Decolonial International Netwerk and International Institute for Scientific Research in The Netherlands are organizing a webinar on the famines in India during colonialism in the context of Genocide Memorial Day on January 17th.
In her lecture Dr. Mehta will give a short chronology of famines that took place during colonial period and then focus on 1943 famine. She will show some photographs and paintings and play music related to 1943 famine. And most importantly she will talk about people’s response to the famine in terms of famous Tebhaga movement in Bengal.
The webinar is organized in the context of Genocide Memorial Day (GMD). This day is a day to remember “man’s inhumanity to man”. GMD was started in 2010 by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, founding member of the Decolonial International Network, as an annual tradition to commemorate the Zionist attack on Gaza in 2008. Some 1,400 Palestinians, mainly citizens, were killed without any intervention by governments. GMD aims to create awareness about the factors leading up to genocide and what we can do to prevent them.
Speaker: Jaya Mehta
Host: Sandew Hira
Sunday January 17, 2021, from 14.00-15.00 Amsterdam/Paris time
Registration: https://din.today/202101-2
Dr. Jaya Mehta is a senior economist who has been working since 2009, in Joshi-Adhikari Institute of Social Studies. It is a research institute based in New Delhi.
She has been a senior fellow at the Institute of Human Development, New Delhi, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi and Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Before that she worked as a Reader in Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. Dr. Jaya Mehta is a founder member of Alternative Economic Survey Group and has been contributing regularly to its annual numbers.
She has been engaged in studying the agrarian crisis in Indian economy, poverty measurement, women’s issues and theory and praxis of socialist systems. In the year 2009, she coordinated a primary survey on marginal farmers across 8 states of the country, delineating their production and marketing pattern.
Eight volumes were prepared presenting the agrarian scene in the country. After that she has conducted a study on collective farming by women in the state of Kerala. The book related to this study is with the publishers.
She also made a study on working class movement in pre- and post-independent India. Recently, she edited a book, ‘The Russian Revolution and Indian Freedom Struggle” to commemorate 100 years of Russian revolution. She also wrote a booklet on ‘Revolutionary potential of women workers in agriculture’ in 2019 on the occasion of 100 years of death anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg.
She has directed plays and made a few documentaries on various topics related to working class and oppressed groups.