PRAGOTI

Report on Symposium: What Can We Learn From the Global Financial Crisis?

Subhanil Chowdhury

A symposium on “What Can We Learn From the Global Financial Crisis?” was organized in New Delhi on 17th November 2008 by Anveshan, Delhi Science Forum and the Economic Research Foundation. The Speaker Hall of the Constitution Club, which was the venue for the symposium, was filled to more than capacity. People from all walks of life including a large number of university students attended the programme.

The U.S. auto giants are an example of how things work in the age of unbridled corporate power. Of how the collapse of restraint on that power fractures economy and society. P.Sainath writes in The Hindu.

Pragoti editorial team's Subhanil Chowdhury delves into the cause of the layoffs in the Indian economy amidst the slowdown and argues for public expenditure and investment that will put purchasing power in the hands of the people as the way out. An earlier article on the same issue by the author can be found here . 

True, the daily miseries encountered by millions and millions of the poor in the country are indescribably grim. And yet, how does one ignore the reality currently unfolding in the stockyard of our stock markets, with scores of families getting ruined, persons engaged in stock-broking firms all of a sudden losing their jobs, a few desperate ones, who have seen their assets disappear in the course of a week’s hurricane, choosing to commit suicide? A sullen anger, mixed with a sense of fright on account of not knowing what is in store tomorrow, hangs in the air. In a large number of cases, those rendered paupers by the share-market devastation were more sinned against than sinning: they were led up the garden path and soon lost their bearing, prudence got juxtaposed with temptation; once they crossed the threshold, they did not know what had hit them. Writes Ashok Mitra in The Telegraph