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Dr Chirag Dhara delivers a talk at Jawaharlal Nehru University

Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS, delivered a talk at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, on 18 March 2025. The talk, titled “Inequality and Climate Destabilisation,” was part of the CESP Seminar Series 2025.

Abstract
How would the world have warmed if each country’s lifestyle had been globally adopted? Our analysis reveals that universalising the lifestyles of most industrialised countries would have warmed the planet by over 1.5°C by 2002. Thus, the current (relative) climate stability is owed to the modest lifestyles of the global majority. Many consequences follow.

Dr Joya John selected to attend Balzan Colloquium at Harvard University

Dr Joya John, Assistant Professor, Literature, SIAS, has been selected to attend the Balzan Colloquium at the Institute of World Literature, Harvard University, from 30 June to 24 July 2025. The three-week colloquium brings together participants from five regions of the world: Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and South/Southeast Asia. Each year, the colloquium focuses on a specific topic with implications for world literature. In 2025, the theme will be ‘Literature and Environmental Crisis’. Participants will meet weekly to share and discuss their work on the topic and will be invited to submit their essays for a special issue of the Journal of World Literature, scheduled for publication in the fall of the following year.

Dr Chirag Dhara pens an op-ed in The Hindu

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 They argue that its conception of development is outdated and incompatible with advances in sustainability science.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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SIAS Students Sparsh Makharia, Vatsalya Betala, and Aarav Akali secure second place in EMPOWER Hackathon at IIM Ahemedabad

SIAS students Sparsh Makharia, Vatsalya Betala, and Aarav Akali (Cohort 2022-26) secured 2nd place at the prestigious EMPOWER Hackathon, an inter-college competition hosted by IIM Ahmedabad’s Social Innovation Club (IDEOS), Ashoka University’s Social Impact Club (Anitya), and the CS Society of Ashoka University.

The EMPOWER Hackathon: Tech for Social Good brought together students from across India to develop innovative, technology-driven solutions addressing pressing social challenges. Competing against 162 participants, the team showcased exceptional problem-solving, technical expertise, and entrepreneurial thinking, delivering a solution that stood out among the top contenders.

Their project, PlantGuard, is an offline hardware-integrated AI system for real-time plant disease detection. It leverages three AI models to analyse plant health and provides farmers with instant feedback, helping them take timely preventive measures. The Hackathon involved an online round, and a final in-person pitch and prototype demonstration at IIM Ahmedabad, concluding in a podium finish for the team.

This achievement was made possible with the support of Krea University’s Cyber Club, which provided essential hardware components and assisted with transportation to IIM Ahmedabad, ensuring the team could participate and present their solution at the final round.

Kaustav Mehta’s undergraduate capstone thesis published in BMC Neurology

Kaustav Mehta, Teaching Fellow, Data Science, SIAS’ undergraduate capstone thesis titled ‘Exploring comorbidity networks in mild traumatic brain injury subjects through graph theory: a traumatic brain injury model systems study’ has been published in BMC Neurology. The paper is co-authored by Dr Shyam Kumar Sudhakar, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, SIAS.

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Dr Proma Raychaudhury pens an op-ed in Anandabazar Patrika

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

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

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

Dr Sayandeb Chowdhury, Senior Assistant Professor, Literature, SIAS wrote 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 Rangachary Kommanduri publishes paper in the Neurocomputing journal

Dr Rangachary Kommanduri’s paper titled, ‘STAD-AI: Spatio-temporal Anomaly Detection in Videos with Attentive Dual-Stage Integration’ has been published in the Neurocomputing journal (Q1, Impact Factor = 5.5).

This work presents STAD-AI, a novel framework for video anomaly detection that combines spatio-temporal attention-based feature extraction with an attentive U-Net architecture for precise anomaly prediction.

Dr Kommanduri is Visiting Assistant Professor, Data Science at SIAS.

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