Dept. of Economics - Organised National Seminar

Summary of the Proceedings of the

National Seminar on

Transformation, Transition or Stagnation?: Understanding Change in the Indian Economy 

organised by the Department of Economics, Christ University 

on the 16^th& 17^th September, 2011

The Department of Economics, Christ University had an opportunity to bring together academicians from various parts of the country to participate in a two day national seminar focussing on the theme ‘Transformation, Transition or Stagnation: Understanding Change in Indian Economy’. Over the two days of the seminar, 20 papers were presented under various plenary sessions.

The seminar began with an inaugural program. The attendees of the program were enriched by the keynote address and valuable insights of Dr. S. Subramanian, Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Research, Chennai, following which a panel discussion was held on the same theme of the seminar with three eminent panellists, Dr.ElumalaiKannan, Dr.Usha Devi, Dr. Etienne Rassendren, initiating a diverse discussion in the presence of the chairperson Prof .P.M. Mathew from the Economics Dept. of Christ University, who moderated the discussion. 

Inaugural Program

The first technical session, chaired by Dr. S. Subramanian saw the presentation of 6 papers categorised under the theme—Labour and Employment, and the Social Sector.  The first paper to be presented was by Binu .P. Paul, titled ‘Performance and perception of students in professional education: Tracing the missing thread in education discussion. This paper highlighted the presence of skewness in the male-female ratio of CET  ranks as well as admitted ranks to top engineering colleges in Kerala across different social categories such as SC/ST, OBC and General Category. An interesting paper was presented by international participants from SriLanka, Prof. SamathiSeraratha, Prof. SanjeeviniLooray and Prof. NirupikaLiyanapathirana. They looked into how it would be possible to bridge the gap between academic and professional accounting education systems as well as other issues related to the topic ‘Model for a graduate accounting profession for Sri Lanka’.

The third paper presenter was Siddhartha Chatterjee on ‘Can Co-operative provide an alternative economic model?’ addressed the question put forth in the title. ‘The relevance of Marxism vis-à-vis Cooperative Movement in India’ was a paper presented by Dr.Rajiv Bode and Dr.SubrataMukerjee with focus on how Marxism and co-operative movement share a similar goal, that of betterment of the working class. Impact of Globalization on Labour and Employment in India was presented by Indira P.M. and Prem Kumar. The paper focussed on the concept of jobless growth which is evident by the fact that GDP growth has not been accompanied by growth in employment. ‘Impact of Sanitary Phytosanitary Agreement with reference to India’ was the subject chosen by Sajitha M, which was the last paper presented in this session. 

The second session was themed around the broad ideas of Macro–Economic policies, liberalization and trade, financial sector reforms. The first paper to be presented was “An assessment of trends in Indian Export with data taken from 2000 to 2010. The paper was presented by Anajana Mani and VijayaPriya S. “The effect of Indian liberalisation policy on the Engineering Industry” was looked into in the next paper by Flowarin A.D.

This was followed by a theoretical paper routed in a perspective of Indian Political economy with a focus on “Constitutionalism v/s globalisation: A trajectory of state controlled economy in India”.  Another elaborate paper presentation followed which looked into the “FDI in India-Various aspects and trends” by Dr. B.T Ramappa. The last paper in this session was presented by Devidas S. Prabhu, who looked into ‘The efficiency of productive human resource transformation in India’s Economic development. Here he focussed on the need to transform unproductive labour into productive labour in our country. 

The theme of the third session was Agriculture and Rural development, Industry and Rural Sector.  “A multidisciplinary study on Micro Finance institutions in India and its legal aspects” was presented to the appreciation of many by Manisha Raj. A study in Dharwad district regarding “The aspect of climate change and food grain production” was given by Dr. M.N Meernaik and Dr. G.P Pantankar. An interesting presentation followed by Dr.RadhakrishnaShetty on “The role of non-farm activities forwarded through the use of self-help groups in rural development”. Another interesting study in the Uttara Kannada district was brought out which employed a geographic approach to understand the scope of increasing crop produce in order to improve the rural economy. 

An interesting last session was on ‘Governance and Deprivation’. The paper presentation started off with a study on sex ratio in our country titled ‘Economic Progress and Social Backlash : Analysing the trends in sex ratio’. The paradox of economic prosperity and social backwardness was explored in this paper. “The impact of corruption on transition economy” .i.e. an  economy that is changing from centrally planned to a free market economy, was studied by Rangaswamy D, Vijay S.J and Anitha K.N.  Postgraduate students of Mount Carmel College, Bangalore Arya and RohiChoudhary presented a paper on the popular ICDS scheme with data taken from 2001 to 2010.

With great conviction it can be said that, not only did the presentation of these papers bring about an exchange of knowledge and ideas but it was also largely successful in bringing about a constructive dialogue between the economists present.

GLIMPSES OF THE NATIONAL SEMINAR