Mahesh Rangarajan

Mahesh Rangarajan
Born	(1964-04-22) 22 April 1964 (age 60) New Delhi, India
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	St. Columba's School, Delhi, Hindu College, University of Delhi, Oxford University
Scientific career
Fields	Modern History, Environmental Studies, Environmental History
Institutions	Dean of Academic Affairs at Ashoka University, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Cornell University, Jadavpur university [1]

Mahesh Rangarajan (born 22 April 1964) is a researcher, author ^[2] and historian with a special interest in environmental history and colonial history of British and contemporary India. He has taught Environmental Studies and History at Ashoka University and Krea University, and served as the Vice Chancellor of Krea University. ^{[3] [4]} He appears frequently on Indian television as a political analyst. ^[5] He is also a columnist in the print media writing on wildlife conservation, political and environmental issues. ^[5] In 2010, he chaired the Elephant Task Force (Gajah) of the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. The Task Force was formed to formulate measures for the protection of elephants in India. ^[6]

Contents

• Early life
• Career
• Political commentary
• Awards
• Books
• See also
• References
• External links

Early life

Mahesh Rangarajan was born in New Delhi and finished his ICSE and ISC from St. Columba's School, Delhi. He then did a Bachelor of Arts in History (Honours) from Hindu College, University of Delhi. He received the Rhodes scholarship in 1986 to do a BA in Modern History from Balliol College at Oxford, which he finished in 1988. He graduated from Delhi university and then from Oxford each with First Class. He was awarded a doctorate (D.Phil.) in Modern History from Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1993, the subject being Forest policy in the Central Provinces. He was awarded a studentship at Nuffield and was also a Beit Senior Scholar, 1991–1992. ^[7]

Career

Mahesh Rangarajan studied at Hindu College, Delhi University (1982-1985) and at the University of Oxford (1986-1993) where he was a Rhodes Scholar. ^[8] He worked as the assistant editor of The Telegraph (Kolkata) for a year during 1993–94. He taught at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA from 2002 to 2004, and served as Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi, 2007-2011 and as Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2011–2015. He was a Professor of Environmental Studies and History at Ashoka University. ^[9] He was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of Krea University in July 2021 ^[4] and stepped down from this position in less than a year citing personal reasons. ^{[10] [11]}

In 2000 he co-authored Towards Co-existence, and the following year a brief work, India's Wildlife History, An Introduction, Battles over Nature, a book he co-authored with Vasanth Saberwal analyses present-day conservation conflicts and finds their roots in India's colonial past and in the governance system that was adopted as an independent nation state. The book Making Conservation Work (2007) co-edited with Ghazala Shahabhuddin looks at ways of securing India's biodiversity in the new century. The same year 2007 he Co-edited a Reader Environmental Issues in India. He was a member of the founding team and corresponding editor of the Cambridge-based journal Environment and History (founded 1996) headed by Richard Grove and also of the journal Conservation and Society (founded 2003). ^[7] He is a member of the executive board of the Association of South Asian Environmental Historians. ^[12]

Awards

In 1988, he was awarded the Martin Wright Prize at Balliol College and the Charles Wallace Scholar and Beit Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1991. ^[7] He was a Junior fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. He was awarded the TN Khooshoo Memorial Prize for Environment and Development in 2014.

Books

• Fencing the Forest, Conservation and Ecological Change in India’s Central Provinces, 1860-1914, Oxford University Press, Delhi and Oxford, 1996; OUP Paperback, 1999.
• Ed., The Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife, Volume I, Hunting and Shooting, Oxford University Press, Delhi and Oxford.
• Ed., Volume II, Watching and Conserving, Oxford University Press, Delhi and Oxford.
• Co-authored with V.K. Saberwal and A. Kothari (2001), People, Parks and Wildlife: Towards Coexistence. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
• India's Wildlife History: An Introduction Permanent Black in association with the Ranthambhore Foundation, Delhi, 2001, Paperback, 2006.
• Vasant Kabir Saberwal and M Rangarajan, Ed. Battles over Nature, Science and the politics of conservation, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2003, Paperback, 2006.
• Edited, Environmental Issues in India: A Reader, Delhi: Pearson Longman, Published January 2007.
• Ghazala Shahabuddin and Mahesh Rangarajan edited, Making Conservation Work, Securing biodiversity in this new century (Delhi: Permanent Black, June 2007).
• William McNeill, Jose Padua and Mahesh Rangarajan Ed. Environmental History As if Nature Existed, (Delhi: OUP, 2010).
• ed., Bharat main paryavaran ke mudde, Hindi translation of the Reader by Rita Sridhar, (Delhi: Pearson, 2009).
• Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan Ed., India's Environmental History Volume I, From Earliest times to the Colonial Era. Volume II: Colonialism, Modernity and the Nation, (April 2012, pp. 1200).
• Mahesh Rangarajan, N. Balakrishnan, Deepa Bhatnagar eds., Selected Works of C. Rajagopalachari, Vol. 1, 1907-1921 (Hyderabad: Blackswan Pvt Ltd., 2013).
• Mahesh Rangarajan, MD Madhusudan and Ghazala Shahabuddin edited, Nature Without Borders,( Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2014)
• M Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan ed. Shifting Ground, People, animals and mobility in India's Environmental history, (Delhi: OUP, 2014).
• Mahesh Rangarajan, Nature and Nation, Essays in Environmental History, ( Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2015).

