To identify and develop unique & high potential change agents of India through a multi-disciplinary programme guided by eminent leaders and scholars of our time.

Course: Sociological reasoning

Faculty: Andre Beteille

This short course on ‘Sociological Reasoning’ has been specifically designed for Young India Fellowship Programme (YIFP). It differs substantially in structure and content from the introductory courses offered in Sociology departments of Indian universities. While, generally, students of Sociology are introduced to the subject through papers on Sociological Theories and on debates about Indian Society, this paper emphasises on the unique and distinctive nature of sociological reasoning. It is an attempt to introduce students at YIFP- who come from various different disciplinary backgrounds- to the enterprise of Sociology. While we will, no doubt, touch on the ideas of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Srinivasand others, the main thrust of the paper will be on explaining the difference between a sociologist’s viewpoint and the views of other disciplines. Sociology, here, will be presented as an empirical and comparative discipline in contrast to the normative and speculative ways of thinking about the world.

• Introducing Sociology
• Religion as a subject for Sociology
• Politics as a subject for Sociology
• Economics as subject for Sociology
• Family, Kinship and Marriage
• Caste
• Social Class
• Equality and Inequality
• Institutions and Networks
• Institutions of Democracy

It is through a discussion of these themes that will try to develop a deeper understanding of the enterprise of Sociology.

A short written examination at the end of the term will evaluate students’ comprehension of the reading material and the lectures.

Course: Foundations of Leadership

Faculty: Dwight Jaggard

The goal of Foundations of Leadership is to increase your capacity to effectively lead throughout your career and to teach others to lead as well. This involves understanding and learning – through reflecting on your own experience – about yourself and about working effectively with others. It also involves teambuilding activities and experiential learning modules that will vividly demonstrate the concepts that we study together in order to deeply embed these concepts. These abilities are essential in meeting critical personal, interpersonal, and organizational challenges.

Course: Shakespeare and the World

Faculty: Jonathan Gil Harris and Madhavi Menon

This course considers how Shakespeare imagines the worldbeyond England and Europe in two plays – The Tempest and Othello.

It also considers howthe world has re-imagined The Tempest and Othello in print and on screen – from the MartiniquanAiméCésaire’s play A Tempest (1968) and the American B-grade science fiction flick Forbidden Planet (1956) to the Sudanese novelist TayebSalih’sSeason of Migration to the North (1966), the American basketball movie adaptation of Othello, O (2001), and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Bollywood film Omkara(2006).

Course Objectives:

• to become attentive to the various ways in which Shakespeare artfully uses language in order to produce effects of dramatic “character” and to create a sense of the “world”;
• to recognize how Shakespeare’s plays are not just relics of a bygone age, but powerful meditations on questions of globalization, cross-cultural encounter, and identity that anticipate the condition of our present world;
• to recognize how the challenge of reading Shakespeare is a creative one that always re-imagines his texts afresh

Statistics and its Application in the Modern World

Faculty: Santosh Venkatesh

H. G. Wells once opined that statistical thinking would one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write. He was not far off. We are inundated by statistical data in practically every domain. Exploratory surveys, empirical investigations, and position papers engender vast amounts of chance-driven data; news sources and technical reports present them and analysis, blogs, and reviews use the data to justify their positions. Statistical data influence everything from public policy to scientific investigation, from environmental science to statistical physics, from manufacturing reliability to supply chains, and from social science to politics.This course deals with how to statistically analyze data and make decisions based on the data. Probability forms the mathematical framework on which statistics rests. Building on basic probabilistic concepts, we will cover the following major topical themes instatistics with applications drawn from a welter of domains.

• Sampling (with a discussion on the pernicious effects of bias and the rise of George Gallup, and a test case on quality control)
• Estimation (presenting the three-cornered dance of constraints enlivened by a physicist’s visit to Monte Carlo and the burning question of whether polls are believable, testing beer and its unexpected consequences, and a test case on the viability of product promotions)
• Hypothesis testing (with a discussion on the state of environmental science and the climate and the modeling of financial markets, and a test case on principled choice of business strategy)
• The chi squared test for distributions (with a discussion on the efficacy of financial analysts, a startling accusation of fraud in psychology, the pervasiveness of incentives in modern life and their unexpected consequences, and the remarkable case of educator fraud in high-stakes educational testing)
• Tests of means (with a discussion on the drug approval process with test cases on high profile retractions of drugs from the market)
• Analysis of variance (with applications on the housing market, more on drugapprovals, and a test case on comparisons of company performance by market andsize)

Course: Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity in Contemporary Perspective

Faculty: Vivek Bhandari

Through a critical evaluation of the life and works of Gandhi, and the larger context that he inhabited, this course will examine this thinker’s view of the institutional apparatus and epistemologies that we have come to associate with the “modern condition.” By using Gandhi’s critique of modernity as the central thematic, the course will analyze his views on non-violence, the political strategy of civil disobedience, and how these are embedded in his perspectives on truth, trusteeship, the preservation of the environment, and satyagraha. Secondary texts, films, and the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, et al, will be analyzed in conjunction with Gandhi’s writings.

