About Mind Over Matter (Economics Society) of Aryabhatta College
Ever since its inception, the subject of Economics has received a reputation of “The Dismal Science” and is associated with crunching numbers which seems to be something that can only be analysed by specialists. But that is only half the story. We strive to bring out the true beauty of the subject and make it easy to understand for a layman. We are “Mind Over Matter”- the Economics society of Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi and are the torch bearers of the Economics department.
Established in 2015, we are a group of highly motivated students; who have an affinity towards Economics; aim to create an environment that is conducive, stimulating and absorbing for like-minded students of our college. Our society aims to bridge the gap between textbook theories and their applications to solve real-world problems. Our vision is to enhance the financial and economic literacy of the youth. We strive to achieve this through various activities holding webinars with aficionados in the economic sphere. That’s us, a group which provides an abundance of exposure and an unforgettable learning experience. We hope to provide a stimulating environment to our peers and have been conducting our annual festival and publishing our annual magazine every year since its inception. In the academic year 2021-22 our annual festival Ecodox 3.0, has been organized learning sessions and writing competition, and published our annual magazine VIEWPOINT 4.0, carving the way for the same.
Our objective has always been to foster social and intellectual activity among students and in particular, to develop in them an interest in the study of Economics. With a number of euphoric academic events concerning economics and exciting filler events, we have come a long way from where we started as a department. The annual economic festival of the Mind over Matter is designed to spread economic literacy across the students of various domains. The society also hosts webinars and seminars and also interviews of eminent persons on their life experiences in continuation with the annual fest to give exposure about different domains to the students.
EVENTS
Webinar held on the topic: Changing nature of Employment and Work in India
Speaker: Prof. Vinoj Abraham
Date: 5th October 2021
Audience: 100+ (around 60)N.M.Singh
‘Mind over Matter’ of the Economics Department, Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, I am pleased to invite you to deliver a webinar on “Changing Nature of Employment and Work in India” that will be held on 5th October 2021 at 3 pm. It is an important constituting part of the webinar series organised by the Economics Society.
Report of the webinar held on 5th October, 2021
The Economics Society- ‘Mind Over Matter’, organised its first webinar of the academic session 2021-22 on Tuesday 5th October, 2021 from 6 pm to 8 pm through Google meet. Prof. Vinoj Abraham, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala spoke on the topic “Changing Nature of Employment and Work in India”. The webinar was attended by more than 60 students and faculty members from different colleges of the Delhi University.
Webinar on the topic : Role Of Digitalization in Global Economic Growth
Speaker: Dr. Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan
Date: 22nd January 2022
Audience: 150+
A REPORT ON WEBINAR
Role of Digitalization in the Revival of Global Economic Growth On 22nd January 2022 at 10:30 am
Facebook live: https://www.facebook.com/events/257634429840920/
Written By Ayush Srivastava & Vishal Shisodia
An insightful Webinar on the topic “Role of Digitalization in Global Economic Growth Program” was organized by ‘Mind Over Matters’, the Economics Society of Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, in the esteemed presence of the invited speaker Dr. Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan, Head, Trade and Commerce, NITI Aayog, Government of India, Dr. Pamela Anwar, the acting Principal, Aryabhatta College, Shri N.M.Singh, the event Convenor, and Dr. Deepika Goel, the Seminar Coordinator on 22nd January 2022 at 10:30 am on the Google meet platform and Facebook live. Dr. Gopalakrishnan began with the presentation by mentioning what is happening due to the covid-19 outbreak, the actions, the impact of economic behavior, and how these actions affect the economy in terms of trade, supply, demand, and, the policy response by lower tourism arrivals, goods trade, production disruptions, transport restrictions, and lower consumption and investment growth respectively. He explained the GDP, employment, and the macroeconomic stimulus impact with respect to the deviation from the world without COVID19. He articulated the policy implications that policymakers need to avoid by any means which in the long containment scenario is large, and promoting income and employment is essential to avoid possible long-term economic scarring. He suggested some of the measures like; Reviewing time-bound restrictions, Keeping the transport and supply chain open, and, promoting strong income and employment protection is also essential. He discussed how digital platform revenues could drive growth in Asia is the center of digital platform competition as the number of users in Asia are large and growing. Also, the digital platform penetration in Asia varies. He went on to elaborate the data and assumptions as we first separate the digital sector from the communication services sector in GTAP, based on the data on the size of all digital services & output. He also mentioned that we assume a digital sector output growth annually that leads to a 20% expansion, and a TFP
growth of 1% both relative to the baseline by 2025. Applications of digital transformation and related economic model in such a pandemic situation and tools and framework to resolve the cracks was the principal topic of the webinar. It was stressed more on the digital transformation as well as on the adaption of changing economic scenarios. Questions and interaction session was held at the end of the Webinar, Dr. Gopalakrishnan took the time to answer all the questions, every point was discussed in detail. The Webinar was ended by a vote of thanks given by Shri N.M.Singh.
