BIC TALKS

Rahul Rao, scholar and author of Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality, in conversation with writer Kavya Murthy talks about the inheritance that the former colonies are living with and how they have managed to warp and expand the imperialist biases and criminalisation of the Queer community. Primarily examining three locations - India, Uganda and Britain - the relationship between the state and interaction with the international position, Culpability of colonial powers, current trans lives conditions in India and the responses of the UN and other international bodies, Out of Time ties together the aspects of Race, caste, class and human rights in the struggle for queer identity rights across centuries in the past and the future. Rahul Rao has research interests in international relations theory, the international relations of South Asia, comparative political thought, and gender and sexuality. Kavya Murthy is a writer, editor and content strategist for digital platforms and curates books and events for Champaca Bookstores.

Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, talks about what propelled her to travel 9,000 miles along India's borderlands. In conversation with Vaibhav Vats, Vijayan recounts her reportage along India's tenuous boundaries with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and - most contentious of all – Pakistan. The conversation delves into the nature of borders, the peculiar origins of India's demarcations and the fractured, founding history that underpins the Indian nation-state. Vijayan and Vats also muse on how the violence on the peripheries slowly permeates inwards, as raging conflicts over citizenship and identity - once an issue confined largely to the borderlands - have moved to the centre of the Indian body politic. Suchitra Vijayan is an award-winning photographer, the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organisation. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. A Barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. Vaibhav Vats is an independent writer and journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times and Al Jazeera, among other publications. He is working on a book on Hindu nationalism and the making of India's Second Republic.

Manu V Devadevan interviews HS Shivaprakash on the beginning of his life as a poet, his influences and his evolution - personal and literary - over half a century. The conversation traces the timeline of contemporary Kannada Literature in parallel with that of world literature through a personal lens. The speakers delve into what makes the experience of a poem or a play different from that of a novel. Touching upon his childhood in Bangalore of the 60s to his life as a traveller, this session is a glimpse into the making of one of the most present and influential voices in Kannada literature. Apart from the physical and technical aspects of his existence as a poet, HS Shivaprakash also speaks of the personal, the political and the spiritual. Poet and playwright HS Shivaprakash is considered one of the most influential voices in Kannada literature today. The recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, he has also received the highest awards in Karnataka for literature and drama. His literary works have been translated into most Indian languages, as well as into English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. A significant scholarly contribution is the rediscovery of the aesthetic facets of Indian Bhakti traditions. Manu V Devadevan teaches History at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, and received the Infosys Prize in Humanities for the year 2019.

In this spirited lecture, which was originally a LISA distinguished lecture delivered in March 2021, the historian Ramachandra Guha recalls some memorable experiences from a lifetime of working in libraries and archives in India and abroad. He introduces us to some great repositories of printed books, such as the National Library in Kolkata and the Sterling Memorial Museum Library of Yale University, and to some great repositories of unpublished archival material, such as the Manuscripts Division of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. And he speaks also of the joyous days and months he has spent in the greatest library-cum-archive in the world, the British Library in London. The lecture was followed by a riveting Q & A session as well.

Bilal Zaidi, founder of the political tech start up, OurDemocracy.in, is in conversation with Sweta Daga, as he gets to the brass tacks of the electoral campaign system in India. This conversation evaluates the ongoing practices which are looked upon as tradition in our electoral democracy, its shortcomings, the opacity in the process and lack of accessibility to the citizenry. Bilal and Sweta talk of the future of political campaign finances with the advent of digital India and whether electoral reforms are in sight or not. With anecdotal information and comparative analyses with electoral procedures of countries like the United State of America, this conversation presents a possibility and a gradual change of direction towards transparency and greater understanding of how Democracy works. Bilal Zaidi is Founder and Executive Director of OurDemocracy.in. Prior to founding OurDemocracy, he was a Global campaigner with Avaaz.org (based in New York). He is also a former journalist with more than 12 years of experience working with organizations like Times Now, NDTV, NewsX among others. He has covered more than 24 Assembly and 3 Lok Sabha elections. He believes his interview with Mr Narendra Modi (India's current PM) and his coverage of the Syrian conflict were the highlights of his career. Sweta Daga has told stories across platforms, from television and film to theater. As a freelance journalist, she has worked in India focusing on climate justice with intersections in gender and equity. She has also facilitated workshops with change makers across the world on systemic change.

