By Lisa Chase, Research Associate, Harvard Business School & Harvard Graduate School of Design

From Left: Shraddha Dwivedi, Devesh Chaturvedi, Rajesh Rathore. and Mani Prasad Mishra

The spirit of collaboration and community that made this year's Kumbh Mela festival so successful was on vivid display at the Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral City workshop on August 29 and 30 at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. This gathering of government officials from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh responsible for planning and managing the Kumbh Mela, faculty and students from FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard Divinity School (HDS), Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) and School of Public Health (HSPH) ; Harvard Business School (HBS); the Harvard South Asia Institute (SAI) and Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI), epitomized the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration and academic curiosity that inspired the HGHI and SAI  to sponsor the workshop.  Representatives from Uttar Pradesh included Higher Education Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi, Professor and Head of the Department of Community Education Shraddha Dwivedi, Mani Prasad Mishra, District Magistrate and Mela Chief Officer, and Deputy Inspector General of Police Rajesh Rathore. Mela Inspector General, Alok Sharma, joined the team from India via Skype.

Innovative university-wide and cross-disciplinary course begins its third year 

Tarun Khanna's (HBS and SAI Director) innovative teaching experiment, 'Contemporary South Asia: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems' has begun its third year this fall. The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students from across Harvard's schools. It is offered as a General Education course at Harvard College.

Tarun Khanna, Sue Goldie, Fernando Reimers, and Parimal Patil will co-teach this course.

The University-wide course features a group of faculty from across Harvard who are members of SAI's Steering Committee and instrumental to SAI's goal of acting as a platform on which interdisciplinary exchange by faculty and students can occur.  Sue Goldie (HSPH) will lead the Health module,  Fernando Reimers (HGSE) will lead the Education module, and Parimal Patil (FAS) will lead the Arts and Humanities module, in addition to Tarun Khanna (HBS), who is the lead faculty for the course.