See also

• Ramachandra Guha

Related Research Articles

The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the future. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it in. Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective.

Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College, named after Swami Vivekananda, was formally inaugurated on 21 June 1946 by professor, philosopher, and politician, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. It is in Mylapore, the centre of Chennai, India, on 20 acres. This college is part of various educational institutions owned by Ramakrishna Mission.

Gopalkrishna Devadas Gandhi is a former administrator and diplomat who served as the 22nd Governor of West Bengal serving from 2004 to 2009. He is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). As a former IAS officer he served as Secretary to the President of India and as High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka, among other administrative and diplomatic posts. He was the United Progressive Alliance nominee for Vice President of India 2017 elections and lost with 244 votes against NDA candidate Venkaiah Naidu, who got 516 votes.

Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time, emphasising the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs and vice versa.

A. K. Shiva Kumar, is a development economist, policy advisor, and evaluator, who has over the past 40 years, taught economics, undertaken evaluations, conducted research and policy analysis, worked closely with governments, international agencies, and civil society organisations to advocate for changes in public policy and legislation. He teaches various courses at Harvard University, Indian School of Business, BITS School of Management, Young India Fellowship, S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research and Ashoka University.

Romulus Earl Whitaker is an American-born Indian herpetologist, wildlife conservationist, and founder of the Madras Snake Park, the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Trust (ANET), and the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust. In 2008, Whitaker was selected as an associate laureate in the 2008 Rolex Awards for Enterprise for his efforts to create a network of rainforest research stations throughout India. In 2005, he was a winner of a Whitley Award for outstanding leadership in nature conservation. He used this award to found the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station in Karnataka, for the study of king cobras and their habitat.

Deepak Kumar was a professor of History of Science and Education, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Kumar lectured at numerous universities within India and abroad, held visiting fellowships at the universities of Cambridge, London, Leiden, The Smithsonian Institution, etc. and has also taught at Wisconsin University, Madison, USA, and York University in Toronto, Canada.

Ramachandra "Ram" Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics. He is an important authority on the history of modern India.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) is an Indian government ministry. The ministry portfolio is currently held by Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

Mysore Doreswamy Madhusudan is an Indian wildlife biologist and ecologist. He is the Co-founder and Director of Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. He has worked on understanding and mitigating the effects of human-wildlife conflict in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in South India. He has also worked in several other forests in the Himalayas and North-east India. In 2004, he was one among the team of wildlife biologists who described Arunachal macaque, a new species of macaque from Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is a historian and author of several history books. He was formerly the Opinions Editor for The Telegraph newspaper, Kolkata and the Chancellor for Ashoka University, where he also serves as Professor of History. He was the founding Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka when the University began in 2014 and was succeeded in 2017 by Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

Upinder Singh is an Indian historian who is a professor of History and Dean of Faculty at Ashoka University. She is the former head of the History Department at the University of Delhi. She is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Prize in the category of Social Sciences (History).

Nature's Beckon is an independent environmental activist group in Northeast India which initiated the environmental movement in Assam.

Conservation in India can be traced to the time of Ashoka, tracing to the Ashoka Pillar Edicts as one of the earliest conservation efforts in the world. Conservation generally refers to the act of carefully and efficiently using natural resources. Conservation efforts begun in India before 5 AD, as efforts are made to have a forest administration. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is the ministry responsible for implementation of environmental and forestry program in India, which include the management of national parks, conservation of flora and fauna of India, and pollution controls.

Sundararaj Theodore Baskaran is a film historian and wildlife conservationist from Tamil Nadu, India.

Renee Maria Borges is an Indian evolutionary biologist and professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science. Her work as a scientist has been profiled on India Today. Her research areas are behavioural and sensory ecology with special reference to plant and animal interactions such as figs and fig-wasps. Other areas of research interest include conservation biology and the history and philosophy of science.

Gunnel Cederlöf is professor of history at Linnaeus University and a working member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. She was previously professor in the Department of History at Uppsala University.

Krea University is an Indian state private university located in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. The Institute for Financial Management and Research was formally integrated under the aegis of Krea University. Krea University houses two schools, School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences (SIAS) and IFMR Graduate School of Business and pioneers Interwoven Learning.

Amita Baviskar is a sociologist and Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University, India. Previously, she was Professor at the Sociology Unit, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India. She received the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research and, in 2010, was awarded the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences – Sociology in recognition of her analysis of social and environmental movements in modern India. Baviskar studies the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India.

Ajay Adrushyappa Desai, also known as, Elephant Man, was an Indian conservationist and Field Biologist, researcher, specializing in behavior of wild elephants with a focus on wildlife conflicts with human settlement.

References

External links

• Featured Articles by Mahesh Rangarajan on India Environment Portal
• Bibliography on Open Library