LILA Newsletter – November-December 2013

We wish all of you a Merry Christ­mas and Happy New Year! This is thanks­giv­ing time for LILA. We thank each one of you for the gen­er­ous sup­port, time and en­gage­ment that you have given us through the last few months. It has been a very thrilling ex­pe­ri­ence for our small team to dis­cover the open­ness and warmth avail­able in our world today. Our speak­ers and col­lab­o­ra­tors who sup­ported us through this time con­firmed to our nascent or­gan­i­sa­tion that there is so much value in get­ting to­gether for a cause. Each one of you has played a major role in thus cre­at­ing a happy world at LILA, and we wish to con­tinue our as­so­ci­a­tion. Our own great­est re­ward has been to watch, lis­ten, and mull over…

As we move to­wards the New Year, we bring you a lot of news from LILA in the last three months. And, so we have thought up a new dy­namic for­mat for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the newslet­ter. While the var­i­ous event re­ports, pho­tos and videos are now a click away, we also thought our newslet­ter, as a pub­lic text, must pro­foundly en­gage with our times and take on a com­men­ta­tor’s role in order to shape trans­for­ma­tive dis­courses at LILA. It must cut new thought roads into the emerg­ing worlds around us.

 

 

Oc­to­ber seemed to us a split of a month, in­deed! From the news of the Amer­i­can shut­down to that of the Cab­i­net ap­proval of the bi­fur­ca­tion of the State of Andhra Pradesh in India caus­ing protests and strikes in the See­mandhra re­gion. We found these new Oc­to­ber rev­o­lu­tions prompt­ing us to re­visit some clas­sics deal­ing with the al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources in a world of in­fi­nite wants and needs. De­spite the dam­ages in­volved in these spe­cific cases, the ab­sur­dity that human wants can yield strikes us hard, and we fondly re­mem­ber good ol’ Adam Smith:

 

	But what re­ally shocked us was a Bud­dhist mob torch­ing so many homes in Myan­mar—what does this sangha mean? Against the atroc­ity that we saw in Burma, we have only our lis­ten­ing to offer in re­sis­tance. Here is Om Mani Padme Hum:
	space!

 

The Mars Or­biter Mis­sion (MOM) was suc­cess­fully launched into earth orbit by the In­dian Space Re­search Or­gan­i­sa­tion on No­vem­ber 5, af­firm­ing our faith in the human ge­nius for ex­plo­rations be­yond lim­ited lo­ca­tions. And we in­deed de­served our own Fes­ti­val of Lights:

 

 

While Nel­son Man­dela left us this De­cem­ber, we saw the rise of an­other peo­ple’s move­ment in India’s cap­i­tal. In the Delhi elec­tions, Aam Admi Party won 28 seats, and with the ex­ter­nal sup­port of the Con­gress that lost the cap­i­tal after 15 years, they are ready­ing them­selves to gov­ern, and pre­pare for the forth­com­ing par­lia­ment elec­tions. Would this prove to be a sus­tain­able po­lit­i­cal move­ment? As con­jec­tures amass, we in­vite you to read Shiv Vish­vanathan, so­cial sci­en­tist and a LILA guest, on the fu­ture of pol­i­tics and pol­i­tics of the fu­ture.

 

 

Click on the im­ages below to read our event re­ports:

		The hand-to-hand of media and ecol­ogy.		Why the Adi­va­sis must speak now.		Women in India today, after the promises and the dreams.
		Au­thors must refuse to die!		The Arts, the State, and the Mar­ket.		Not your reg­u­lar Maggi-sized re­port.
The politico-eth­i­cal dilemma of the In­dian Press.		The youth­ful wave of in­no­va­tions.		The mid­dle class in two words: in­equal­ity and in­dif­fer­ence.		On the ir­re­ducibil­ity of the Human Health Cov­er­age.

 

 What did you think of the LILA PRISM Lec­ture Se­ries? Please share your feed­backs with us. Click on the form below:

 

Have a look at our re­ports from the LILA Lu­mieres events:

Tamil po­etry across lan­guages.		A mes­mer­iz­ing evening around Kathakali.		All in sup­port of the great In­dian ath­lete!

 

LILA is in the news! Click below to read all our ar­ti­cles in the press:

Who is be­hind LILA? See our newly re­designed team page:

 

Did you miss some of the LILA events? Stay tuned. We will up­load all the videos of our ac­tiv­i­ties very soon.

We warmly thank all our col­lab­o­ra­tors: the India Habi­tat Cen­tre, India In­ter­na­tional Cen­tre and Al­liance Française; The Car­a­van Mag­a­zine, our media part­ner, SWECHHA our Pub­lic In­ter­face Part­ner, and the other media houses that sup­ported us through this time. Each one of you has played a role in cre­at­ing a happy world at LILA, and we wish to con­tinue our as­so­ci­a­tion. We also hope to have con­tributed in the for­ma­tion of a net­work of agents and in­sti­tu­tions shar­ing the same goals.

 

At LILA, we are de­lighted by our first phase ac­tiv­i­ties, and the way these have qui­etly yet steadily begun a move­ment to cre­ate a pub­lic space for trans­for­ma­tive ideations. We are en­cour­aged by the sup­port and en­cour­age­ment we re­ceived from all di­rec­tions. But there is much more to come! The next phase of our work shall start with a new pro­ject, In­ter-ac­tions, the LILA plat­form for pub­lic de­bates. Its on­line site will host ex­changes be­tween ex­perts in a va­ri­ety of fields, and re­spon­dents from uni­ver­si­ties and the civil so­ci­ety. In Feb­ru­ary, we will or­ga­nize an Au­di­ence Meet to re­flect with you upon all the pro­jects past and to come. And, of course, we will con­tinue or­ga­niz­ing LILA Lu­mieres screen­ing-de­bates, as well as our LILA Spe­cial Lec­tures.

 

Im­ages cour­tesy: Odisha Sun Times | Samuel Bu­choul | Uni­ver­sity of Toronto Mis­sis­sauga | In­dian Ex­press