CSA_syllabus_draft1_june2012.doc

DRAFT May 24, 2012

DRAFT June 8, 2012

Contemporary South Asia:

A Survey of Intractable Problems and Innovative Solutions

Tarun Khanna

Harvard Business School, Morgan Hall 221

This Version: DRAFT June 8, 2012

Course Lecture Location: Sever Hall 113Meeting Time: M., W., 3:305 pm

Course Numbers:

General Education (FAS): SW-47

Harvard Kennedy School: PED 338

Harvard School of Public Health: GHP-568

Harvard Graduate School of Education: A-819

Harvard Business School: 1266

OVERVIEW

This survey course focuses on several categories of social and economic problems faced by the countries of South Asia, specifically, in the realms of Education, Health, and Financial Inclusion. Each problem category will be dealt with through a survey lecture, supplemented by assigned readings, and an in-depth look at one or more organizations, companies, non-profits, or regulatory interventions that have attempted to address some of the problems within that category. (Supplemental readings will be recommended for those wishing to explore the topic further.) The primary objective of the course is to immerse students in an inter-disciplinary and university-wide setting to the problems of our generation in South Asia, and also to a range of entrepreneurial attempts to solve these, warts and all.

The course is designed for advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students from all parts of the University. The course will be listed in FAS, HBS, HKS, GSE, HSPH, and SEAS (other students will be able to cross-register, and the grading protocols worked out before the start of term). The mixture of student backgrounds is important for its success. The lectures and deep-dive case studies are the core of the course, a must for all attendees; the course requirements are tailored separately to the needs of undergraduate and graduate students, with plenty of opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences.

There will be an introductory and concluding module, interspersed with a module on each of the three problem categories, each lasting about three weeks.

Lectures will review the available evidence on the incidence, causes and consequences of the problem in question. Case studies of each solution will examine whether and why it worked, and how it could have been improved, as well as compare the effort to other ambient successes and failures. Some overview lectures might be delivered by visitors; the case studies will be discussed interactively and might feature the protagonists wherever feasible. These lectures and case discussions are mandatory for all students.

In addition there will be a weekly section, mandatory for undergraduates, optional for graduate students, for a more in-depth exploration of selected readings and, perhaps, discussions of additional interesting cases of success or failure. Graduate Teaching Fellows (TF), with relevant knowledge of the material and geography, will run the small sections.

The lectures and sections will draw on experiences from multiple South Asian countries, featuring Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan particularly heavily. From the optional materials, students might choose to focus their attention on a particular country, however, and these might additionally include some of the other countries form South Asia (Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, as well as Afghanistan and Myanmar, if one were to push the boundaries to the west and east respectively).

Thus, through the weekly lectures and sections, students will develop an appreciation for the near-historical causes of the problem; the qualitative and quantitative evidence regarding the problem especially in comparison to various counterfactuals; its various interpretations; commonalities and differences across South Asian countries; and the respective roles of the state, civil society and private enterprise in helping resolve the problems.

PROJECT COMPONENT:

Graduate students will be required to develop a project report. As described below, undergraduates might chose the project report in lieu of a term paper, though this will likely require them to exert incremental effort. The idea of the project is to present a candidate solution this may take the form of a business plan, a plan to build a non-profit, a plan to create a regulatory intervention, all of which are equally admissible that solves a crisply stated, and significant, problem in a particular setting in South Asia.

As examples, a project might develop a plan to:

Deliver heat-sensitive vaccines to places that need them but cant currently access them;

Help education non-profits pursue their interventions with some scale, rather than with well-meaning but small one-off efforts;

Work on waste-recycling options in the many urban slums all across South Asia with a view to enhancing public health;

Find concrete ways to encourage good human capital to gravitate more to the public sectors of these countries;

Create a program to incentivize public service officials in order to have an impact their work ethic and reduce corruption;

Propose ways of increasing transparency in the public sector.

Initiate and nurture a blog that brings together diverse constituencies needed to solve some candidate problem

By way of motivating example, an appendix contains very brief descriptions of three organizations, one in Bangladesh and two in India, each of which was initiated by students from the Boston area. The idea is that the projects for this course will seek to create organizations that can have similar, or greater, impact on South Asias intractable problems. A list of successful student projects from the 2011 course are also listed there.

Graduate students must self-assemble into project teams that include students from more than one Harvard Faculty (e.g. An acceptable team could include students from FAS, HBS, HSPH). See the section below on iLab facilitation for further information.

The spirit of the exercise is that entrepreneurial action can be more effectively harnessed than has historically been the case in South Asia. After the course, but not as a part of it, teams that reach a threshold level of excellence in their project reports will be eligible for funding to travel to South Asia in the January term (2012) for exploratory work on their project.

We also anticipate that many of the best projects could subsequently be entered into a local (South Asia) and then a global competition for solving contemporary social problems in developing countries. There will be significant cash prizes for the best local and global projects. These cash prizes will be sufficient to develop such ideas into business plans that can be funded by early stage venture capitalists.

