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Projects
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The Centre often takes up work on behalf of
outside agencies provided such work merges with the academic interests of
individual scholars and of the institution. Teams of the Centre's scholars have
worked in the past for projects assigned by the World Bank, ILO and UNDP.
Several governmental agencies have also commissioned important projects.
South Asia Regional
Fellowship Programme:
The CSSSC also acts a partner organisation for
SSRC's South Asia Regional
Fellowship Program. This is a multi year fellowship opportunity for college and
university teachers based in South Asia. Every year, a theme of regional
significance is chosen and fellowships are awarded through a competitive
process. Applicant eligibility is restricted to those permanently residing and
teaching in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. There are no
citizenship restrictions. Eligible applicants must hold a Ph.D. in the social
sciences, humanities, or related fields. As many as 20 fellowships may be
awarded to college teachers and university faculty teaching in the social
sciences and humanities across South Asia annually. Up to fifteen fellowships
are reserved for junior scholars (less than Professor rank), and no more than
five for senior scholars (Professor rank and above). The primary intent of the
fellowship is to write up completed research. We expect the fellowship period to
be used to prepare an article of sufficient quality to be published in a major
social science journal or to ready a monograph for publication by an academic
press. Fellows may also apply to begin new research or to continue ongoing
projects but these will have lower priority. The average fellowship period will
be between 3-4 months. Fellows are required to (a) apply for leave from teaching
and other responsibilities (b) affiliate with a research centre during the
fellowship term.
Application kits may be requested from Mr.
Bodhisattva Kar, SSRC Project Associate at the address of CSSSC or by e-mail to
ssrccal@cssscal.org from February
onwards, every year. Fellows are expected to participate in an annual regional
conference and training and may take up the fellowship between January and
December in the following year.
The program is supported by a grant from Ford
Foundation.
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SEPHIS:
From 2001, under the South-South Exchange
Programme for History and Society, a Dutch initiative, CSSSC has become a
resource centre for South Asia for
SEPHIS. A number of activities (such as
lecture tours, publication of occasional papers and conferences) are being
planned under this scheme. SEPHIS will also make possible the admission of a
number of international scholars from Southern countries to the RTP course in
January 2004. For information please contact the
SEPHIS South Asia Regional Desk at
the Centre.
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Project on Documentation of Bengali
Advertisement supported by SEPHIS:
The Centre begun the work of documentation of
Advertisement in Bengali in its archive, the project initially supported by the
India Foundation for the Arts and from 2002 being supported by SEPHIS. Under
this project, the Centre so far documented a huge collection of texts and
visuals of Bengali advertisement in its archive. Professor Gautam Bhadra is the
over all in-charge of the project and Abhijit Bhattacharya of the Archive
working as co-investigator for the project.
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History of the United Bank of India:
This is a story project of the
UBI which
recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Starting from a review of the Social
History of Banking in Bengal in the 19th and early 20th century, the
investigation under the project discovers the roots of the bank in the merger of
the four prominent bengal banks and dwells briefly on their individual
histories. The next phase studied is the growth of the private bank prior to
nationalization. The nationalization question not only brouht a big debate in
banking but also put enormous pressure on the bank to grow and meet the
challenges of development banking. The recent years witness a crisis,
stabilization and turnaaround for the bank.
Principal Investigators:
Indrajit
Mallick and
Sugata Marjit.
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ENRECA:
A collaborative project for research and training
being funded by the
ENRECA programme of DANIDA. Under this the Centre's faculty
worked with the International Development Studies group at
Roskilde University,
Denmark, and the Centre for Basic Research,
Kampala, Uganda. There have been joint research workshops and publications on
the institutional foundations of industrialization' and urban culture and
democracy. PhD students from Uganda and India have been trained at Calcutta and
Roskilde. For more information please contact
Susanta Ghosh.
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INDIA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
& JAPAN FOUNDATION
The India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore and
Japan Foundation Asia Centre are funding the extensive documentation of textual
and visual material of 19th and 20th century Bengal held at the Centre's
archive.
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DFID:
A project on Social Development Research in West
Bengal sponsored by the
Department for International Development (DFID) of the
Government of UK was completed in 2002.
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SANEI:
"Groundwater Markets in West Bengal, India:
Emergence, Evolution and Market Structure": The project is sponsored by the
South Asia Network of Economic Research Institutes (SANEI), a subsidiary of
Global Development Network of the World Bank. The project is being supervised by Pranab Kumar Das. This is a collaborative project with Dr. Bhaswar Moitra,
Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. This study aims at an
investigation of the nature and patterns of development of groundwater markets
across distinct agro-climatic zones in West Bengal, in particular what physical,
technological, social and economic factors foster or impede the establishment
and growth of private groundwater markets. Future research requires careful
documentation of salient ground level features of the Groundwater markets across
agro-climatic zones in the state. Further the study tries to capture the
patterns of evolution - ownership, technology and market structure-of these
markets. Recent advances in game theory and industrial organization theory can
offer valuable insight into the nature and pattern of contracts, contract
enforcement, entry barriers and persistence of concentration and welfare issues.
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Reserve Bank of India Research Endowment:
This
Reserve Bank of India Endowment is located
within the Centre for conducting research primarily in the fields of Banking,
Industry, Finance and Macroeconomics. Economists within the Centre participate
in this specialized research programme. The endowment is chaired by Prof.
Sugata Marjit as the RBI Professor of
Industrial Economics. The endowment publishes
India
Macroeconomics Annual through
Sage India,
U.K.
