Constrained Expertise In India and China – Panel 2
{VIRTUAL BOOK TALK}
We invite you to join us for the launch of “Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking”, a publication emerging from our international research seminar The Shifting Geographies of Expertise and Policymaking. This seminar brought together 12 scholars and practitioners from India, China, and beyond to explore expertise and policymaking across fields including energy, public health, education, housing, pandemic responses, and rural and urban development. The book is edited by Professors Manjari Mahajan and Mark W. Frazier, Co-Directors of the India China Institute.
“Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking” explores what kinds of knowledge and knowledge purveyors get mobilized and privileged, and what gets sidelined in policymaking in India and China. Through its detailed empirical studies in both countries, the volume illuminates a trend of increasing concentration of political authority which has frequently demanded that experts be aligned with the central government’s agenda.
The second panel, on Thursday, Oct. 30 at 9:00am EST, will discuss knowledge that emerges from social movements, grassroots communities, and local governments, and how it influences, or gets sidelined, in policymaking processes.
SPEAKERS
Thresia CU
Senior Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies (New Delhi)
“Shifting Locations of Knowledge Production for Health Policies: Community Engagement in Palliative Care in the Indian State of Kerala”
Ceren Ergenc
Research Fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
“Expert-Policymaker Relationship in China’s Urban Waste Governance”
Avinash Madhale
Program Director, Urban Programmes, Center for Environment Education, India
“Struggle for Stability: Coping with COVID-19 Community-Led Actions and Learning from M-East Ward of Mumbai”
Kesava Chandra Varigonda
Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore
“Challenging the Centralised Hierarchy of Civil Nuclear Policy and Expertise in India: Anti-nuclear Opposition from the mid-2000s to late-2010s”
Yang ZHAN
Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Department of Applied Social Sciences; A Managing Committee Member of the China and Global Development Network, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
“Gendering Scholar Activism in China’s Rural Development”
October 30, 2025 , 9:00 am – 10:30 am