BIC TALKS

With an increasing number of urban, city dwellers finding their way back to agriculture, there's a small but definite movement towards natural, organic, alternative methods of sustainable farming. While the stress has been on constant productivity to make economic sense, we are now becoming aware of how much damage the land, food culture and native knowledge systems have experienced. As they wait for policy to catch up, two people talk about what moved them to take an active interest in sustainability, preservation and conservation.

In this episode of BIC Talks ecological conservationist Priya Shanavas speaks with lawyer turned farmer and innovator, Aparna Rajagopal about lessons learnt while setting up her self-sustained off the grid model farm, Beejom and several projects housed within it, like preserving and growing traditional, heirloom and native varieties of crops, a seed bank and preserving endangered varieties of indigenous cattle.

Historically the country's annual budget exercise has been a major event and spectacle in the annual economic calendar. There was a time when the post budget analysis by people like Nani Palkiwala used to draw audiences in droves. Off late with the dropping of the railway budget, and the introduction of the GST, the annual budget is increasingly becoming just another important day in the announcements made by the government. This year there were expectations of a populist budget in view of upcoming state elections but that did not happen. We have a budget focused on growing capital investments and infrastructure.

To discuss this and more on this episode of BIC Talks we have Pranay Kotasthane, deputy director of Takshashila Institution where he teaches public policy, international relations, and public finance at Takshashila's graduate and post-graduate programmes in conversation with Narayan Ramachandran, social entrepreneur, columnist and emerging market investor.

In this conversation with Vaibhav Vats, Dr. Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History at St.Anthony's College, University of Oxford, provides a glimpse into the range and spectrum of his research and writing - touching on history of Indian diaspora and identity drawn from personal history, enquiring into Gandhi and decoding his continually evolving understanding of sacrifice, violence and non-violence through the lens of the Mahabharata, understanding the dynamics of personalities like Jinnah, Ambedkar and Nehru, while drawing parallels with the current dispensation and communal, political climes. The essence of non-violent protest endures due to their moral emphasis that overrides any political appeal which has ensured Gandhi stays put in our collective imagination.

Centring the narrative around a lively, erudite and thoroughly enjoyable history of one family from Malwa in Central India which held substantial land and various administrative offices in the Mughal empire and negotiated over several generations with three regimes - the Mughals, the Marathas and the British, Dr Chatterjee assembles a living, breathing world through her book, Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords across Three Indian Empires. It is a classic history from below, populated with real people and colourful individuals in both spectacular and everyday situations which tells a riveting story even as it opens up many important questions for scholars and students of Mughal history and historical scholarship more broadly.

In this episode of BIC Talks Dr. Prachi Deshpande talks to Dr. Nandini Chatterjee about the story of how she reconstructed a coherent archive to tell a micro-history of one family over such a long period of time and about it being a thought provoking meditation on the very nature of the historical archive.

On 28 May 1940, in the early days of the Second World War, Major Akbar Khan marched at the head of 299 soldiers along a beach in northern France. They were the only Indians in the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk.

What journey had brought these men to Europe? What became of them and their comrades captured by the Germans?

In this episode of BIC Talks, author and historian Ghee Bowman talks to writer and journalist Vaibhav Vats about his book, 'The Indian Contingent: The Forgotten Muslim Soldiers of the Battle of Dunkirk' while examining the larger British narrative and place in history, details his research and tells an important although obscure and astonishing story of the Indian contingent – the Muslim soldiers who fought in the pivotal Battle of Dunkirk – from their arrival in France on 26 December 1939 to their return to an India on the verge of Partition.

In recent times, with the proliferation of Over the Top Entertainment platforms and increased access to content from all over the world in various languages, If there's has been a clear and visible front runner in popularity, fandoms, fan fiction and all round good old hysteria - it's all things K!

South Korean Pop music, Korean Soap Operas, Live action and animated Films, food and Culture are taking over the imagination of a large swathe of the urban Indian population. While the spectrum of the influence of the South Korean Entertainment industry is wide, writer, podcaster and cultural critic Deepanjana Pal and author & journalist Nisha Susan give us an introduction to what is the innocuous gateway to an entire subculture - the phenomenon of the K - Drama.

In mid December, 2021, Dramaturg, Writer, Director & Cultural Critic Rustom Bharucha facilitated a week-long workshop for a cohort of 12 participants on Dramaturgy at Bangalore International Centre with inputs from several artists and practitioners, including philosopher and educator, Sundar Sarukkai.

We caught up with the two at the height of churning during the workshop for a tête-à-tête on what was most playing on their minds. In this revealing conversation, they mull over necessary qualities that characterise the concept of "Theatre", the social context of 'touch' in the times of a pandemic; tactility, conversation and sociality. The conversation also seeks to problematise the romantic idea of theatre being democratic and the central idea of theatre being a safe space. Some questions explored are - Can theatre really be viewed as a model of civil society and does it truly allow the practitioner the agency to challenge social norms? What is its role in dissent and what is the true function of theatre?

This episode of BIC Talks features Srikrishna Ramamoorthy in conversation with founder and chairman of Marico, Harsh Mariwala. While there's a small chance his name may not ring a bell, most of us would have encountered the iconic blue and white Parachute coconut oil bottle at some point in life - one of several FMCG brands from the Marico stable. Harsh has played a key role in converting a traditional commodities driven family business into a leading consumer products and services company.

His recent book, Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico, co-authored with global business advisor, Ram Charan, talks about two journeys - of Marico as a company and the personal one of Harsh while he learned, spotted opportunities and took risks in the building of the market entity. Having now stepped away from day to day operations, in this conversation Harsh talks about how he has to reimagine himself, while scripting new chapters in life and work; and his continuing quest to do more, be more and make a difference.

What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In her book Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas.

In this provocative conversation writer Samanth Subramanian along with Larissa contemplates what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? What exactly do we value most as human beings, and why?

This conversation was originally streamed as part of the The Bangalore Life Science Cluster and NCBS Archives' Public Lecture series and has been adapted to this podcast.

Perhaps no other issue today is as confronting as our warming earth. What we need are thousands - millions - of everyday conversations about the climate to enlarge the ranks of the concerned, engage the disengaged and persuade the cautious of the need for action. While companies and governments are hugely responsible for the mess we're in, can individuals effect real, significant, and lasting change to solve this problem.

Towards the end of October 2021, filmmaker and designer Jenny Pinto engaged authors and researchers Prof. Kimberly Nicholas and Dr. Rebecca Huntley on their work and their books on Climate Change and the shifting of the strategy on conversations around the impending climate emergency.