Sep 24 2025 to Sep 24 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

How do we represent those who peopled Indian agrarian history?

These talks explore the place of oral narrative in reconstructing India’s post-Independence agricultural history, especially some of its less known though no less defining moments. As important as watershed events and policy interventions are to the making of agrarian history, the contributions of other actors, among them landless agricultural workers, peasants, political workers and agricultural scientists, must also be given their place. The perceptions of agrarian change as evaluated and voiced by those who made significant contributions to the course of agrarian history makes for a more textured view of social and economic change in rural India.

Through first-hand accounts from the lab and the field we see how individual experience and social context shaped the making of agrarian history in India after independence. These stories don’t just add detail; they shift perspective, showing how knowledge and change emerge through lived realities.

Parvathi Menon, former Resident Editor of The Hindu, and historian of science Sandipan Baksi will share insights from two major oral history projects, moderated by Madhura Swaminathan of the Indian Statistical Institute.

An invitation to listen closely to the stories that have shaped our reality today.

This discussion is part of the 69th edition of the Archives Public Lecture Series, which focuses on explorations in and around the archives at NCBS.

In collaboration with:

Speakers

Parvathi Menon
Journalist & Historian
With a career spanning both academia and journalism, Parvathi Menon brings a rare combination of historical depth and editorial experience. She earned her doctorate in history from Aligarh Muslim University and went on to shape public discourse as Resident Editor of The Hindu in Bangalore and as the newspaper’s London Correspondent. Her reporting and analysis have covered politics, culture, and international affairs with nuance and rigour. In addition to her editorial leadership, Parvathi has contributed to scholarship as a historian, bringing archival research into conversation with lived realities. This dual engagement with scholarship and the press marks her as a voice attuned to both the complexity of India’s past and the urgency of its present.

Sandipan Baksi
Historian of Science
The history of science and its relationship to agrarian change has been at the centre of Sandipan Baksi’s work. A historian with a doctorate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, he is Director of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies. His research focuses on the evolution of agricultural science in India and the communities of scientists who shaped it in the decades after independence. Currently, he is collaborating with the Archives at NCBS to build an oral-history archive that will serve as a unique resource on the history of agriculture, science, and technology in India. Through his scholarship and institution-building, Baksi is advancing a critical field at the intersection of science and society.

Madhura Swaminathan
Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore
For over three decades, Madhura Swaminathan has studied questions of food security, agriculture, poverty, and inequality in India. She is Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru, and holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford. Her research has illuminated the structural challenges facing rural economies and the uneven impacts of growth on livelihoods. Madhura’s most recent book, Economic Change in the Lower Cauvery Delta (Tulika Books, 2023), co-edited with V. Surjit and V. K. Ramachandran, extends her long-standing focus on agrarian transformation. Widely respected as both teacher and scholar, she has contributed significantly to debates on development and policy, ensuring that questions of equity and justice remain central.