In 1999, I was one of five graduate students who took a course with two leading heterodox economists, Professors Madhura Swaminathan and V.K. Ramachandran at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development and Research (IGIDR), Goregaun, India. The course was a once-off event that was not replicated. In this sub-series of heterodox approaches, Land and Labor in Rural India, the four students discuss the importance of the course to their academic research and how the issues they were working on have evolved over 25 years. In this first episode, I speak with one of the students now a professor of economics at the Indian Institute for Technology (IIT), New Delhi with a focus on rural employment.
Jayan Jose Thomas is a Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, where he has been employed since July 2010. His research deals with various issues related to development, mainly labor, industrialization, and the macroeconomy. He teaches courses on macroeconomics, Indian economic development, international economics, and planning and development. Jayan is a former Member of the Kerala State Planning Board. While India has been the primary focus of his research, Jayan has been maintaining a lively academic interest in China and East Asia as well. He has worked extensively using Indian and international data sources, conducted field studies, and also worked with archival material. His research papers have appeared in World Development, Development and Change and Economic and Political Weekly journals. He contributes regularly to media outlets, including the Hindu, Frontline , and Livemint, and his research has been cited in the Government of India’s Economic Survey, BBC, and the New York Times. His previous academic positions were at the National University of Singapore, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, Madras School of Economics, and Central University of Kerala. He has worked on research projects for the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). He received his B. Tech in Industrial Engineering from Kerala University and Ph.D. in Development Economics from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.
Personal website: https://jayanjthomas.wordpress.com/
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