Course: Historical Perspectives: Reason and the Making of Modern India

Faculty: Rudranshu Mukherjee

The title of the course explains its purpose and its theme. What needs to be explicated is the way it approaches this very broad subject. The lectures will look at the life and career of certain individuals who used reason to put forward their arguments and also believed in the power of reason to transform society. It will place the individuals in a specific historical context – this will also serve to introduce to the class the basic contours of the making of modern India – and then analyse their careers in relation to the context. This will serve to bring in to focus their impact as well as their contradictions and slippages. A word of warning: It should not be assumed that these were the only individuals to have pursued reason in modern India. In fact, the course should provoke students to look at other stalwarts who were committed to the advocacy of reason.

• August 27
  Lecture 1: Introductory lecture on modern Indian history
  Lecture 2: Thecoming of reason and Ram Mohun Roy
• September 3
  Lecture 3: A Brahmin pundit and reason: Vidyasagar
  Lecture 4: A poet's vision: Tagore
• September 10
  Lectures 5 & 6: Critique of British rule and the Moderates
• September 17
  Lectures 7 & 8: Critique of caste: Jotirao Phule and Ambedkar
• September 19
  Lectures 9 & 10: Nehru: The point of arrival

Course: Economics

Faculty: Shiv Kumar

The main objectives of this course are to (1) develop an appreciation of the basic concepts of microeconomics, and (2) explore their usefulness in helping us think about public policy interventions. The course will provide a useful perspective on how economists think about society’s problems. Emphasis will be laid on key principles and paradigms with applications to public policy as a way of introducing some of the ‘big ideas’ of microeconomics.

Course: Introduction to Philosophy

Faculty: Yunus Tuncel

In this introductorycourse, we will read philosophical texts of various philosophers from Plato to Heidegger. The course will give an overall presentation of Western philosophyand expose students to thinkers, ideas, schools of thought from differentepochs of Western civilization. Within the context of this broader picture, wewill focus on the following major Western philosophers: Plato, Aristotle,Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche.As we reading from excerpts from their works, we explore several philosophicaltopics such as knowledge and certainty, being and reality, mind and body, Godand religion, and morality and the good life. What are some of the crucial philosophical problems for these thinkers?How do they present these problems? What is philosophy? What is thinking? Whatis the relevance of philosophy in our lives and in contemporary society? Theseare some questions we will explore in this course, as students are expected todevelop their critical, analytical skills.

Course: A Hands-on Introduction to Visual Storytelling: Change makers

Faculty: Sanjeev Chatterjee

A Hands-on Introduction to Visual Storytelling is designed to take YIF students through the process of telling visual stories in the form of a documentary photo slideshow or video documentary about individual lives of social entrepreneurs/change makers. These are meant to be in-depth profiles of people who have dedicated their lives to creating positive social impact. Students will be required work in groups of 6 to conduct field research to identify their subjects, find out details of their lives, document a typical day-in-the-life of their subjects and assemble a cogent and visually compelling story sequence for public exhibition. In the process, students will explore ideas of story, “look”, visual impact, visual grammar, interview, editing and storytelling inside and outside the classroom. One team of 2 Fellows will have the assignment of designing and executing the project website.

The objective of this engagement is threefold:

• Leadership in any field today requires the ability to articulate ideas clearly in private and public settings. The digital age provides easy access to visual tools that are now widely used for communicating ideas, information and passions. More importantly, these tools allow us to make sense of the world around us through the exploration of interconnections between traditional knowledge domains. For example; how public health challenges are connected to changes in climate, lack of education as well as socioeconomics can be explored through stories. Good storytelling helps make these communications compelling and effective. So, one objective is to formally introduce participants to practical ideas of visual storytelling.
• In our fast paced lives, there is very little time dedicated to the details of a fast changing world around us. This leads to a limited worldview based on personal experiences. Yet, the signs of a fast changing world are all around us. Signs that can help us navigate the future. Looking more closely at the lives of social entrepreneurs/change makers in Delhi, will allow Fellows to perhaps reconsider ideas of success and achievement.
• The success of any of these projects will be heavily dependent on the quality of collaboration within and among groups. The process of media making will be used as a first hand experience in collaborative problem solving and achievement.

Course: Group Dynamics

Faculty: Kenwyn Smith

This course on Group Processes is intensely experiential. It builds on the strong liberal arts backgrounds in human biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature, economics, history, philosophy and political science. Its purpose is to provide participants with an in depth understanding about group processes while they are in operation. It is usually easy to see what went right or wrong in a group, an organization or a community when one looks back in hindsight, or to understand what is going on in groups observed from a distance. To tune into these dynamics when we are embroiled in them ourselves and to take constructive actions when it could have a meaningful impact is a completely different issue. This is an art form which requires cognitive and emotional processing that is extremely demanding and draws on multiple logics simultaneously. The course offers new ways of understanding the relationship between “out of awareness” and “unrecognized” processes and the overt behavior of groups and their members. Participants will be introduced to, and invited to practice, the science and the crafts of “right-brain,” analogic, paradoxical ways of reasoning about group functioning, while linking them with the classic reasoning systems of “left-brain,” digital, casual logic.

