Page 7 - SAU Connect March 2019

The Quarterly Newsletter of South Asian University | Volume 3 Issue 3 March 2019

Academic Events

Fifth International Conference on South Asian Economic Development

New Delhi (21-22.02.2019) SAU FE News: The Faculty of
Economics organized the Fifth International Conference
on South Asian Economic Development on 21-22
February, 2019 at Akbar Bhawan, South Asian University.
The conference was supported by the Indian Resident
Mission of the Asian Development Bank and the Indian
Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). The
conference series, which started in 2015, has been
successful in spanning across academic networks in
South Asia and in providing an international platform in
the region to deliberate on methodological advances in economic development from alternative
theoreticalparadigms,inallareasofeconomicresearchrelevanttotheregion.

Theconferencecomprised14technicalsessions,alongwithanopeningsessionwithaninauguraladdress
and a keynote lecture, a plenary lecture, and two panel discussions. This year the conference received
around 450 papers out of which a total of 44 were selected for presentation. Researchers from across
South Asia as well as from Europe and the United States presented their work on a diverse set of
theoretical and empirical issues. The chairs and discussants in the technical sessions were renowned
academiciansfromacrossdifferentuniversitiesandinstitutesintheregion.

The conference started with welcome comments by Kavita A Sharma (President, South Asian University)
andSantoshCPanda(DeanandProfessorFacultyofEconomics&Vice-President,SouthAsianUniversity),
followed by opening remarks from Kenichi Yokoyama (Country Director, India Resident Mission- Asian
Development Bank, New Delhi) and a keynote lecture titled “Current Issues and Outlook in Agriculture”
by Ramesh Chand (Member, NITI Aayog, New Delhi). The first panel discussion, titled “Economic
Development: The South Asian Context”, was chaired by renowned economist, R. Nagaraj (Professor,
Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai). The panel included Rana Hasan (Director,
Development Economics and Indicators Division, Asian Development Bank, Manila), Wahiduddin
Mahmud (Former Professor, University of Dhaka), and Dushni Weerakoon (Executive Director, Institute
ofPolicyStudies,Colombo).

The first day of the conference concluded with a plenary lecture, titled
“Has India De-industrialized between 1991 and 2011”, delivered by Prof. R.
Nagaraj. The penultimate session of the conference was an
interdisciplinary panel discussion, titled “Political Economy of
Development and Democracy in South Asia”, among four eminent
panelists: Rohini Somanathan (Professor, Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi), Satish Deshpande (Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi
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