The teacher in charge of the department thanked the speaker On behalf of students and faculty members of the Economics Department and entire administration at Aryabhatta College, for the talk on “Role of Digitalisation in the Revival of Global Economic Growth” held on Saturday, 22nd January, 2022. He said that the talk was extremely informative, and was enjoyed thoroughly by everyone.
Further, the speaker was appreciated for taking out time from his busy schedule to share his talent and expertise with us. The seminar earned a huge positive response.
Webinar
Speaker – Syed: an entrepreneur
A webinar was organised by Mind Over Matters, the Economics Society of Aryabhatta College, Delhi University on 27 January. Syed Shabee Rahman, a 2019 batch alumnus of Economics (27 January 2022 Google Meet)
Department was invited as the speaker for the session. Syed is an entrepreneur and has completed his masters in developmental studies from Christ University, Bengaluru.
The session started with the words of wisdom by the convenor of the economics department, Prof. NM Singh Sir followed by Prof. Harish Dhawan Sir after which Syed began with his lecture remembering his days in Bengaluru when he started with his journey of entrepreneurship.
He briefed the students about how he entered into the industry of sustainable fashion and eventually ended up starting his own business. He then told the students how studying economics helped him doing so. Being an economics student not only helped him directly in starting up a business but also made him a more conscious person with better analytical skills helping him in decision making. He emphasised on how it had helped him to view the world from a different perspective and better allocate the resources. He informed the students about the various soft and hard skills which one should know along with its importance.
He educated the students about the fundamentals of starting a business. He explained how important it is to research well about the market and know about the audience one wants to target along with the competing firms. He also talked about the different challenges one faces while doing a business.
He concluded by talking about his offline college experience, his experience with the college professors and how it had made him the person he is today after which he answered some questions asked by students.
The session ended with the vote of thanks by Prof. NM Singh Sir.The session was quite insightful and helped the students to know about how a business works and the challenges one faces.
– By Triguna Jain
Webinar on the topic: Digital Economy in the Global Perspective
Speaker: Prof. K.V Bhanu Murty
Date: 14th February 2022
Audience: 100+
Prof. K.V. Bhanu Murthy, USME, East Delhi Campus, Delhi Technological University.
Prof. K.V. Bhanu Murthy is former Dean Faculty of Commerce & Head Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Prof. Murthy is a Ph.D. in Economics from Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics. His recent contributions are in the areas of Banking and finance, environmental economics, corporate governance in banks, international business social responsibility and business ethics. He has published three books (from international publishers), 20 chapters in International Books and Monographs. He has more than 140 publications in all, of which 40 are international; as well as 100 papers in international and national conferences. He has done two international and ten national projects, including a UKIREI project with Open University UK and Mc. Arthur Foundation, USA. He has 8 International and more than 25 National Best Paper Awards. He has produced 22 PhDs and 28 MPhils.
Social Science Research Network Library (SSRN) has rated sixteen of his papers in the TOP TEN LIST in the world, of which 8 are in the All Time Top Ten List. His overall ranking at SSRN (amongst 5, 42,000 economists, in the world) is at the 99.2 percentile.
He is National Coordinator for e-Content Development of UG Courses in Commerce and PI for e PG Pathshala and MOOCs in Commerce. Presently, Vice-Chairman for Centre for e- Learning & Teaching Learning Centre, SGTB Khalsa College, Delhi University.
The speaker highlighted how digitalization can help in the growth of the economy and open new avenues for the way ahead. The program ended with a vote of thanks by Dr. N M Singh.
Webinar (Fest) on the topic: Why Are Indian Farmers Poor?
