Paraspar, an initiative of the Office of Communications (OoC) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), is a platform for conversations about knowledge systems, particularly science.
PARASPAR
Invites you to a webinar series on
Understanding India
In this series, experts from different fields of human endeavour will provide their insights into some of the lesser discussed facets of India.
What does an old man sitting by an ancient waterfall tell us?
India’s Northeast as an ecological plot made of extractions, exuberance and expectations
Click here for the Poster.
Abstract: I came across Lomtung Tago, well into his nineties, sitting by a fire near the Siko Dido waterfall perched high atop the outer Himalayan range in Shi Yomi District, Arunachal Pradesh. Who is Mr. Tago? A local tribesman who in his youth guided the Indian Army out from the jungle to the plains in the face of advancing marauding Chinese troops? One who lived and interacted with the ‘Chinese’ for a long period when they made his village (‘basti’) the base and witnessed the Chinese efforts to harness the waterfall into a reservoir of drinking water, even electricity? Or an elderly person whose ‘location’ kept changing as the world around him changed, ticking by the expansion of the militarised hydro-carbon landscapes along with the shifts in ‘the great game East’? Taking off from the resilience of Mr. Tago and the timelessness of the waterfall, the lecture will go on to discuss India’s Northeast as an embodiment of an eco-cultural space, a policy making frame and geo-political scheme woven around the intimate interaction between nature, nation and nationalities. From examples of rock relics in geo-security terrains of Arunachal Pradesh to life-worlds in mountainous Naga villages enduring through changes and course shifting rivers in the Brahmaputra Valley, the lecture will emphasise that the continuous production of the region as a ‘resource frontier’ in the perilous slopes of capitalism helps one understand the region as an ecological plot made of wars, friendships and survival.
Speaker: Dr. Kaustubh Deka
Dibrugarh University
Assam
Date: 19 April 2021 (Monday)
Time: 4.00 pm
Click to join: https://bit.ly/3wIVcU7
All are welcome.
For any queries, please contact Dr. Bitasta Das (bitasta@iisc.ac.in), Office of Communications, Indian Institute of Science.
