Events

The Impact of COVID-19 in India and Pathways to Recovery

Hosted by the International Growth Centre (IGC)

Online public event, United Kingdom

Speakers

Farzana Afridi

Farzana Afridi

Professor, Economics and Planning Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, India.

Harjot Kaur Bamhrah

Harjot Kaur Bamhrah

Managing Director, Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar, India

Robin Burgess

Robin Burgess

Director, IGC and Professor of Economics, LSE

Gaurav Datt

Gaurav Datt

Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Monash University.

Swati Dhingra

Swati Dhingra

Assistant Professor in Economics, Department of Economics and Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

The ongoing COVID-19 health crisis has affected lives across the world and caused a massive economic shock. The situation in India is particularly dire, with a deadly second wave of infections sweeping across the country. Last year, India imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world to limit virus transmission, which led to severe economic losses and hardships for millions. The government will have to now draw on evidence from the first lockdown, and introduce new policies that carefully balance the saving of lives with the need to protect livelihoods. To help policy stakeholders understand the severity of the crisis, IGC India is gathering new evidence around the socio-economic impact of COVID-19. These studies focus primarily on three themes: labour markets, households, and health and wellbeing.

Meet our speakers

Farzana Afridi is a Professor in the Economics and Planning Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi. Her primary research interests lie in the areas of education, gender, and more recently, political economy. She holds an abiding interest in understanding the response of individuals and households to public programmes in developing countries.

Harjot Kaur Bamhrah is the Managing Director, Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar. She has also held positions as Principal Secretary, Mines and Geology Department. Previously, she has also held positions as Principal Secretary, Department of Science and Technology. She is from IAS 1992 batch cadre.

Robin Burgess is a Director of the IGC. Burgess is also a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the Economic Organisation and Public Policy Programme at LSE.

Gaurav Datt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Deputy Director of the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University. He has over twenty years of research and operational work experience in the development sector. He has worked in research positions at the World Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C.

Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at Ashoka University. Prior to this she was at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India.

Swati Dhingra is an Assistant Professor in Economics at the Department of Economics and Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

Harlan Downs-Tepper studies novel methods for targeting poverty at Duke University. Prior to Duke, he was Chief of Staff at IDinsight, a global development consulting organization, where he conducted policy research based in Patna and elsewhere.

Mousumi Dutta is currently the Professor and Head of Department at Presidency University, Kolkata. Previously, she has been appointed as Lecturer in Economics, West Bengal Education Service and has taught in institutions like Bethune College and Presidency College.

Clément Imbert is Assistant Professor at University of Warwick. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Economics and Nuffield College, Oxford University. His fields of interest are Development economics, Labor economics, Public economics and Political economy.  

Sunil Kumar Mishra is an economist by profession and presently working as a Fellow at the Institute for Human Development. His interest area is food security, child deprivation and tribal studies. He has published several research papers in referred journals of national and international repute. 

Pronab Sen is the Programme Director for the International Growth Centre India Programme. Pronab received his PhD in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University specialising in open-economy macroeconomic systems, international economics and public finance.

More about this event

The International Growth Centre (@The_IGC) aims to promote sustainable growth in developing countries by providing demand-led policy advice based on frontier research.

The IGC directs a global network of world-leading researchers and in-country teams in Africa and South Asia and works closely with partner governments to generate high-quality research and policy advice on key growth challenges. Based at LSE and in partnership with the University of Oxford, the IGC is majority funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

Twitter hashtags for this event

#COVID19India, #BuildBackBetter, #COVID19Research, #EconTwitter

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