South Asia Program
Is the Global Economy as Resilient as it Seems?
Eswar Prasad, SAP
Eswar Prasad (SAP) analyzes global economic resilience in the face of President Trump’s tariff war: “Policymakers need to use this period of relative calm to push forward with reforms,” he advises.
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Laidlaw Scholars Q+A Webinar with Pachaysana
November 6, 2025
5:00 pm
For the summer 2026 Leadership in Action experience, students will be placed with the Pachaysana Foundation exploring what it means to be an intercultural leader in today’s complex, fractured world. Please attend this Q+A webinar with Pachaysana Foundation to learn more about their work and how the Laidlaw Scholars explore leadership as something we live—grown in relationship and rooted in the wisdom of agrarian, Indigenous, and activist communities.
Attendance and participation in the Q+A are highly recommended for Laidlaw Scholars applicants. Applications are due January 12, 2026.
Register here. Can’t attend? Another Q+A webinar is scheduled for November 5.
Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu with questions.
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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Laidlaw Scholars Q+A Webinar with Pachaysana
November 5, 2025
12:00 pm
For the summer 2026 Leadership in Action experience, students will be placed with the Pachaysana Foundation exploring what it means to be an intercultural leader in today’s complex, fractured world. Please attend this Q+A webinar with Pachaysana Foundation to learn more about their work and how the Laidlaw Scholars explore leadership as something we live—grown in relationship and rooted in the wisdom of agrarian, Indigenous, and activist communities.
Attendance and participation in the Q+A are highly recommended for Laidlaw Scholars applicants. Applications are due January 12, 2026.
Register here. Can’t attend? Another Q+A webinar is scheduled for November 6.
Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu with questions.
***
The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
World in Focus: Venezuelan Drug Boat Strikes
October 7, 2025
4:00 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Join Einaudi Center experts for World in Focus Talks on global events in the news and on your mind. Our faculty's research and policy insights put the world in focus.
This year we’re hosting informal campus discussions on many Tuesday afternoons. This week’s topic:
Following a military buildup in the Caribbean, the U.S. government has confirmed multiple airstrikes on Venezuelan boats suspected of drug smuggling—killing at least 17 in September. The U.S. claims these actions are “armed conflict” against narcoterrorist organizations. The Venezuelan government condemns the attacks as illegal.
Is the U.S. violating international law? What may happen if tensions continue to escalate?
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Featured Faculty
Oumar Ba (PACS) | Government Pedro M. R. Barbosa (LACS) | Visiting ScholarKen Roberts (LACS) | GovernmentDavid Bateman | GovernmentAleida Sandoval | Visiting Scholar
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Conversations Matter at Einaudi
This conversation is hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its regional and thematic programs. Find out what's in store for students at Einaudi!
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Gopal Yonjan: The Man & His Music
October 7, 2025
4:30 pm
Goldwin Smith Hall, G64
Presented by Gopalaya & Gopal Yonjan Foundation
Dedicated to Peace, Unity & Harmony in Nepal
At a time when Nepal’s wounds are still raw and much remains to be rebuilt, the program turns to the enduring power of Gopal Yonjan’s songs through stories and compositions presented by his wife Renchin Yonjan and singers from Nepal.
Gopal Yonjan’s musical legacy is archived at the Rare & Manuscripts Division, Cornell University
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
South Asia Program
‘Huge Energy Challenges’: How Can India Make the Leap to Become a Green, Clean Country?
Arnab Basu, SAP and Nancy Chau, Einaudi
Researchers at Cornell University found that exposure to dirty cooking fuels in India contributes to a high rate of child mortality.
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Trump Wades Into Bailout Politics in Offering a Lifeline to Argentina
Eswar Prasad, SAP
Eswar Prasad, Cornell University economics professor and former IMF official, comments on the economic risks and lack of a strong rationale for the proposed unconditional U.S. bailout to Argentina.
