CASI Student Programs Open House

2:00 to 4:30 p.m.

The Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania provides funding and support to current Penn undergraduate and graduate students to travel to India and conduct independent research and participate in volunteer internships based at selected CASI partner organizations. CASI also offers a nine-month post-baccalaureate fellowship to support a recent Penn graduate to conduct an independent research project in India.

Indian Defense Reforms: Institutionalizing Clarity and Cohesion in Security Planning

Frank O’Donnell

Indian national security policymaking has traditionally suffered from a lack of central strategic planning: an organized process, fully integrating civilian and military defense institutions, that sets long-term defense objectives, then ensures these are met through procurement and posturing fulfilments. Instead, defense policy development largely consists of a combination of procurement wish lists submitted separately by the three military services, alongside intermittent initiatives principally formulated by the Prime Minister.

India’s Rural Employment Guarantee Program: Evidence from the India Human Development Surveys of 2004-5 and 2011-12

Sonalde Desai is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland with a joint appointment as a Senior Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago and The RAND Corporation.

Biodiversity Management with Public Participation: Can India Do Better?

Ghazala Shahabuddin

In India, legally established Protected Areas have historically been the most important means adopted for biodiversity conservation. Protected Areas (PAs) primarily include National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, and more recently, Community Reserves and Conservation Reserves. Today, there are as many as 703 PAs all across India, covering almost 5 percent of its land area. With burgeoning demands on land and water, and a high population density of 382 people/square km, the area commitment to PAs shows the national importance placed on biodiversity.

India's Economic Development: The Weight of the Past and the Promise of the Future

Arvind Subramanian is the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. He is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. (currently on leave from both). Named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world's top 100 global thinkers, he has published widely in academic journals and policy commentaries.

The Civil Sector and Drones in India

Shashank Srinivasan

Unmanned aerial vehicles are flying robots that provide some of the benefits of manned flight without its attendant risks and inconveniences. Commonly known as drones, they’ve entered the limelight in the past two decades due to advances in electronics engineering and computer science. Having proved their worth on the battlefield during both the 1973 Yom Kippur and the 1982 Lebanon wars, numerous military forces began implementation of their surveillance and weaponized drone programs.

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