IIM Indore’s Special Interest Group organised a Workshop on Development Strategies for Malwa region at the Institute on Sunday, April 25, 2015.
The workshop started with a brief discussion on some basic statistics about the Malwa region and the mandate and activities of the Special Interest Group (SIG) by Professor Siddhartha Rastogi and Professor Joyshankar Bhattacharya, Faculty members, IIM Indore.
The first session of the day was conducted by Professor Arnab Mukherjee, Faculty, IIM Bangalore, who shared his thoughts on sub-national development strategies. He started his talk with a discussion on regional divergence through examples like Nogales, Bangalore, Chaco phenomenon and Bihar. Bihar, as an example, was discussed in ample detail with respect to its transition from a glorious past to its downfall and then its slow resurrection. It has lagged behind due to historic under capacity and an indifferent public policy by the past governments. Policies like Permanent settlements, Freight Equalisation and Designed Governance Failure contributed to Bihar lagging behind other states in socio-economic development. These factors pointed out to the importance of the role of the state in regional growth and prosperity. The session closed by discussing the relevance of the lessons learned from other states for Malwa region and potential themes for research in the region.