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The New India Foundation is pleased to announce the Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture 2021‘US Politics: Why Here, and Where from Here?’ by Edward Luce on 12 March, 2021


Bengaluru, Wednesday, 24th February 2021: The New India Foundation is pleased to announce that the Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture for 2021 will be delivered by renowned journalist and columnist Edward Luce. The lecture will be hosted virtually this year, in association with the Bangalore International Centre on 12th March 2021 at 6:30 pm IST. Edward Luce will speak on ‘US Politics: Why Here, and Where from Here?’

Edward Luce, who is one of the most highly regarded commentators on US politics in the world, will talk about the dynamics of US politics, and the impact of the newly elected US government on the world, especially on India.

This will be the fourteenth NIF Annual Lecture, which was renamed in 2019 to the ‘Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture’ in honour of the late multi-lingual scholar and playwright. Delivered by a distinguished scholar or writer, the NIF Annual Lecture is held in Bengaluru, in association with a reputed public institution. The lecture will be conducted online this year.

One of the leading and most prestigious events on the calendar, the New India Foundation Annual Lecture has facilitated debate on important social issues, with talks featuring renowned scholars and thinkers including:, Jean Dreze, Sunil Khilnani, Yogendra Yadav, Ela Bhatt, Professor André Béteille, Professor Raghuram Rajan, Professor Rahul Mehrotra, Lant Pritchett, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Dr Arvind Subramanian, Professor Esther Duflo, Professor Sunil Amrith and Dr Sowmya Swaminanthan.

This year’s speaker, Edward Luce is the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. Before that he was the FT’s Washington Bureau chief. Other roles have included South Asia bureau chief, Capital Markets editor, and Philippines Correspondent. Luce was previously the speechwriter for the US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence H. Summers, in the Clinton administration.

He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017), Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012), and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007). He appears regularly on CNN, NPR, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and the BBC.

About the New India Foundation

Based in Bengaluru, the core activity of the New India Foundation is the New India Fellowships which have been awarded to scholars and writers for over a decade and a half now. Aimed at enabling and supporting high-quality research on an extraordinary range of topics on post-Independence India, the NIF Fellowships have resulted in the publication of an eclectic and vibrant collection of twenty-two books published by prestigious publishing houses.

Instituted in 2018, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, for the best non-fiction book on modern/contemporary India, has further built on its mission of sponsoring high-quality research and writings on the world’s largest democracy.

Ramachandra Guha, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Nandan Nilekani, Srinath Raghavan and Manish Sabharwal are the Trustees of the New India Foundation.

To the attend the lecture, please register here: