India, an Emerging Power:
The Economic, Political, and Cultural Dynamics
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
3-5pm, Carzo Room, 318 Speakman Hall
Sanjoy Chakravorty: "Fragments and Glues: How to Fit the Old India into the New India"
Mark Cohen: "Understanding India, 'Old' and 'New'"
Arvind Phatak: "India: An Emerging Power"
The Indian economy is today the second fastest growing major economy in the world with a growth rate of 9.2 % at the end of the second quarter of 2006-2007. When measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), the Indian economy is the third largest in the world with a gross domestic product (GDP) of US $3.666 trillion. When measured in US $ exchange rate terms, it is the twelfth largest in the world with a GDP of US $719.8 billion (2005).
In 2003, economists at Goldman Sachs presented a much quoted paper, "Dreaming with BRICs," which argued that by 2050, the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs) would eclipse the US and Japan in wealth generation and produce 40% of the world's GDP. By 2025, according to the report, BRICs could account for over half the size of the G6. If the economic predictions reach target, the world's largest democracy will also soon become one of its largest economies, an accomplishment enabled by longstanding institutions of open society, public higher education, and a multilingual labor force equally adept in English and in HTML.
How has a country that was an abject colonial economy less than 60 years ago achieved its current global muscle? How might we renew an understanding of India's development from its five-thousand year history to its recent interventions in the world stage? And, perhaps most importantly, what role do India's "products"-such as business, science, technology, and politics, but also film, literature, music, architecture, philosophy, religion -play in fabricating the country's new global presence? Has India really changed from a nation of bullock carts, or have its purveyors masterfully refashioned its perception on the global stage?
Please join India experts at Temple as they explore the economic political and cultural dynamics of this new global powerhouse. A reception will follow the panel.
Speaker Bios
Sanjoy Chakravorty, associate professor and chair of Geography and Urban studies at Temple University, is the author of Made in India (2006, Oxford University Press, with S. Lall), an examination of the economic geography and political economy of Indian industrialization, and Fragments of Inequality (2005, Routledge), a theoretical analysis of the dynamics of inequality and income distribution.
Professor Chakravorty has also authored or co-authored three dozen journal articles, book chapters and reports that have been widely published in geography, development economics, planning, and urban journals. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the World Bank. More information on his work can be found at http://astro.temple.edu/~sanjoy.
Mark Cohen is a lecturer at Temple University where he teaches Asian business courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. His areas of research include economic development in India and the impact of Confucian ethics on East Asian business. Dr. Cohen also teaches in Temple University's Political Science department. He has extensive experience working in the private sector, most recently specializing in the distribution of goods produced overseas.
Arvind V. Phatak, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Management and International Business Education, is the Executive Director of the Institute of Global Management Studies/Center for International Business Education and Research (IGMS/CIBER) and the Director of the International Business Program. He served as the Chairman of the General and Strategic Management Department from 1978-1981 and 1987-1990, and is the founding member of the Consortium of Undergraduate International Business Education, and a board member of the World Trade Institute Committee of the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia.
Professor Phatak is the author of six books, has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and publications, and regularly presents at the Academy of Management and Academy of International Business.