A number of research projects partially or fully
funded by the endowment are in progress. Some of the completed research projects
are :
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Financial Sector Reform for Stimulating Growth
on Investment in India
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Regional Trade Openness Index and Income
Disparity - A New Methodology and the Indian Experiment
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Pro-Market Reform and Informal Wage – Theory
and the Contemporary Indian Perspective
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A Portfolio Based Theory of Excessive
Foreign Borrowing and Capital Control in a small Economy.
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'Collateral Monitoring and Banking
Regulation', Sugata Marjit and Indrajit Mallick.
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'Real Sector, Banks and Policy Issues: An
Exploration in a Dynamic Macroeconomic Model', Pranab Kumar Das.
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'Trade Reform, Internal Capital Mobility and
Informal Wage - Theory and Evidence', Sugata Marjit and Saibal Kar.
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'Entrepreneurial Culture, Occupational
Choice and Tax Policy: A Simple Theoretical Note', Saibal Kar.
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'Interest Rate Policy and Macroeconomic
Performance', Sugata Marjit.
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'Investment of Indian Firms in an Imperfect
Capital Market', Sugata Marjit, Pranab Kumar Das and Jayati Bhattacharyya.
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'A Macroeconometric Model for India: The
Credit View', Pranab Kumar Das.
For more information please contact
Dr. Saibal Kar
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Economic Analysis of Corporate Bankruptcy Law
Reform in India:
This is a project done on behalf of the CSSSC and
funded by the
WB National
University of Juridical Sciences. A team of lawyers, economists and
accountants have contributed to the project report which deals with the genesis
of corporate bankruptcy in India, the contemporary problem and the issues
raised. Theoretical Literature and Empricial Literature have been reviewed to
specify the problem and the nature of the query.
For more information please contact
Dr. Indrajit Mallick
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Writing New Cultural History of Eastern India
supported by the
Ford
Foundation:
The project began in March 2004 and work has
begun on further acquisition at the archive of relevant historical documents
from all over Eastern India. The process of selection of Doctoral and
Post-doctoral fellows with specialization in Eastern India has already Began.
Professor Partha Chatterjee is over all in-charge of the project.
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DFID sponsored project on Strengthening Rural
Decentralisation (SRD) in the state of West Bengal:
The DFID sponsored project on Strengthening Rural
Decentralisation (SRD) in the state of West Bengal is currently in progress. The
Centre is involved in the creation of baseline data and purpose level indicators
that would facilitate the programme to be carried out in all 18 districts of the
state by the Department of Panchayat and Rural Development. The first phase of
the project has recently been concluded. Six districts were studied and the
findings were shared with DFID and the Government of West Bengal. The second
phase of the project has now been completed. The study was conducted on behalf
of the Centre by a study team drawn from the faculty.
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Survey of Libraries and Archives in Eastern
India and Bangladesh:
The CSSSC is currently engaged in a survey of
libraries and archives in Bangladesh and in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura among
Eastern Indian provinces. This is a collaborative project with the
Center for
South Asia Libraries (CSAL), and the survey aims to a broader project on
South Asia Union catalogue (Phase: II) in collaboration with University of
Chicago and Center for Research Libraries in USA and Roja Muthiah Research
Library, Chennai as member institute in South Asia. The project will be housed
in the CSSSC with an aim to compute all available bibliographic records
published in any South Asian languages from Eastern India, Bangladesh, Bhutan
and Colonial Burma in a single database and upload the same in Online Public
Access Cataloguing system. An earlier version of the survey, conducted
independently by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta is
available on
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/csal/surveys/bengali-survey-india.doc . Abhijit
Bhattacharya is coordinating the project on survey and bibliography on behalf of
the Centre. The final report of the survey is expected to be published by the
middle of May 2006 and the bibliography project will start from June 2006 and
will continue for three years with financial support from National Endowment for
Humanities, USA.
For more information please contact Mr.
Abhijit Bhattacharya
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Indexing of Articles from 19th and
early 20th century periodicals:
This is a collaborative project between the
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and the Center for Research
Libraries (CRL), Chicago. The
purpose of the project is indexing of articles in selected periodicals,
especially on health and hygiene, published in 19th and early 20th century
journals those are already documented by the archive of the CSSSC. The index
will be published in electronic format along with the journal articles, wherever
possible following the Online Public Access Cataloguing system.
Abhijit Bhattacharya is the coordinator
of the project.
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South Asia Union Catalogue Project:
The project is sponsored by the Center for South
Asia Libraries (CSAL),
Chicago for computing all bibliographic records published in South Asia from its
earliest instance to 1959 in a central server and gives open access to the
database to the scholars. The initiative of preparing such a database taken in
2003 as South Asia Union Catalog and
for smooth functioning of the project the South Asian region divided in four
phases and The CSSSC, a member institute of the CSAL for the bibliographic and
archiving projects is the base for the Phase - 2 to cover Eastern Indian
provinces, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Colonial Burma. This is a quadrangular project
with University of Chicago, Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, CSSSC and
Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai and is expected to be completed by 2009.
Abhijit Bhattacharya is acting as
coordinator of South Asia for the project.
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Collaborations:
A number of faculty members serve as office
bearers for various academic associations such as the Council of the ICSSR, the
governing body of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (New
Delhi), and the Standing Committee on Women's Studies of the UGC.
Many are on the editorial boards of academic
journals such as the Aitihasik, Sociological Bulletin, Global Governance,
Identities.
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