RIVER VALLEY CULTURES OF INDIA

An MPA and PhD from Harvard University, Dr. Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty is a renowned art historian and museologist of India. He is an IAS of the 1970 batch who has successfully combined his administrative skills with his interest in various areas of archaeology, cultural heritage, art history and the museum movement in India. He has held several prestigious positions in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He was Commissioner for Archaeology in M.P.; Director of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal; Principal Secretary and then Additional Chief Secretary in Chhattisgarh where he was responsible for setting up a 100 hectare open-air ethnographic museum in Raipur and about 70 folk and tribal arts, crafts, medicine and food centres under the community forest management system. At present, Dr. Chakravarty is a trustee and Member Secretary, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts; Director General, National Museum and Vice Chancellor, National Museum Institute. He has travelled widely and has authored and edited several books. Dr. Gyani Lal Badam, a leading quatern-ary geologist and palaeontologist, has vast experience in excavating and studying various palaeontological sites throughout the country. After obtaining his PhD on the Siwaliks of northwest India from the Panjab University, Chandigarh, he moved on to establish the discipline of palaeontology at the renowned Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Pune, where his academic interests diversified to include various river valleys in central and peninsular India. However, the focus of his research for some time has been the central Narmada Valley and some tributaries of the Godavari and Krishna rivers. After a tenure at the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal, Dr. Badam is presently associated with the Department of Culture and Archaeology, Government of Chhattisgarh, Raipur, to establish a multicultural complex and to study some less known aspects of geoarchaeology of Chhatt