Speaker: Dr Nilanjan Banik
Date: 25th February 2022
Audience: 150+
A REPORT ON WEBINAR
Why are Indian Farmers poor? On 25 th February, 2022 at 11:00 AM Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/bxi-cutr-veuYouTube Live: https://youtu.be/x96goXyduX8
By Rahul Sood & Muskan Kathuria
An insightful Webinar on the topic “Why are Indian Farmers poor?” was organized by ‘Mind Over Matters’, the Economics Society of Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, in the esteemed presence of the invited speaker Dr. Nilanjan Banik, Professor and Program Director at Mahindra University, Professor Manoj Sinha the Principal, Aryabhatta College, Shri N.M.Singh, the event Convenor, and Dr. Deepika Goel, the Seminar Coordinator on 25th February, 2022 at 11:00 am on the Google meet platform and YouTube live. Dr. Nilanjan Banik began the session by giving a basic introduction about the topic along with the required statistics. Before getting into a deeper discussion, he explained the importance of the aforementioned topic. He further elaborated on our extreme dependence on the agriculture sector, the low annual median wage of the farmers and also about possible interventions to the problem. He shared some crucial statistics from a study he did in Rajasthan for the Government of India. He further articulated on the topic by discussing the farmer’s limited access to land, farming equipment, cold storage/warehouse facilities, transport etc., he also shared appropriate data for the same in support of his point. Moving ahead, he thoroughly discussed possible solutions to the problem including, farm loan waivers, improving storage infrastructure, building e-mandis, etc., he also discussed the merits and demerits of each solution and explained how they would be of assistance to the farmers. Furthermore, he did benefit from cost analysis of aforementioned solutions and also gave his own opinion on the matter, stating that farm loan waivers don’t make economic sense and that economic rationale should prevail
over politics, he also said that improving infrastructure and building e-markets is a much better solution. Following this, Dr. Nilanjan provided the references for the content and then concluded his presentation which led to the start of the Q&A session in which he answered questions from the audience which included the students as well as the professors. The session was concluded by the convenor, Dr. NM Singh with a vote of thanks.
Webinar (Fest) on the Topic: Crime, Gender and Punishment
Speaker: Dr Nishith Prakash
Date: 25 th February 2022
Audience: 100+
Webinar (Fest) on the Topic: Economics of Indian Electoral Process
Speaker: Dr Ajit Ranade
Date: 26 th February 2022
Audience: 150+
Webinar on the topic Gender, crime and Punishment
Date: 25th feb 2022
No. of Registrations: 200+
A Report on Webinar Gender, crime and Punishment. By lavanya
An insightful webinar on the topic “Gender, crime and punishment” was organised by “Mind over Matters, the economies society of Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, in the highly valued presence of the invited speaker Dr. Nishith Prakash, Associate Professor of Economics in a joint position with the Department of Economics and the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, along with Prof. Manoj Sinha, the Principal of Aryabhatta College, Dr. N.M singh, the event convenor and Dr. Deepika Goel, the seminar coordinator, on 25 th February 2022 at 7:30 pm on the Google meet platform.
Dr Nishith Prakash began the presentation by mentioning how Gender based violence is a global social problem that cuts across boundaries of race, religion, cultures age, gender and economic wereth. Most. pervasive yet one of the least reported four of human rights violations ( 1 in 3 women experience some form of GBV).
Also, policies aimed at addressing Gender based violence has yield mined results due to the complex nature of the problem He explained the impact of an innovative at- scale-policy in India that expanded access to Women police stations on incidence of violence committed against women, proactive behaviour of women towards GBV, measures of crime deterrence and women’s labour supply. WPS are designated police stations that only deal with VAW and only employ female officers and is widely used in low- and middle-income countries for instance brasil, four, South Africa
Next to it, he mentioned that the first Woman Police station in the world was opened in 1973 in Kerala followed by the functioning of WPS and figures representing crime report by Туре and Growth of WPS in India and Distribution of WPS across cities in 2005 and 2013 respectively…
Further he discussed that bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) Reports on Policing Organisation provides the location of WPS across India and its year of roll out since 2005, but is incomplete. National Crime & Record Bureau (NCRB) publishes yearly data on reported crime by the Indian Penal Code for instance violence against women, non gender- based violence etc, and
Once the incident is occurred and reported, the police is required to register a First Information Report (FIR) which is then aggregated by each police station and reported to the SCRB and finally to NCRB.
Dr. Nishith Prakash went on to elaborate the positive and negative impacts of WPS and also mentioned that we find the presence of WPS leads to more reporting of VAW crime, and we believe that the impact on VAW is driven by reporting and not actual crime. It appears that WPS is effective in getting women to report crime, but at the same time ineffective in term of quality policing
Questions and interaction session was held at the end of the Webinar and our highly valued speaker took the time to answer all the questions, every point was made clear in detail leaving no doubts in the mind of the students. The Webinar was ended by a vote of thanks given by Dr. NM Singh and Dr. Deepika Goel.
