Featured Conference:
Keynote Address: Kemal Dervis, The Administrator, UNDP
March 27-28, 2008 @ The New School
The stage is set for India and China to be major players in the global political economy of this century, having posting record growth rates for the past five years. Yet, each faces major social and economic challenges. Both countries are coming face-to-face with growing social unrest. Their leaders and residents face the dual challenges of extensive poverty and growing worries about rising energy needs in a world market dictated by a dwindling oil supply.
China’s growth is creating massive disparities between its urban and rural sectors, resulting in protests against state authority and restless migrant populations. Residents face a steady degradation of public health due to runaway industrial growth, while capitalists begin to chafe against the state’s tight control of the market. India’s growth and the interests that champion massive liberalization of the economy and unfettered foreign investment are increasingly challenged by farmer suicides, violence against minorities, the rise of judicial activism and an active, vocal civil society.
The India China Institute at The New School, now in its third year of convening fellowships, public debates and trilateral research collaborations between experts in India, China and the United States, is ideally placed to host this major conference on “Prosperity and Inequality: Debates in India and China”.
Drawing on two cohorts of our own fellows from all three counties, as well as a remarkable range of experts who have been researching issues of urbanization, globalization and growth in India and China, this Conference will determine a benchmark assessment of Chinese and Indian urbanization and wealth-formation, of the social and political risks associated with skyrocketing growth in two massive agrarian societies, of alternative designs for future development in each society and of the search, in both societies, for a “third way” of development that combines the virtues of socialism and capitalism without sacrificing the virtues of democracy and grassroots inclusion.
Detailed Coverage of our Prosperity and Inequality Conference
Past Conferences:
June 16, 2007
Beijing, China
Following the one-week India China Fellowship Program residency in China, ICI hosted an international conference at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The Vice Mayor of Beijing, Gang Chen, delivered the keynote address. Additional remarks were made by New School Provost Benjamin Lee, Central Academy of Fine Arts President Gongkai Pan and India's Ambassador to China Nirupama Rao. The conference, attended by over 150 scholars, practitioners, and students, tackled three urgent questions:
1.) How do we plan and manage the growth of cities?
2.) How do we plan for the unplanned and foster citizen participation?
3.) How do we account for technology and innovation in planning the future of cities?
This was the third conference organize as a capstone event at the end of an ICFP residency. It was successfully concluded with enthusiastic questions and comments from the audience.
April 28-29, 2006
New York, NY
The rapid economic emergence of India and China has significantly altered the landscape and context of cities in a world of migration. The scale and urgency of globalization and urbanization in India and China are unprecedented and present significant socio-economic challenges for these two countries and across the globe. "Cities in a World of Migration: India and China in Global Perspective" will provide a forum for insight into the multiple dimensions of these changes - social, economic and environmental - and the opportunities and challenges of ubanization and globalization in the 21st century.
For more Info 212.229.6812 or email indiachina@newschool.edu