SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Report from Kerala tour, February 2010

On February 10 and 11 SASNET’s Director, Dr. Anna Lindberg visited the Centre for Research and Education for Social Transformation (CREST, www.crest.ac.in) in Kozhikode, Kerala, India, and delivered a talk on “Women and ‘Modernisation’ in Kerala”. At CREST, she met with Prof. D.D. Namboothiri, Vinod Krishnan and Nirmal Joy to discuss future collaboration between CREST and Swedish Universities (photo to the right, D.D. Nampoothiri with his students).

Anna Lindberg also visited The Centre for Bioinformatics at Kerala University on February 20. She met with Dr. Achutsankar S. Nair who is the coordinator for the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window India at Kerala University, R. Dilip, Administrative Officer, and Ms. Radhika S., who is a Ph.D. student of journalism. They discussed future collaboration between Kerala University and Lund University.
Dr. Achutsankar (who recently visited Lund University, more information) expressed great appreciation with our collaboration so far. He noted that Kerala University has recently opened up more departments for foreign students, teachers, and researchers, and hopes to receive an increasing number of foreign academicians in the future. In particular, Dr. Achutsankar (photo to the left) mentioned the unique collection of Sanskrit documents at the university, and expressed his hope that Swedish (and other European) researchers of stature will be attracted by it to come as guest professors. Certain grants may be available for this purpose.

Dr. Achutsankar is also engaged in the Sustainable Kerala Network (http://www.sustainable-kerala.net/) initiated by Prof. Baboo Nair from Lund University, and Anna Lindberg discussed its present status with him.
In a small ceremony  arranged by Dr. Achutsankar after the meeting, Anna Lindberg planted a palm tree outside the Centre for Bioinformatics

Anna Lindberg also visited the Centre for Women’s Studies and met with Dr. Jayasree, who talked about the development of Women’s (or Gender) Studies at Kerala University. The same day, she met with Dr. J. Devika and Dr. S. Irudaya Rajan at the Centre for Develoment Studies in Thiruvananthapuram. Devika is a member of the SASNET South Asia reference group.

On Saturday 13th February, Anna Lindberg met for one hour with Kerala’s finance minister, Thomas Isaac (photo to the right), in order to discuss the development in Kerala over the past ten years.
T. Isaac talked about Women’s self-help groups in the Kudumbashree Project (www.kudumbashree.org) and other means to reduce poverty among the most impoverished residents of the state.  He also mentioned that the large number of cashew workers have gotten lots of attention and improved conditions since Anna Lindberg’s book was published in 2001 (more information).
Anna informed him about the Sustainable Kerala Network, which evoked his great interest.