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Recent IiT Features

  • Corruption, Technology, and Reform: A Mixed View from the States

    Over the last two years, the corruption pervading India’s government has received remarkable media attention, thanks, in part, to scandals surrounding the Commonwealth Games, 2G telecom licenses, and the Adarsh housing society. This has shaken the complacency of many citizens who heretofore saw bribes and kickbacks as an inevitable part of daily life, and has provided fodder for the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare.

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  • Beneath Our Dancing Feet: A Dilemma of Conscience in Practicing the Art of Bharatanatyam

    Practicing Bharatanatyam in India today means negotiating a dance form with a sensitive past and a problematic present. It means living with appropriations and dealing with notions – inherited, construed, and sometimes fallacious. It also means addressing history and navigating identities of class and sexuality.

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  • What Determines MGNREGA Wages?: Some Evidence on Voice and Exit from Orissa

    This year marks the six year anniversary of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India’s landmark right-to-work program. The act guarantees one hundred days of paid employment to every rural household in India (up to 850 million people), regardless of eligibility criteria, and establishes the government’s flagship welfare program with an allocated central government cost of 401 billion rupees (or $8.9 billion USD) in 2010-11, which accounts for 3.6 percent of government expenditures.

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CASI Celebrates 20 Years

Please join us for events throughout 2012 to celebrate CASI's 20 years at Penn.

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CASI Announces Winners of 2012 Travel Funds Competition

The travel funds for 2012 will be distributed among 16 Penn students. The travel funds assist Penn students to participate in volunteer internships with Indian NGOs or conduct independent research projects in India during the summer months.

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CASI Celebrates Five Years of India in Transition Online!

On March 28 2007, India in Transition (IiT) released its first online publication! Since then, IiT has consistently provided a bi-weekly online forum for both senior and younger scholars from all over the world. IiT presents brief, analytical perspectives on the ongoing transformations in contemporary India based on cutting-edge research in the areas of economy, environment, foreign policy and security, human capital, science and technology, and society and culture. A Hindi translation accompanies each published article and can be found on CASI’s Web site along with related online resources. IiT is also carried in a number of Indian newspapers and online media platforms.

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Corruption, Technology, and Reform: A Mixed View from the States

Jennifer Bussell
May 7, 2012

In this issue of India in Transition, Jennifer Bussell, Assistant Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin, argues that incentives for state officials to engage in petty corruption have resulted in citizens across the country receiving only limited benefits from efforts to improve public services through the use of information technology.

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CASI and UC Santa Cruz Launch Survey on Indian-American Entrepreneurs

In collaboration with UC Santa Cruz, CASI is currently conducting research on Indian-American entrepreneurs and their links with India. This work is funded by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA). If you are an existing or aspiring entrepreneur, please consider taking a short 15 minute survey to help inform this research endeavor. At the end of the survey, you will be able to enter a raffle for a prize.

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CASI Receives Grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation

The $168,327 grant will investigate India's emergence as one of the world's largest and fastest growing economies, and how this will have significant implications for its role as a leading player in world politics.

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CASI Receives Grant from John Templeton Foundation

The $421,071 grant will investigate the principal characteristics of Dalit entrepreneurship in India and the key factors that facilitate and impede Dalit entrepreneurship that are distinct from those faced by entrepreneurs from other communities within India.

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Welcome from the Director

Since its founding in 1992, the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) has continued to uphold Penn’s global reputation as a leading center of research in South Asian studies. The goals of the Center are threefold. The first goal is to engage in policy-relevant research focused on the challenges facing contemporary India and thereby improve our understanding of India's politics and society, its rapidly changing economy, and transformation as an ancient civilization and emerging major power. In doing so, we strive to create a forum in which scholars can dialogue with academic, policy, and business communities. The second goal is to nurture students’ interest in contemporary India through internships at the Center and interactions with visiting scholars who are in residence at CASI, as well as by providing them with opportunities to work and conduct research in India. And third, the Center aims to act as a public forum on contemporary India by hosting seminars, workshops and conferences year-round, and through our online publication, India in Transition, which provides scholars around the world a medium to exchange ideas about contemporary India.

As CASI continues to grow and expand, we hope to further strengthen ties throughout Penn and collaborate with leading research centers worldwide, including our counterpart organization based in India, the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI). In doing so, we look forward to furthering our role as an international hub for policy-relevant research on modern India.

-Devesh Kapur
Director, Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India

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