Social & Political Mapping / Logistical Vision-Popular movements -Researchers & Experts

SOCIAL & POLITICAL MAPPING OF POPULAR MOVEMENTS, LOGISTICAL VISION & INFRASTRUCTURE OF INDIA

Popular Movements in West Bengal and Bihar

RESEARCHERS & EXPERTS

Researchers & Experts in 2018

REAEARCHERS

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ABSTRACTS

Ranabir Samaddar, Distinguished Chair in Forced Migration
Ranabir Samaddar

Swaran Singh is Professor of Disarmament Studies at the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). He is President of Association of Asia Scholars, General Secretary of Indian Association of Asian & Pacific Studies, Visiting Professor, China West Normal University and Guest Professor at Research Institute of Indian Ocean Economies (RIIO), Yunnan University of Finance and Economics (China), and Advisory Board Member of Atlanta-based Communities Without Borders Inc. He was Chief Vigilance Officer of his University (2012-15) and External Member to its Centre for East Asian Studies of JNU. Prof Singh has 25 years of experience in research and teaching and lectures at major institutions like National Defence College, Defence Services Staff College, and all other major military institutions as also Foreign Service Institute, Indian Institute for Public Administration etc. as also contributes to radio and television discussions. His most recent research article on "State of India's Security Studies" published in recent issue of Millennial Asia (Sage, Sept-Nov 2015) at http://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/ssingh/State_of_Security.pdf Prof Singh travels and writes extensively on Asian Affairs, China’s foreign and security policy issues with special focus on China-India confidence building measures as also on Arms Control and Disarmament, Peace and Conflict Resolution, India’s foreign and security policy issues. He has co-edited BCIM Economic Corridor Chinese and Indian Perspectives (Adroit 2017), Transforming South Asia: Imperatives for Action (2013); India and the GCC Countries, Iran and Iraq: Emerging Security Perspectives (2013), On China By India: From Civilization to State (Cambria 2012), Emerging China: Prospects for Partnership in Asia (Routledge 2012), Asia’s Multilateralism (in Chinese, 2012) published from Shanghai; Edited China-Pakistan Strategic Cooperation: Indian Perspectives (2007) Co-authored Regionalism in South Asian Diplomacy (SIPRI Policy Paper No. 15, February 2007) and authored Nuclear Command & Control in Southern Asia: China, India, Pakistan (2010), China-India Economic Engagement: Building Mutual Confidence (2005), China-South Asia: Issues, Equations, Policies (2003), China’s Changing National Security Doctrines (1999) and Limited War: The Challenge of US Milit PAGE 11ary Strategy (1995). His e-mail is [email protected]

Researchers & Experts in 2017

REAEARCHERS

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ABSTRACTS

Sucharita Sengupta

Sucharita Sengupta is associated with Calcutta Research Group (CRG). Her research interests pertain to Forced Migration and Border studies in the context of Asia. After masters’ in Political Science from the University of Calcutta, she joined the Calcutta Research Group as a Research Assistant working on ‘West Bengal-Bangladesh Borderland: Humanitarian issues’. Under this, she wrote a paper on women trafficked from Bangladesh incarcerated in jails of West Bengal, India. This was presented at a workshop “Interrogating Forced Migration” in March 2015 and published as “Bordered Lives: Women from Bangladesh behind bars in India”, La Frontera 35 (2). Her recent research in CRG focused on the Rohingya refugees as part of the perilous irregular maritime migrants to the shores of South East Asian nations like Thailand and Malaysia. In this work she tried to trace the history and context of such maritime drives, reasons that allure them to take to the sea, and also the recent media attention to the phenomenon generating mass awareness of the issue internationally, especially in Bangladesh, and to some extent, India. The recent focus on the plight of the boatpeople on the high seas therefore, shows the need of a comprehensive research and continuous advocacy to keep the issue relevant. Currently she is working on patterns of migration in Northeast India in wake of the Look East policy of the Indian government, whether population mobility is impacted upon by the developmental trajectory of the government in the region and issues of out migration from Northeast top the rest of India.

