Category: Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Chirag Dhara pens an op-ed in The Hindu

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS, along with Dr Soumyajit Bhar, has penned an op-ed in The Hindu titled The dangerous illusion cast by development rankings. The authors articulate a new vision of sustainable development, discussing how the United Nations Development Program has shaped countries’ perceptions of progress for decades. They argue that its conception of development is outdated and incompatible with advances in sustainability science. The piece proposes a new framework for development in the 21st century.

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Dr Swayam Sampurna Panigrahi delivers guest lecture on Sustainable Manufacturing and Operations at Tshwane University of Technology

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Swayam Sampurna Panigrahi, Assistant Professor, Operations and Area Chair – Operations, IFMR GSB, delivered a guest lecture on Supply Chain Sustainability on 13 March 2025 in a research seminar on ‘Sustainable Manufacturing and Operations: Bridging Academic Insights and Industry Practices,’ organised by the Department of Operations Management, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa. The lecture was delivered online.

Dr Proma Raychaudhury pens an op-ed in Anandabazar Patrika

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Proma Raychaudhury, Assistant Professor, Politics, SIAS recently published an op-ed in Bengali at Anandabazar Patrika, an analysis of the Trump-Zelensky interaction through the performative approach to populist politics. Read here.
Dr Raychaudhary also delivered an invited lecture at Adamas University’s Guest Lecture Series on Exploring Women’s Participation and Representation in Indian Politics on 10 March 2025. She also delivered an online talk at a public forum on political science called Rashtrabiggan Charchakendra on 15 March 2025. Watch the talk

Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda publishes an essay in the Frontline

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Associate Professor, Politics, SIAS has published an essay, Telangana’s SC subclassification risks reinforcing old inequities in Frontline (10 March 2025).

About the Essay

Following the Supreme Court’s verdict on the sub-classification of SC reservations, the Telangana government took the initiative to implement this by categorising 59 Dalit castes into three groups based on their socio-economic and educational status. While the move aims to ensure more equitable distribution, concerns persist about dominant sub-groups potentially monopolizing the benefits.

To achieve true justice, Gundimeda suggests a merit-based equity model that considers factors such as generational access, educational background, and employment history. This model would prioritise the most disadvantaged individuals within each sub-group. Additionally, he advocates for gender justice by proposing a sub-quota for women within each category.

While Telangana’s decision is significant, its long-term success hinges on the careful and nuanced implementation of this policy to prevent further marginalization. The proposed model could serve as a framework for other states, ensuring fair representation while addressing the structural inequalities that Ambedkar envisioned in his approach to reservations.

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Professor Anil Srinivasan receives the Anjali Khandwalla Memorial Award

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Professor Anil Srinivasan, Visiting Professor of Practice, Literature and the Arts, SIAS, received the iconic Anjali Khandwalla Memorial Award. The award, instituted and presented by Dr Pradeep Khandwalla, former Director of IIM Ahmedabad, is given annually to an outstanding teacher or educator. Nominations are submitted by scholars, and the jury consists exclusively of teachers and professors. The  event was held at MICA, Ahmedabad which is Professor Srinivasan’s alma mater.

Dr Sayandeb Chowdhury writes for The Wire and Sangbad Pratidin

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Sayandeb Chowdhury, Senior Assistant Professor, Literature, SIASwrote about the sophistication of a psychoanalytical approach to stardom, and the unique daring of its leading actor in Satyajit Ray’s Nayak (The Hero, 1966), starring the Bengali screen icon Uttam Kumar, which was re-released after a digital restoration across the country on February 21 2025. 

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The same film occasioned a piece in Bangla about the idea of the public in popular culture. For readers who can read Bangla, head here 

Dr Chirag Dhara delivers a talk at IISER Pune

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS delivered a talk at IISER, Pune based on their recently published paper, ‘A scalability-centric perspective on global human development within environmental limits’ on 28 February 2025. The talk was delivered as part of the ECS Seminar and was titled, ‘What levels of development can humanity “sustainably” aspire to?’

Dr Chirag Dhara delivers a talk at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS delivered a talk at the Prof R Ananthakrishnan Colloquium at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune on 25 February 2025. The talk was titled “Is India a good or bad performer on climate change?”

Abstract of the talk

Climate performance indices are widely used to evaluate national climate action efforts, but significant discrepancies exist among prominent indices such as the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), and Climate Action Tracker (CAT). These divergences have led to contentious public disagreements between governments and index developers in the past.

Divergences stem from methodological choices that reflect different underlying assumptions about climate performance evaluation. In particular, our analysis finds that the extent of emphasis on equity can lead to widely divergent, even contradictory, assessments by indices.

We introduce a conceptual framework to categorise performance indices based on the worldviews/perspective they encode, often unknown even to the index developer. Our results demonstrate that indices sharing similar underlying perspectives tend to produce concordant rankings. We call for an explicit articulation of perspectives encoded in indices based on our framework, and hypothesize that this would enable more constructive resolution of conflicts. 

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Dr Suchika Chopra presents research paper at IIT Bombay 

Ram Kumar Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Dr Suchika Chopra, Assistant Professor, Economics, SIAS recently presented the research paper, titled ‘Effects of Health Shocks on Time Spent in Home Production’, at IIT Bombay from 17-19 February organised by YSI INET Economics. This paper examines the non-monetary costs associated with health shocks and evaluates whether incorporating home production helps sustain effective consumption during a health shock or exacerbates its overall impact.