Aga Khan Foundation sponsors sessions on Writing, Reading and Economics at Jaipur Literature Festival

Delhi, India, 19 January 2016 –As part of its commitment to reading, learning and the exchange of ideas, the Aga Khan Foundation will be supporting the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, the world's largest free literature festival, taking place at Diggi Palace in Jaipur between 21 and 25 January 2016.

Matt Reed, Chief Executive Officer of the Aga Khan Foundation in India said: “Wherever we work, the Aga Khan Foundation seeks to promote pluralism and improve the quality of life in the communities we serve. The Jaipur Literature Festival participates in a deep Indian tradition of diversity, intellectual inquiry, and spirited debate reminding us how intellectually vibrant contemporary India is – and how vital intellectual diversity is to India’s reputation in the world and its future development.” William Dalrymple, ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival co-director, said: "I am a huge fan of the remarkable work done by the Aga Khan Foundation and am delighted that we've been able to bring them on board at Jaipur." The Aga Khan Foundation will be sponsoring the following sessions related to its global work on economic development, social inclusion and cultural pluralism:

• Writing for Children, Writing as Children panel discussion moderated by Nayanika Mahtani with acclaimed Indian writers Nandana Dev Sen, Jerry Pinto and Paro Anand, Thursday 21 January. Together, Sen, Pinto and Paro will share their experiences of writing as children again and understanding what children today are interested in reading.

• Fiction and Economics with Arvind Subramanian, Friday 22 January. The economist and Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India will discuss how his understanding of economics has been shaped by literary readings and his belief that development economists would do well to read beyond the academic.

• The Politics of Inequality with Thomas Picketty, introduced by Mihir Sharma, Saturday 23 January. The economist, professor and author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, will talk about his latest book, its theory of capital and inequality and what exactly it means for the prospects of economic growth in the century ahead.

• The Silk Roads with Peter Frankopan in conversation with Colin Thubron, Sunday 24 January. Frankopan, author of the bestseller The Silk Roads: A New History of the World and Director of the Centre for Byzantine Research at the University of Oxford will discuss the impact the roads that link the East and West have had on world culture, politics, religion and economics and how, as a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have crisscrossed Asia for millennia.

• Incarnations, Reincarnations with Sunil Khilnani in conversation with William Dalrymple, Sunday 24 January. In this session, Khilnani, the author of the seminal The Idea of India and Director of the King's College London India Institute will populate the timelines of India’s past with the tangible presences of characters and personalities, their idiosyncrasies and the actions and reactions that resonated in the country’s history.

For Press Queries:

Lukhi Linnebank
Aga Khan Foundation
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +919560002296

Notes

About the Aga Khan Foundation

The Aga Khan Foundation is part of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private development agencies working to empower communities and individuals to improve their living conditions and opportunities, especially in Central and South Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. AKDNinstitutions have been assisting India’s development for over 100 years.

The Aga Khan Foundation’s mission is to develop and promote creative, community driven solutions to the long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy and ill health. Its programmes span education, health and rural and urban development and cutting across all of its work is a strong commitment to community participation, empowerment of women, pluralism and social inclusion, and human resource development.

AKF has been working in India since 1973 and is currently active in seven states. To date, its support for community-led programmes has helped 1.2 million children learn to read and enabled over 10,000 community-based organisations to reach out and improve the quality of life of 1.3 million of India’s poorest.

About the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival

The world’s largest free festival of its kind, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival has been described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’. Celebrating writers from across the world, the Festival has hosted some of the best regarded and loved names ranging from Nobel Laureates and Man Booker Prize winners to star debuts including Amish Tripathi, Eleanor Catton, Hanif Kureishi, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Ian McEwan, JM Coetzee, Mohammed Hanif, Oprah Winfrey, Orhan Pamuk, Pico Iyer, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Wole Soyinka, as well as renowned Indian language writers such as Girish Karnad, Mahasweta Devi, MT Vasudevan Nair, Uday Prakash and UR Ananthamurthy.

Writers and Festival Directors

William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale invite authors from across the globe to take part in the five-day programme set against a backdrop of Rajasthan’s stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur.

Equity and democracy run through the Festival’s veins placing some of the world’s greatest minds, humanitarians, historians, politicians, business leaders, sports people and entertainers from all walks of life on stage together. This free and egalitarian access to these renowned thinkers and writers is a powerful statement in a country where access to such individuals remains a privilege of few. The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival provides a potentially life-changing opportunity for audiences from Rajasthan, across India and the world to learn from and exchange ideas with contemporary literary stalwarts.

The Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally, and is produced by Sanjoy K. Roy. Since 2014, JLF has spread its wings beyond the borders of India with weekend events at London’s Southbank Centre in May and Boulder, Colorado in September.