Popular Politics, Upsurge and the Revolt in the Sixties and Seventies of the Last Century

EXPERTS

ABSTRACTS

Mallarika Sinha Roy

Mallarika Sinha Roy teaches in Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Earlier she has taught Centre of Global South Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen and she was a post-doctoral fellow at Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, 2008-2009. She has studied in Presidency College, Kolkata, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and University of Oxford (UK). She has written a book titled Gender and Radical Politics in India: Magic Moments of Naxalbari (1967-1975) (Routledge Studies in South Asian History Series, 2010). She has also written several journal articles and book chapters including “Bringing Space Alive: Doreen Massey’s World of Connected Geography”, (Economic and Political Weekly, 2016), “Intimate Spaces of Struggle: Rethinking Family and Marriage in Contemporary India” in Knut A. Jacobsen (ed) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, (London: Routledge, 2015), “Rethinking Female Militancy in Postcolonial Bengal”, Feminist Review, (2012), “The Romantic Manifesto of Revolution: Some Reflections on Issues of Gender in the Naxalbari Movement” in Pradip Basu (ed) Discourses on Naxalite Movement (1967-2009): Insights in Radical Left Politics (Calcutta, 2010), “Magic Moments of Struggle: Women's Memory of the Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal, India (1967-1975)”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, (2009), “Contesting Calcutta Canons: Issues of Gender and Mofussil in the Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal (1967-1975)”, Contemporary South Asia, (2009) among others. She was the co-convenor of Women’s Studies Seminar Series, JNU, 2013-2015 and she is a member of Indian Association of Women’s Studies; British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS) and Political Studies Association (PSA).

Kumar Rana

Kumar Rana 1. Working with the Pratichi Trust since 2001 and helped develop the research team of the Trust that has taken shape of the Pratichi Institute (in 2011). Led several primary investigations on primary education, health delivery, food and nutrition carried out by the Trust. 2. Was part of a two-years ethnographic research project on seasonal migration in Eastern India carried out by the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia. 3. Taken part in quantitative data collection for several projects, including the Human Development Report 1994 and Market Information Survey of Households (MISH) 1995, carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and travelled extensively in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand (600 villages), Uttar Pradesh (60 villages), Haryana (30 villages), Himachal Pradesh (30 villages), Andhra Pradesh (28 villages). 4. Joined active politics while pursuing high school education, and was involved in a series of movements on land, wage, forest and Jharkhand separate statehood. 5. Contributed to journals like the Economic and Political Weekly, and newspapers like the AnandabazarPatrika. Contributory author of a number of volumes edited by eminent scholars. Authored several reports of the investigations carried out by the Pratichi Trust. Published a number of books in Bangla. Taken part in and edited the translations of Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative India, Identity and Violence, The Idea of Justice (co-edited with Anirban Chattpadhyay), Uncertain Glory (jointly authored by Jean Dreze; jointly translated with Anirban Chattopadhyay); translation of Sen’s The Country of First Boys is ongoing (jointly with Anirban Chattopadhyay). 6.Member, Calcutta Research Group; Honorary Fellow, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna. 7. Currently editing a Bangla fortnightly Arekrakam, (Founder-editor: Ashok Mitra). Pursuing (2015-17) Masters in Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery (MMSC-GHD) at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University.

