Convenor’s view:
“Yesterday is but today’s memory, tomorrow is today’s, dream”
Since the last three years the YESM(Young Economist Students’ meet) , one of the brightest students forum of the department of Economics, Jadavpur University has been organizing the seminar followed by a varied discussion on a current day polemic issue. Its motive is to provide a common platform to the budding intellects as well as the dignified citizens of the society, to put forward their respective views, ideas and come up with their rational and logical arguments based on the theme. As India is undergoing a rapid volatile nature of educational reformation, where it is yet to assume a specific shape, and viewing the total reshuffling of the educational structure of India by our education minister ‘Mr. Kapil Sibal’ we have decided to come up with a theme of “ Investment for the future: Educational Development”. It rather worked as a boon in disguise, helping us select our theme.
As development is the core question of economics, Human Development Index, HDI brought forward by Dr. Amartya Sen and “Sen’s capability approach” highlights the increase in human capability, standard of living etc. The core concern of human development is education. According to ‘Lord Brougham’ “Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive, easy to govern but impossible to enslave”. So education is one of the most primary concern in the inception of the planning era. Prior to the independence (1% of the GDP was allocated for education sector). By the dawn of 1991, the new economic policies were introduced. Concerned with scarce public fund more emphasis was laid upon the efficient utilization of fund subject to the government fiscal stringencies. Investment in education was increased to around 4% from 1% , that too places India in the 81st position according to the global census. The DISE (Directorate of information system on education) has come up with another...