DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
FRIDAY SEMINAR
Speaker: Prof. Ravi Bhandari
Visiting Chair, Planning Commission, University of Mysore | Professor of Eminence, MSRUAS
Date & Time: 07th Nov 2025 [Friday]:
03:30 PM
Venue: SEMINAR HALL [Management Studies]
Abstract:
By providing an easy and elegant “answer” to the complex process of development, albeit a wrong one, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson’s rise to prominence (2024) has lent support to a very particular understanding of development that is now prevalent in the discipline. It also provided an easy, unfalsifiable, and arguably racist narrative of underdevelopment, that reinforces Eurocentrism and a colonial world view. The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to AJR once again reveals the insular nature of the discipline, and its resistance to fundamental change and improvement, apart from very narrow changes in methodology. Likewise, the more recent Nobels in 2025 is also an example of the abuse of economics by Mathematically Sanitizing Schumpeter’s ‘Creative Destruction’ in order to politically support Free Market Capitalism. The 2025 laureates didn’t just study creative destruction; they completed a century-long project to drain Marx’s explosive critique of its revolutionary content, repackaging systemic violence of capitalism’s dynamism as a mathematical inevitability. Like Marx who famously said ‘I am not a ‘Marxist’ Schumpeter too if alive today would say ‘I am not a Schumpeterian.’
Brief Bio:
Professor Ravi Bhandari is a leading scholar in development economics and economic thought, with a uniquely wide range of expertise in international finance, geopolitics, sociology, and economic anthropology. He has taught worldwide including the Universities of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai, and published extensively in top journals. Professionally, he has advised global international development agencies like USAID, UNDP, and the World Bank as a senior economic consultant. A Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, his work focuses on agrarian crises and land inequality in South Asia within a global framework. He currently holds the title of Visiting Chair of the Planning Commission, State of Karnataka, and is Professor of Eminence in the Faculty of Management and Commerce at M.S. Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences. The paper for this talk will be posted on his website, simply his namesake www.ravibhandari.com if you have further interest or want to connect.
ALL ARE WELCOME