Archives: Event

The India Policy Forum 2019

 

NCAER held the 16th India Policy Forum at the NCAER India Centre in New Delhi on July 8-10, 2019. The keynote speech on the morning of July 9th was delivered by Dr Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. Using data from the Economic Survey 2019 released by the Government of India recently, Dr Subramanian provided a detailed roadmap of the Government’s economic agenda going forward.

The IPF is the leading economic policy event in the summer season of Delhi, featuring a galaxy of eminent speakers and panellists from India and overseas. The IPF seeks to facilitate lively debate and discussion of the key economic challenges facing the nation, all based on rigorous research by some of the best economists worldwide working on India.

Dr Shekhar Shah, Director General of NCAER and co-editor of the IPF Volume, said that “The 16th India Policy Forum has brought together a remarkable set of some of the world’s best economists working on India.  Through the two days we have had present at the IPF four Chief Economic Advisers to the Government of India, the Chairman of the 15th Finance Commission, the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, two Deputy Managing Directors of the IMF, two Secretaries to the Government of India, NITI’s Advisor on Education and a range of other prominent researchers and policy analysts.  The topics taken up by the 16th IPF have also meshed well with the new government’s priorities.”  He added, “ If the engagement we have seen at the IPF is any indication, I have very high hopes for the depth of reforms in many of the areas that we can expect the Modi 2.0 Government to pursue.”

The IPF includes presentations of original commissioned papers, leading to a published volume, and the annual IPF Lecture. The IPF Volume is curated by its editors, Dr Shekhar Shah, NCAER Director General, Dr Barry Bosworth of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, and Professor Karthik Muralidharan, of the University of California, San Diego, and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at NCAER.

 

The IPF 2019 commenced on the 8th evening with the 1st T N Srinivasan Memorial Lecture, by Professor Pranab Bardhan of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Subramanian’s address at the opening session on the 9th morning was followed by presentations of three papers on the following topics: ‘The effect of foreign shocks on the Indian economy’; ‘Four years after the base-year revision: taking stock of the debate surrounding India’s national income estimates’; and ‘An inclusive growth dividend: Reframing the role of income transfers in India’s anti-poverty strategy’.  The evening ended with the IPF 2019 Lecture on Modern Macroeconomic Policy by Professor Stanley Fischer, former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve under President Obama. The Lecture, which was attended by a full house, was chaired by Mr N K Singh, Chairman, 15th Finance Commission. Two more papers on ‘An employment data strategy for India’ and ‘Rural–urban disparities in the time of growth’ were presented on the concluding day of the IPF.

The IPF 2019 hosted over 400 participants over its three days. During the event, over 35 presenters and discussants deliberated on the five IPF research papers, which had been selected from a vast number of submissions after a rigorous review by the IPF Editors. The Forum also included a Policy Roundtable on the Indian National Education Policy, which debated various challenges entailed in implementation of this ambitious policy.  The panellists at the Roundtable included Mr Alok Kumar from NITI Aayog, among others. In addition to Dr Subramanian, several sessions of the IPF were chaired by key policymakers, including Dr Ashok Lahiri, 15th Finance Commission; Mr Pravin Srivastava, Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI); and Dr K P Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

Chairing the session on one of the papers, “An Employment Data Strategy of India” today morning, Mr Pravin Srivastava, Secretary, MoSPI said, “Data is a public good and the Ministry needs the cooperation of all stakeholders as well as the research community to ensure its widespread and efficient use.”

The penultimate session of the IPF comprised a Policy Roundup in which the panellists discussed suggestions made in each paper as well as the policy environment needed for ensuring the implementation of these recommendations. The Roundup was chaired by Dr Krishnan, and included the National Vice President of the BJP, Mr Jay Panda, along with eminent economists Dr Indira Rajaraman, Dr Rajnish Mehra, and Dr Nirvikar Singh as the panellists.

The 16th IPF concluded on the 10th evening with a panel discussion on Validating India’s GDP Growth Estimates moderated by Mr. T. N. Ninan of the Business Standard, and featuring Arvind Subramanian (Kennedy School), Pronab Sen (former Chief Statistician of India), and Sebastian Morris (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad).

Whither US federal climate policy in the age of Trump, Pelosi, and defiant US states?

NCAER hosted a seminar on “Whither US federal climate policy in the age of Trump, Pelosi, and defiant US states?” with Nathaniel Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund. Shreekant Gupta, Professor, Delhi School of Economics, and Coordinating Lead Author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (5th Assessment report), was the discussant . The seminar was attended by NCAER research team and invited guests from institutions across the city.

