It's getting late here, so I'll try to keep the introduction brief. Assuming everything goes according to plan, myself, Pooja, Rahul & Stephanie will be updating this blog regularly over the coming weeks. We're all undergrads at the University of Pennsylvania and are spending the summer interning with the Piramal Foundation's Grassroots Development Lab. Our project assignments vary, so I won't even attempt to describe each person's work! We'll fill you in on the details over the next few days...
In the meantime, here's a brief description of both the Center for the Advanced Study of India (which awarded us the grants that made this trip possible) and GDL itself. If you want more information, you can always check out the links we've posted.
About CASI (in their own words):
"Founded in 1992, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania is the only research institution in the United States dedicated to the study of contemporary India. A national resource, it fills an urgent need for objective knowledge of India's politics and society, rapidly changing economy, and transformation as an ancient civilization and major power. The Center's key goals are to nurture a new generation of scholars across disciplines and to provide a forum for dialogue among the academic, business, and foreign policy communities."
And about GDL:
"Established in 2006, the Piramal Foundation started by establishing a "Grassroots Development Laboratory" in the ancestral town of the Piramal family: Bagar, Rajasthan. The GDL's mandate, much like the research and development centers for industrial innovations, is to find solutions to the toughest questions in the development of rural India. The GDL team works only on issues of national relevance, applying different ideas through innovative trials in a single district. Our aim: to find ideas with promise that can be scaled to larger populations by future foundation projects."
That's that. Look out for more postings over the next few days, as we get this blog up and running.
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