Author: Ram Kumar

Dr Srajana Kaikini, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at SIAS, Krea University published a paper titled Face – An Insufficient Technology of the Subject in the Journal Sambhashan’s special issue on Technology, Art, and Society (July – September, 2023) (Volume 4, Issue 3) pp.19-33. In this paper, Dr Kaikini philosophically explores the face in art history to argue for a renewed understanding of its relationship to the subject.

(Click here for more )

Dr Rama Devi, Visiting Assistant Professor at SIAS, Krea University gave an online talk titled Between Impositions and Autonomy: Dalit Women, Education, Skill and Employment at the South Asia Forum Education Transformations and Youth, University of Melbourne, on January 23, 2024. 

Education is often conflated with women’s empowerment. Access to formal education is considered to possess the potential to usher in the elimination of the imposed dependence of women on men by enhancing their employability and easing their entry into the labour market. Establishing such simplistic interconnections evades hidden constraints of socio-cultural conditions entwined with patriarchal ideologies that influence and even partially prohibit women’s access to education vis a vis work/marginalization in the labour market. Examining the nature of educational access and occupational aspirations of urban Dalit women residing in a Delhi settlement, the presentation underlines that patriarchal ideology impresses and controls the nature and outcome of the education they obtain. In the settlement, while most young girls pursue higher education, not everyone is expected to channel their educational degrees to secure paid employment. Unlike men, women are not encouraged to engage in every form of work as the nature of female occupation is intimately tied to notions of honour and disgrace of the family. Locally prevailing patriarchal norms dictate and define what constitutes respectable work for women.

A paper by Prof Madhuri Saripalle, Professor of Economics at IFMR GSB, Krea University was accepted for poster presentation at the Annual meeting of the American Economic Association, held at San Antonio, Texas on Jan 5-7, 2024. Titled Testing and Risk attitude under incomplete information: A game theoretic perspective, the work has been co-authored with Dr Vijaya C Subramanian. 

This study investigates the critical role of testing in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, employing a game theory framework to model decision-making processes for both governmental authorities and individuals under information asymmetry. The population is categorized into two groups based on immunity status (high immunity – type 1, and low immunity – type 2), known only to individuals and their engagement in risk-prone or risk-averse activities. The government holds a prior belief derived from a probability distribution regarding immunity status and faces a strategic decision of selecting one of three testing approaches: universal testing, hybrid testing, or no testing, each with associated expected costs. The study finds that increased benefits of risk-averse behaviour among type 2 individuals relative to type 1 lead to a higher odds ratio of immune individuals. Policy should aim at: (a) Implementing a hybrid testing strategy and (b) Incentivising risk-averse behaviour. In other words, instead of highlighting the costs and penalizing risk prone behaviour, the government should trumpet the benefits of risk averse behaviour.

Click here for more

Dr Swarnamalya Ganesh, Assistant Professor of Practice at SIAS, Krea University presented a paper titled The Dance Heritage is Us! at the international seminar organised by Sangeet Natak Akademi, Government of India, New Delhi. The topic of the seminar was Temporal and Spatial Dynamics: Comparative Explorations through a myriad of Indian Perspective.

The life of a dance is short. It begins and ends with the dancer. Sculptures, paintings and writings have captured dance through their own conceptual and speculative potential to reproduce or retain the critical space for dance in the world. In becoming historical objects of India, such sculptures and paintings, simultaneously serve as deterritorialised material cultures, housed in monuments and museums, as well as people’s beliefs, hinged on fact-based infatuations with dance.

What is the value of time in understanding how these objects inform us of a dance danced in the past, or one that is to be danced in the future? Dr Ganesh invites the audience to investigate Indian dance sculptures as not merely a collection and validation of dancing bodies through time, but as bodily reading, memorization and survival of images that showcase Us! – the living and moving heritage of dance. 

Dr Suresh Govindapuram, Assistant Professor of Economics at IFMR GSB, Krea University presented a paper on Empowering Rural India: Combating Corruption and Fostering Financial Inclusion at the Global Conclave 2024, held under the theme Advancing Human Development in the Global South. The Conclave was organised at the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi, in partnership with NITI Aayog, the Government of India and Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), from January 11-13, 2024.

The Guild, Mumbai has published a monograph based on the exhibition of Akbar Padamsee’s Searching for the Present, Where?, curated by Dr Srajana Kaikini for the gallery and held at The Guild, Mumbai. In this monograph, Dr Kaikini offers an incisive philosophical reading of Padamsee’s figurations through photography, pencil and watercolour (1995- 2006). 

Read more: https://www.guildindia.com/publications-Catalogues.htm

Dr Swarnamalya Ganesh, Assistant Professor of Practice at SIAS, Krea University published a book section, Major Breakthrough in Minor Drama Forms – Understanding Uparūpaka-s through Places, Performances and Indigenous Custodians,  as part of Uparūpaka-s- in Indian Performing Arts, published by The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (ISBN 978-93-91622-83-1).

In this critical research, Dr Ganesh draws connections, textually, historically (inscriptional and archaeological) as well as performatively between Sanskrit treatises on Rūpaka-s or drama traditions and the Pān communities of the Sañgam literatures, tracing them to the tribal Pānā custodians, such as the servicing communities like Pardān-s and many others. This research brings us closer to and more definitively placing many theatrical and performing traditions in the continuum of tribal and early practices of various communities, thus helping answer some long standing “origin theories” tied around prestige networks like that of Sanskrit and gentrification of performing arts.