Course: Leadership for the New Economy

Faculty: Kenwyn Smith

This course addresses a number of basic issues central to leadership: wealth creation, innovation, cross-sector collaboration, wealth-distribution, birthing possibilities, fostering new futures. The course builds upon the earlier YIF leadership course and draws upon the thinking found in psychology, anthropology, sociology, management, politics, economics and philosophy. We start from the premise that all leadership acts require a form of thinking that transcends the conventional, while simultaneously standing on the shoulders of the reasoning processes used by organizational members and managers embroiled in every-day decisions about both the mundane and the profound. In short, leadership thinking is done in concert with, but is not captive to the conventional. We will focus on developing new reasoning capabilities about a wide variety of topics. Our deliberations will be both highly theoretical and highly practical. Students will find they are stretched to think in abstract and concrete ways simultaneously. No theory divorced from reality will be seen as relevant; no questions of application (“what we could or should do in any situation”) unattached to meaningful and robust theory will be entertained. All participants will be invited to push the envelope of your reasoning powers.

Course: Anthropology Today: Ethnographies and Entanglements around the World

Faculty: Mekhala Krishnamurthy

This is a course about anthropology’s engagement with some of the most challenging and compelling issues facing the world today. It is, inevitably, only a glimpse into a very diverse and vibrant discipline, but through a selection of creative and committed texts, written by anthropologists working in field sites across the globe, we will explore the critical insights and interconnections, ethical dilemmas and practical implications opened up by ethnographic approaches to contemporary predicaments. From finance to food systems, humanitarian intervention and the military to cybersociality, IT professionals to the pharmaceutical industry and the struggles of people living with AIDS, the readings will push us to consider different contexts, experiences and perspectives, de-stabilising the familiar, while relating to the exceptional and extraordinary. In the process, they might provoke us to reconsider our assumptions, confront regimes of power, inequality and injustice, but equally renew and expand our sense of individual and collective engagement in redefining the boundaries of the possible.

Course: Political science / IR: Joint teaching programme in International Relations for YIF

Faculty: Devesh Kapur / Eswaran Sridharan

This course provides an overview of international relations and foreign policy. It summarizes the history of international relations, concepts and theories that are widely used to view the world, the history and structure of international security, international organizations and the international political economy. On the basis of this extensive background on the international system, the past, present and possible futures of Indian foreign policy will be examined.

Course: Critical Thinking and Writing

Faculty: Eric Saranovitz

Writing is a means of expressing oneself in a clear, precise manner. We know what we know, but we must also let others know what we know, using our language as a tool. As opposed to other means of communications, writing concretizes our thoughts for the world to see, making them permanent, rather than fleeting. Writing allows us to edit and reflect upon our thoughts, before we communicate them. This course is key because it will show us how to communicate our thoughts and ideas to others in writing - a task central to all professional and personal pursuits in life.

• Writing; as a process of learning, reflecting and building.
• Writing for Improving one's writing is best done by doing it rather than talking about it. There will be writing in class every day, and writing assignments due as homework for every class.
• Reading of texts from professional essayist and some from students. These texts will serve as a source for ideas as well as exemplify how different writers approach particular situations.
• Sharing. We write for an audience. Your audience will be the faculty, as well as your peers in (and out) of class. The classroom will be a forum for discussing our writing and needs to be an open, and comfortable place to accomplish this task.
• Essays: You will be required to hand in three 4-6 page final essays, typed proofread and edited.
• Informal Writing: In addition, you will have to hand in at least two preliminary drafts for each one of the essays. Additionally there will be a number of informal writing exercises, both in and out of class.
• Conferences: Conference with each individual during the term to discuss drafts on an individual basis will be conducted.

Course: The Political Economy of India’s Development 1947-2012

Faculty: Mihir Shah

• Markets, State and Community: A Critical Look at Key Drivers of Change Reading:
  Samuel Bowles et al (2005): Understanding Capitalism, Oxford University Press
• India’s Development Strategy 1947-2012 Part I
• India’s Development Strategy 1947-2012 Part II Reading:
  Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (2002): India: Development and Participation, Oxford University Press
• Adivasi Predicament in India Reading:
  Mihir Shah et al (1998): India’s Drylands (Chapter 5), Oxford University Press
• A Paradigm Shift in Water Management in India Reading:
  Chapter on Water in 12th Five Year Plan
• MGNREGA: An Instrument of Inclusive and Sustainable Growth Reading:
  Chapter on Rural Development in 12th Five Year Plan
  Mihir Shah et al (ed) (2012): MGNREGA Sameeksha, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, Orient Blackswan

Course: Sociology of the Environment: Nature, Culture and Power

Faculty: Amita Baviskar

From the genome to global climate change, 'nature' is the centre of competing claims. Be it debates over BtBrinjal or mining in the Niyamgiri hills, environmental issues invoke a complex medley of scientific authority, human rights claims, as well as notions of national and planetary welfare. This course is based on the premise that environmental issues are inseparable from the question of power. How do contestations around knowledge and power shape the environment? How do cultural beliefs and social relations affect ideas and practices about nature? The course addresses these questions by exploring how environmental issues are socially constructed and contested. We ground our review of theory and method in ethnographic and empirical studies that extend from big game reserves in Tanzania to shopping malls in southern California, with a focus on contemporary Indian debates.

Course: Arts Appreciation – Illustrative & Performing Arts

Faculty: Anunaya Chaubey

The Art Appreciation Course will seek to make the students understand and enjoy the way a work of art communicates and works, not only as an aesthetic object but also as a cultural product .