Pushpendra Kumar Singh

Pushpendra Kumar Singh is a professor and in-charge of Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Patna. A sociologist by training, Prof. Pushpendra has been engaged in teaching, research and activism. Previously, he was with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai as a professor. He was a visiting fellow to Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He also served as the Dean of the School of Rural Development (Tuljapur campus) of TISS. He has also contributed in the Right to Food Campaign as a campaigner and state adviser to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court. As part of his work with ActionAid India, he was actively engaged in dalit and tribal rights in Bihar and Jharkhand. He made valuable contribution in human rights assessment of the tsunami relief and resettlement in five tsunami-affected countries. His academic contributions have been in the area of land reforms and agrarian relations, rural labour, castes, displacement and rehabilitation, governance and elementary education. He was part of the authors’ team that prepared the Public Report on Basic Education (OUP, 1999) and has edited a volume on land reforms (Sage Publications, 2000). His publications include Land Reforms in India: An Unfinished Agenda (Co-edited with Mr. B.K. Sinha), Public Report on Basic Education in India (Co-authored), Governing Caste and Managing Conflicts: Bihar 1990-2011 (Co-authored with Dr. Manish K Jha), Some Aspects of Tenancy Debate: Implications for Policy Reforms (Co-authored with B.K. Sinha in D. Narasimha Reddy (ed.), Agrarian Reforms, Land Markets, and Rural Poor), Bihar: Including the Excluded and Addressing the Failures of Public Provision in Elementary Education (Co-authored with Anup K. Karan in Santosh Mehrotra (ed.), The Economics of Elementary Education in India: The Challenge of Public Finance, Private Provision and Household Cost ) among many others.

Prabhu Prasad Mohapatra

Prabhu Prasad Mohapatra is Professor, Department of History at the University of Delhi. His academic career after PhD began with a Fellowship at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library(1989-1993) and was followed by Post-Doctoral appointments at Yale University(1993-94), School of Oriental and African Studies, London,1994 and at the University of Amsterdam (1994-1997).After returning to India he was Visiting Fellow at the V.V Giri National Labor Institute between 1998-2002 where he established the Integrated Labor History Research Programme and set up a fully digital and online Archive of Indian Labor, first of its kind in India. His areas of interest and specialization include History of Labor and Working Classes, Transnational Labor History and Long distance Labor Migration, History of Indian Diaspora, Economic History of Modern India, Environmental History.From 2002 February he was appointed as Associate Professor at the Department of History, University of Delhi. He has taught courses in Economic History of Modern India, History of Labour and Labouring Poor and Working Classes, National Movement and Strategies of Imperial Control in the M.A ( Final ) Year and “Slaves Coolies and `free `labor : A History of Servitude” in the M.A ( previous) classes. He has also taught MPhil classes on Research Methods. He has supervised/and is currently supervising research of more than 20 MPhil and PhD students. He has had stints as Visiting Professor at Ecole Normale Superiore (Cachan) (2008) and University of Goettingen (2010-11) and held the L.M Singhvi Senior Fellowship at University of Cambridge (2006) and Fellowship at International Research Centre on Work and Lifecycle in Global History Perspective, Humboldt University (2011). He has been involved in the establishment of the Association of Indian Labour Historians (AILH) and actively promoted international academic cooperation around issues of history of labor and Global History.

Anil Acharya

Anil Acharya is a Bengali essayist, short story writer and poet. In 1966, he founded the Bengali literary quarterly and little magazineAnustup. He graduated with an honors degree in English literature from the Scottish Church College. Thereafter he earned his master's degree in English literature from the University of Calcutta. He started publishing the literary quarterly Anustup as an undergraduate student at Scottish Church College in 1966.Since his college days, he has written poems, short stories and essays in Bengali and English. After earning a postgraduate degree in English literature, he started out as a lecturer, and later became a reader and then associate professor in English at the Serampore College, within the aegis of the University of Calcutta. He was also Head of the Department of English and set up the Communicative English programme in Serampore College. He is a member of the Publisher and Bookseller's Guild, the organizers of the Kolkata Book Fair, which is Asia's largest book fair and the most attended book fair in the world. He was elected Secretary of the Guild for three successive terms, between 1996-1998, and during his tenure, the noted French Philosopher Jacques Derrida inaugurated the Kolkata Book Fair in 1997.He has spent a life in writing and editing his quarterly journal, and has also founded an English language literary periodical for translated short stories from Bengali, called Harvest.In 1970, he assisted the Australian director Paul Cox as the assistant director in making the documentary on Calcutta. He was also the associate producer of Paul Cox's film "Force of Destiny" released in 2014. He is currently associated with St. Thomas' College of Engineering and Technology, Kolkata.Between February 2013 and February 2015, he wrote a regular Sunday column in the Bengali newspaper 'Ei Somoy', called "Nipaatone Siddho". It documented the myriad experiences that played out across four decades in the Bengali cultural and political landscape, and shaped Anustup and what it stands for. He is also the author of the Bengali book titled "Parasmaipadi" which is a collection of his selected articles.In recognition of his efforts, in 2012, he was appointed as a Tagore National Scholar by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India.

