Robert Stephens, Author and Architect, RMA Architects, is in conversation with SPJIMR Prof. Dr Dinyar Patel.

The architect Charles Correa once described Bombay/Mumbai as a great city but a terrible place. In ‘Bombay Imagined,’ Robert Stephens, an American-born architect at RMA Architects, chronicles several centuries of unfulfilled plans to make the city both greater and less terrible. ‘Bombay Imagined’ demonstrates that smelly sewage, awful infrastructure, paltry open space, and inadequate housing are not simply modern problems: Bombay citizens have established a long tradition of devising plans to mediate these perennial headaches.

"Past Imperfect," explores leadership from a historical perspective while bridging the past and present. The series is brought to you by SPJIMR's Centre for Wisdom in Leadership (CWIL) and features conversations with authors of recent works of global and Indian history and explores political and economic leadership in unusual or unconventional situations.

SPJIMR Past Imperfect

Past Imperfect Episode 5: Bombay Imagined with Robert Stephens

WISE Tech Insights episode 05: India's next digital leap: From Public Infrastructure to public Intelligence

WISE Tech Insights episode 06: AI in Cancer detection — Promise of a Revolution?

Past Imperfect Episode 23 features Dinyar Patel, Associate Professor of History at SPJIMR, in conversation with Padraic X. Scanlan, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto and the author of Rot: A History of the Irish Famine.

Between 1845 and 1851, a famine of unimaginable proportions ravaged Ireland. At least a million people died and at least a million more Irish emigrated. The Great Famine, Scanlan argues, was a product of both colonialism and global capitalism. A rigid adherence to free market principles utterly blinded British policymakers about relief efforts. Stunningly, as Ireland starved, the country continued to export agricultural goods. Relief operations even discouraged Irish from growing their own food, lest such food interfere with market forces. Scanlan’s narrative of the Great Famine reminds us that this was a thoroughly modern event: one that was repeated in other parts of the British Empire, including in India. 

Past Imperfect episode 23: Padraic X. Scanlan on why Ireland’s Great Famine matters

WISE Tech insights episode 8: Fintech: Beyond the unicorns, the untold story


WISE Tech Insights Episode 9: The unicorn paradox: Why Indian agritech requires integration, not disruption

Past Imperfect Episode 24 features Dinyar Patel, Associate Professor of History at SPJIMR, in conversation with Sam Dalrymple, author of Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia.

The Partition of 1947 was not carried out in isolation. Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands reconstructs a longer and much more complex story: how the British Indian Empire, which once stretched from modern-day Yemen to Myanmar, was sundered through five distinct and traumatic separations. Between 1937 and 1971, twelve nation-states emerged from the rubble of empire—yet their creations were not inevitable. Shattered Lands is a story of cosmopolitan connections, opposition to partitions, and several missed opportunities which could have changed the course of South Asia’s very violent twentieth century.

Past Imperfect Episode 24: Sam Dalrymple on South Asia’s five tectonic partitions

Past Imperfect Episode 25 features Dinyar Patel, Associate Professor of History at SPJIMR, in conversation with Avrati Bhatnagar, Instructor in the Department of History and International Comparative Studies Program at Duke University, and Sumathi Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University. Bhatnagar and Ramaswamy are the editors of Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay 1930-1931.

 

Photographing Civil Disobedience captures Bombay in a moment of upheaval, convulsed by the Civil Disobedience Movement. Based on an album of photographs recently discovered at the Alkazi Collection in Delhi, the volume provides a new perspective on Bombay and Indian nationalism, demonstrating the power of female political participation. Bhatnagar and Ramaswamy show us how, in the months after Mahatma Gandhi’s famous Salt March, the women of Bombay led, directed, and dominated key acts of anticolonial protest. Photographs, they remark, can tell us a very different version of history from what we derive from written records.

Past Imperfect episode 25: Female power on the streets of Bombay

Past Imperfect Episode 26 features Dinyar Patel, Associate Professor of History at SPJIMR, in conversation with John Cassidy, staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Capitalism and Its Critics: A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World.

Although the term “capitalism” only dates from the 1830s, people have been analyzing it—and, quite often, condemning it—for over 250 years. Capitalism and Its Critics provides a sweeping account of over thirty major economic thinkers. These range from well-known names like Adam Smith and Karl Marx to lesser-known—but equally important—figures like Silvia Federici, who demanded wages for housework, and Eric Williams, who laid bare the formative role of slavery in capitalism. Flagrant inequality has been a rallying cry of these critics, but so has empire and imperialism. From eighteenth-century critiques of the East India Company to twenty-first century assaults on American hegemony, we can observe some remarkably consistent arguments about how capitalism has been immoral, inequitable, and exploitative but also remarkably resilient.

Past Imperfect Episode 26:  John Cassidy on capitalism and its critics

Past Imperfect Episode 27 features Dinyar Patel, Associate Professor of History at SPJIMR, in conversation with Joshua Ehrlich, Associate Professor of History at the University of Macau and the author of The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge.

Google has one thing in common with the East India Company: it sees itself as not just a business but a promoter of knowledge. In The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, Ehrlich explains why colonial officials like Warren Hastings and Lord Wellesley set up schools and promoted scholarship. They saw an explicit political value in such projects. By being a patron of knowledge, the Company could “conciliate” key constituencies in India and Britain and fend off accusations of philistinism. Company officials began by forging alliances with learned elites and scholar-administrators. By the 1820s, however, some British colonial administrators were experimenting with something far more revolutionary: mass education.

Past Imperfect Episode 27: Joshua Ehrlich on the East India Company’s politics of knowledge

SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR) is a constituent of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and is ranked among the top ten business schools in India. It is in the top 50 ranks in the Financial Times (FT) 2020 business school rankings and is placed 3rd in India and 36th in the world. As a premier school of management, SPJIMR is noted for pedagogic innovations and pioneering programmes, which have helped the Institute stand out for its unique and distinctive path in management education. SPJIMR's mission is to 'influence practice' and 'promote value-based growth'. The Institute currently operates from its 45-acre campus in Andheri, Mumbai, and a campus in New Delhi.  

Taking forward the SPJIMR motto of thought leadership, SPJIMR Thoughtcast showcases the 'influencing practice' principle of the institute and features an expert SPJIMR faculty in a reflective conversation with a senior industry leader on management and business.

Past Imperfect Episode 5: Bombay Imagined with Robert Stephens

SPJIMR Podcast

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