National Seminar on Changing Policy Regime and Sectoral Performance of India concluded

Amritsar, March 22 (Punjab Post Bureau)– A two-day UGC National Seminar on Changing Policy Regime and Sectoral Performance of India was concluded in Confernce Hall, Guru Nanak Bhawan of Guru Nanak Dev University. This seminar was organized by the Punjab School of Economics. A large number of students and scholars were participated.

            Prof. R.K. Sharma from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi delivered Valedictory address. Prof. Parminder Singh conducted the proceedings of Seminar, Prof. Kuldeep Kaur gave the concluding remarks and Prof. Paramjit Nanda, Head, Punjab School of Economics proposed vote of thanks to all delegates.

In his address, Prof. R.K.Sharma emphasized that there have been many studies concerning sectoral composition of GDP and workforce at national and international level. Scholars have looked into the changing sectoral shares looking at changes as have happened in the developed economies of the world. In the initial stage, there is predominance of the agricultural sector and as the development takes place the share of the agriculture declines and that of industry increases which helps the services sector also to grow. However, as the time moves, one finds the share of agriculture in income as well as employment declines. The share of industrial sector which is highly productive starts rising and service sector also starts expanding. However, in the current scenario, the share of agriculture sector in GDP has come down very fast but share of this setor in the workforce employed has declined slow. This sector’s share in the GDP which was around 52 percent in 1950-51 at 2004-05 prices and the share of labour force was to the tune of 73 percent. A characteristic of any backward economy. Their shares in income have come down to around 14 percent by 2012-13, whereas the share of workforce has declined to little less than 50 percent only. This has affected the relative per worker productivity vis-à-vis industry and services sector of the economy. This decline in the share of per worker productivity is the prime factor towards the agrarian crisis in the country. There are other causes for that but an important one is land. With population or workers increasing, not only per capita availability has declined but most of it is marginal holdings which have increased over the years and with fatigue of the technology, agricultural production especially food has stagnated or declined which is a cause of concern for the food security of the country.

During the seminar, about 65 papers were presented covering the various sectors relating to Indian Economy viz. agriculture, industry, service sector, social and physical infrastructure. The contributors were from Aligarh Muslim University, Jammu University, Panjab University, Chandigarh, Punjabi University, Patiala, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda and various colleges of Punjab etc. Majority of papers highlighted the positive and negative effects of changing policies on various sectors and suggested possible suitable solutions.