Bengaluru’s connection to Nobel prize in Economics deepens

Bangalore ecologist Harini Nagendra is a 2013 Elinor Ostrom awardee, instituted in the name of the 2009 Nobel Prize winner.

For Bangalore-based ecologist Harini Nagendra, whose name has just been announced as a winner of the 2013 Elinor Ostrom award, it is a bittersweet moment.

Harini Nagendra and Dr. Ostrom at Kaikondrahalli Lake. Pic: Priya Ramasubban.

The award has been instituted in the name of Elinor Ostrom, the USA-based scholar who received the Nobel Prize for economics in 2009 for her long standing body of work on the governance of the commons. For Harini, Elinor was, apart from being one of the most brilliant, incisive and deeply humanistic scholars, a very dear friend, collaborator and mentor with whom she worked closely for 12 years. Says Harini, "The award (being) in Lin Ostrom’s name, and is a great honour." Elinor passed away just a year ago in June 2012.

The very first 2013 Elinor Ostrom Award on Collective Governance of the Commons goes to eight individuals and organisations from around the world, including Harini. The award is given by a consortium of 15 international organizations including the UNESCO Man and Biosphere programme, Resilience Alliance and the International Association for the Study of the Commons. Harini will receive the award at IASC conference in Mt. Fuji, Japan, in early June.

The award has been given at end of a process in which experts and an awards council received many candidates and carefully evaluated them in three consecutive rounds.The other laureates are: Foundation for Ecological Security, the Open Spaces Society, Grupo de Estudios Ambientales A.C., Harini Nagendra, Ben Cousins, Charles Schweik, Eduardo Araral and Michael Cox.

Wikipedia defines the commons as :cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth." Environmentalists around the world often refer to lakes, forests, open green spaces, usually managed by governments as the commons.

Elinor Ostrom had a deeper connection to Bangalore. She had been herself studying lakes in the city and had deep insights into the way forward for citizen action on lake preservation. She passed away in Indiana, United States, mid last year after a short and intense battle with pancreatic cancer. During her trip to Bangalore in February 2012, she visited Kaikondrahalli lake on Sarjapur Road. Kaikondrahalli lake was restored through a collaborative effort by local communities and the BBMP, was one of the sites of research for Harini.

The consortium notes on its website that the Elinor Ostrom award is "to acknowledge Ostrom’s legacy for scholarship and policy-making while making it accessible to wider and more varied audiences, within and outside of the academia". It also wants to promote academic research on the commons, collective action, and related institutions, as well as its application to the understanding of the governance of different types of commons. The website adds that the awards were also instituted to "multiply the impacts of Ostrom’s proposals on scholarship and policy-making, making her legacy a living one.

For her part, Harini has authored articles in Citizen Matters on environmental issues of Bangalore, and her July 2011 article chronicling the city’s green battles in detail is still an important read for those who want to understand how the city communities have been standing up to grave threat of losing lakes and green spaces to unregulated urbanisation.

She is currently a scholar at Bangalore-headquartered Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment or ATREE, and is also holds an Asia-level research position at Indiana University.
Harini, 41 studied at Bishop Cottons Girls School, Bangalore and National Public School Indiranagar. After her BSc from St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science, she completed MS in Biological Sciences and PhD in Ecology from Indian Institute of Science. The mother of a 5 year old and National Geographic Conservation Trust grantee has said, "If anything I can do, in collaboration with others, can make the smallest dent in the situation-the likelihood of a better world for my daughter’s generation is worth it in and of itself."

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Similar Story

Are Chennai streets safe for women? Here’s what they told us

85.9% of women in Chennai who responded to the survey think that CCTV cameras in public spaces make streets safer for women.

In view of Women's Day, observed on March 8, Citizen Matters conducted an online survey on women's safety in Chennai. As many as 171 women took part in this survey between the age group of 18 to 51 years. These women were from areas like Sholinganallur, Adyar, T Nagar, Kotturpuram, Thiruvanmiyur, Royapuram, Perambur, Madipakkam, Anna Nagar and other parts of Chennai. Though we circulated the survey across Chennai, many of the responses were from women in the Southern parts of Chennai, indicating the lack of access for women from areas of North Chennai to take part in such online surveys.…

Similar Story

The consequences of eviction: Women face the wrath of domestic violence

Why should evictions cause domestic violence? Our conversation with women in Chennai's resettlement areas brings out many harsh realities.

At 16, when Jency* got married to a man her family chose for her, she dreamt of a blissful life. Her husband, a carpenter, toiled to make ends meet, while she was a homemaker. Life was tough but they were content. "During weekends, he would take us to the beach and once in a while we went to the movies. Eating Delhi appalam and walking along the seashore at Marina Beach with my husband and my two kids is one of my favourite happy memories," she says. That was Jency's life in the past. The sole breadwinner of her family,…