Saideepika Rayala

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program
Project Title:	Dams as Symbols of Development and Freedom in Postcolonial India
Field of Study:	History
Home Institution:	Yale University, New Haven, CT
Host Institution:	Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana
Grant Start Month:	August 2024
Duration of Grant:	Nine months

Brief Bio:

Saideepika Rayala is a recent graduate of Yale University from where she received a BA in history and was part of Yale Law School’s academic program in human rights. Her studies focused on South Asian environmental history, forced migration, and international human rights law. Saideepika wrote her undergraduate history thesis on the relationship between Indian industrialization and nationalism during the 1920s Mulshi anti-dam movement.

At Yale, she served as the project leader for the Lowenstein Human Rights Project’s Crimes Against Humanity mission and advocated for a Crimes Against Humanity Treaty at the United Nations Sixth Committee. She also served as city editor of the Yale Daily News and online managing editor of The Yale Review of International Studies. Saideepika has worked for Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights, the International Detention Coalition, and the Migrant Forum in Asia.

In her free time, Saideepika enjoys painting, boxing, listening to podcasts, and trying new foods.

Saideepika’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring how dams came to symbolize India’s trajectory toward freedom, modernity, and development in the post-independence period of the 1940s–1960s. She is conducting archival research and media analysis, primarily focusing on three major dams constructed during this period, to understand the debates surrounding these projects and how the country sought to balance economic development with ecological stability. She believes that studying this period can reveal how dams came to occupy a central role in Indian society and that past projects can inform modern-day dam-building efforts.