Suresh Tendulkar Memorial Lecture

22 July 2016

The Symbiosis School of Economics (SSE) under the aegis of the Symbiosis International (Deemed University) organized the third Suresh Tendulkar Memorial Lecture at SIU's Lavale Campus in Pune on 22 July 2016. The lecture was instated in the memory of Dr. Suresh D. Tendulkar, former Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council and the National Statistical Commission who is best known for his contributions to the field of Economics, particularly in the study of Poverty. The session was attended by the students and faculty of SSIS, Pune. Dr. Bibek Debroy, Professor, Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Member, NITI Aayog delivered the third Tendulkar memorial lecture and also officially launched the book ‘Economica Scriptus', a collection of articles by the students of SSE.

Dr. Debroy's lecture, which was titled ‘25 Years of Economic Reforms, Poverty, Inequality', informed the audience of the challenges faced during the estimation of poverty and poverty line, as poverty in its self is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional in nature. His lecture underscored the importance of using the Human Development Index (HDI) tool, developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Tendulkar Poverty Line which not only captures per capita poverty estimates by also captures the spread of inequality in terms of access to other resources like education and health. In his concluding remarks, Dr. Debroy informed the audience of India's demographic dividend. He also stated that India has a small window of opportunity of 15-20 years before ‘young India will start to show signs of slow down'. Therefore, specific policy interventions are necessary to mobilize and empower the youth so as to allow them to act as catalysts for India's development and growth. The lecture was followed by a question and answer session.

Report by: Srinivas Subramanium and Mohan Babu (Student,SSIS)
Supervised by: Ms. Swarnakshi Luhach (RA, SSIS)