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.

Author Keshav Desiraju and music enthusiast Vishnu Vasudev discuss Mr. Desiraju’s latest book Of Gifted Voice that looks at MS Subbulakshmi’s life and times, and the great musical tradition she belonged to and to which she brought so much, against the larger backdrop of developments in the world of Carnatic music. MS Subbulakshmi’s life was one of extraordinary achievement. Although she was portrayed in many ways – as a musician who sought and achieved an all-India appeal; a philanthropist and supporter of noble causes; an icon of style; a woman of piety and devotion; and a friend and associate of the good and the great – she was first and foremost a classical vocalist of the highest rank, of unmatched gifts, who lives on in the musical history of India. Though her story has often been told, we know little of the woman behind the image and the musician behind the public persona. Of Gifted Voice attempts, with warmth and keen-eyed perception, to understand the music, the history, the artiste and her incomparable presence. This episode of BIC Talks was originally streamed live on BIC Streams. 

Historians Dinyar Patel and Prashant Kidambi discuss the life and legacy of Dadabhai Naoroji, who Gandhi referred to as the ‘Father of the Nation’. Dinyar has authored the book, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism (Harvard University Press, 2020).  They discuss Naoroji’s life and work as an Indian nationalist thinker, as a member of the British parliament, and as a leading intellectual whose legacy lives on even beyond India in various anti-colonial, nationalist and suffragette movements.  This episode of BIC Talks was originally streamed live on BIC Streams on February 13th, in association with the Bangalore Literature Festival. Dinyar Patel is a historian of modern India, focusing on Indian nationalism, the city of Bombay/Mumbai, and the Parsi Zoroastrian community. He is currently Assistant Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) in Mumbai. Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism is his first book.  Prashant Kidambi is associate professor of colonial urban history at the University of Leicester, UK. Kidambi’s research explores the interface between British imperialism and the history of modern South Asia. He is the author of Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire and the lead editor of Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos. 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.

Authors Taran Khan and Samhita Arni share personal experiences and stories from their time spent in Kabul, peeling away the many layers that make up the city and its rich and tumultuous history.  Taran N. Khan is a journalist based in Mumbai, and author of Shadow City: A Woman Kabul. Taran spent time working in Kabul between 2006 and 2013. She grew up in Aligarh and was educated in New Delhi and London. Shadow City, her first book, won the Tata Literature Live! First Non-Fiction Book Award for 2020. It has also been nominated for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2021. Samhita Arni is the author of four books and retells mythological stories. Her most recent book is ‘The Prince’, and she lived and worked in Kabul in 2012 and 2013. Samhita was previously on BIC Talks to talk about Sex in Indian Epics and Literature (Episode #62) and on Pandemics in Prose (Episode #10). 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.

Jawhar Sircar and Siddharth Raja discuss the political dynamics of West Bengal, in the run up to the state assembly elections of 2021. They discuss the political history of the state, the ethnic, caste and class lines along which politics has taken place over the 20th century, and what conflicts lie ahead for the state in the 2021 elections.  Jawhar Sircar is a public intellectual and a retired civil servant who writes and speaks often in the popular press. He served as the CEO of Prasar Bharati, India’s public broadcasting agency between 2012 and 2016. Before that, he was Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Government of India between 2008 and 2012. He writes regularly for the New Indian Express as well as several other publications. Siddharth Raja is a lawyer based in Bangalore. He was previously on BIC Talks as a guest on Episode 34, to talk about the rich history of the Nandi Hills near Bangalore.  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. 

Fire safety engineer Sumit Khanna and Vasanthi Hariprakash talk about how each of us can play our role in reducing the risk of fire accidents as we lead our lives in cities. Both Sumit and Vasanthi are associated with the Beyond Carlton trust.  They discuss India’s fire safety codes and policies, discuss implementation challenges, and explore important questions about fire safety that every citizen can ask – about their homes, apartments, offices, malls, hotels and any places they visit.  Beyond Carlton is a citizen-led initiative that works to improve fire-safety awareness across India. It was started by Uday Vijayan, after he lost his young son in the preventable Carlton Towers fire tragedy that occurred on February 23, 2010.  Sumit Khanna is a trained fire protection engineer from the National Fire Service College, Nagpur. With over 12 years of experience in the fire protection industry, Sumit has worked with multiple companies in developing building codes, writing standards and promoting fire prevention. He has contributed to India’s National Building Code, helped amend Karnataka’s fire laws, and was one of the people inspecting the Carlton Towers Fire in 2011.  Vasanthi Hariprakash is a journalist, radio and podcast host, and storyteller. She has worked with the Indian Express, with Radio City 91 FM as the host of the primetime show Good Morning Bangalore, with NDTV, among others.  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.

