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The IDG is one of the oldest and most respected societies of St. Stephen's College, Delhi. It looks to broaden perspectives by discussing a variety of issues with eminent personalities.

Our talks often throw up some very unexpected answers and, even more often, some very unexpected questions.

Friday, October 8, 2010

The Informal Discussion Group invites you to an interactive session with

S. Anand

(Publisher: Navayana)

on the topic:

The Legacy of B. R. Ambedkar

S. Anand is the co-founder of Navayana, India’s first and only publishing house to exclusively focus on the issue of caste from an anti-caste perspective. Literally meaning ‘new vehicle’- a term given to B.R.Ambedkar’s socially concerned, rationalistic and anti-metaphysical interpretation of Buddhism, the institution publishes the best of socially-engaged writing from India – including the works of Namdeo Dhasal, Meera Nanda, Dilip Menon and Anand Teltumbde. A recipient of the ‘International Young Publisher of the Year’ award and the ‘Ashoka’ fellowship for his work as a social entrepreneur, Mr. Anand is the harbinger of change in the study of caste, highlighting the manner in which it animates aspects of everyday life, so that strategies can be evolved to fight it, especially through mediums of popular culture, such as cinema and sport. Though this task of critiquing and challenging such an entrenched social phenomenon is certainly not easy, Navayana is a vehicle headed in this direction.

Time: 8 PM

Date: Friday, 13th August 2010

Venue: Staff Room



The Informal Discussion Group invites you to an interactive session with

Siddharth Varadarajan

(Journalist: Chief of Bureau, The Hindu)

on the topic:

Negotiating for Peace/Pieces:

The Indo-Pak Equation

Described as ‘one of India's sharpest foreign policy commentators and thinkers,’ Siddharth Varadarajan is the Strategic Affairs Editor of The Hindu and editor of Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy. He has reported on the NATO war against Yugoslavia, the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and the crisis in Kashmir. He has also received numerous awards in his field - such as the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize, and, most recently, the Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in journalism.

Time: 8 PM

Date: Wednesday, 28th July 2010

Venue: Staff Room



The Informal Discussion Group invites you to an interactive session with

Aditya Nigam

(Political Scientist: CSDS)

on the topic:

The rise of Maoism and the problem of democracy in India

Aditya Nigam, Joint Director of the Programme in Social and Political Theory at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), works in the broad field of social and political theory. He is particularly interested in cultural politics and is engaged in attempting to understand political practices beyond limits of ‘political science’. He is currently working on a longer term project of looking at a counter-history of capitalism from a post-Marxist perspective.

He has published regularly on questions of nationalism, identity and radical politics in both English and Hindi. Nigam is author of several books including ‘The Insurrection of Little Selves: Crisis of Secular-nationalism in India’, After Utopia: Modernity and Socialism in the Postcolony’ and is currently working on a book entitled ‘A Desire Named Development’.

Time: 8 PM

Date: Monday, 2nd August 2010

Venue: Staff Room