Archives: Event

Future Trends Forum 2026: Future Health Systems — Investing Today, Transforming Tomorrow 

NCAER’s Centre for Health Economics (CHE) together with PATH, convened the 16th Future Trends Forum in New Delhi on 1–2 September 2026. This two-day regional forum brought together leaders from government, industry, international organizations, and global health experts from 10 countries — India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates — to discuss how sustained investments can build more resilient, equitable, and future-ready health systems.  This was CHE’s seminal event and provided a basis for translating key dialogue into potential areas of policy research.  

Discussions spanned three themes: sustainable healthcare financing, AI-driven health systems, and cross-sector collaboration. In his inaugural address, Mr. Deepak Sood, Whole Time Member (Non-Life), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), highlighted India’s “missing middle” — a population that falls outside government health schemes, yet unable to afford adequate private insurance — as an important focus for policy attention.  

NCAER’s Director General, Mr. Suresh Goyal, underscored CHE’s role in convening regional ministries of health, policy makers, multilateral health and economists, and industry stakeholders to inform policy-relevant research in the arena of health economics.  

Ms. Nisha Gupta, Director of the Centre for Health Economics, emphasized combining best practices across the region to tailor solutions for sustainable health care financing, highlighting that the challenge in translating investments into measurable public health outcomes is increasingly becoming an issue of institutional capacity, rather than the availability of resources. 

Building Financially Resilient Youth: Sustainable Digital Financial Literacy and Investor Protection towards Viksit Bharat

As a celebration of the International Literacy Day, NCAER and the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, in collaboration with Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi, organised the IEPFA-NCAER Investor Education and Protection Annual Conference 2026-27 on the theme, “Building Financially Resilient Youth: Sustainable Digital Financial Literacy and Investor Protection towards Viksit Bharat,” on 8 September 2026, at the SRCC Auditorium, University of Delhi.

The conference brought together senior policymakers, economists, financial sector experts, and academicians to deliberate on the importance of digital financial literacy, financial resilience and investor protection in an increasingly technology-driven financial ecosystem.

The welcome address at the conference was delivered by Professor Simrit Kaur, Principal, SRCC, University of Delhi, who highlighted the importance of financial awareness among the youth and emphasised the role of educational institutions in enabling students to navigate the increasingly complex financial and digital environment.

Delivering the inaugural address, Dr Prabodh Seth, Former Member, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, pointed to the need for integrating financial awareness and responsible financial behaviour into the educational ecosystem. He focused on the key role of universities and colleges in educating young people to make informed choices relating to savings, investments, credit and digital financial services. In his special address, Mr. Suresh Goyal, Director General, NCAER, lauded the collaboration between NCAER and IEPFA for information dissemination, research and policy engagement in strengthening investor education and protection, and promoting financial resilience among investors to enable them to withstand economic and financial shocks. The Guest of Honour, Professor R. P. Tulsian, Chairman, Committee for the Promotion of Financial Literacy, University of Delhi, stressed that financial literacy should be an integral part of youth development to hone their ability to take responsible financial decisions.

Delivering the keynote address, on behalf of Mr Sumit Garg, CEO, IEPFA, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, Lt. Col. Aditya Sinha, General Manager, IEPFA, suggested that wider access to digital financial services must be accompanied by greater awareness of investor rights, cyber risks, online frauds, and grievance redressal mechanisms.

Moderating the panel discussion, Dr C. S. Mohapatra, IEPF Chair Professor, NCAER, accentuated the role of digitalisation in fuelling rapid transformation of India’s financial ecosystem, wider access to formal financial services, and growing participation in financial markets. He emphasized that while However, since digitalisation has also increased exposure to cyber fraud, and given rise to misinformation, impulsive financial decisions, and behavioural biases, investor education must move beyond merely promoting awareness of financial products towards developing behavioral skills needed for making rational and responsible financial decisions. He also emphasised that the vision of Viksit Bharat cannot be realised without ensuring the financial well-being and resilience of its citizens. Lt. Col. Sinha focused on the growing risks associated with cyber fraud, phishing, impersonation and other forms of digital financial crime, underscoring the criticality of safe digital practices. Mr H. R. Khan, Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India, spoke on the evolution of India’s financial system and the importance of financial stability and consumer protection in a rapidly digitising economy. Mr Chanchal Sarkar, Economic Adviser, Department of Economic Affairs, underlined the contribution of household financial resilience in inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and the role of savings, informed investment decisions, and responsible participation in financial markets as well as an enabling policy environment in protecting investors and strengthening the financial position of households. Ms Himani Lath, Former Manager, NSDL, Financial Literacy Expert and SMART Trainer, SEBI, pinpointed the need for promoting an understanding of financial planning, savings, investment choices, risk assessment, and investor protection mechanisms.