Although one is able to subliminally respond to a work, more often than not, when asked to comment or talk about that work of art, that person gets defensive and apologetic. In expectation of proper comprehension and subsequent informed articulation of an aesthetic experience by the student, the Course will attempt to equip him with knowledge of such aspects of art as: its definition : expression and experience; its evolution down the ages: from cave art to contemporary times; elements of art ; movements and styles exhibiting the dynamic play of elements and the zeitgeist.The teaching and interactions in the classroom will be complemented by art workshops to enable the student to express the learning in practical terms ; visits to art galleries and exercises in thinking and writing critically on selected works of art therein.

Course: Essentials of Business

Faculty: Rajiv C Lochan

Business skills are an important ingredient for success, regardless of your chosen professional pursuit! This course is an overview "bridge" course into the essentials of business management. The course will parsimoniously focus on the most critical concepts of accounting, finance, operations, marketing and strategy and will require the application of these concepts through the five weeks (ten sessions of two hours each) of instruction for the course. There will also be an overview to effective problem solving and a thought-starter discussion on ethics as part of the curriculum.

As with most efforts in the real world, this course will require working in teams and in the process learning from each other. Specifically, each team will be the senior management team of a (disguised) real-world company and will be required to solve a series of business problems faced by the company. "Lecturing" will be restricted to a necessary minimum and the expectation is for an interactive "debate and discussion" in class.

The specific objectives of the course are four-fold. The course is designed to help you to:

• Develop a deeper understanding of the most critical concepts of the foundational elements of business management (i.e. accounting, finance, operations, marketing and strategy)
• Apply these concepts to various facets of your firm as a leader of the firm
• Learn to collaborate in teams and practice the give-get of leveraging each others' strengths
• Provoke introspection to ethical reasoning

Course: Governing the Indian Metropolis

Faculty: Tommaso Vitale, Christophe Jaffrelot, Laurent Gayer, Gilles Verniers, Amitabh Kundu, Marie-Helene Zerah, Pierre Jacquet, Patrick Le Gales

While the current rate of urbanisation of India is still modest, its future is not. In the coming decades, millions of people will be joining cities.

Most Indian metropolises are the product of European imperialism - in its colonial form or not. But many others large cities pre-existed this phase of world history, following an old urban tradition whose resilience in today’s India needs to be assessed.

Given their size and the cultural diversity of the local society, cities are bound to be multi-religious, multi-ethnic and ridden with inequalities. While some groups are adversely affected by processes of ghettoization – or spatial segregation – in which class plays a major role, in combination with caste and religion – others are the crucible of new forms of civic expression and contestation.

Governing India’s metropolises is a challenge not only in terms of monitoring socio-cultural diversity and designating representatives in the best (democratic?) possible way, but also in terms of providing equitable access to a vast array of public services and amenities (water, electricity, transport, etc.). Public bodies limitations and the politicization of public service delivery add to the difficulty to meet those challenges.

Furthermore, most Asian metropolises are situated in a transnational space, between a rural and semi-rural hinterland - where the migrants and resources come from, and an international arena, confined to a region or open to intercontinental flows of people, capital and goods. This in-between position sets the scene for the confrontation – and sometimes clashes – between competing worldviews, conceptions of justice and claims to territorial access, of the many groups that compose the urban mosaic.

This one-semester course is intended to offer a comparative approach of these issues – integration and segregation, Politics of public services delivery, habitat and land access, globalisation of metropolises – on the basis of empirical case studies. Taught by Indian and French specialists of South Asia and Urban Studies, the course will situate itself at the crossroad of history, sociology, geography, economy, political science and international relations.

Course: Fundamentals of Public Speaking

Faculty: Ann Torfin Shoemake

Description of the course

Through experience in a variety of speaking situations, students gain self-confidence in organization of thought and self-expression.

Course Objectives and Student Learning Outcomes

Students will engage in a variety of activities designed to promote competency in public speaking delivery, organization of ideas, acquiring and evaluating supporting materials, word and language choice, audience analysis, effective listening, and the construction and presentation of narrative, informative and persuasive speeches.

Course Methodology

This is a hands-on, practice-oriented course for which individual participation is essential. Students will present relevant and well-planned speeches and act as a respectful and empathetic audience for their classmates. The classroom will serve as a non-threatening space for all speakers, with consideration and encouragement for those who experience public speaking apprehension.

Tentative Course Agenda

Course: Sociological reasoning

Faculty: Andre Beteille

This short course on ‘Sociological Reasoning’ has been specifically designed for Young India Fellowship Programme (YIFP). It differs substantially in structure and content from the introductory courses offered in Sociology departments of Indian universities. While, generally, students of Sociology are introduced to the subject through papers on Sociological Theories and on debates about Indian Society, this paper emphasises on the unique and distinctive nature of sociological reasoning. It is an attempt to introduce students at YIFP- who come from various different disciplinary backgrounds- to the enterprise of Sociology. While we will, no doubt, touch on the ideas of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Srinivasand others, the main thrust of the paper will be on explaining the difference between a sociologist’s viewpoint and the views of other disciplines. Sociology, here, will be presented as an empirical and comparative discipline in contrast to the normative and speculative ways of thinking about the world.

The course of ten lectures will focus on the following themes:

• Introducing Sociology
• Religion as a subject for Sociology
• Politics as a subject for Sociology
• Economics as subject for Sociology
• Family, Kinship and Marriage
• Caste
• Social Class
• Equality and Inequality
• Institutions and Networks
• Institutions of Democracy

It is through a discussion of these themes that will try to develop a deeper understanding of the enterprise of Sociology.

