The first time I heard of YESM, a scant few weeks into my first semester, it appeared as one of those mysterious rites of passage, which however oft discussed need to be experienced to be truly understood. In my naïveté, I had somewhat expected a repeat of the classroom experience, albeit with some familiar and several unfamiliar instructors on a subject which despite being a common enough topic of discussion, especially in Bengali addas, was not one I’d ever considered in any depth (the theme that year had been “Rethinking Capitalism”). What I found instead was an outpouring of different opinions, an exchange of ideas, a sharing of contrasting perspectives and at the end of those two days I walked away with an awed understanding of exactly how pertinent an issue I had blithely ignored for so long, and how important it was to deliberate on such issues for the sake of both our academic understanding and personal decisions. At the end of two and a half years spent in the department and two editions of this event seen, I daresay I understand YESM, its purpose and significance, a whole lot better.
The purpose of YESM, as I now understand it, is to try and explore as many facets of an issue as possible, from various perspectives and allow not just seasoned academics to voice their opinions, but provide the students, the budding economists, with a platform to bridge the gap between textbooks and the beyond, to form their own judgements and opinions about the great wide world. Thus it follows that while deciding the theme, the first consideration is relevance.
These are interesting times, poised as we are on the brink of a possible change… On one hand a government battling a slowing growth by curbing current account deficit through subsi...
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...wth with firm policies and a take-no-prisoners attitude the answer, or is a more inclusive approach through social sector reforms the need of the hour?
Is there a route to growth that would not leave in its wake a certain class of society to wallow in their misery?
How much worse will things get before they finally look up and we attain that Holy Grail which is ‘development’?
These are pertinent problems that need to be brought out from where they lurk at the back of our minds and thrashed out in the light of day.
I would personally consider YESM 2014 a success if it manages to get all those who attend the meet to at least give these issues a thought, for as Meister Eckhart said
“What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action”.
Works Cited
Global HDR 2013, UNDP
Economic Survey 2012-13, Ministry of Finance, Government of India