This edition, centred around ‘Artificial Intelligence and Economics,’ underscores the pivotal role of this multidisciplinary theme in shaping society, education, and life at large. In the contemporary era, the amalgamation of Artificial Intelligence and Economics assumes paramount importance as AI becomes intrinsic to economic dynamics, reshaping decision-making and resource allocation.
Recent revelations of data protection and privacy lapses by major companies like Facebook and Google underscore the critical need for heightened scrutiny, prompting the Editorial board to delve into a research paper on the repercussions of lax data protection on consumer privacy.
Delving into insightful conversations with eminent economists, Dr. Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay and Ms. Aditi Bhowmick, provided a profound understanding of contemporary issues. Our guest contributors come from renowned colleges nationwide that resulted in diverse submissions, ranging from multidisciplinary research papers to thought-provoking perspectives.
Additionally, a special collaboration with the Economic Society of Ashoka University produced a trilogy of insightful articles that explore various facets of the highly significant G20 summit hosted in India.
We hope that this edition of Aapoorti serves your intellectual interests and is as enriching for you to read as it was for us to compile.
Our theme for this year is ‘Behavioural Economics’. Behavioural Economics is steadily being integrated into mainstream theory. Since its venture into the intellectual sphere, behavioural economics has gained immense popularity and credibility amongst academics and professionals. Many universities have introduced bachelors and masters courses on the subject and several governments have set up departments specially dedicated to behavioural policy measures. This wave of recognition has opened up several avenues in the field of behavioural economics and has led to a considerable upsurge in the scope of research in the field. The ever-growing literature in the field of behavioural economics called to our curiosities and prompted us to delve into this subject, with more resources available to us and more perspectives challenging ours than ever before. In this edition, our editors have tackled the thought-provoking subjects of incentives for criminal behaviour and biases in decision-making for self versus for others. Our research endeavours have been a learning curve for us, adding great nuance to our views on these subjects. We hope it does the same for our readers.
This edition also features interviews with two distinguished economists: Prof. Prabhat Patnaik and Prof. Bhaskar Dutta. We were fortunate enough to speak to them about their area of expertise and contemporary issues which proved to be a highly enlightening experience that we are glad to be able to share with our readers. This year we also received several guest submissions from renowned colleges all over the country. They include everything from research papers on multidisciplinary topics to book reviews on the latest economic literature.
We hope that this edition of Aapoorti serves your intellectual interests and is as enriching for you to read as it was for us to compile.
This year the Editorial Board has chosen the theme – “Ethics and Philosophy”. Normatively, economists try to understand how people make decisions by conducting a cost-benefit analysis, in which a value framework is implicitly adopted. Different value commitments can lead to the same item being considered a cost from one perspective and a benefit from another. Three important ethical questions that loom over economic decision-making are – what is the standard of “good”, how does one establish that something is “good” and who should be the beneficiaries of the “good”. In an evolving world, where more and more importance is being placed on the repercussions and the reverberations of our actions, such considerations become essential, especially in matters of public policy.
Through our in-house papers we have explored sub-topics of our theme like modern art, work ethics, and charitable giving in hopes of adding a fresh perspective to economic thought. Our interviewees, Noam Chomsky, Nishith Prakash and Ashwini Deshpande, who we were fortunate enough to interview, too enriched our purpose by speaking on contemporary issues of the political environment, labour economics, discrimination and Covid-19. In this edition you will also see our guest contributors delve into topics such as vaccination drives, public policy and environmental protocols, among others. We believe there’s something in this edition to cater to the likes of every economic enthusiast out there.
We hope that this edition of Aapoorti is as enriching for you to read as it was for us to create and compile.
Aapoorti’s eleventh edition has come together in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic, which has presented unprecedented challenges to the Editorial Board, much like the rest of the world. We cannot help but feel a sense of pride considering the circumstances in which our contributors and teammates have worked, with relentless focus on carrying a legacy of excellence and quality publication.
Our theme for this year is ‘Gender Economics’. While gender has always been at the root of much disenfranchisement in the world, it has once again come to the forefront: the brunt of the Coronavirus-19 pandemic has been borne along gendered lines. Female job loss rates are 1.8 times higher than male job loss rates worldwide (McKinsey & Co.), the burden of unpaid care and domestic work on women has increased and so have calls to domestic violence authorities (UN Women). This has prompted a deeper examination of the cyclical relationship between gender and economics. Our editors this year have undertaken research on a wide array of subjects: from harkening back to the Great Depression to understand the origins of the term ‘gold digger’ to examining the gender gap within academia. Our foray into these areas has added a great degree of nuance to our own views on the same, and we hope that it does the same for our readers.
We have interviewed eminent economists such as Dr. Richard Wolff, whose work is especially relevant as the world casts a questioning eye on capitalism in the wake of the crisis. In an aim to bring more diversified (and youthful!) perspectives to our journal, we have also interviewed Ronak Jain, a PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard University.
We hope that this edition of Aapoorti is as enriching for you to read as it was for us to create and compile.
As Aapoorti enters its tenth edition, we cannot help but feel a sense of achievement looking at how far the journal has come. From talking about the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2011 to evaluating the relevance of economics in the twenty-first century this year, Aapoorti has maintained an unchanging focus on excellence and continued its tradition of pertinence. We are indebted to our contributors from various colleges for their insightful submissions and our lovely readers for their never-ending support. We have also interviewed economists and loving professors such as Dr. Arunava Sen, Dr. E Somanathan, and Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, enriching this edition with a wealth of knowledge and perspective on the discipline of economics. This edition is dedicated to those who were forced out of formal education.
