"The veil of growth"
Speaker : Prof. Narendar Pani
JRD Tata Chair Visiting Professor, NIAS
@ : narendar@nias.res.in
Chairperson : Dr. Anant Kamath
Associate Professor, Inequality and Human Development Programme, NIAS
@ :anant.kamath@nias.res.in
Date : 2nd September 2026
Time : 9.30 AM
Venue : Lecture Hall
Abstract: India’s real growth rate conceals a remarkable decline in its nominal growth rate. This allows officialdom to continue to claim that India is one of the faster growing economies in the world even as deep cracks appear in the foundations of earlier high growth rates. The talk will explore the nature of the earlier high growth rates, the political response to the inequality in that growth, and the consequent crisis that is now unfolding in India’s political economy.
About the speaker: Narendar Pani has been at the National Institute of Advanced Studies for nearly two decades and has been associated with the institute’s Inequality and Human Development Programme for more than half that time. He has been commenting on India’s political economy for over four and a half decades. His books include Redefining Conservatism: An Essay on the Bias of India’s Economic Reform, Inclusive Economics: Gandhian Method and Contemporary Policy, and The City as Action: Retheorizing Urban Studies.