Adur Pradeep, OP
Bhubaneswar: Renowned economist Dr S Subramanian Saturday inaugurated the golden jubilee conference of Orissa Economics Association (OEA) at the Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies here.
While delivering a lecture on poverty, growth and inequality, Subramanian, ICSSR National Fellow at Madras Institute of Development Studies, said: “A view which is increasingly gaining ground to the effect that growth in per capita average income is the prime if not the sole engine for the elevation of poverty. This is a point of view which has been popularised from the early 2000s in what is referred to as a post-Washington consensus by certain economists in World Bank and allied organisations.”
He reiterated that growth shouldn’t be the only criteria while analysing the poverty scenario.
“Growth is important for alleviation of poverty but to be persuaded to the belief that it is the only thing which matters in the alleviation of poverty is asking for a bit much. I think it is also seriously misguided.”
The main themes of the two-day conference are ‘Labour market and employment in India’ and ‘Economic development and the tribal communities in Odisha’.
Dr Arvind Subramanian, the Chief Economic Advisor of Government of India, who was scheduled to attend the inaugural meet Saturday, will join the conference today, the organisers said. He will be the chief guest at the hour-long golden jubilee seminar at 11.15 am Sunday.
Dr Madhusudan Sahoo, chairperson of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, will be the main speaker at the Prof KM Patnaik memorial lecture. The conference will conclude today.
OEA, which was founded in 1968, is one of the oldest regional academic associations in the country. The first annual conference of OEA was held in the historic Ravenshaw College Hall January 26, 1968.
Meanwhile in the souvenir and abstracts of conference papers, published as part of the conference, Prof Baidyanath Mishra, who presided over the inaugural meet Saturday, discussed the major challenges being faced by the rural economy.
On the impact of subsidy on poverty, he wrote, “Even now more than one-third population of the country is below the poverty line. Subsidies are increasing year by year.
“Studies have been made in respect of many of the largest central schemes like PDS – food and kerosene, MGNREGS, SSA and MDM. Those results show that they have not helped the poor, but only increased the administrative cost in operational level along with huge loss of funds in corruption. This is reported by the Economic Survey 2016-17 by the Government of India, not by an individual research worker.”
Mishra observed that misallocation leads to wide disparity between the rich and poor. “A number of studies show that the disparity is increasing in India.”
He added: “By starting some industries in rural areas, you cannot increase the per capita income of rural workers. What is more important is to improve the required skill and technical knowledge as required for the above industries to increase employment and wage level in rural areas. Unless we have effective human resources, the rural economy will continue to remain depressed.” (PNN)