A short written examination at the end of the term will evaluate students’ comprehension of the reading material and the lectures.

Course: Foundations of Leadership

Faculty: Dwight Jaggard

The goal of Foundations of Leadership is to increase your capacity to effectively lead throughout your career and to teach others to lead as well. This involves understanding and learning – through reflecting on your own experience – about yourself and about working effectively with others. It also involves teambuilding activities and experiential learning modules that will vividly demonstrate the concepts that we study together in order to deeply embed these concepts. These abilities are essential in meeting critical personal, interpersonal, and organizational challenges.

Course: Globalisation, Media and Culture

Faculty: Radha Hegde

This course will introduce students to the subject of globalization and attendant areas of social and cultural transformations in contemporary life. Media and new technologies are redefining the meaning of communication, participation and the very fabric of everyday life. Technology enabled forms of interconnection and interactivity lead to a series of questions about the cultures and politics of social life. How do the flow and traffic of images, capital and people shift the relationship between the categories of the local, national and global? Is globalization predominantly a narrative of the West? Are alternative forms and compositions of globalization being scripted from emerging economies and national spaces? How are local cultural forms and media spaces being articulated and circulated? How are notions of tradition and modernity both colliding and reconciling? How are systems of communication producing new publics and forms of public spaces? How are these issues playing out in the Indian context and how are they gaining visibility globally? These are some of the questions that will animate our discussions as we explore the intersection of globalization, communication and culture. Using a historical and comparative framework, we will look at specific instances and case studies to understand the cultural processes that underwrite globalization.

Statistics and its Application in the Modern World

Faculty: Santosh Venkatesh

H. G. Wells once opined that statistical thinking would one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write. He was not far off. We are inundated by statistical data in practically every domain. Exploratory surveys, empirical investigations, and position papers engender vast amounts of chance-driven data; news sources and technical reports present them and analysis, blogs, and reviews use the data to justify their positions. Statistical data influence everything from public policy to scientific investigation, from environmental science to statistical physics, from manufacturing reliability to supply chains, and from social science to politics.This course deals with how to statistically analyze data and make decisions based on the data. Probability forms the mathematical framework on which statistics rests. Building on basic probabilistic concepts, we will cover the following major topical themes instatistics with applications drawn from a welter of domains.

• Sampling (with a discussion on the pernicious effects of bias and the rise of George Gallup, and a test case on quality control)
• Estimation (presenting the three-cornered dance of constraints enlivened by a physicist’s visit to Monte Carlo and the burning question of whether polls are believable, testing beer and its unexpected consequences, and a test case on the viability of product promotions)
• Hypothesis testing (with a discussion on the state of environmental science and the climate and the modeling of financial markets, and a test case on principled choice of business strategy)
• The chi squared test for distributions (with a discussion on the efficacy of financial analysts, a startling accusation of fraud in psychology, the pervasiveness of incentives in modern life and their unexpected consequences, and the remarkable case of educator fraud in high-stakes educational testing)
• Tests of means (with a discussion on the drug approval process with test cases on high profile retractions of drugs from the market)
• Analysis of variance (with applications on the housing market, more on drugapprovals, and a test case on comparisons of company performance by market andsize)

Course: Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity in Contemporary Perspective

Faculty: Vivek Bhandari

Through a critical evaluation of the life and works of Gandhi, and the larger context that he inhabited, this course will examine this thinker’s view of the institutional apparatus and epistemologies that we have come to associate with the “modern condition.” By using Gandhi’s critique of modernity as the central thematic, the course will analyze his views on non-violence, the political strategy of civil disobedience, and how these are embedded in his perspectives on truth, trusteeship, the preservation of the environment, and satyagraha. Secondary texts, films, and the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, et al, will be analyzed in conjunction with Gandhi’s writings.

Course: Historical Perspectives: Reason and the Making of Modern India

Faculty: Rudranshu Mukherjee

The title of the course explains its purpose and its theme. What needs to be explicated is the way it approaches this very broad subject. The lectures will look at the life and career of certain individuals who used reason to put forward their arguments and also believed in the power of reason to transform society. It will place the individuals in a specific historical context – this will also serve to introduce to the class the basic contours of the making of modern India – and then analyse their careers in relation to the context. This will serve to bring in to focus their impact as well as their contradictions and slippages. A word of warning: It should not be assumed that these were the only individuals to have pursued reason in modern India. In fact, the course should provoke students to look at other stalwarts who were committed to the advocacy of reason.

Course: Plato’s Republic (Philosophy)

Faculty: Vijay Tankha

• Introduction
• Preliminaries
• Education:The First Stage
• Guardians and Auxiliaries
• Justice in State and Individual
• Women and The Family
• The Philosopher Ruler
• Education of The Philosopher
• Imperfect Societies
• Theory of Art
• The Immortality Of The Soul And The Rewards Of Goodness

Course: Deconstructing Literature:Women's Narratives of Violence and Constructions of Collective Identities

Faculty: Giti Chandra

This course is an interdisciplinary study of national, ethnic or racial violence, its narrativisation and affects and its transformation into collective identity formation. It is focused around contemporary novels written by women and interrogates the ways in which these narratives are gendered by women who are subjected to such violence, who survive these conflicts and who narrate both the violence and the collective identity. The course will follow the argument that the violence directed against women in the course of national, racial or ethnic conflict is qualitatively different from the violence directed against men. This difference is defined and detailed in the course of the study and its significance is shown to be central both in the narrativisation of violence as well as in the construction of collective identities.