Note that the travel grants and prizes will be announced by Harvards South Asia Initiative, http://southasiainitiative.harvard.edu/, more widely than the course, so that it is not a requirement to be in the course to participate in this competition.

ILAB as Facilitator & Resource

The iLab will serve as valuable resource to the class throughout the semester. iLab staff will host a series of short programs (outside of lecture) to introduce students to the basics of writing a business plan, assist in team formation, and facilitate project mentoring. For teams that are interested, the iLab can provide space for teams to work on their projects. Finally, for teams that submit business plans to the Omidyar grant competition and are selected, the iLab will provide long term space for them to continue work on their projects if they wish.

Session 1: Introduction to Business Plan

At the end of the second week/beginning of third week, iLab staff will deliver a short seminar on the fundamental concepts of a business plan, review its essential components, and be available to answer questions. Some form of take home material will also be available for guidance and reference throughout the semester. In addition to getting a primer on writing a business plan, this will be a good opportunity to mix with other students and get familiar with all of the resources available through the iLab.

Session 2: Project Team Speed Dating

Graduate students must self-assemble into project teams. These teams must include a mix of students from different Harvard faculties. (For example, a team of lawyers will not do, but mixing them with doctors or public health or public policy students will.)

The iLab will host a session in the 3rd or 4th week to help facilitate this process. Prior to the event, the Teaching Fellows will publish a list of students' self-declared interest ares, so that individuals are somewhat informed before the event. This event will allow students to meet informally, explore shared interests, and assemble teams of an appropriate discipline mix. (These teams must be approved well-before the mid point of the class.)

Additionally, teams, once assembled, must make an effort to include undergraduates who would like to participate as full-fledged team members in lieu of their (undergraduate) final report.

Session 3: Project Mid-review

The iLab will host a review and mentoring session after midterms where teams can present their work thus far to practitioners and entrepreneurs in the field (Boston area consulting partners or possibly others from abroad) who can offer comments and advice on a range of issues. This session was very useful to teams last year.

Project Team Work Space

The iLab will be able to offer project space to teams if requested. GET DETAILS ON WHAT THIS MEANS FROM GORDON have sent him an email (6/7)

Material Outside Scope of Course

In the interest of greater depth, there are several areas that are not covered by the course. Topical areas of great importance e.g. urbanization, water, environmental change have been forsaken, with regret, in this version. Even more broadly, there are plenty of problems with roots in macroeconomic mismanagement that are left out. A broad swathe of problems related to border disputes and diplomatic mishaps also fall outside the course purview. In general, students paper and project work for the course should stay within the broad problem areas identified.

The lectures and sections will draw on a set of inter-disciplinary required readings, and a host of recommended readings will be available for deep-dives. While there is no course text, we will recommend a few broadly relevant ones. Additionally, we will draw extensively on video and film materials when relevant. Finally, the South Asia Initiative at Harvard, sponsors a slew of events squarely related to this course, and students will be encouraged to participate in these and draw on them as relevant in their course-work.

REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS:

The two main requirements for graduate students will be

lecture attendance and participation, 30%

a final project with an interim team-level report on the project. (30% interim report; 40% final report)

Section attendance is not mandatory for graduate students. As regards grading, section participation can help the students grade if she/he is on the margin between grades, but section non-attendance will have no negative impact. Graduate students may work with the appropriate TF to design an appropriate role for themselves within the sections, and, if they intend to attend section, should select into one at the beginning of the course.

REQUIREMENTS FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS:

As a Societies of the World Gen. Ed. course, this course is designed in part to [acquaint undergraduates] with values, customs, and institutions that differ from their own, and help students to understand how different beliefs, behaviors, and ways of organizing society come into being. In addition, this course is also designed to provide students with the knowledge and the opportunity to grapple with complex social and economic problems. The work expected from undergraduates is fashioned so as to meet these two goals.

Section and Lecture attendance and participation, 30% of total grade

Two papers, 5-7 pages each, total of 30% of total grade which are meant to explore and extend one or more of the focus areas of the course. This is intended to build upon the first lecture that introduces the particular focus area for the field. Ways of exploring the focus area can include investigating the historical evolution of the problem category within South Asia, or investigating the particular issues of this problem category that have manifested in a country or region within South Asia that was not explored in the lecture. The objective of this assignment will be to encourage students to learn more about particular problem category in the part of South Asia in which they develop a specific interest. It can also act as a stepping stone towards defining and investigating their final paper or project.

One final paper, approximately 20 pages long, 40% of grade. This long paper offers students the opportunity to synthesize and organize all the material they have learnt during the course into a single, concrete assignment. Its nature is therefore best left open-ended, but there are two possible forms that this paper can take which will be especially suited to satisfying the pedagogical objectives of this course.

