology and entrepreneurship across semiconductor chip design, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), building and deploying state of the art AI (artificial intelligence) /ML (Machine Learning) models and applications across various industries. He is also the India Design Centre Head for Kawasaki Microelectronics, Senior R & D Director at Cadence Design Systems and Motorola

Chair: Apar Gupta, Founder Director, Internet Freedom Foundation

ChatGPT and similar “Large Language Models (LLM)” have taken the world by storm and surprised even some of its inventors on its capability to generate human like text across multiple domains including generation of software code and pin pointing security vulnerabilities in the software which many industry standard tools missed detecting! This talk introduces the core concept of Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) and walks through the potential impact it is going to create and challenges there-in - from re-skilling needs to “responsible” AI!
 

Mortuary Practices of the Harappans with special Reference to the North West region of India

Illustrated lecture by Dr. Satarupa Bal, Assistant Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India who is presently part of the excavation team at the site of Purana Qila archaeological mound

A comprehensive study of the funerary practices followed by the Harappans in the north western region of India emphasizing on specific markers, so as to determine a pattern or variation in these practices and an indication to the probable societal way of life in the different periods of Harappan habitation in the specific region under study 

Curator: Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray

Tracing the Beginnings of the Harappans: New Excavations at Rakhigarhi

Speakers: Dr. Sanjay Manjul, Jt. Director General, Archaeological Survey of India; and Dr. Ajay Yadav, former Additional Director General, Archaeological Survey of India

Chair: Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray

This talk will address the much-debated question of the beginnings of the Harappan civilization based on the ongoing archaeological excavations by ASI at Rakhigarhi, perhaps the largest Harappan site in India. Situated on the banks of the river Chautang, a palaeo-tributary of Drishadavati, the site is covered by two revenue villages by name Rakhi-khas and Rakhi-shahpur in Hisar, 150 km from New Delhi
 

Mughal Banaras: An Exploration

Speaker: Malavika Kasturi, Associate Professor (South Asian History), Departments of History and the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto and with author of Embattled Identities, Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century North India (OUP, 2002). Prof. Kasturi is working on the urban history of Banaras from the eighteenth century from the perspective of Mughal pensioner families

The illustrated lecture will explore the lesser-known history of Banaras through the legacy of exiles and pensioners from the eighteenth century, especially Mughal princes like Jahandar Shah and his descendents.

Chair: Dr. Yaaminey Mubayi

Tale of a Gypsy in Kafka’s Land

A collection of poems by Mandira Ghosh (Authorspress: 2023)

Discussants: Prof. Radha Chakravarty, Former Prof. of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, AUD, Critic; 
Dr. Gauri Shankar Raina, Broadcaster, Translator and Member, Advisory Board, Sahitya Akademi; Ms. Mandira Ghosh, Poet,Researcher, Writer and Author of the book

Chair: Shri K. Jayakumar, President, Poetry Society (India) and Former Chief Secretary, Govt. of Kerala
 

(Collaboration: The Poetry Society, India)