Course: Economics

Faculty: Shiv Kumar

The main objectives of this course are to (1) develop an appreciation of the basic concepts of microeconomics, and (2) explore their usefulness in helping us think about public policy interventions. The course will provide a useful perspective on how economists think about society’s problems. Emphasis will be laid on key principles and paradigms with applications to public policy as a way of introducing some of the ‘big ideas’ of microeconomics.

Course: Algorithmic/Analytical Thinking:An Introduction to Algorithmic Thinking

Faculty: Sanjeev Khanna

The main objectives of this course are to (1) develop an appreciation of the basic concepts of microeconomics, and (2) explore their usefulness in helping us think about public policy interventions. The course will provide a useful perspective on how economists think about society’s problems. Emphasis will be laid on key principles and paradigms with applications to public policy as a way of introducing some of the ‘big ideas’ of microeconomics.

Course: A Hands-on Introduction to Visual Storytelling: Change makers

Faculty: Sanjeev Chatterjee

A Hands-on Introduction to Visual Storytelling is designed to take YIF students through the process of telling visual stories in the form of a documentary photo slideshow or video documentary about individual lives of social entrepreneurs/change makers. These are meant to be in-depth profiles of people who have dedicated their lives to creating positive social impact. Students will be required work in groups of 6 to conduct field research to identify their subjects, find out details of their lives, document a typical day-in-the-life of their subjects and assemble a cogent and visually compelling story sequence for public exhibition. In the process, students will explore ideas of story, “look”, visual impact, visual grammar, interview, editing and storytelling inside and outside the classroom. One team of 2 Fellows will have the assignment of designing and executing the project website.

The objective of this engagement is threefold:

• Leadership in any field today requires the ability to articulate ideas clearly in private and public settings. The digital age provides easy access to visual tools that are now widely used for communicating ideas, information and passions. More importantly, these tools allow us to make sense of the world around us through the exploration of interconnections between traditional knowledge domains. For example; how public health challenges are connected to changes in climate, lack of education as well as socioeconomics can be explored through stories. Good storytelling helps make these communications compelling and effective. So, one objective is to formally introduce participants to practical ideas of visual storytelling.
• In our fast paced lives, there is very little time dedicated to the details of a fast changing world around us. This leads to a limited worldview based on personal experiences. Yet, the signs of a fast changing world are all around us. Signs that can help us navigate the future. Looking more closely at the lives of social entrepreneurs/change makers in Delhi, will allow Fellows to perhaps reconsider ideas of success and achievement.
• The success of any of these projects will be heavily dependent on the quality of collaboration within and among groups. The process of media making will be used as a first hand experience in collaborative problem solving and achievement.

Course: Group Dynamics

Faculty: Kenwyn Smith

This course on Group Processes is intensely experiential. It builds on the strong liberal arts backgrounds in human biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature, economics, history, philosophy and political science. Its purpose is to provide participants with an in depth understanding about group processes while they are in operation. It is usually easy to see what went right or wrong in a group, an organization or a community when one looks back in hindsight, or to understand what is going on in groups observed from a distance. To tune into these dynamics when we are embroiled in them ourselves and to take constructive actions when it could have a meaningful impact is a completely different issue. This is an art form which requires cognitive and emotional processing that is extremely demanding and draws on multiple logics simultaneously. The course offers new ways of understanding the relationship between “out of awareness” and “unrecognized” processes and the overt behavior of groups and their members. Participants will be introduced to, and invited to practice, the science and the crafts of “right-brain,” analogic, paradoxical ways of reasoning about group functioning, while linking them with the classic reasoning systems of “left-brain,” digital, casual logic.

Course: Leadership for the New Economy

Faculty: Kenwyn Smith

This course addresses a number of basic issues central to leadership: wealth creation, innovation, cross-sector collaboration, wealth-distribution, birthing possibilities, fostering new futures. The course builds upon the earlier YIF leadership course and draws upon the thinking found in psychology, anthropology, sociology, management, politics, economics and philosophy. We start from the premise that all leadership acts require a form of thinking that transcends the conventional, while simultaneously standing on the shoulders of the reasoning processes used by organizational members and managers embroiled in every-day decisions about both the mundane and the profound. In short, leadership thinking is done in concert with, but is not captive to the conventional. We will focus on developing new reasoning capabilities about a wide variety of topics. Our deliberations will be both highly theoretical and highly practical. Students will find they are stretched to think in abstract and concrete ways simultaneously. No theory divorced from reality will be seen as relevant; no questions of application (“what we could or should do in any situation”) unattached to meaningful and robust theory will be entertained. All participants will be invited to push the envelope of your reasoning powers.

Course: Ethics and Technology

Faculty: Kenneth Foster

The course will consider ethical issues related to the creation and use of technology. Lectures, reading, and class discussion will cover topics ranging from the ethical responsibility of professionals engaged in research and the development of technology to “macroethics” and ethical constraints on use of technology. The course will include lectures, readings, and class discussion on topics ranging from principles of ethics articulated in different philosophical traditions, codes of ethics of engineering and professional scientific organizations, and generally accepted ethical principles for scientific research and human +experimentation. Students will analyze current issues involving ethics and technology in individual written work, group presentations, and group-generated policy recommendations.