The first would be a detailed investigation of a particular attempt by a person or institution to tackle a specific complex social problem in South Asia. This can be modeled around one of the many case studies that will be discussed in class.

The second would be an analysis of one of the social, economic, and legal phenomena that cut across the various focus areas, as it impinges upon a particular situation. For example, issues such as gender, social hierarchy, legal institutions, and political structures impact every problem category and will inevitably affect any proposed solution.

In both cases, what matter the most are specificity of detail, sensitivity to context, and feasibility of solution, if one is proposed. There are no particular methodological preferences for how these issues are to be tackled in the paper.

Additionally, undergraduates will be encouraged to submit a 12 page proposal of their final paper in advance, summarizing their main argument(s). This is in order to allow the TFs to assist them with the formulation and analysis of the problem, and with the writing should they desire or need it.

In lieu of the final paper, undergraduates may choose to join one of the graduate-student teams working on a concrete project. Graduate students will be strongly encouraged to accept those undergraduates who are sufficiently motivated to take on such a challenge. The higher difficulty of such an assignment for undergraduates vis-a-vis a final paper will be taken into account during grading.

Examples of Organizations Launched in Recent years, initiated by students in the Cambridge Area.

1) PRS Legislative Research (http://www.prsindia.org)

PRS Legislative Research was established by a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School (then Harvard KSG) in India in 2005 aiming to deepen and broaden the legislative debate by providing non-partisan analysis to all Members of Parliament across Party lines. Incubated by the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based autonomous policy think-tank, PRS runs a number of programs designed to fulfill its core mission of making Indias legislative process better informed, more transparent and participatory. Some of these include:

Legislative briefs, 46 pages long, analyzing upcoming legislation and distributed among Members of Parliament, the media, and NGOs

State Laws Project: a searchable electronic database of all state laws at www.lawsofindia.org

LAMP Programme: training young graduates to work as legislative assistants to MPs

Press support: regularly updating the media on the status of legislation

The overall goal is to connect three groups of peoplethe Members of Parliament who craft and vote on legislation, domain-specific experts in various fields, and stakeholders in the issues being legislated (from NGOs to the public at large)in a non-partisan way, with the goal being to create more meaningful legislative debate.

2) ClickDiagnostics (http://www.clickdiagnostics.com)

Founded by alumni of Harvard and MIT, ClickDiagnostics is a global mobile health (mHealth) social enterprise who specialize in using the widespread coverage of cellular phone networks throughout the developing world to connect patients with healthcare providers for diagnosis and for collection of health data. ClickDiagnostics runs operations in South Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

In Bangladesh, the NGO BRAC and ClickDiagnostics have worked to combine their respective patient management system and mobile healthcare modules to create a project wherein community-based health workers collect and store patient data, which helps to assess the risk level of the patients and to provide automatic medical advice.

In partnership with SAJIDA Foundation, Bangladesh's largest micro-health insurance program, Click workers collect information on the insurance clients using Click-enabled mobile phones, allowing SAJIDAs doctors to remotely monitor patient data and offer real-time diagnostic advice.

In Botswana, Click has partnered with the Ministry of Health, the Botswana UPenn Partnership, and Orange (Botswana) Telecommunications to develop phone-based screening for cervical cancer, tuberculosis, tele-pre/post oral surgery, and for mobile tele-dermatology and mobile tele-radiology.

3) Aspiring Minds (http://aspiringminds.in)

Aspiring Minds was dreamt up by a graduate of MIT (and his brother at IIT, New Delhi) in conjunction with professors at Harvard and MIT to bridge the divide between the under-employed in India and several organizations professing to be starved of talent. The goal of Aspiring Minds is to offer credible and genuine assessment to various aspects of education, training and employment. Given the vast size of Indias job-seeking population and the scale at which Indian companies must identify candidates for recruitment, Aspiring Minds uses modern assessment methods tailored to the Indian cultural and social context to identify the appropriate candidates. These include:

a nation-wide computer adaptive test taken by thousands which can then be used by companies to identify job candidates

specialized testing modules for English skills, logical and quantitative skills, computer literacy, knowledge of financial services, and the like.

establishment of corporate talent benchmarks, in order to re-use them for large-scale recruitment

performance assessment of employees to identify skill gaps, to offer input for employee training and for promotions

* Readings in the syllabus that are starred are optional and not required.

Introductory Module

The region we call South Asia today encompasses a very diverse range of natural and human environments. Snow-clad mountains, lush tropical jungles, arid wastelands, fertile alluvial plainsall these climatic and topographical settings play host to people who differ on language, attire, cuisine, faith, political persuasion, even choice of sport. How do we make sense of such variation? On what basis do we classify countries as South Asian, and where do we draw lines separating countries or cultures or regions? How do we remain cognizant of the tremendous diversity that exists even within each of the different countries? And finally, what measures do we utilize to understand the means by which and the extent to which governments and the people of the region have established the conditions necessary for human flourishing?