11TH FEBRUARY
3:00-4:00 PM
“Goddesses and Devotees”
Kanad Sinha and Bharati Jagannathan
Details to be announced shortly.
12TH FEBRUARY
3:00-4:00 PM
“Death Penalty, Democracy and Anti-terror laws in India”
Anup Surendranath and Ujjwal Singh
Dr. Surendranath will discuss who gets the death penalty in India, and the process by which they are sentenced to death. Dr. Ujjwal Singh will talk about extraordinary laws such as Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention Act), Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, formulated to oppose terrorism and extremist violence. He will argue that anti-terror laws erode both the procedural and substantive aspects of the rule of law, become the terrain where permutations in alliance politics and configuration of power are played out, and assume an antagonistic notion of politics which seeks resolution through elimination and externalisation of difference.
4:30-5:30 PM
“A Global Agreement on Climate Change: Perspectives From Economics and Beyond”
Sreekant Gupta and Navroz Dubas
Runaway climate change is a fact and its impact are already huge and pervasive. 2015 was the warmest year ever recorded since measurements began. 2014 was the second most. Urgent action is needed. But a global agreement has eluded us ever since talks began in 1995. Can and will such an agreement ever happen? Can the nations of the world act before it is too late? What perspectives does economics provide in this context? Are there alternative approaches? Were the latest round of talks in Paris in December last year a breakthrough? The Paris Agreement represents a sea change in the model of global governance around climate change. It proposes a bottom up approach supported by top down elements, that are designed to bring countries onto a virtuous cycle of ever greater action, as they see other countries ramp up their effort. This approach, at least in theory, provides India some development space to grow. And it holds out an approach for more effective global action on climate change, but only if a virtuous cycle is, in fact, created. Understanding the Paris Agreement to climate change requires looking beyond economic concepts to ideas from regulation theory and the governance literature on how best to build this virtuous cycle.
The panel comprising noted experts on climate change will discuss and debate these issues.
4:30-5:30 PM
“Caste In Higher Education”
Gopal Guru and Vikas Bajpai
Rohith Vemula’s powerful political statement through his suicide note can demonstrate the key reasons for Indian republic’s failure to deliver on its promises: social equality is impossibility till the exploited gain access to the knowledge production and distribution mechanisms, altering its organizing logic. If Indian higher education sector remains a space of alienation, humiliation and disintegration of Dalit minds and bodies, if we find it impossible to come out of our shackles that make us inhuman, understanding the what, how and why of these in socio-economic, ideological and historical terms can help in formulating a platform for ethical action towards inclusivism.
12TH FEBRUARY
4:30-5:30 PM
“Atheistic Traditions in India”
Alex Watson and Dr. Dharmakirti
The idea behind this panel is to lend an overview of diverse atheistic traditions in India – philosophical and religious from earlier times and political traditions from modern times. Dr. Dharmakirti will speak on atheism in Buddhism, including the Navayana Buddhism of Ambedkar. Some popular articles by Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary executed by the British in 1931, and Periyar, leader of social justice movement in Tamil Nadu, both of whom publicly declared themselves atheists, and related it to their politics – will also be discussed. Dr. Watson has been working on atheistic arguments in classical Indian philosophy recently drawing on arguments given by Mīmāṃsā, Buddhism, Jainism, Samkhya and Cārvāka/Lokāyata.