Course: Anthropology Today: Ethnographies and Entanglements around the World

Faculty: Mekhala Krishnamurthy

This is a course about anthropology’s engagement with some of the most challenging and compelling issues facing the world today. It is, inevitably, only a glimpse into a very diverse and vibrant discipline, but through a selection of creative and committed texts, written by anthropologists working in field sites across the globe, we will explore the critical insights and interconnections, ethical dilemmas and practical implications opened up by ethnographic approaches to contemporary predicaments. From finance to food systems, humanitarian intervention and the military to cybersociality, IT professionals to the pharmaceutical industry and the struggles of people living with AIDS, the readings will push us to consider different contexts, experiences and perspectives, de-stabilising the familiar, while relating to the exceptional and extraordinary. In the process, they might provoke us to reconsider our assumptions, confront regimes of power, inequality and injustice, but equally renew and expand our sense of individual and collective engagement in redefining the boundaries of the possible.

Course: Listening

Faculty: Lisbeth Lipari

Listening is central to thought and communication but we often ignore its importance. In our anxiety to speak and be heard we can easily overlook our failure to listen. This course explores the centrality of listening to all modes of communication and delves deeply into the indissoluble relationships of listening to language, speaking, thinking, aesthetics, & culture. Through course readings, lectures, discussions, exercises, papers, and projects, students will be exposed to a variety of perspectives involving the habitus of listening (listening as being, thinking, and understanding—inner speech and human consciousness, cultural listening); the difficulties of listening (the failure to listen—difference, silence); and the aesthetics of listening (soundscapes and acoustic ecology--music and auditory worlds).

Learning Goals:

• To enhance & improve your listening awareness and capacities
• To understand the transactional relationship between listening, thinking & speaking.
• To demonstrate holistic thinking about listening and its relation to language and thought.
• To identify, appreciate, and analyze the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of listening.

Course: Managing Business for Growth & Sustainability

Faculty: Rishikesha Krishnan

With most of the world embracing a capitalist economic model, corporations and businesses are explicitly recognised as engines of economic growth. The business sector has come to occupy a more important position in society than ever before. This course focuses on the business sector with the following two objectives:

• What role does business play in society?
• How can businesses be managed to create wealth for their owners as well as be positive forces in society?

To answer these questions, we will use case studies, readings, lectures and some in-class video films.

• The Corporation in Historical Context
• Starting, Building & Sustaining a Business
• Understanding Financial Statements
• Basics of Corporate Finance
• Competitive Strategy
• Innovation & Organizational Renewal
• Looking at Strategy Inside Out: The Resource-based View of the Firm
• Implementing Strategy: Vision, Leadership, & Organizational Design
• Managing Across Borders: The Internationalization of the Corporation
• The Corporation Revisited: Ethics, Values & the Manager

Course: Political science / IR: Joint teaching programme in International Relations for YIF

Faculty: Devesh Kapur / Eswaran Sridharan

This course provides an overview of international relations and foreign policy. It summarizes the history of international relations, concepts and theories that are widely used to view the world, the history and structure of international security, international organizations and the international political economy. On the basis of this extensive background on the international system, the past, present and possible futures of Indian foreign policy will be examined.

Course: Critical Thinking and Writing

Faculty: Eric Saranovitz

Writing is a means of expressing oneself in a clear, precise manner. We know what we know, but we must also let others know what we know, using our language as a tool. As opposed to other means of communications, writing concretizes our thoughts for the world to see, making them permanent, rather than fleeting. Writing allows us to edit and reflect upon our thoughts, before we communicate them. This course is key because it will show us how to communicate our thoughts and ideas to others in writing - a task central to all professional and personal pursuits in life.

• Writing; as a process of learning, reflecting and building.
• Writing for Improving one's writing is best done by doing it rather than talking about it. There will be writing in class every day, and writing assignments due as homework for every class.
• Reading of texts from professional essayist and some from students. These texts will serve as a source for ideas as well as exemplify how different writers approach particular situations.
• Sharing. We write for an audience. Your audience will be the faculty, as well as your peers in (and out) of class. The classroom will be a forum for discussing our writing and needs to be an open, and comfortable place to accomplish this task.
• Essays: You will be required to hand in three 4-6 page final essays, typed proofread and edited.
• Informal Writing: In addition, you will have to hand in at least two preliminary drafts for each one of the essays. Additionally there will be a number of informal writing exercises, both in and out of class.
• Conferences: Conference with each individual during the term to discuss drafts on an individual basis will be conducted.

