The Centre for Social and Economic Progress hosted a seminar titled “Employment Generation in India – Facts and Figures” on Tuesday, September 10, 2024.

The seminar featured a discussion between Surjit Bhalla, Former Executive Director for India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, IMF and Santosh Mehrotra, Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, UK. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Distinguished Fellow, CSEP and Former Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India, GOI chaired and moderated the session.

About the event

There are wide variations in the number and quality of employment generation in India, which largely stems from the data one uses to estimate these figures. Two prominent researchers in this field, Surjit Bhalla and Santosh Mehrotra, with differing opinions, will come together to present their views and concerns, and take questions from the audience.

Chair and Moderator 

• Montek Singh Ahluwalia, an economist, and civil servant, was former Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Government of India. He joined the Government in 1979 as Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, after which he held a series of positions including Special Secretary to the Prime Minister; Commerce Secretary; Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs; Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance; Member of the Planning Commission and Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. In 2001, he was appointed as the first Director of the newly created Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund. He resigned from that position in 2004 to take up the position of Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission which he held from 2004 to 2014.Mr Ahluwalia has been a key figure in Indian economic policy. He writes on various aspects of development economics and has been published in prominent Indian and international journals and books. He co-authored Re-distribution with Growth: An Approach to Policy, which, published in 1975, was a path-breaking book on income distribution. In February 2020, he published his book, Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years, an insider’s account of policymaking from 1985 to 2014.For his outstanding contribution to economic policy and public service, he was conferred the prestigious ‘Padma Vibhushan’ in 2011, India’s 2nd highest civilian award for exceptional and distinguished service.

Speakers

• Surjit S. Bhalla is former Executive Director for India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan at the IMF (Nov. 2019-Oct. 2022). He has served as part-time member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s First Economic Advisory Council (2017-18), and has served on several government committees, including Chairperson High-Level Advisory Group on Trade (2018-19) and member, RBI Capital Account Convertibility Committees, 1999 and 2006.Dr Bhalla has taught at the Delhi School of Economics and served as Executive Director of the Policy Group in New Delhi, the country’s first non-government funded think tank. He has worked as a research economist at the RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, and at both the research and treasury departments of the World Bank, and as a consultant to Warburg Pincus. He has also worked on Wall Street in Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. He was founder-chairman of Oxus Research & Investments 1997-2016; and was Senior India Analyst for the Observatory Group, NY, April 2015-Sept. 2018. He has also been a Contributing Editor for The Indian Express (2010-2019).He is the author of several academic articles, books, and more than 1500 op-eds in national newspapers and magazines. Books: How we Vote, April, 2024, discusses the role of narratives and fake economic commentary in Indian political discourse; Citizen Raj: Indian Elections 1952-2019 analysed Indian elections since 1952 and accurately forecast the Modi victory in 2019; The New Wealth of Nations (2017), correctly forecast the changing nature of gender equality in the world via educational attainment; Second Among Equals – The Middle Class Kingdoms of India and China (2007) , defined, developed and estimated the role of the middle class in India, China and the world; Devaluing to Prosperity (2012) examined in detail the role of mercantilism (currency undervaluation) in China’s miracle growth 1990-2010; Imagine There’s no Country (2002), developed and estimated global inequality and poverty trends; Between the Wickets: The Who and Why of the Best in Cricket (1987), developed a model for evaluating performance in sports (cricket). He holds a PhD and in Economics and MPA from Princeton University, and a BSEE degree from Purdue University.
•  Santosh Mehrotra is Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, UK and ex-Prof (Econ) and Chair of the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.After an MA (Econ) from the New School for Social Research, New York, and PhD (Econ), Cambridge University (1985), Santosh spent 15 years with the UN (1991-2006) in research positions, heading UNICEF’s global research programme on social/economic policy at the Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, and as chief economist of the global Human Development Report New York. He returned to India to head the Rural Development Division and Development Policy Division of Planning Commission (2006-09), and was lead author of several chapters of the 11th & 12th Five Year Plans of India, and the India Human Development Report.He was also the Director General (2009-14) of the National Institute of Labour Economics Research, Planning Commission, in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India. He advises the current NITI, the Ministry of Labour, and the Ministry of Skill Development. His writings have been translated into Hindi, Spanish, French, Russian, German and Portuguese. Santosh Mehrotra joined IZA as a Research Fellow in August 2021.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.

In the media

Data on unpaid labour divides economists. But they agree on one thing: real wages have stagnated