Summer School in Development Economics

India has for the last twenty years been undergoing a rapid and abiding structural shift in its pattern of development. The transformation of the economy from the period of the license raj to the post liberalization era has wrought many changes, with somewhat ambiguous implications. While the trend growth rate has increased, there are serious questions that remain about poverty, inequality and welfare in the country. Even as we see vast changes to the urban and rural landscape, ecological, political and moral constraints loom large. The ability and opportunity to break out of conditions of deprivation appear to still be limited for an unacceptably large proportion of the population. Nor is it clear that a coherent strategy exists to deal with the gale forces unleashed by the structural changes wrought by the move towards a more explicitly capitalist growth model. The great challenge of the times appears to be thinking of reasonable solutions to these problems and to understand and loosen the current limitations of national policy.

The Azim Premji University-Institute for Economic Thinking Advanced Graduate Workshop in Indian Development is interested in identifying the complex interactions that influence poverty and development as well as strategies for development that have proven successful in promoting equitable growth, promoting capabilities and reducing poverty. Given these enormous challenges and the need for a great variety of initiatives at multiple levels to resolve them, the first step is to build a new generation of scholars and practitioners that understand these issues. To that end, the Azim Premji University and the Institute for New Economic Thinking will team up to create a space for an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the advanced stages of their PhD dissertations from all over India to collaboratively engage in these issues with each other and with leading academics and practitioners from all over the globe.

In the one week summer workshop, running from July 9^th to 15^th, students will be exposed to the work and ideas in development of 10-12 invited scholars from universities in India and abroad. Over the course of the workshop, students will interact with scholars and practitioners in two primary ways:

1. Lecture series: Each day, 2 speakers will present their latest research and overview of projects to the small group of approximately 20 advanced graduate students. Speakers will be drawn primarily from Economics but have broad other interests (policy makers and NGOs).
2. Dinner and lunch discussions provide an opportunity for more informal interactions between speakers and students, including an opportunity to explore the interplay between academic disciplines and policy.

The conversations that start in Bangalore should continue long after the completion of the workshop. Our goal is twofold: first, to create a national network of scholars and practitioners who can continually build on each other's ideas and learn from each other over time and second, to introduce scholars to APU and its unique infrastructure and interests for future collaboration and research.

Thematic Concerns

Since this is a one week workshop, the thematic division is necessarily somewhat narrower than otherwise. A set of (non exhaustive) themes to be discussed are:

1. Theorizing India's Takeoff: What are the Causes? (When does one identify structural breaks, in what sectors does one see growth, stagnation etc.)
2. The Great Indian Poverty Debate (Measuring Poverty Trends, Controversies about Outcomes)
3. Measuring and Understanding Growing Inequality (Rural-Urban, South-North, Skilled-Unskilled, Caste Based Inequalities etc.)
4. India in the World. (How does one evaluate India's experience in engaging with the World? In what ways has global integration been effectively and not effectively managed)?
5. Different Philosophical Approaches to Development in India. (Is there a place for Gandhian, Marxian or other approaches to the question of Development?)
6. The Politics of Growth in India (How useful are ideas such as accommodative politics? How important is the rise of caste politics for development? How does one understand and theorize class politics in the current Indian context?)
7. Economic Sources of Conflict. (How important are patterns of growth for generating and ameliorating social conflict?)
8. Indian Demographics and its Management. (How important is the demographic dividend? What implications does this have for policies on education?).

The summer school is open to students in PhD programs from around the country. There is no cost to participate, and room and board and travel will be provided to participants. The admitted class will be restricted to 25-30 students.  Applications may be submitted through email to [email protected] and are due May 20, 2012. 

http://www.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/summer-school