National Seminar on
“Challenges of ‘Economics’ in a Neo-liberal Era:
Methodology, Theory and Empirics”
Organised by the Post Graduate Dept of Economics, Panampilly Memorial Govt College,
Chalakudy, Kerala, (Affiliated to Calicut University, India)
(6th and 7th March, 2013)
Ever since the ascendancy of Neo-liberal economic
ideology consequent to the pontification of foreign exchange crisis of 1991 as
a gripping ‘economic crisis’, it has been incessantly proclaimed from every
roof-top of policy making institutions that economic policies should be
formulated and implemented on the basis of ‘sound economic principles’ and
‘hard data and evidence’ evaluated by ‘expert’ committees rather than pampering
and pandering to the populist sensibilities. As a sequel, the questions
of subsidy on cooking gas and diesel when subsidies (read as revenue foregone)
to corporate sector balloon to astronomical figures (Rs. 375,000 cores approx
for the last six years), the issues related to land-grabbing and
life-slaughtering at the altar of infrastructure development, the continuous
whipping of public expenditure as root cause of deficits of the
government, the pathological concern for 'inter-generation equity' in the
midst of widespread poverty and malnutrition etc are consistently posited for
'positioning' the theoretical alibis which glorify the
efficiency of market outcomes as if they alone are based on ‘sound economic
principles’. The virtues of 'value-judgment' free economic analysis,
often touted as 'positive economics', are the bedrock of these ‘sound economic
principles’ and glorifications drives. The larger question to be raised in this
context is that whether the 'positive economics' is in fact free from value-judgments?
Whether it has its own agenda, that fosters the economic interests of capital
and market, in the name of ‘efficient market outcomes' that reflect ‘sound
economic principles’?
Taking the cue from the observations by Albert
Einstein (“...whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory
which you use”), it is worth noting the fact that it is the value judgments
themselves that propel the so-called 'positive' social scientists. It is
nothing but the value-judgments that are implicitly influencing the positive
economist which eventually determine the research questions to be asked to
dissect the 'preferred' problems of the society, the data to be collected and
the methods to analyse it etc. The mathematical formalisation is only yet another
linguistic tool which facilitates rigorous representation and further
manipulations, of cherry-picked economic relationships. Mathematical
formalisation per se will not lend any element of
scientificity to the analysis of economic relationships.
Against this backdrop the seminar intends to grab-back
the theoretical space of social science in general and economics in particular,
reflective of the heterodox dimensions of empirical reality which has been
sidetracked in a period of Neo-liberal ascendancy. It aims to critically
approach the methodology used to study and analyse economic
and social issues which are too temperamental of the
sensibilities of a minuscule section of the society for saving the development
space for the languishing and vanishing muted millions on the periphery
of Indian affluence.