Prasanta Ray

Prasanta Ray is President of the Calcutta Research Group. His research interest relates to the interface of society and politics and economic morals. Currently he is trying to reconstruct the history of early twentieth century banking crisis in Bengal with a particular focus on the victims. This is a part of history of greed in Bengal. His teaching engagements include Everyday life worlds, Economic Sociology and Research Methodology.He joined West Bengal Junior Education Service in 1966. His teaching in Presidency College began in 1977. He retired as Professor and Head, Department of Political Science and Professor-in-charge (1989-2003), Department of Sociology, Presidency College, in 2003. He taught simultaneously as a Guest faculty in Department of Sociology, Calcutta University. He was Emeritus Professor in Political Science and Sociology in Presidency College/University, 2004-12. Heis currently Emeritus Professor in Sociology, Presidency University, and Honorary Visiting Professor, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. He was Indian Council of Social Science Research post-doctoral fellow: 1987-89, Visiting Scientist, Sociology Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata (September, 2003-March, 2004), and Member, Working Group on Under-graduate Colleges in India, National Knowledge Commission. 2006.

  • His doctoral research was on role of family in political education of the young in family. As an ICSSR fellow, he researched on conflict management by the post-colonial state in India. My current research interest is in economic morals.He teaches Everyday Sociology, Development Studies and Political Sociology in BA and MA classes in Presidency University, and Economic Sociology and Qualitative Research Methodology at MPhil level in IDSK.
  • Online Resources
Priyankar Upadhaya

Priyankar Upadhaya heads the Malaviya Center for Peace Research and holds the UNESCO Chair for Peace and Intercultural Understanding at Banaras Hindu Univerity. In his illustrious career spanning close to four decades, Prof. Upadhyaya has been teaching International Relations & Peace Studies at Banaras Hindu University. Professor Upadhayaya holds M.Phil. and Ph.D Degrees of Jawaharlal Nehru Universityand Advance International Diploma(s) in Conflict Resolution from the Uppsala University, Sweden. Prof Upadhyaya pursued Post-Doctoral Research at London University and the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, Washington DC. He was selected for the Guest Scholar Award of the Woodrow Wilson Centre of International Scholars at Washington DC 1992, Faculty Research Award, Canadian Govt. 1999 and Senior Fulbright Award in 2004. Professor Upadhyaya has taught Political Science & Conflict Resolution in many parts of the world, including Concordia University, Montreal; Ulster University in Northern Ireland, at the Department of Political Science, Karlstad University, Sweden. Professor Upadhyaya has also served as a guest faculty at the US Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. He has also been Fellow at the Henry L Stimson Center, Wash DC, and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo. Earlier this year Prof. Upadhyaya has been appointed as PRIO Global Fellow.He has contributed as a Resource Person for UN University of Peace and at the Henry L Stimson Center, Wash DC. Prof. Upadhyaya has also been a visiting speaker at the Foreign Service Institute, Naval War Academy and National Defense College in India. More recently, Prof Upadhyaya has served as the ICCR Chair of Indian Studies at Dublin City University.In June 2016, Professor Upadhyaya delivered a path breaking speech at the UN Consultative meet on ‘Peace as a process’ held at Geneva. In September, 2016, Professor Upadhyaya was invited by President Obama to the White House to attend a meeting on Religious and Interfaith dialogue. He has served in various quality committees constituted by Government of India including the Civil Service Examination Reform Committee under purview of the UPSC and the National Mission on Education through ICT [NMEICT]. Professor Upadhyaya has publications in journals and books from OUP, MUP, CUP, Sage, Ashgate and Routledge among others and research articles in reputed International Journals such as the Denver Journal of International Law & Policy; International Studies (Sage) and Strategic Analysis (Routledge).

