The Centre for Social and Economic Progress hosted the seminar to discuss the research paper titled “Measuring Economic and Human Development in the Anthropocene: Bringing Climate Change In” by Ajay Chhibber, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Institute for International Economic Policy, George Washington University, on Tuesday, December 19, 2023 from 4 pm to 6 pm IST. Attendees joined online via Zoom or in person at the CSEP Auditorium (6 Jose P Rizal Marg, 2nd Floor, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021). The seminar was also streamed live on YouTube.

About the event:

Some 80 odd years ago the Nobel Prize winner, Simon Kuznets introduced GDP (income) as a measure of economic progress. Another 50 odd years later, noted Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen helped introduce the Human Development Index (HDI) by adding education and health to it and bringing a human dimension to measuring development. This paper says the time has come to add sustainability and measures of vulnerability to the existing HDI. The HDI has made progress by adding gender and inequality in its sub-formulations but does not capture the more comprehensive Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed in 2015 and new vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic and climate related disasters. The paper critically reviews many indicators that have since emerged to capture economic development but suggests that an improved HDI remains the best option going forward. It shows that above an HDI level of 0.8, the cut-off for very high human development, major trade-offs emerge with ecology. It argues for incorporating ecological and climate change related variables into the HDI and creating a vulnerability adjusted HDI that measures resilience to ecological, health and economic shocks.

Speaker

Ajay Chhibber is the Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP), George Washington University, Washington D.C., and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He served on the External Advisory Group for the Finance Track of India’s G-20 Presidency.

He was the first Director General, Independent Evaluation Office, India (Minister of State) and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He served earlier as Assistant Secretary General, UN and Assistant Administrator, UNDP where he was directed its work on Asia and the Pacific. At the World Bank he served in senior positions as Country Director in Turkey and Vietnam, and Division Chief for Indonesia and the Pacific as well as the Director and Lead Author of the seminal 1997 World Development Report on the Role of the State.

He has a Ph.D from Stanford University, an MA from the Delhi School of Economics and was awarded the David Rajaram Prize for best all rounder at St Stephen’s College, Delhi University where he received BA Hons in Economics. He has also done advanced management courses at Harvard University and at INSEAD, France.
He has written six books on Economic Development and numerous published articles in major journals. He writes regularly for newspapers and business magazines. His latest book co-authored with Salman Soz “Unshackling India: Hard Truths and Clear Choices for Economic Revival” published by Harper Collins was declared the Best New Book in Economics for 2022 by the Financial Times and was awarded the India Economic Forum Literary Award for 2022.

Chair and Moderator

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay is currently the Research Director of India Development Foundation and the Founding Dean of the School of Liberal Studies at UPES. In 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, he was appointed Advisor to the Union Finance Minister. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in October 2006. He got his PhD in Economics from Cornell University, USA, in 1983. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute as a lecturer in 1983 and became a full professor in 1991. Between 2003 and 2008, he was the Founder Director of India Development Foundation. From August 2011 till January 2016 he was the Founding Director (Dean) of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shiv Nadar University. Between 2019 and 2023, he was the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Public Policy. He has published widely in international journals, and has a number of books, in economics and finance. His current research areas cover policy, finance, law and economics of patents and, the concurrent monitoring and evaluation of non-market interventions. He has a rich experience of advising students at the PhD level and has a number of students both in India and abroad.

Discussants

Rupa Chanda is the Director of Trade, Investment and Innovation. Prior to that, she was a Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) where she taught Macroeconomics and International Trade and received several teaching awards. She also served as Dean, Programmes at IIMB. Earlier, she worked as an Economist at the IMF and briefly served as Head, UNESCAP Subregional Office for South and South-West Asia in New Delhi. Prof. Chanda received her PhD in Economics from Columbia University and her Bachelor’s from Harvard University. Her research interests include the WTO, trade in services, regional integration and migration. She has undertaken research and professional assignments for international and Indian organizations and has published extensively in the form of books, journal articles, book chapters, and reports. She is active professionally as a research guide, reviewer, and member of several expert committees. She was member of the WHO’s Review Committee on the functioning of the International Health Regulations (2015-16) and the WHO’s Expert Advisory Group, International Recruitment of Health Personnel (2019-20).

Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP.  Dr. Bhandari has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic, and social reforms in India, economic geography, and financial inclusion. He received his PhD in economics from Boston University for which he was awarded the Best Thesis in International Economics. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. Apart from applied economics research, Dr. Bhandari has built, seeded, and exited from three companies in the research, analytics, and digital domains, including Indicus Analytics, a leading economic research firm. Currently, he is conducting research on issues of inclusion, India’s energy transition, and how it will impact the government as well as the economy.

Priyadarshini Singh is a Fellow with the Human Development research program at CSEP. She has previously worked with the Centre for Policy Research- New Delhi, Ashoka University and PwC-India. She completed a PhD at the Department of Politics and International Relations at SOAS, University of London as a Felix Scholar. Her research work focuses on political economy of policy-making with a focus on education, history of public institutions and grassroots political ideas and politics. Her recent publication is ‘Ideas, Policies and Practices: Tracing the evolution of elementary education reform from 1975’ (2023 PE05- RISE program at University of Pennsylvania).

Closing Remarks