Course: Philosophy of Science

Faculty: Dhruv Raina

• The Scientific Method: theory and observation; deriving theories from facts, induction and inductivism.
• The problem with induction; falsifiability and coherence; sophisticated falsificationism and the growth of science.
• Revolutionary Change and Rationality: paradigms and normal science; puzzle-solving and the cautiousness of normal science, relativism and reason in science.
• Research programmes, testing methodology of research programmes against history; anarchism as epistemological medicine.
• The contested character of science; realism and anti-realism, realism and instrumentalism.
• The social constructivist challenge; the strong programme and the politics of knowledge

Course: Sociology of the Environment: Nature, Culture and Power

Faculty: Amita Baviskar

From the genome to global climate change, 'nature' is the centre of competing claims. Be it debates over BtBrinjal or mining in the Niyamgiri hills, environmental issues invoke a complex medley of scientific authority, human rights claims, as well as notions of national and planetary welfare. This course is based on the premise that environmental issues are inseparable from the question of power. How do contestations around knowledge and power shape the environment? How do cultural beliefs and social relations affect ideas and practices about nature? The course addresses these questions by exploring how environmental issues are socially constructed and contested. We ground our review of theory and method in ethnographic and empirical studies that extend from big game reserves in Tanzania to shopping malls in southern California, with a focus on contemporary Indian debates.

Course: Arts Appreciation – Illustrative & Performing Arts

Faculty: Anunaya Chaubey

The Art Appreciation Course will seek to make the students understand and enjoy the way a work of art communicates and works, not only as an aesthetic object but also as a cultural product .

Although one is able to subliminally respond to a work, more often than not, when asked to comment or talk about that work of art, that person gets defensive and apologetic. In expectation of proper comprehension and subsequent informed articulation of an aesthetic experience by the student, the Course will attempt to equip him with knowledge of such aspects of art as: its definition : expression and experience; its evolution down the ages: from cave art to contemporary times; elements of art ; movements and styles exhibiting the dynamic play of elements and the zeitgeist.The teaching and interactions in the classroom will be complemented by art workshops to enable the student to express the learning in practical terms ; visits to art galleries and exercises in thinking and writing critically on selected works of art therein.

Course: Science Technolgy and Human Values

Faculty: P L Dhar

The humanity today faces two kinds of problems which threaten its very survival on planet earth; viz. technogenic problems like climate change and resource depletion, and social problems of strife, violence, organized crime and terrorism. The course aims to encourage students to investigate these problems in depth and facilitate this investigation through suitable interventions. At the end of the course, it is expected that the students would be able to appreciate that : i) that science, technology and human values are interconnected ; ii) All these problems have their roots in a confusion about human values; iii) Attempts to solve these problems through technological interventions alone are often counterproductive; iv) Sustainable survival on this planet earth needs a transformation in human consciousness and establishment of social order based on universal human values.

The broad topics are:

• Present state of the society: progress and its price!
• Science, Technology and Human Values
• Can values be taught? Are there any universal human values?
• The Science of Value Inculcation
• Models of Development
• Alternative Futures

Course: Contemporary International Development

Faculty: Subir Sinha

The course exploring how the international architecture of development – that is, the network of actors and institutions, and the dominant ideas shaping development interventions – has emerged, how it has changed over time, what successes it has had, and what have the barriers to fuller success. The readings place the Indian experience in historical and comparative perspective.

• Development Regimes in Historical Perspective
  This session provides an overview of international development from the late-19th century to the late-20th. It also introduces some key concepts that will form the analytical vocabulary for the course.
• The New Development Paradigms
  We consider the rise of ‘rational choice’ oriented frameworks in development interventions, and review 4 key concepts in the new development paradigms that emerged from the crisis of the 1980s-1990s, namely ‘sustainable livelihoods’, ‘good governenace’, ‘social capital’, and ‘failed states’.
• The State in Contemporary Development
  Even though the new development paradigm was ‘market-centred’, it still made an argument for substantial role of the state in the development process. However, this was not the state of old. A new debate started over the ‘new’ developmental state, which we review this week.
• Civil Society in Development
  One key element of the new development paradigm is that the state should be divested so some key roles in the development process, particularly with respect to ‘social sector’ development. Here, the role of ‘civil society’ has received a lot of support. And, in general, civil society has been equated with ‘NGOs’. But ‘civil society’ is not a term with a clear-cut meaning. How have conflicts over what is ‘civil society’ affected development interventions?
• The Agrarian Question Today
  In most countries of the global south, more than 50% of the population is rural and is connected in some way or another with agriculture. Yet, the agricultural sector is considered to be in some crisis for more than a couple of decades. What is the crisis of the agrarian sector today, and what are some ways out suggested by experts?
• The Urban Planet
  On a planetary scale, more than 50% of the world’s population now lives in cities. What specific challenges does it throw to development experts and agencies, and what has been the record of policies aimed at ameliorating the conditions of the urban poor.
• Humanitarianism
  Since the last decade and a half, the issue of ‘humantiarianism’ has inched its way to the centrestage of international development thinking and practice. What are some powerful justifications for international humanitarian assistance, and what are some of their drawbacks?
• Democratisation
  The Arab Spring reminded us last year that not all parts of the world are democratic, and that the yearning for democracy is strong even in countries where authoritarian governments delivered on the basics of a good life, such as in Libya. What does democracy mean today, and how is it connected with development issues?
• New Thinking on Poverty and the Poor
  The centre of development thinking and policies are ‘the poor’, though, over a century and more, poverty has not been eliminated. We review some recent writings on the conceptualization of poverty, and some new advice on how to eliminate it. What are the strength and weaknesses of these approaches?
• Some Recent “Success Stories.”
  Brazil, China, India and South Africa, the so-called BRICs, are held up as evidence that there are new trajectories of national development, and that the balance of power that sustained international development is now shifting towards these newly emergent countries. To what extent would you join the celebration of the new models, and what would be your reservations?