A REPORT ON WEBINAR ECONOMICS OF INDIAN ELECTORAL PROCESS
Date : On 22 February 2022
By KANAN DHAMIJA
An intuitive Webinar on the topic ECONOMICS OF INDIAN ELECTORAL PROCESS was organized by ‘MIND OVER MATTER’, the economics society of Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi, in the esteemed presence of the invited speaker Dr. Ajit Ranade, Vice Chancellor, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Prof. B Mangalam, the acting principal, Aryabhatta College, Shri N.M. Singh, the event Convener, and Dr. Deepika Goel, the Seminar Coordinator on 26th February at 11:00 am on the Google Meet platform and
YouTube Livestream.
Dr. Ajit Ranade commenced the session by mentioning Elections held at various levels of the government start with the foremost and lowest tier being the Local Government substantially called gram panchayat or Zila Parishad and moving forward to the Municipal Corporation Department which are conducted by the State Election Commission and not by the Election Commission of India. Many states of India have instituted 1/3rd reservation for women which concludes to more than 1 million women who are participating in the elections. He briefly spoke of Election Commission of India as far as Maharashtra is concerned about conducting only 48 elections for electing the member of parliament that is LOK SABHA and 244 elections to elect the MLA OR VIDHAN SABHA. He then brought up the importance of economics of election process in terms of the Central Government wherein he specified that no money can be spent by the govt without the consent of the people which does not mean that each and every person will give their consent but a team of 543 authorized representatives that arrive at a concurrence regarding the budget of INDIA will.
Through a presentation, Dr. Ajit Ranade showed the major expenditure that is spent on the election process in the past 2 decades exhibiting them as the most expensive election process in the world which in 2019 was approximately 55000 crores. In another slide he articulated the estimate of the various expenditure heads in Lok Sabha 2019 polls wherein campaign and publicity held 35 percentage of the expenditure followed by voter’s directly and election commission with 25 and 20 percent respectively. Sir also informed us about the hike in the official expenditure limit of Lok Sabha from 70 lakhs to 95 lakhs and for Vidhan Sabha which has been spared by the election commission of India
Towards the end of the meet sir expressed his views on the allocation of sector wise budget and the need to allocate budget wisely and precisely according to the needs of the sectors and guided to Curb the spending on elections which will in turn reduce the wastage of government’s spending on unofficial expenditure and eventually curtail corruption.
Questions and interaction session was held at the end of the Webinar, Dr. Ajit Ranade took the time to answer all the questions, every point was discussed in detail. The Webinar was ended by a vote of thanks given by Dr. Deepika Goel.
FEST
Name Of Event: Chankya Neeti Date: 26th Feb 2022
No. of Registrations: 480+
FEST
Name Of Event: Trade-A-Way Date: 27th Feb 2022
No. of Registrations: 470+
FEST
Name Of Event: The Escapeurs – Unravel the Inner Sage Date: 27th Feb 2022
No. of Registrations: 250+
Webinar on the topic: Yoga: Benefits for Students
Speaker: Anisa S
Date: 6th March 2022
Audience: 100+
A Report on webinar Yoga : Benefits for the Students
In collaboration with NSS, Aryabhatta College
-By Jatin Jain
A very informative webinar on the topic “Yoga: Benefits for the Students” was organized by ‘Mind Over Matter’, the Economics Society of Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi in collaboration with ‘NSS Aryabhatta’, in the esteemed presence of the invited speaker Ms. Anita S, Acupuncture and Yoga Therapist, Onkar Açu Yoga, Dr. N. M. Singh, the event Convenor,
and Dr. Deepika Goel, the seminar coordinator on 6th march 2022 on google meet platform. Ms. Anisha started with explaining some of the major benefits of Acu Yoga and how its impacts the overall health of an individual. She then presented a module that she suggested should be done at morning and at night to reap the maximum benefits. She then helped explained students to find out some of the significant acupuncture points and how to stimulate them using breathing exercises.
With an aim to make the session even more inclusive, she threw light to some of the basis of yoga, starting form how to do ‘Pranayam’ perfectly thus to reap maximum benefits of it. She then initiated the discussion about some of the most effective stress relief yoga exercises and she explained how practising these will also act as a prevention of other diseases for which stress is a major cause. The session was concluded by the vote of thanks for Ms. Namita Singh Of NSS, Aryabhatta.
