Abstract: The economics profession has been obsessed with 'New Institutional Economics' for 30 years coinciding with the umprecedented rise of neoliberalism. I argue this is not an accident or coincidence, but the same old colonial ideology simply dressed up in a new label. 'Good institutions' are predictably Western and 'bad institutions' are indicative of the Global South, leading to corruption, rent-seeking, and bribery. This argument does not stand the bare minimum standards of historical, theoretical, or empirical evidence of academic research and shown to be ideologically driven. Interestingly, past and present colonialism is falsely accepted but only in order to deny its historical and continuing dependencies shaping the 'wealth of nations’ today.
About the speaker: Professor Ravi Bhandari is a distinguished scholar in development economics and the history of economic thought, whose teaching and research publications span international finance, geopolitics, sociology of development, and economic anthropology. He has taught at the top Universities in the world including UC Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia, JNU and IGIDR and published widely in leading journals, authored influential critiques of land reform policies for agencies like UNDP, and the World Bank, and was awarded the Fulbright Senior Research Scholarship for his contributions. His research centers on agrarian crises and land inequality in South Asia within a global context. His career has been shaped by mentorship from renowned economists Alain de Janvry, Samir Amin, Prabhat Patnaik, Mohan Rao, and MH Suryanarayana.