The panel discussion was followed by an interactive question-and-answer session with students and participants of the conference.

NCAER Seminar: A Tale of Two Middle Classes

NCAER organised a seminar featuring a presentation by Dr Sonalde Desai, Professor and Centre Director, NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre, New Delhi, and Distinguished University Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, titled, ‘A Tale of Two Middle Classes’, on 31 August 2026. Dr Desai’s presentation examined the size, composition, and orientation of India’s middle classes, and the divergence between objective and subjective perceptions about the latter. Her presentation drew upon research from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), which began in 2004-05 as a nationally representative, multi-topic survey of 41,554 households in 1,503 villages and 971 urban neighbourhoods across India, conducted by NCAER in collaboration with the University of Maryland. The second round of the survey re-interviewed most of these households in 2011-12. The third round, for which fieldwork was undertaken in 2022-24, has been jointly conducted by researchers from NCAER, the University of Maryland, Indiana University, and University of Michigan. IHDS has documented the unprecedented transformation of Indian society across two decades with the growth of the middle class as a key component of this transformation.

Dr Desai’s presentation addressed the following pivotal questions:

  1. What is the size of the Indian middle class, and who forms a part of it?
  2. To what extent do the objective and subjective markers of middle-class status overlap?
  3. How do the middle-class lifestyle and worldview differ from those of the poor and the near-poor?

The comprehensiveness of the IHDS dataset fosters informed, cross-disciplinary discussion at a time when the scarcity of empirical evidence often constrains researchers and practitioners from engaging with these questions.

The seminar was chaired by Mr Suresh Goyal, Director General, NCAER. Dr Amita Baviskar, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University, and Mr Aurélien Kruse, Lead Economist for India at The World Bank, served as discussants during the seminar.

Launch Event of the NCAER-ILO Policy Brief on ‘Advancing Women’s Digital Inclusion in the Platform Economy’

NCAER, in collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO), co-hosted a policy dialogue at NCAER on 24 August 2026 to launch their joint policy brief on advancing women’s digital financial inclusion in India’s platform economy and discuss its key findings and recommendations. The research for the policy brief was undertaken by the Centre for Gender and Macroeconomy (CGM) at NCAER, in collaboration with the ILO. The event brought together government officials, regulators, digital platform companies, financial service providers, worker organisations, and researchers to discuss policy insights from the brief.

The central premise of the discussion was to reiterate the mandate that women need to be provided targeted financial services and appropriate safeguards to meaningfully participate in the growing gig economy while simultaneously being able to build secure and resilient livelihoods for themselves. It also sought to identify pathways for expanding access for women platform workers to affordable financial services, including payments, savings, credit, insurance, and social protection, using platform-generated earnings records and India’s digital public infrastructure. The speakers also focused on how India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI), platform-generated data, and financial innovations can be responsibly leveraged to expand women’s economic opportunities by enabling them to enter, continue, and progress in India’ platform economy, thereby strengthening decent-work outcomes for them.

The policy brief launched at the event argues that Digital Financial Inclusion (DFI) is a critical enabler for advancing decent work in the platform economy, where decent work means not just access to platform-mediated work for remuneration or payment but also productive work that delivers improved earnings, economic stability, and adequate social protection. Consequently, women need the full gamut of financial services across their journey on the platform: start-up capital to enter, short-term credit and insurance to withstand income and health shocks, and a combination of savings, credit, and planning tools to thrive and advance. Running through all three stages is the need for social protection.

For women platform workers, the shift from asset-based lending to cash-flow-based underwriting is among the more consequential levers for expanding financial inclusion. The latter assesses repayment capacity from a borrower’s income stream rather than from tangible assets offered as security. This is particularly important for women, who are far less likely to hold land or property in their own name. When a woman takes up platform work, she begins generating a verifiable digital record of completed gigs and payment deposits. This provides the income evidence that cash-flow-based underwriting relies on, allowing a lender to assess her capacity to repay from what she earns rather than from property she is unlikely to own.

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