Lecture on measuring pro-poor growth and inclusive development at Jamia
The Department of Economics, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) organised a Public Lecture (online) by the renowned econometrician, an authority on inequality and poverty studies and famously known for Kakwani Index, Prof. Nanak Kakwani on “Measuring and defining pro-poor growth, inclusive growth and pro-poor development, inclusive development ” on 24th March, 2023.
Prof. Kakwani delivered the lecture online from Australia. The programmes started with the introductory address by Prof Asheref Illiyan, HoD Department of Economics, JMI.
He warmly welcomed the speaker and participants from India and abroad. He highlighted the importance of the topic especially for developing countries like India. Prof. Nanak Kakwani started his lecture by explaining the concept and definition of the terms like Pro-poor, inclusive, growth and development.
The idea of propoor growth has its root during 1960s-70s in the form of trickle down model. This model postulated that the growth or innovation will be beneficial more for the already affluent and the benefits will trickle down to least affluent persons with some time lag.
This contention had been challenged during the 1980s by the works of Dr. Montek Singh Ahuliwalia and others where they emphasised the importance of growth distribution and showcased that the benefits are not reaching the poorest section of society.
Furthermore, Prof Nanak also mentioned the work of Prof. Amratya Sen and Prof. Jean Drèze where they have highlighted the growth as fuel but growth distribution as an engine for achieving the growth distribution through policy and programmes.
He also pointed out the dearth of studies for examining the growth of India in the lights of pro-poor and inclusive growth and development. Further, he presented the conceptual differences between pro-poor growth, pro-poor development, inclusive growth and inclusive development. The inclusive growth considers the distribution among all while the pro-poor growth considers the distribution of growth among the poor rather than rich.
Based on the empirical data from India for the last 20 years Prof. Nanak concluded that the growth of India is not pro-poor and not pro-poor development. He motivated the researcher and scholars to work on these issues by also including the environmental aspects while measuring the growth of GDP.
Thus, he has suggested a term pro-environmental growth and development for analysing the growth prospects. The programs had audience from different departments/centres of JMI and from other universities like, IIT Kanpur, IIM Jammu etc.
The moderator of the lecture was Dr. Zakaria Siddiqui, Economist at Australian Government. He mentioned that the issue of measurement, data limitations, and even theoretical underpinnings is really important for policy makers to evaluate the effectiveness of the various policies and programmes.
The rapporteur report was prepared by Dr. Mohammad Zahid Siddiqui, JMI. The program concluded with vote of thanks proposed by Dr. Vasim Akram, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, JMI.
