India’s Economic Paradox: Growth Without Jobs in the World’s Fastest Expanding Economy ( A Lecture by: Dr. Santosh Mehrorta)

Name: India’s Economic Paradox: Growth Without Jobs in the World’s Fastest Expanding Economy ( A Lecture by: Dr. Santosh Mehrorta)
Start: 2025-05-14T13:00:00+03:00
End: 2025-05-14T15:00:00+03:00
Location: SSE Room CP22

by Public and Community Events

Lecture/Talk/Seminar

Wed, May 14, 2025

1 PM – 3 PM (GMT+2)

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SSE Room CP22

AUC Avenue, P.O. Box 74, New Cairo, 11835, Egypt

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India is the world's fifth-largest economy at market exchange rates and third-largest at purchasing power parity. It has been a driver of global GDP growth, as it has been, after China, the fastest-growing large economy; since 2021, India is growing faster after the recovery, faster than China. But unlike China, India's non-farm job creation is extremely slow. At least 6 million young people join the labour force every year, but youth unemployment is still double what it was 10 years ago. Tens of millions of unemployed, plus surplus labour in agriculture, also need to be provided with non-farm jobs.

Santosh Mehrotra will explore what is the nature of the employment crisis, and how it is related to a structural reversal in the economy in the last decade, and the reasons for it. We will also briefly discuss what can be done to create more jobs, at reasonable wages, before India's demographic dividend runs out. Women's employment and participation issues, which have invited considerable debate, will be examined as well.

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Speakers

Santosh Mehrotra

Santosh Mehrotra is Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, UK and ex-Prof (Econ) and Chair of the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

After an MA (Econ) from New School for Social Research, New York, and Phd (Econs), Cambridge University (1985), Santosh spent 15 years with the UN (1991-2006) in research positions, heading UNICEF’s global research programme on social/economic policy at the Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, and as chief economist of the global Human Development Report New York. He returned to India to head the Rural Development Division and Development Policy Division of Planning Commission (2006-09), and was lead author of several chapters of the 11th & 12th Five Year Plans of India, and the India Human Development Report.

He was also the Director General (2009-14) of the National Institute of Labour Economics Research, Planning Commission, in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India. He advises the current NITI, the Ministry of Labour, and the Ministry of Skill Development.

His writings have been translated into Hindi, Spanish, French, Russian, German and Portuguese.

Santosh Mehrotra joined IZA as a Research Fellow in August 2021.

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