ABOUT MCRG
ABOUT Mahanirban CALCUTTA RESEARCH GROUP
Born as a facilitating group in support of the peace movement in West Bengal, the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group is now known as the Calcutta Research Group (CRG). The Third Joint Conference of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (1996), an unprecedented four-day public gathering of 400 peace activists of the sub-continent in Calcutta, marked the beginning of CRG. The founders were a group of researchers, trade unionists, feminist thinkers and women’s rights campaigners, academics, journalists, and lawyers. This was to be a forum for policy discussion and analysis on issues of democracy, human rights, peace, and justice.
Developing as a forum of mostly young public activists and socially committed researchers, CRG is now well-known for its research, dialogues, and advocacy work. It has carved out a niche for itself in the scholar-activist world for its policy studies on autonomy, human rights, women’s dignity, issues of forced displacement and migration, peace and conflict resolution, citizenship, borders and border-conflicts, and other themes relevant to democracy. The emphasis that CRG places on the East and the Northeast in its research and dialogues has now resulted in a strong network of scholars, activists, and institutions in the region.
Some of the Main Objectives are:
To develop a group of scholar-activists to engage in policy studies particularly relating to the east and the north east of India and the sub-continent on themes of justice, dignity, forms of democracy, conflict resolution, peace and human rights, Diaspora, refugee studies, internal displacement, borders, boundaries, partitions, and the broad issues of forced migration;
- To sponsor or commission studies based on research, translation or compilation relating to the above-mentioned themes of policy interest;
- To foster academic and cultural contacts by broadening the network on related policy matters in the east and north-east;
- To focus on legal-constitutional aspects of problems relating to resolution of conflicts, ensuring human rights, and decentralization;
- To organise dialogues among scholars and activists in the east and the northeast on issues of peace, human rights, and democracy;
- To organize, undertake and promote publications, audio-visual documentation, seminars, workshops, and campaigns on the said policy matters as inputs to various public bodies, human rights forums, peace organisations, and parallel publications; And make gender and justice as marks in all these pursuit
While pursuing its researches, CRG has been successful in bringing together a group of like-minded scholars and academics and maintaining the distinctive group character. With the kind of research outputs to its credit and the database accumulated over the years on the subject of its focus, it can truly claim itself to be a resource centre only of its kind in the east and the northeast. CRG has been functioning with enviable track record beyond the established system of higher education in the country. In Calcutta it is again the only voluntary association of eminent intellectuals and dynamic young researchers working on policies and issues of peace, conflict resolution, human rights, and democracy.
The members of the CRG are acclaimed academics and professionals in their respective fields; they are noted researchers, teachers, journalists, communicators, publishers, editors, and women’s rights activists. While their individual work is well known in respective fields, their collective association on a voluntary basis in form of a research group has given CRG’s distinctive character. Members were originally from the city of Kolkata, which explains its name, but its partnership is with many colleagues and institutions in India and elsewhere. Willing individuals, groups, and institutions from outside can also apply for associational membership.
RECOGNITION OF MCRG'S WORK
- Topped a list of ‘Centres with Potential’ in a report prepared for Research Councils, UK by India Foundation For The Arts, Bangalore, 2010
- Received special mention by the Special Representative of the UN Security General in his report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, 2008
- “Centre of Excellence” in Migration Studies by Government of Finland, 2005-07
- Recommendation of publication of work deemed “rich in historical and analytical rigor” by ICSSR, 2013