The 8th Indo-China Forum was held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, from October 16-20, as a collaborative effort by Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), China; International Management Institute Kolkata, Delhi and Bhubaneswar, India; and Institute for Social and Economic Change, Delhi. The conference theme was “China-India: Humanities, Economy and People’s Welfare”.
The inaugural programme was addressed by Prof Xiang Baoyun, President, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences. From the Indian side, the address was led by Prof Arindam Banik, Director, IMI Kolkata, who represented all three campuses of IMI. The conference was attended by over 80 participants from India and Japan, and 34 representatives of think-tanks across provincial China.
Dignitaries and participants at the 8th Indo-China Forum
Prof Banik delivered the keynote address on ‘Access to Skill, Migration and Decent Work: Key Dimensions of Exclusion in the State of Uttarakhand’. He underlined the high-quality evidence relating to issues of serious concern on wage inequality. He highlighted the counter-factual analysis, which reveals that there are winners and losers in all policies and that there is a substantial heterogeneity in policy effects between groups and within groups.
Researchers and scholars presented a total of 42 papers on topics ranging from population changes, development of intelligent manufacturing, urbanisation of China and India, and Indian culture and Chinese Taoism, and their relevance in the South-Asian economies.
The three campuses of IMI had signed an agreement in 2011 with SASS, Chengdu, China, to organise seminars, workshops and joint conferences. Over the years this has strengthened the people-to-people contact between the nations. Historically, the conferences have been happening every year, alternately at the Chinese and Indian campuses of the partner institutes.
Prof Xiang Baoyun, in his keynote address, mentioned the positive impact of such exchanges in refining the policy programmes of China and India. He particularly stressed that academic research has further strengthened the relationship between the two countries.