A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta
Surupa Gupta, professor of Political Science and International Affairs, delivered a guest lecture on Tuesday, April 26, at the Foreign Service Institute. The lecture, titled “Covid-19 in South Asia: State Responses to the Pandemic,” was delivered online to a group of US diplomats headed to Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta penned an editorial for The Free Lance-Star entitled, “Indira Gandhi: Creator of the modern Indian State” in advance of her Great Lives lecture on India’s first and only woman prime minister, which was held on Tuesday, Feb. 22. The program can be accessed through the program website at umw.edu/greatlives.
INDIRA GANDHI is known as India’s first and only woman prime minister, and the world’s second democratically elected female head of government. These titles, however, mask a complex and fascinating personality. Gandhi, as prime minister, emerged as one of the most consequential and polarizing figures in Indian politics.
Derided initially as a “dumb doll,” Gandhi surprised her followers and detractors as a canny politician with a strong sense of realpolitik and an authoritarian bent. Her decisions helped both restore and tarnish India’s image in world politics.
She turned India from a food-scarce to a food-surplus country; her bold move to help establish Bangladesh strengthened India’s credentials as a major Asian power; and yet, her declaration of political emergency in 1975 delivered the first frontal attack to India’s democratic institutions since that nation gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Read more.
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta appeared on CGTN America, on “The Heat: Global leaders agree 15% minimum corporate tax.”
It’s called a global minimum corporate tax – designed to crack down on tax havens and impose new levies on large, profitable multinational corporations.
Details remain to be worked out, but according to the OECD, if enacted the plan could bring in about $150 billion in additional global tax revenue per year — and reshape the global economy. CGTN’s Toby Muse has a report.
To discuss:
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta penned an article for Inkstick Media entitled, “How India’s Farmers are Trying to make Modi Listen.”
For almost seven months now, Indian farmers have been protesting three laws that the Indian parliament passed in September 2020. They have blocked highways, organized a nationwide strike, and have continued with the protests through the current, deadly COVID-19 crisis.
Farmers’ protests are not uncommon in India. In 2018, over 40,000 farmers marched over a hundred miles to Mumbai in Maharashtra to demand better support for farmers from the state government. The current protests, however, have been remarkable for many reasons: The protests have occasionally become violent and have attracted widespread international attention from lawmakers and celebrities alike. After an initial offer to negotiate, the federal government, against whose laws the farmers are protesting, reacted by arresting a young climate activist and with a crackdown against protestors. Read more.
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Surupa Gupta
Surupa Gupta, professor of Political Science and International Affairs, discussed India’s farmers’ protests on the Deep Dish podcast hosted by Brian Hanson at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. India’s farmers have been protesting three laws that the Indian Parliament passed in September 2020: the laws open up farm produce marketing to various private sector actors, limiting the role and the reach of government regulations.
Gupta also published a piece on the strength of farmers as a political force in India in The Conversation, a non-profit, independent, open-access news source.
Surupa Gupta, professor of Political Science and International Affairs and director of UMW’s Women’s and Gender Studies program
Some of the same technology for online webinars was available even before the pandemic started but for the most part, few people were organizing webinars with global participation before March 2020. That has changed: students from Miranda House and Gargi College, two highly selective liberal arts colleges in New Delhi reached out to Surupa Gupta, director of UMW’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program and professor of Political Science and International Affairs with a request to speak in a webinar titled “Peace and Persistence – Assessing the ‘She-cession’ and Leadership of Women in Pandemic.” Gupta shared the panel, held on September 8, with two professors from New Delhi. The students belong to a campus group called Global Youth, which, among other things, seeks to expose Indian youth to diverse global perspectives on a variety of issues.
