Microplastics, an Invisible Threat to our Ecosystem

Panelists: Dr. Sumit Sharma, Programme Officer, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); Nandini Kumar, Consultant, CII-ITC Centre for Excellence for Sustainable Development; Dr. Shukla Pal Mitra, Director, National Productivity Council (NPC), Delhi; and Anand Bodh, Co-founder, Dharaksha Ecosolutions

Chair: Ravi Agarwal, Founder Director, Toxics Link

Microplastics is a global environmental concern that has the power to threaten marine life as well as freshwater organisms for decades and centuries and has the potential to poison the entire food chain. Considered global pollutants, microplastics can also act as vectors for spreading toxic chemical additives. Do we understand its real impact on human health and overall ecology? Do we still have time to stop its spread and mitigate the existing contamination of the ecosystem?

(Collaboration: Toxics Link)

Gandhi in the Twenty-First Century: Ideas and Relevance

By Anshuman Behera & Shailesh Nayak (NIAS & Springer: 2022)

Discussants: Dr. Varsha Das, well-known Gandhian, writer and art critic; Shri S.N. Sahu, former Officer on Special Duty to President K.R. Narayan and a student of Gandhian Thought; Dr. Anshuman Behera, Associate Professor, School of Conflict and Security Studies, National Institute of Advanced Studies and co-author of the book; and Prof. Shailesh Nayak, Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Life Trustee, IIC and co-author of the book

Moderator: Shri Suhas Borker, Convener, Working Group on Alternative Strategies and Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV)

Stray Poems and The Temple

By  Abhay K. and Sanjula Sharma (Paperwall Publishing: 2022)

Discussants: Dr. Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet, critic and academician; Prof. Rumki Basu, formerly Head, Dept. Political Science & Professor of Public Administration, Jamia Millia Islamia; Shri Abhay K., Deputy Director, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, poet and author; and Ms Sanjula Sharma, poet and author

Chair: Ms Rajni Sekri Sibal, writer and civil servant

Illustrated lecture by Manu P. Sobti, prolific architectural historian and urban interlocutor of the Global South, International Engagement Director and Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland’s School of Architecture

Chair: Prof. Jyoti Pandey Sharma, Professor of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi

Between 1952-1965, Le Corbusier’s lesser-known cousin Pierre Jeanneret served as the collaborating Senior Architect on the monumental Chandigarh Capital Project in northern India. In its unprecedented usage of the Pierre Jeanneret Fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Archives in Montreal, this presentation explores Jeanneret’s engagements with the idyllic Punjab countryside and Chandigarh hinterland. Jeanneret’s recordings and musings were then undeniable reassertion of the complex human and landscape palimpsest that had and would experience inevitable (and substantial) erasure, while a new city emerged from these untidy ruins
 

“May I speak to Professor Panini, please?” Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the  Aṣṭādhyāyī

Speaker: Dr. Rishi Rajpopat,   University of St. Andrews, Scotland

Chair:  Dr. Oscar Pujol, Director, Cervantes Institute, New Delhi

Organised by IIC-International Research Division with the support of Ministry of External Affairs

Speaker: Dr. Swapna Liddle, author and historian with specialization in the history of Delhi. Closely involved in the movement to preserve heritage monuments and sites. Dr. Liddle is associated with the Delhi Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). She is the author of Chandni Chowk: The Mughal City of Old Delhi (2017); Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi (2018); and recently, The Broken Script: Delhi Under the East India Company and the Fall of the Mughal Dynasty, 1803-1857 (2022)

Chair: Prof. Partho Datta, School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

The cataclysmic events of 1857 had a profound impact on Delhi. The revolt and its brutal suppression also changed the way later generations would assess the culture of the period before 1857. To that extent 1857 is a prism that distorts the view of the preceding half-century. Based on the research in her recent book - The Broken Script: Delhi under the East India Company and the Fall of the Mughal Dynasty, 1803 - 1857, Swapna Liddle discusses the role of 1857 as a distorting lens, and how we can look behind it to reassess what Delhi was really like under the British East India Company and the last two Mughal emperors.

Nehru and the Spirit of India

By Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee (Penguin Random House: 2022)

Discussants: Prof. Hilal Ahmed, Political sociologist and Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; and Shri Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, poet and author of the book

Chair: Prof. Ashis Nandy, social theorist and political psychologist

Ravi Shankar: The Indian Sun who Rose in the East

Illustrated lecture by Oliver Craske, author of Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar which was published to acclaim in 2020. During a career in book publishing, Craske had collaborated with Shankar on his memoir Raga Mala and has edited other books on subjects including Einstein, The Beatles, cricket and art collecting

Chair: Anita Singh, Vice-Chairperson and Director, Indian Music Society

Accounts of the sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) usually focus on his groundbreaking achievements in popularizing Indian music overseas. His biographer Oliver Craske argues that his achievements within India, which are less lauded today, were equally significant and are essential to an understanding of the man who was perhaps India’s most important cultural figure of the 20th century
 

Speakers: Amb. Navdeep Suri, Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation and former Indian Ambassador to Egypt; Prof. P.R. Kumaraswamy, Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; and Shri Atul Aneja, Editor, India Narrative who has reported conflicts from Baghdad, Beirut and Cairo

Chair: Ms Indrani Bagchi, CEO, Ananta Centre

The visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to Delhi as an honoured guest at the 2023 Republic Day celebrations marks an important moment in the evolution of relations between Delhi and Cairo. India and Egypt today reconnect at a moment very different from the Nehru-Nasser era in the second half of the 20th century. The discussion will explore the contours of a renewed partnership between India and Egypt

(Collaboration: Asia Society Policy Institute, New Delhi)

Speaker: Prof. Jay L. Garfield FAHA, Doris Silbert Professor in Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Buddhist Studies; Chair, Department of Philosophy, Director, Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program, Smith College and Visiting Professor of Buddhist Philosophy, Harvard Divinity School

Chair: Kabir Saxena

The talk presents a Buddhist analysis of non-violence in a way relevant to our contemporary life. Prof. Garfield will start with an explanation of how violence manifests in the contemporary world; then develop a Buddhist analysis of that violence and its causes; and ask how a Buddhist ethical framework determines our responsibilities as agents in the context of that violence and a path to its eradication