Manoj K Jha 

Manoj K Jha is Professor and Head of Department of Social Work, University of Delhi. His research interests revolve around methodological and conceptual issues of social protest movements, minorities and marginalized communities. His latest book Riots as Rituals is based on his research on communal relations, mobilization and violence with the Bhagalpur riots in the Backdrop. An academician-activist to the core, he is a practitioner of emancipator and anti-oppressive approach in Social Work. He has designed and implemented rehabilitative and re-conciliatory action projects in Gujarat and Rajasthan and has been part of several civil society fact-finding teams to respond to instances of violence and atrocities. He was a lecturer at Department of Social Work, Jamia Millia Islamia from 1994 to 2002 before joining DSSW. He is also a visiting faculty to School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. His Research Interests/Focus include Political Economy and Governance, Social Action and Social Movements, Majority-minority Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies. Courses Taught include: State, Political Economy and Governance: Social Action and Social Movements and Conflict Mitigation and Peace Building.
He was engaged by Constella-Futures as lead researcher for the content and frequency analysis of parliamentary and legislative discourses on HIV/AIDS in six high prevalence states. He has worked as consultant with Oxfam (Gujarat) on its initiative on Peace building and Conflict reduction in West India and was instrumental in creating in Urja Ghar-an open and shared space for communities in riot affected Gujarat.He has undertaken Due Diligence Process for Women Exemplar Award to be given by CII for the two consecutive years i.e. 2008 and 2009. He was also offered the position of Programme Coordinator for the Peace building and Conflict reduction programme in West India. He was part of the consultation meet to develop a manual for child rights organized by MHRD, UNICEF and TISS. He has worked as consultant with FUTURES Group on content analysis of parliamentary questions on HIV-AIDS. He has coordinated a national study on Social Exclusion of Dalit and minority children from the sphere of education. He has conducted workshops on sensitization to underprivileged and marginal communities for different Gos/NGOs. He has coordinated and led teams of NGOs and trainee social workers for relief and rehabilitation work in the earthquake affected Kutch district of Gujarat with particular emphasis on marginalized and the vulnerable groups. He has led evaluation team for Total Literacy Campaign (TLC) to some districts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar.

Researchers & Experts in 2016

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ABSTRACTS

Sucharita Sengupta

Sucharita Sengupta is associated with Calcutta Research Group (CRG). Her research interests pertain to Forced Migration and Border studies in the context of Asia. After masters’ in Political Science from the University of Calcutta, she joined the Calcutta Research Group as a Research Assistant working on ‘West Bengal-Bangladesh Borderland: Humanitarian issues’. Under this, she wrote a paper on women trafficked from Bangladesh incarcerated in jails of West Bengal, India. This was presented at a workshop “Interrogating Forced Migration” in March 2015 and published as “Bordered Lives: Women from Bangladesh behind bars in India”, La Frontera 35 (2). Her recent research in CRG focused on the Rohingya refugees as part of the perilous irregular maritime migrants to the shores of South East Asian nations like Thailand and Malaysia. In this work she tried to trace the history and context of such maritime drives, reasons that allure them to take to the sea, and also the recent media attention to the phenomenon generating mass awareness of the issue internationally, especially in Bangladesh, and to some extent, India. The recent focus on the plight of the boatpeople on the high seas therefore, shows the need of a comprehensive research and continuous advocacy to keep the issue relevant. Currently she is working on patterns of migration in Northeast India in wake of the Look East policy of the Indian government, whether population mobility is impacted upon by the developmental trajectory of the government in the region and issues of out migration from Northeast top the rest of India.

