Can economics be of the people, for the people and by the people?

Sound theories are essential as they provide stable base for policymaking, but the process is too long-drawn and takes away objectivity

Abhijeet Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer’s Nobel Prize for ‘randomised control trials’ or RCTs brought back fond memories of our Masters in Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. Professor P Venkatramaiah, who was teaching development economics and had done seminal work on input output economics, started with: “I don’t know what to teach you. My theories on development economics stand challenged.” He went on to teach us ‘game theory’ for which Nash, Selten and Harsanyi had won the Nobel Prize in 1994. A sidelight: He would prompt us to negotiate when we disagreed with our marks given in our