Author and scholar Usha Iyer talks to dancer Poorna Swami about the rich history of women dancing in Hindi cinema. Usha and Poorna explore the agency and power dynamics that various Indian actors and dancers had over the decades, how dancing in cinema can be seen as a continuation of various dance traditions in India, and discuss the roles played by important women like Vyjayanthimala, Helen, Madhuri Dixit and Saroj Khan. Usha Iyer is an assistant professor of film and media studies at Stanford University. She is the author of Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Indian Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2020).  Usha’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of cinema, performance, and gender and sexuality studies, with a specific focus on film and performance histories, body cultures, and Global South cultural traffic along the vectors of race, gender, caste, and religion. Poorna Swami is an independent writer, choreographer and dancer based in Bangalore. At the age of seven, she began training in the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, before extending her training to contemporary dance and post-modern techniques.  Poorna has previously hosted two episodes of BIC Talks: #28 with Rahul Rao about the politics and morality of taking down problematic statues; and #35 with Annie Zaidi about home, belonging, displacement and identity.  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.

Author and business leader Hema Hattangady talks to editor Karthik Venkatesh and shares her personal and professional journey from when she took over as the CEO of a family-owned hardware electronics-based energy management company in 1996, and ethically grew the business manifold, and finally sold the business to a multi-national company in 2009. Along with Ashish Sen, Hema has recently written a book- Liftoff: The Story of Conzerv, which chronicles her experiences.  Karthik Venkatesh is a Senior Editor at Westland Books, and occasionally writes for the popular press on language, history and culture. 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.

This podcast episode features a presentation by poet, cultural theorist, writer, translator and independent curator, Ranjit Hoskote, followed by a discussion with architect and writer, Prem Chandavarkar.  Ranjit Hoskote walks us through the engagement of an extraordinary set of people who used the mass media of their time to bring their passion, be it art, science or human endeavour to a larger audience. He draws attention to four television series that used the wide-reaching impact of the medium. By elaborating on each of the individual styles and political and philosophical positions of these four ‘popularisers’ whose ‘democratising projects’ attempted to build bridges between ‘expert cultures’ and ‘popular audiences’, Hoskote builds on what is in one sense, a journey of nostalgia through these series, in another, a personal journey, a tribute to a set of exposures that had excited him and influenced the range of his thinking as a young person, to investigate these ‘experiments in public reason’ in the context of understanding what it means to strive to be cosmopolitan, to be cognizant of and invested in the multiplicity of interconnections that define us.  In the discussion that follows, Prem Chandavarkar responds to the presentation through a set of statements, polemical, challenging and reinforcing, that stimulate us to think about the meaning of the public space, the truth of public reason, and the promise of the mass media. An examination of the impact of mass media on culture, pedagogy and reason, this presentation and conversation, with its many intellectual dimensions -- facilitated as it is by the internet, presented on today’s mass media and accessed through today’s methods of wide dissemination -- leaves us thinking about the meaning of public engagement, and demands of us, the listeners, that we contribute to the thinking about ways to craft public interactions as we move into a changing future. This is the first in the series, Passion and Plurality, arranged in a collaboration between the Literature platform of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai and the Bangalore International Centre.  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.

Padma Vibhushan & Atomic Energy Guru Dr MR Srinivasan and Science Historian Dr Jahnavi Phalkey discuss the rich story of India’s nuclear programme and its development over 70 years. India’s first research reactor, Apsara, went critical in 1956 and today, there is a network of nuclear power generating reactors across the country, forming a critical part of India’s power grid. Srinivasan and Phalkey discuss India’s journey from the early days under Homi Bhabha, through the Geopolitics of the Cold War, Sanctions, the 2005 Indo-US nuclear deal, all the way through till today. Dr MR Srinivasan is Former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and former Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, retiring in 1990 – and continue to contribute to nuclear energy policy in the country, including playing a key role in the Indo-US nuclear deal. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan for his services to the nation. He also received the first Homi Bhabha Gold Medal from the Indian Science Congress and of the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award. He is the author of the book From Fission to Fusion: The Story of India’s Atomic Energy Programme. Dr Jahnavi Phalkey is the Founding director of the Science Gallery Bengaluru. She is a historian of science and technology, and the author of the book Atomic State: Big Science in 20th Century India, and co-edited Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century. 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.