Archives: Event

The 2nd C.D. Deshmukh Memorial Lecture 2014

A lecture by Professor Arvind Panagariya on “A Reform Agenda for India’s new Government” was second in the series of lecture, instituted in memory of Sir Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh, one of India’s most eminent economists and a founding father of NCAER. In his lecture, Professor Panagariya stressed that the overarching objective of the reforms by the new government must be targeted towards building a prosperous, strong and modern India. Presenting to a large audience at The Claridges, he outlined a strategy of reforms along two tracks. This lecture by Professor Panagariya was later published.

Arvind Panagariya

Arvind Panagariya is Professor of Economics & Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy and Director of the Columbia Program on Indian Economic Policies at Columbia University. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at NCAER. In 2012 the Government of India honoured Panagariya with the Padma Bhushan for his contributions in the field of economics and public policy. Panagariya has been the Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and Professor of Economics and Co-director of the Centre for International Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has worked with the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and UNCTAD in various capacities. Panagariya has written or edited more than a dozen books. His book India: The Emerging Giant (2008) was listed as a top pick of 2008 by the Economist magazine. The Economist has described his latest book (with J. Bhagwati) Why Growth Matters (2013) as “a manifesto for policymakers and analysts.” He writes a monthly column in the Times of India. Panagariya is co-editor of the India Policy Forum, the highest ranked economics journal out of India based on RePEc citation counts and published by NCAER with Brookings.

Bimal Jalan

Bimal Jalan is one of India’s best known economists. He was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1997 to 2003 and nominated thereafter to the Rajya Sabha. He was the President of NCAER’s Governing Body during 1998-2008. Jalan is currently chair of RBI’s Committee for issuing new bank licenses. He has served as India’s Chief Economic Adviser, Banking Secretary, Finance Secretary, Member-Secretary of the Planning Commission, and Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He has represented India as Executive Director on the boards of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He has written extensively on the Indian economy. His latest book is Emerging India: Economics, Politics and Reforms (Viking/Penguin, 2012).

About C.D. Deshmukh

Sir Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh was the first Indian to be appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 1943 and was part of the official Indian delegation to the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference that led to the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He served as the Union Finance Minister during 1950 to 1956 under Nehru and was a founding member of NCAER’s first Governing Body. He later served as Chairman of the University Grants Commission and Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, during which time he also founded the India International Centre. He was honoured by the President of India with the Padma Vibhushan in 1975. NCAER is privileged to honour the memory of C. D. Deshmukh as part of its own legacy.

The first lecture in this series was delivered by Prof Kaushik Basu in January 2013. Read more

China’s November 2013 blueprint for sweeping reform

The seminar dwelled around the recently announced blueprint for sweeping economic, social, and administrative reforms in China.  Dr Xiao Geng, Vice President of Research at the Fung Global Institute (FGI) in Hong Kong delivered his talk through video conferencing. Dr Ramgopal Agarwala, Distinguished Fellow, RIS, who were invited as the discussant  led the deliberations and interactions with the participants from amongst research community, representatives from embassies and eminent experts.

Dr Xiao Geng initiated his talk by referring to the explanation on the plenum. He discussed about stronger role of markets as a decisive force in allocating economic resources, the need to build basic economic institutions as well the need for tax and fiscal reforms. He affirmed that markets and the government are two sides of the same coin as good government can lead to efficient markets.Speaking optimistically about the reforms, the presenter shared research findings in select cities of China.  The success of market forces being in action was illustrated through the case study of Foshan city that had attracted migrant labour as well as capital.

In a discussion following the presentation, Professor Ramgopal Aggarwal opined that the government is part of the solution rather than a problem.  He stated the importance of Indian cities in future years and discussed factors that would help attract labour to the cities. He summarized by highlighting that both China and India should work together.  A wide gap between the two economies could be destabilizing for the Asian region.

NCAER receives a Rs. 50 crore gift from Nandan and Rohini Nilekanii

NCAER received a historic Rs 50 crore (about US$ 8.1 million) gift from Nandan M. Nilekani, the President of NCAER’s Governing Body, and Rohini Nilekani on Wednesday, 18 December 2013. The announcement for one of the largest ever private gifts to an independent research organisation in India was made in the presence of members from NCAER’s governing body and staff. The gift will fund additions to NCAER’s endowment, the establishment of a world-class new NCAER India Centre on NCAER’s campus in the heart of New Delhi, and new social research and knowledge capabilities in areas that are of rapidly growing importance for India.

Nandan Nilekani is the President of NCAER’s Governing Body and currently the Chairman of the Unique Identity Authority of India and a co-founder of Infosys, where he was earlier the CEO. Rohini Nilekani is the Founder-Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation that supports initiatives around the country for safe and sustainable water and sanitation. The support for NCAER reflects Nandan and Rohini Nilekani’s deep and long-standing commitment to supporting evidence-based policymaking in India.