The United States is the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter on an annual basis, and remains the largest historical emitter.  The Trump Administration, however, has sought to roll back climate regulations and threatened to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.  Recently, there has been renewed interest in the U.S. Congress in climate policy, including proposals for an economy-wide carbon tax.  States like California and New York, meanwhile, have responded to the vacuum in Washington by putting in place aggressive climate policies of their own. With a new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and a presidential election coming up in 2020, what are the prospects for climate policy in the United States? And how much can be accomplished by states in the absence of federal action?  In his presentation at NCAER, Nathaniel Keohane, head of the Climate Program at the Environmental Defense Fund, deliberated these very pertinent questions at length as he discussed the prospects for U.S. climate policy in the Trump era and under a future administration.

Nathaniel Keohane is an economist, advocate, and expert on climate, environment, and energy issues in the United States and globally.  Keohane is Senior Vice President for Climate at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a leading nonprofit advocacy organization based in New York.  In 2011-2012, he served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment in the National Economic Council and Domestic Policy Council, where he helped to develop and coordinate administration policy on a wide range of energy and environmental issues.  Prior to joining the Administration, Keohane was Director of Economic Policy and Analysis and then Chief Economist at EDF, playing a lead role in efforts to enact comprehensive cap-and-trade legislation in Congress.  He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University, and a past Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Global Affairs at Yale University’s Jackson Institute, and was an Associate Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management.  His research in environmental economics has been published in prominent academic journals, and he is the co-author of Markets and the Environment (2nd ed., Island Press, 2015), and co-editor of Economics of Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2009).  Keohane received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, and his B.A. from Yale College.

NCAER signs MoU with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation for Improving India’s National Statistical System

NCAER signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) in New Delhi today to use new data technologies, knowledge generation and knowledge sharing, and capacity building in the field of official statistics. The MoU was signed by Dr Anil Kumar Sharma, NCAER Secretary and Operations Director and Shri Ajay Kumar Mehta, Deputy Director General MoSPI, in the presence of Dr Shekhar Shah, Director-General, NCAER, Shri Pravin Srivastava, Secretary, MoSPI cum Chief Statistician of India, Shri Jyotirmoy Poddar, Director General, Central Statistics Office, and other senior officers of MoSPI. NCAER was represented by a large team of researchers who work on data collection, including Dr Santanu Pramanik, the Deputy Director of the new NCAER National Data Innovation Centre, set up recently by NCAER to further its aim of remaining at the cutting-edge of scientific data collection. Shri Srivastava and Dr Shah both spoke of the high hopes the two entities had of the mutual learning and innovation that would emerge from the MoU.

The Ministry is embarking on major reforms in the national statistical system aimed at improving the coverage, quality and periodicity of its statistical products and processes, and their use in a federated system by leveraging government-wide data sets, establishing common standards, promoting greater use of technology and expanding capabilities. NCAER’s MoU with MoSPI is based on mutual collaboration and learning and will promote cooperation in many areas of data collection and analysis, particularly in piloting and experimentation with new data technologies, knowledge generation and knowledge sharing, and capacity building.

Carrying out household and other surveys has been a distinctive part of NCAER’s work since its inception in 1956. NCAER has a number of well-known national surveys to its credit: these include the Rural Economic and Demographic Survey or REDS (possibly the world’s second oldest panel data set); the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure or NSHIE (the first national survey in India to collect direct household income data); and the India Human Development Survey or IHDS (India’s only national household panel data set). Data from these surveys have been used extensively by scholars and policymakers all over the world.

Some of the key areas identified for improvement in the MoU include review of the existing official statistics system and  development of an ICT plan for mainstreaming technology and statistical data integration across agencies and states; use of technology for survey instruments and processing of data for large-scale surveys and data analytics; creation of a national data warehouse for administrative statistical datasets; improvement in the quality and coverage of core statistics; establishment of common standards and protocols for data collection; development of new ICT-based framework for measurement of social and economic indicators in the emerging knowledge-based economy; and capacity building for statistical activities including big data analytics, and technical reporting.

The MoU will offer NCAER the opportunity to provide inputs to MoSPI on broad-ranging analytical and data collection activities, including through the methodological pilots being done by its NDIC and others at NCAER and the vast experience of national level data collection NCAER has accumulated through its 60 years of survey based research.

After the signing ceremony, there was a lively exchange between MoSPI senior officers and NCAER staff on the areas of cooperation that could be explored under the MoU, further testifying to the potential utility of the new arrangement.

