The Indian economy: Rising to global challenges - Dr Kaushik Basu

The annual K R Narayanan Oration with Dr Kaushik Basu Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. The annual K R Narayanan Oration is an important event in the ANU calendar. This oration series honours India's past-President, Dr K R Narayanan. The current President of India sends a forwarding message to be read out just prior to the oration by India's High Commissioner in Canberra. Thus the oration provides Australian audiences an invaluable link to Indian policy-makers at the very highest level. Kaushik Basu is Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He is on leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies. During 2006--09 he was Director of the Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell. Earlier he was Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, where in 1992 he founded the Centre for Development Economics and was its first Executive Director. He is also a founding member of the Madras School of Economics. He is currently (the 4th) President of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, which was founded by Amartya Sen. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India and was, for several years, a member of the steering committee of the Expert Group of Development Issues set up by the Swedish Government. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Exim Bank of India. His books include Analytical Development Economics (1997, MIT Press), Prelude to Political Economy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics (2000, Oxford University Press) and Of People, Of Places: Sketches from an Economist's Notebook (1994, Oxford University Press). His latest book, Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics is to be published shortly by Princeton University Press and Penguin. In May 2008 he was awarded one of India's highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, by the President of India.