‘Refugee Movement in West Bengal’

Sibaji Pratim Basu

Sibaji Pratim Basu of Department of Political Science with Rural Administration at Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal (India), is a senior teacher, researcher and author in the field of a wide range of subjects in social science. Professor Basu has graduated from the Department of Political Science, Presidency College, Kolkata (1981); post-graduated from University of Calcutta (1983) and obtained Ph.D. on “The Concepts of Nationalism and Internationalism: Tagore and Gandhi”, from Calcutta University (2005). He taught Political Science at Sree Chaitanya College, Habra, West Bengal for three decades and also worked as the Guest faculty at Post Graduate Departments of Political Science at University of Kalyani (1987-2006) and Netaji Subhas Open University, WB (2003-09). For more than a decade, since 2001, he had delivered Special Lectures on “Cultural Politics” at Rabindra Bharati University. He has acted as Resource Person during Refresher Courses and pre-Ph.D. courses at various universities, including University of Calcutta. He has presented papers and chaired sessions at different national and international conferences/seminars. A regular contributor to academic journals/books and popular dailies, periodicals, Professor Basu often appears on various channels as political commentator. He specialises in Modern Indian Political Thought & Politics, Socialist Thought and also has serious interest in the issues related to forced migration in contemporary South Asia and people’s ‘sustainable rights’ in India.

‘Food Movement in West Bengal’

EXPERTS

ABSTRACTS

Mallarika Sinha Roy

Mallarika Sinha Roy teaches in Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Earlier she has taught Centre of Global South Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen and she was a post-doctoral fellow at Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, 2008-2009. She has studied in Presidency College, Kolkata, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and University of Oxford (UK). She has written a book titled Gender and Radical Politics in India: Magic Moments of Naxalbari (1967-1975) (Routledge Studies in South Asian History Series, 2010). She has also written several journal articles and book chapters including “Bringing Space Alive: Doreen Massey’s World of Connected Geography”, (Economic and Political Weekly, 2016), “Intimate Spaces of Struggle: Rethinking Family and Marriage in Contemporary India” in Knut A. Jacobsen (ed) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, (London: Routledge, 2015), “Rethinking Female Militancy in Postcolonial Bengal”, Feminist Review, (2012), “The Romantic Manifesto of Revolution: Some Reflections on Issues of Gender in the Naxalbari Movement” in Pradip Basu (ed) Discourses on Naxalite Movement (1967-2009): Insights in Radical Left Politics (Calcutta, 2010), “Magic Moments of Struggle: Women's Memory of the Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal, India (1967-1975)”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, (2009), “Contesting Calcutta Canons: Issues of Gender and Mofussil in the Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal (1967-1975)”, Contemporary South Asia, (2009) among others. She was the co-convenor of Women’s Studies Seminar Series, JNU, 2013-2015 and she is a member of Indian Association of Women’s Studies; British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS) and Political Studies Association (PSA)