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Warming Climate is Biggest Threat to Rangelands
Lund Debater Chris Barrett in World in Focus
Chris Barrett (Dyson/Brooks) analyzes climate impacts on Mongolian rangeland this month in Science. He joins Muna Ndulo (Law) on October 22 to debate the future of international aid.
Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?
This year's Lund Critical Debate explores the impact of aid on global communities, what makes aid effective—and how to move forward.
“It’s always struck me as puzzling, why people in suits and ties in capital cities seem to think that the pastoralists don’t understand very well how to manage these lands. And yet, there’s this common belief that you have to get them to reduce their herd sizes. That just hurts the herders.”
Overgrazing is commonly blamed as a key cause of rangeland degradation—yet policy measures designed to limit grazing damage, like herd-size restrictions and livestock taxes, can have devastating consequences on herders' livelihoods.
In Mongolia—where 70 percent of the land area is rangeland—the government revived a national livestock head tax in 2021 in response to perceived overgrazing impacts.
New research from Chris Barrett (IAD/SEAP) identifies a more significant factor: climate change.
Barrett's team analyzed longitudinal data on vegetation conditions and livestock population, collected annually by the Mongolian government across 40 years. They found that larger herds can slightly reduce rangeland productivity over the short term, but climate and weather have a much larger effect. The team published the findings on September 18 in Science.
“When we look really carefully at the equivalent of county scale over the whole country, over 41 years, we find that the longer-run changes in rangeland conditions are entirely attributable to changes in the climate,” said Barrett.
“Mongolian rangelands are affected more by the collective greenhouse gas–emitting behaviors around the globe than by local herders,” he wrote in the Science article. “Policymakers might therefore usefully focus attention on global mitigation and on international compensation for climate damages and less on taxing herders who … appear responsible for little if any of the change in Mongolia’s rangeland primary productivity over the past 40 years.”
The project began among Barrett's graduate students, including one who grew up on the Mongolian rangelands. Coauthors include two alumni from Mongolia—Tumenkhusel Avirmed ’21, MS ’23, now a research data analyst at Stanford University, and Avralt-Od Purevjav, PhD ’20, a consultant at the World Bank.
Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and a professor in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. He is a frequent commentator and policy advisor on food security and agricultural economics.
Featured in World in Focus Briefs
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STS Colloquium with Prakash Kumar
October 20, 2025
3:30 pm
Morrill Hall, 423
Contextualizing the Silver Bullet
The high yielding variety seeds (or HYVs) are overwhelmingly depicted in current historiography as the silver bullet that solved the problem of hunger in many parts of the Global South in the 1960s. Developed by Rockefeller breeders, these seeds of wheat and paddy were globalized by cold warriors who wished to obtain agricultural yield increase in their fight against communism that assumedly was prone to spread among the world’s poor and hungry. Deviating from such self-assured perspectives on the efficacy of HYVs, this talk turns attention to the history of past efforts at yield enhancement that were folded into the decision to invite HYVs into India, the turbulent years in which HYVs arrived in India, and the technocratic belief that stood by these seeds and ensured that they were given a chance to succeed. The fact that the HYV revolution has remained a limited regional phenomenon despite efforts to extend it elsewhere in India beckons us to treat the HYVs as historical beings that have a particular and contingent past of their own.
Prakash Kumar is an associate professor of South Asian history at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in the history of science, agrarian lives, epidemics, development, Indo-US relations, and Cold War era modernization. He is the author of two books, one on colonial science (Cambridge, 2012) and a recent one on the history of the Green Revolution in India (Cambridge, 2025). He is currently working on a history of public health and epidemics in India. His works have been funded twice by the National Science Foundation, by US Fulbright Commission, and the German Historical Institute.
Additional Information
Program
South Asia Program
After Gen Z Protests, Nepal Set for Fresh Elections in March
Kathryn March, SAP
Kathryn March, professor emerita of anthropology, offers insight into how social media highlighted privilege disparities in Nepal during recent youth-led protests.