India and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

CASI Seminar
Chinmay Tumbe
Assistant Professor, Economics Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad
A Virtual CASI Seminar via Zoom


Listen to podcast (in conversation with Gautam Nair, CASI Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

About the Speaker:
Chinmay Tumbe loves to laugh and learn. He is Assistant Professor of the Economics Area at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) and the author of India Moving: A History of Migration. He has published widely on migration, has served on policy-making groups and has worked in India, UK, Italy, and the US. He was the 2018 Alfred D. Chandler Jr. International Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School and the 2013 Jean Monnet Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, Florence. Before IIMA, he was a faculty member at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, and was a student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Ruia College, Mumbai and Rishi Valley School, Madanapalle. 

About the Seminar:
The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more than 14 million Indians in the span of a few months and is the country's greatest demographic disaster on record. It was also India's worst year in recorded economic history with a real GDP growth rate of negative 10 percent and inflation surging past 30 percent. Despite its significance for epidemiology and economics, it is arguably the least studied event in modern history. This seminar sheds light on various aspects of the disaster based on Tumbe's ongoing research and discusses current COVID-19 challenges against the backdrop of the events of 1918.

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.