Reimagining India’s Economic Future
About the talk
Is India growing rapidly today and on the cusp of transforming the lives of its people? Is global manufacturing rushing to India and will it then generate the kind of employment that India’s youth badly needs? The optimistic answers to these questions which dominate the media also have their critics. The counter view is that India’s growth has been and continues to be extremely unequal and it is not generating adequate employment. Another counter is that India has missed the manufacturing bus and industry will never be able to generate jobs on the scale needed. India, it is said, must look to growing and generating jobs on the back of services, including high-end services. It is also argued that India’s governance structures are far too enfeebled to oversee an economic transformation.
Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba address both sets of views in their new book, Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future, as they develop a policy perspective on India’s economy that will ‘break the mould’ and usher in an era of improved well-being which will be equitable and transform people’s lives.
Raghuram Rajan
He is a world-renowned Indian economist who is currently a distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His past policy positions include governor of the Reserve Bank of India and chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. His bestselling books include Fault Lines (winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award), and I Do What I Do, The Third Pillar and Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (with Luigi Zingales). His widely cited research focuses on the underpinnings of economic growth. His numerous awards include the Fischer Black Prize and the Deutsche Bank Prize for financial economics, Euromoney’s Central Banker of the Year award and the Banker’s Global Central Banker Award.
Rohit Lamba
He is an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. He received a PhD in economics from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. He publishes regularly in leading academic journals and newspapers. He has also worked as an economist at the office of the chief economic adviser to the Government of India.