We hope that your travels through the pages of this journal are as enjoyable as our experiences while creating and compiling them. Our readers have been our priority throughout this process, and we sincerely hope to present you with a comprehensive and original journal. Happy Reading!
The Editorial Board of the Economics Department, Miranda House, is pleased to present the 2019 edition of Aapoorti. This year’s edition includes interviews with Lord Meghnad Desai, Dr. Jayati Ghosh, Dr. Bina Agarwal and Miranda House alumna, Dr. Indira Rajaraman. Our journal tackles the vast and relevant topic of Black Economy – our team has produced articles scrutinising the theme from a myriad of perspectives. Most importantly, we have been fortunate to receive skillfully written guest entries from across India. This year’s guest entries cover many dynamic research questions, varying from an intriguing IS-LM analysis of the Venezuelan Crisis to an insightful survival analysis on the dropout crisis, and many more! We hope you gain new perspectives after reading our journal and thoroughly enjoy yourself. We look forward to hearing your feedback!
One too many bated breaths later, we bring to you the culmination of the perseverance and hardwork of our Editorial Team – Aapoorti 2018. In this year’s edition, you will find articles, poems and research papers that intrigue the mind and challenge the reader to question why things are the way they are. This year’s edition also contains interviews we held with leading academics such as Dr. Devaki Jain, Sh. Bibek Debroy, Dr. Arun Kumar and Dr. Isher Ahluwalia. Here’s to hoping you had as good a time reading it as we did compiling it.
The Editorial Board of Department of Economics, Miranda House is proud to present to you the seventh edition of our annual economics journal, Aapoorti! This year, the Editorial Board chose to explore the theme ‘Slavery in the 21st Century’. We discuss the modern day rhetoric of liberty, sovereignty and fraternity in this context. We have tried to investigate if certain parallels exist between a slave, a society and the societal orientations in the 21st century. Working on this journal has been a learning curve like no other. We hope that reading this year’s Aapoorti will force you to look at the world around you in a different light.
Aapoorti 2016
E-book : Aapoorti 2016
As we seek to move ahead, towards a growth path that promises not only a sustained growth rate, but also one that is sustainable and inclusive of all, we realized that it’s time to embrace our roots. In Aapoorti 2016, we look forward to learn from them who we have left behind, or so we thought. We seek to borrow the wisdom of the ‘ancients’, as we attempt to create a better future. We bring forth the Telluric Tales, where we explore various indigenous knowledge base, practices and resource management mechanisms, because, we believe ,our past that holds the key to the various conundrums we are faced with in the present. We , at Aapoorti, this year, sought to break the narrow confines of the general notion about economic science and endeavour to shed lights on its diverse aspect and acknowledge the myriad players across it’s spectrum, from the immigrants to the environment.We also had the privilege of interviewing eminent economists like Jean Dreze, Rakesh Mohan and Jayati Ghosh, and we are sure their words would be as enlightening to you as they were to us.
Happy Reading!
Aapoorti 2015
E-book : Aapoorti 2015
As winds of change sweep the world, we bring to you the latest edition of Aapoorti with the theme: Transitus- The Way Forward. We celebrate dynamism and change with articles from The Editor’s Desk centred on innovations in the recent past that have challenged orthodox economics like those of Piketty, Mazzucato, Mark Blyth and others. Interviews with eminent economists like Dr. Pulapre Balakrishnan and Dr. Subir Gokarn are engaging and enlightening. Recognising the need for a platform for undergraduates to present their research papers, we have introduced an exclusive Research Section along with the usual sections- Revelations, Thinking Seeds etc.
Happy Reading!
Aapoorti 2014
E-book : Aapoorti 2014 Presenting Aapoorti 2014. Check out our fourth edition, with many new sections like Vishleshan, Alumni Lecture Series, Revelations and Fun Arcade. We have also continued with Buzzwords of the Year, which focuses on the rupee crash of 2013. The Editors’ Desk this time brings you an analysis of various trade-offs, while Thinking Seeds elaborates on basic economic concepts. Also read interviews by Lord Meghnad Desai, Dr Rajat Kathuria and Dr E Somanathan..
Aapoorti 2013
E- book : Aapoorti 2013
Arthashastra, The Economics Society of Miranda House, brings to you Aapoorti- 2013, the third edition of the annual Economics journal of Miranda House. This edition gives the readers a peek into a wide range of economic issues, with two entirely new sections- World Affairs & Thinking Seeds. Apart from a detailed and unconventional analysis of commodity taxes and a focus on environmental economics, we have included interviews with two eminent economists- Dr. C. Rangarajan & Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia.
Aapoorti 2012
E-book – Aapoorti 2012 Aapoorti is an initiative of economics undergraduates at Miranda to bring together ideas and opinions regarding various facets of economic life. Aapoorti, is the Hindi word for ‘meeting wants’ and hence aptly captures the etymology of economics (matching supply with demand) and the root of political policies. In the same spirit, we try to create a common platform for different opinions to interact in a distinct enclave. There is no dearth of opinions and view points, especially when it comes to Economics, a subject with wide implications. It spans out a limitless horizon of learning, of which Aapoorti is only a minuscule part.
Arthashastra 