China Family Panel Studies and Income Inequality in China

NCAER organised a seminar on “China Family Panel Studies and Income Inequality in China” with Yu Xie, Princeton University. The seminar was attended by NCAER Research team and invited guests from other institutions in New Delhi.

The China Family Panel Studies is a nearly nationwide, comprehensive, longitudinal social survey that is intended to serve research needs on a large variety of social phenomena in contemporary China. The CFPS promises to provide to the academic community the most comprehensive and highest-quality survey data on contemporary China. In his presentation at the seminar, Xie provided a detailed background on the survey and presented his research using the data on income inequality.

Yu Xie is the Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Sociology and has a faculty appointment at the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. He is also a Visiting Chair Professor of the Center for Social Research, Peking University. His recently published works include: Marriage and Cohabitation (University of Chicago Press, 2007) with Arland Thornton and William Axinn, Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis with Daniel Powers (Emerald 2008, second edition), and Is American Science in Decline? (Harvard University Press, 2012) with Alexandra Killewald.

Xie joined Princeton after 26 years at the University of Michigan, most recently as the Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, Statistics and Public Policy and a research professor in the Population Studies Center at Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Xie’s main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies and sociology of science. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica and the National Academy of Sciences. He has a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from the Shanghai University of Technology, and an MA in the History of Science, M.S. in Sociology and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Land Question in Urban Development: NCAER releases a new book

NCAER released a new book covering critical issues pertaining to land prices and other challenges facing the land sector in urban India at an event held in its new Conference Centre. These issues assume added significance in view of the fact that India is one of the most land-scarce countries in the world. This scarcity has been increasing at a rapid pace in urban India. On current population trends, land per capita in India by 2050 will have declined four fold relative to 1960. The resulting rise in urban land prices has led to the growth of unauthorised settlements, inadequate infrastructure, squalor, and homeless populations. Land regulation is hampered by the absence of systematic data collection and analysis, and by poorly drafted laws and the limited management capacities of urban development agencies. Despite these concerns, urban economics in India has remained a neglected field of policymaking and policy assessment.

This conference volume edited by Shashanka Bhide and Devendra B Gupta contains invited papers from NCAER’s Round Table in New Delhi on Land Economics–Issues and Challenges. The Editors also commissioned several additional papers that the Round Table did not cover. The ten papers cover the full array of problems that confront India’s urban areas. It is a testimony both to the quality of these papers and to the persistence of the problems that the papers remain fully relevant and have much to offer four years after the NCAER Round Table.

In his presentation on the key themes in the book, Shashanka Bhide who recently retired as the Director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai and was earlier the Senior Research Counsellor at NCAER pointed out that, “there is a need for an integrated and flexible approach on the use of natural resources for urban development. The rural-urban links need to be recognized, changing ways of transport and commerce need to be recognized and more importantly equity and sustainability of expanding urban spaces should guide policies.”

The inadequate availability of serviced land and built-up space for growing city populations acts as a serious constraint on rational, productive, and environmentally sustainable urban growth. NCAER’s work on land issues suggests that land regulation and related legal frameworks in India are crying out for more systematic data collection and analysis. In addition, apart from the high costs of land acquisition and development, numerous clearances relating to the environment, urban arts, fire, local area zonal restrictions, and aviation require almost 7 to 10 years according to experienced developers.  This is both because of poorly drafted laws and regulations and the growing but still limited management capacity of many urban development agencies. These agencies are often unable to enforce compliance on regulations to do with planning, zoning, FAR, density, and setbacks, driving a big wedge between intention and actuality.  This acts as serious bottlenecks to the cost effective and orderly use of urban land. This book is part of the growing body of ongoing robust research programme work at NCAER on cities and urban areas.

The launch of the book was followed by a panel discussion on ‘Why this Chaos in India’s Urban Land Markets’ moderated by Shekhar Shah on the fundamental questions raised in the book as they apply to India. The panellists included Amitabh Kundu, Distinguished Fellow, RIS; Deepak Sanan, Senior Adviser, NCAER; E. Jayashree Kurup, Head of Content & Advisory, Magic Bricks; and A. K. Jain, Former Commissioner, Delhi Development Authority.

Bringing the afternoon to a close, Devendra B. Gupta, co-Editor of the book and Senior Adviser at NCAER, said, “This book represents NCAER’s effort to promote economic analysis relating to urban land, which requires far more attention than is being currently accorded to it. We hope that the discourse in the book will inform greater discussion on urban land issues, leading to vital policies for urban development.”

NCAER collaborated with Omidyar Network for this event and for the NCAER Land Policy Initiative, and the Think Tank Initiative for the original Round Tale

    Get updates from NCAER