Sudeshna Banerjee

Sudeshna Banerjee is a professor at the Department of History, Jadavpur University. She had studied History at Presidency College, Calcutta, then University of Calcutta and did her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.She had earlier taught at City College, Calcutta. Using mainly a social history perspective, she engages with women and gender, the city and urbanization, the environment and environmentalism, science and society, colonialism and nationalism, the political economy and cultural politics of neoliberal globalization, and development-induced displacement. Temporally, her focus is on the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Geographically, South Asia, India and particularly Bengal/West Bengal are the areas on which she concentrates. She was awarded Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship, tenable at Brown University, USA, 2012-13, Charles Wallace India Trust (UK) grant-in-aid towards completion of doctoral research in the UK, 1996, The Commonwealth Academic Staff Scholarship (tenable at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) for Doctoral research in the UK during 1993-1996, UGC Junior Research Fellowship, 1984-85 and UGC National Scholarship for rank-holders in the First Class in the B.A. (Honours) Examination, 1980-81. Her major publications are ‘Non-Bengali’ Icons of Malevolence: The Bengali Middle-Class Representation of an “Other” in Inter-War Calcutta’ in Himadri Banerjee et al (eds), The Calcutta Mosaic: Essays and Interviews on the Minority Communities of Calcutta , London and New Delhi, 2009; ‘Public Memory, Personal Memories and the Historical Moment: Rethinking Partition Here and Now’, in Journal of Peace Studies, vol. 12, issue 3, July-Sept, 2005; ‘Displacement within Displacement: The Crisis of Old Age in the Refugee Colonies of Calcutta’, Studies in History (New Series), vol. 19, number 2, 2003.

Kumar Rana

Kumar Rana 1. Working with the Pratichi Trust since 2001 and helped develop the research team of the Trust that has taken shape of the Pratichi Institute (in 2011). Led several primary investigations on primary education, health delivery, food and nutrition carried out by the Trust. 2. Was part of a two-years ethnographic research project on seasonal migration in Eastern India carried out by the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia. 3. Taken part in quantitative data collection for several projects, including the Human Development Report 1994 and Market Information Survey of Households (MISH) 1995, carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and travelled extensively in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand (600 villages), Uttar Pradesh (60 villages), Haryana (30 villages), Himachal Pradesh (30 villages), Andhra Pradesh (28 villages). 4. Joined active politics while pursuing high school education, and was involved in a series of movements on land, wage, forest and Jharkhand separate statehood. 5. Contributed to journals like the Economic and Political Weekly, and newspapers like the AnandabazarPatrika. Contributory author of a number of volumes edited by eminent scholars. Authored several reports of the investigations carried out by the Pratichi Trust. Published a number of books in Bangla. Taken part in and edited the translations of Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative India, Identity and Violence, The Idea of Justice (co-edited with Anirban Chattpadhyay), Uncertain Glory (jointly authored by Jean Dreze; jointly translated with Anirban Chattopadhyay); translation of Sen’s The Country of First Boys is ongoing (jointly with Anirban Chattopadhyay). 6.Member, Calcutta Research Group; Honorary Fellow, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna. 7. Currently editing a Bangla fortnightly Arekrakam, (Founder-editor: Ashok Mitra). Pursuing (2015-17) Masters in Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery (MMSC-GHD) at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University.

Tanika Sarkar

Tanika Sarkar is a historian of modern India. Sarkar’s work focuses on the intersections of religion, gender, and politics in both colonial and postcolonial South Asia, in particular on women and the Hindu Right. She has recently retired from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Before joining CHS, JNU she taught at the St. Stephen’s College, and the Indraprastha College, Delhi University. She was also a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, between 1990 and 1994 and at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin in summer 2000. She has been a visiting professor at Chicago University, University of Witswatersland, Johannesberg, South Africa, and Centre for Modern Indian Studies (University of Goettingen, Germany).Tanika Sarkar’s important publications are:

Bengal 1928-1934: The Politics of Protest, (Oxford University Press India, 1987).

Words to Win: A Modern Autobiography (Kali for Women, 1999).

Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right (coauthored with Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen; Orient Longman 1993).

Women and the Hindu Right (edited jointly with Urvashi Butalia, 1995).

Women and Right-Wing Movement: Indian Experiences (edited jointly with Urvashi Butalia, 1998).

Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, Cultural Nationalism (Hurst, 2001).

Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader (two volumes, edited jointly with Sumit Sarkar, 2008).

Rebels, Wives, Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times (University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Caste in Modern India: A Reader (two volumes, edited jointly with Sumit Sarkar, Permanent Black, 2013).

Words to Win: The Making of a Modern Autobiography (2014)