Edward Luce, one of the most highly regarded commentators on US politics, talks about the dynamics of US politics, and the impact of the newly elected US government on the world, especially on India. This episode was originally streamed live on March 12th, 2021 as the annual Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture. One of the leading and most prestigious events on the calendar, the New India Foundation Annual Lecture has facilitated debate on important social issues, with talks featuring renowned scholars and thinkers. Edward Luce is the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. Before that he was the FT's Washington Bureau chief. Other roles have included South Asia bureau chief, Capital Markets editor, and Philippines Correspondent. He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017), Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012), and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007).He appears regularly on CNN, NPR, MSNBC's Morning Joe, and the BBC. More details on BIC Talks podcasts on the BIC website

Researcher Siddharth Chakravarty and anthropologist & researcher Vani Sreekanta exchange notes on their most recent visit to West Bengal post the lifting of the lockdown. They talk about complexities of food habits, food production, policies that govern the ecologically sensitive areas of the Mangroves, coastal mechanisation, gender politics and the politics of migrating fishing workers and labour. This wide ranging conversation mulls over the role of the researcher and the engagement, intervention and impact on their subjects. Siddharth Chakravarty is an independent researcher interested in the encounters between land-based policy-making and the biophysical properties of the oceans. He is interested in fish as they shape and are shaped by processes of territory-making, resource-sharing and trans-boundary migration. Vani Sreekanta is an independent researcher interested in the complex enmeshment of human and more-than human systems. She also likes to think about the roles networks and collaborations play in building more representative, participatory research. She has worked in environmental conservation for nearly a decade and is currently involved with a transdisciplinary collaboratory called the Southern Collective.

The elemental relevance of poetry in lives and times such as ours is what binds this conversation with poet Ranjit Hoskote and Journalist Supriya Nair together. Ranjit's newest collection of poetry, Hunchprose is a response to and reflection of the many lives the poet possesses within him. This conversation delves deep into inspirations, memories and experiences that affords us a glimpse into the life of the polymath and how life traces verse and vice versa. Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. His seven collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts, Central Time and Jonahwhale. He is also the author of I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded, the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems and a translator of the legendary Urdu poets Mir and Ghalib. Hoskote curated India's first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He has received the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award and the S.H. Raza Literature Award. His poems have been translated into German, Hindi, Bengali, Irish, Marathi, Swedish and Spanish. Supriya Nair is a journalist from Mumbai. She is the editor of the publication Fifty Two and co-founder of the media company All Things Small. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

Pavan Srinath talks to Lekha Naidu about creating BIC Talks and releasing 100 episodes of the podcast since March 2020, when the pandemic lockdowns began in India. On this episode Pavan takes the guest seat, as Bangalore International Centre's Programme Manager Lekha Naidu talks to him about the joys, lessons and challenges of podcasting. They discuss how BIC pivoted to podcasting within a week of the first nation-wide lockdown, how they managed to record deep conversations almost entirely remotely, and what kept the show going. Pavan also shares a few of his favourite moments and episodes from the last year, and his thoughts on podcasting in general. Pavan Srinath is a public policy researcher and podcaster, who also hosts The Pragati Podcast and the Thale-Harate Kannada Podcast. He's accessible at @zeusisdead on Twitter and Instagram. Lekha Naidu is Programme Manager at BIC, and will be taking over Pavan's role as host and producer of BIC Talks from Episode 103. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast and Stitcher. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

In early March 2020 as the shadow of the pandemic loomed large and uncertainty - financial and otherwise was the order of the day, Yes Bank joined a long parade of banking and financial scandals arisen due to malpractice. Another one seemingly bitten the dust when the moratorium on Yes Bank was imposed by the RBI. Journalist Furquan Moharkan had been following this story long before it broke and his research is now the basis for the book, The Banker who Crushed his Diamonds. In conversation with Furquan is editor Shreya Punj, while taking us through what actually happened and how do we as citizens read the signs of an impending disaster. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.