SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Report from Hyderabad:

Meeting at the Centre for Social Development, at the National Institute of Rural Development, NIRD

13 March 2002
NIRD has an excellent library, keeping an impressive amount of journals and magazines, as well as a good collection of new books. It should be possible for Swedish research students and researchers to come and work here for some time, something which could be arranged on the basis of an exchange programme.
The visit was hosted by Mr. R. Vidyasagar, who is working as a consultant with a programme on child labour in rural areas. Present was also the NIRD Director, Dr. R R Prasad.

Dr. Prasad, who made his PhD thesis on the Bhotias in the Himalayas, suggested co-operation and exchange of students and researchers. He would like to secure help in the following areas:

1. Social mobilisation of the rural community for development
2. Social audit, that is the accountability and transparency of rural development projects
3. Social marketing, how to market socially relevant values in the community, e.g. breastfeeding practices instead of substitutes. He referred to a book by the anthropologist Scarlett Epstein on social marketing.
4. Equity issues in development (”Equality is the goal, equity is the means”)

He also informed about a South Asian Perspectives Network Association, led by Dr. Ponna Wignaraja, who is Vice Chairman of Independent South Asian Commission of Poverty Alleviation.

Other persons I met at NIRD was the Deputy Director, Dr. K. Suman Chandra, a sociologist interested in Education, who now also works with the project on child labour, sponsored by the ILO, Dr. V. Annamalai, assistant director for the Centre for Panchayati Raj, and Dr. A K Rajuladevi, Centre for Social Development, a PhD from Tamil Nadu working on gender issues.

Seminar at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS)

The seminar on Indian Farmers’ Movements in a Comparative Perspective was led by the CESS Director, Prof. S. Mahendra Dev, and Dr. Jos Mooij.
There were about 15 persons present from the staff, plus at least one political scientist from the University of Hyderabad.
After presenting SASNET I held a lecture for about one hour, and then we had about 45 minutes of discussions. There were quite a few and interesting questions and comments.

Meeting at SaciWATERs – South Asian Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies

Web page: http://www.saciwaters.org/default.htm

E-mail: saciwaters@rediffmail.com

Present at the meeting: Peter Mollinga, Dr. Jasween Jairath, and Dr. Arunachalam Rajagopal.
They work with governments and NGOs in the field of water studies. Through Wageningen University in the Netherlands Mollinga guides ten doctoral students all over South Asia.
They are interested in studies of water struggles of various kinds. I suggested that other types of day to day collective actions may also be included.

Meeting at Administrative Staff College of India, ASCI

Web page: http://www.asci.org.in

ASCI is housed in the palace of the former Nizam of Hyderabad, magnificient with main buildings, annexes, a big garden, swimming pool, etc. It is an autonomous institution, which is 100 per cent funded by external funds. Mostly they teach middle aged businessmen in business management, and they also do a lot of consultancy work, some for the government of India.
There were about 12 persons present in the meeting. I promised to look into their possibilities to link up with Swedish institutions, e g with Hans Jansson at Göteborg University.
Some of the participants: Dr. Gautam Pingle, Management, Dr. Usha Ramachandra, Energy,
Mr. Hemnath Rao, Business ethics, Rural co-operatives, and Dr. Prabhati Pati, Human Resource Management in Business.