New Delhi: The 32nd lecture of the “Lecture Series” organized by the Central Vigilance Commission was delivered by Shri Surjit S. Bhalla, Member, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council here today on the topic “Employment and Poverty Reduction in India ”.
In his lecture, Shri Bhalla dealt with several economic issues of contemporary relevance. The first issue was the computation of employment and unemployment in the Indian economy, and how this is linked to perceptions of economic growth. He further spoke in detail on poverty as an economic concept and how this has been calculated worldwide. He outlined the development of India’s poverty line and shared his belief that a government should work for the poorest quarter of the population, as against the present system of calculation of the national poverty line and debates on what percentage of the population fell below this line. He opined that the methodology to measure poverty should be consistent for an economy over a period of time, as this would enable more accurate assessments of the development and growth outcomes for the Indian economy in the long term. The concept of higher economic growth rate being associated with rising inequality, the phenomenon of jobless growth and the skewed growth distribution in economies were some other areas covered in his lecture where he sought to dispel some popular misconceptions in the public mind. The lecture was followed by a lively question and answer session.
Full time and part time CVOs based in Delhi/NCR attended the lecture along with CMDs, Board of Directors and other officers of the vigilance administration. The lecture may be viewed online as it was webcast live through NIC and the web page link is available on www.cvc.nic.in.
