By /

Medha Malik Kudaisya

Media Kudaisya_018 - Halfbody

Profile: https://discovery.nus.edu.sg/804-medha-malik-kudaisya

Having always been interested in history, I did my doctorate in South Asian history at the University of Cambridge after a Master’s degree at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. For my thesis I worked on the trading community of the Marwaris, a diasporic mercantile community which moved from the northern hinterland of India to the port cities of Calcutta and Bombay. My research and teaching interests are in the areas of economic and business history, biography, South Asian diaspora and history. I have been with the History Department since 2003 and was previously with the University Scholars Programme. I have been teaching courses on ‘Asian Economic and Business History,’ Contemporary India and ‘Chinese Business in Singapore and Beyond.’ In my free time, I like reading and enjoy traveling in the Himalayas. I am always happy to meet with students, so do drop in to see me.

TEACHING AREAS:

  • Asian Economic and Business History
  • Indian History (1947 onwards)
  • Visual Culture in India


CURRENT RESEARCH:

  • Economic Ideas and Planning in India since the 1940s
  • Business history of South and South-east Asia
  • South Asian Diaspora
  • Marwari Community and Diaspora


SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Books

  • The Oxford India Anthology of Business History, (edited), (Oxford University Press, 2012)
  • The Life and Times of G. D. Birla (Oxford University Press, 2003)
  • Chinese and Indian Business: Historical Antecedents (co-edited with Ng Chin Keong), (Brill, 2009)
  • Tryst with Prosperity. Indian Business and the Bombay Plan of 1944 (Penguin, 2018)
  • Yugpurush Ghanshyamdas Birla  (Hindi, Vani Prakashan, 2021)

Journal Articles/ Chapters in Books

  • ‘The Promise of Partnership”: Indian Business, the State, and the Bombay Plan of 1944,’ Business History Review, (Harvard Business School, Volume 88 / Special Issue 01 / Spring 2014, pp. 97-131)
  • ‘Developmental Planning in ‘Retreat’: Ideas, instruments, and contestations of planning in India, 1967–1971,’ Modern Asian Studies, (2014, CJO2014. doi:10.1017/S0026749X13000644.)
  • ‘A Mighty Adventure’: Institutionalizing the Idea of Planning in Post-colonial India,1947–60,' Modern Asian Studies, 43:4, 2009
  • 'Reforms by Stealth' : Indian Economic Policy, Big Business and the Promise of the Shastri Years, 1964-66' in South Asia, Journal of the South Asian Studies Association of Australia, Special Issue on 'Society, Realm and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia' Volume XXV, No. 2, August 2002.
  • 'G D Birla, Big Business and the Partition of India' in D. A. Low and Howard Brasted (ed.) North India and Independence : Freedom, Trauma and Continuity, New Delhi, Sage Publications for the Australian Association of Asian Studies, 1998. Also published in South Asia, Journal of the South Asian Studies Association of Australia, Special Issue, Volume XVIIII, 1996.
  • 'Imperialism, Colonialism and Nationalism : A Theoretical Perspective (Teaching Unit EH 1- 01 for History Elective Course 1 on Modern India 1857-1964), New Delhi, Indira Gandhi National Open University, 1989.