Talk Time

As an MIT graduate student, I was often extremely resentful that I couldn't attend as many of the wonderful free lectures and talks on campus. For example, I missed out on the Dalai Lama, Margaret Cho, and god knows how many more. Now, as an employee, I'm making amends, and trying to attend as many as I can, even if I have to take my laptop with me and work over there. Of late, and maybe not so strangely enough, a lot of these events have had an Indian focus. Yesterday, for example, I managed to catch a little bit of a high level roundtable with Sam Pitroda, popularly known as the father of Indian telecom. Today, I attended an interesting talk by Dr. Rakesh Mohan, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India, ex Finance Secretary of India, on the economic reforms of the past 15 years. Mohan was very informative and erudite, and came with his own power-point clicker and loads of charts. I especially liked the question he raised about how much of India's fiscal policy should be cyclical, and how much countercyclical? (given that India is now so immersed in the world economy, and rises and ebbs along with the world's economic cycles). I was quite taken aback by his warning that the data on employment doesnt look so good. Govt. employment has not been rising for the pst 10 years, similarly non Govt. public sector employment has not been rising too. So in the organized sector, at least, employment has not been rising. Perhaps the unorganized sector and the large growth of informal employment is filling in, but still, its something I was not aware of.