The Nilekanis’ gift comes in the wake of the July 2013 visit to NCAER by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to lay the foundation stone for the new NCAER India Centre. During his visit, Dr Singh noted that “This institution is a great national asset … I must say that with the passage of time, the need for creative, purposeful, applied economic research has not diminished, it has only gone up.” Dr Singh was a member of NCAER’s Governing Body during 1976-1982.

In making the announcement, Nandan Nilekani said, “NCAER is India’s oldest and largest economic research institution—a part of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision for the independent institutions that a newly independent India needed. I have been privileged to serve as the President of NCAER’s Governing Body since 2008. From its early days in the 1950s, NCAER’s empirical research and data collection have contributed immensely to economic policy thinking in India. Rohini and I are excited about contributing to a national institution of NCAER’s stature, helping it build further on its durable legacy of almost six decades of service to the nation, and supporting its rejuvenation in ways that will make it even more vibrant.”

The NCAER Governing Body and its Director-General, Dr Shekhar Shah, expressed their deep appreciation for this gift, applauding the underlying spirit of renewing national institutions that are independent, influential, and use timely data and analysis to generate practical insights and guidance for policymakers, citizens, and the media. Drawing on the Prime Minister’s recent remarks at NCAER, Shekhar Shah noted that “India needs institutions like NCAER more than ever before; if this was true in 1956, it is truer today. India is grappling with hard policy choices, challenges of implementation, regulation and governance, an uncertain macroeconomic environment, and global transformation at a pace that is unprecedented. Mapping a sound course through this can make the difference between floundering and flourishing, between attaining India’s vast potential and letting it slip away.”

Commenting further on today’s announcement, Shekhar Shah said, “This gift from the Nilekanis marks a true turning point in India. India’s growing tradition of global philanthropy has recently funded places like Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Oxford, and Brookings, which is wonderful. It is now heartening to see this tradition come home; supporting the renewal of independent, Indian national institutions whose policy research can have multiplier effects for the common good. Over nearly sixty years the promise of NCAER has endured—the promise to ask the right questions, gather good evidence, analyse it, and share the results in influential ways with policymakers and people. Nandan and Rohini’s generous gift to NCAER today, and the high standard it sets, will help renew this promise and fulfil it in new ways.”

The gift is a first step in NCAER’s 2020 Capital Campaign, under development since mid-2012. The Campaign is raising funds for NCAER’s endowment, the NCAER India Centre, and short and longer-term initiatives to grow NCAER’s human, social, systems, and financial capital. NCAER will build new research, data collection, and evaluation capabilities that seek to better understand the massive economic and social transformation underway in India, India’s changing role in the global economy, and their implications for policy.

Malcolm Adiseshaiah Mid-Year Review of the Indian Economy 2013-14, NCAER-IIC

New Delhi, Saturday, 16 November 2013: At a seminar held at the India International Centre, New Delhi today, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) presented the Mid Year Review of the Economy, 2013-14. The Review covered the performance of the economy during the first half of the current year (April- September 2013-14), and made projections for the year as a whole based on two models, a quarterly model and an annual model. It also included two special papers on ‘Revival of the Mining Sector’ and ‘Natural Gas Pricing and Energy Security’, both issues of critical importance to the economy.

Leapfrogging Methodology & Technology in Household Survey Research: Lessons from the US and India

This research symposium organised by NCAER in collaboration with the Survey Research Centre (SRC) at the University of Michigan initiated discussions on improving the sample survey research and practices relevant for bringing data to inform policy making. The Chairman of the National Statistical Commission, Dr Pronab Sen, participated in the symposium and India’s Chief Statistician, Dr T C A Anant, delivered the opening keynote remarks.

The symposium invited several experts from SRC to talk about some of the profoundly influential, long-term panel surveys that SRC has pioneered, including the well-known US Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. Professor William Axinn spoke the US national Survey of Family Growth, Narayan Sastry on the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics and David Weir on the US health and Retirement Study. Beth – Ellen Pennell from SRC led a session on computer based tools for managing surveys.

The symposium provided an opportunity to compare notes on the Indian experience with surveys, both from NCAER and NSSO. Household and other field surveys have always been one of NCAER’s strengths from its very inception in 1956. More recently, NCAER has mounted the India Human Development Surveys (IHDS-I and II). IHDS-II will be the first national longitudinal panel survey of its kind in India.

Dr Sonalde Desai from NCAER spoke on IHDS-I and II, Amit Mukherjee from IIM-Lucknow on the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure while G C Manna, SCIO on the National Sample Surveys. Finally, a policy roundtable chaired by Dr Shekhar Shah, Director General NCAER discussed the ways to strengthen public policy survey research in India.

The symposium was followed by signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between NCAER and SRC, University of Michigan for collaborative work on survey research.

SRC at Michigan (http://www.src.isr.umich.edu/) is a global leader in interdisciplinary survey-based search and its teaching and training. SRC conducts some of the most widely cited and influential studies in the US. SRC’s long-running surveys, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Monitoring the Future Study, and the Health and Retirement Study, have become national resources for US social research and policy.

    Get updates from NCAER