Patiala, October 31-‘To stop the process of exclusion and discrimination, we need to create a conducive climate for socio-economic environment with human values as part and parcel of economics of human resource development in India. Economics is a necessary subject for everyone as consumer, producer, distributor and trader to learn and comprehend. It is really a queen of social sciences as called by Noble Laureate Paul Samuelson but has reduced its stature because of the human behaviour on which it is based.
We have to accept that we adopt trial-and-error policy experiments in India and call it academic research which brings bad name to the subject. As economics has lost academic market share, it has also faced, like other declining industries, escalating complaints about the quality of its product–its core theory and how it is taught. The problems appear to be, in economists terms, both a deterioration of human capital and a technology increasingly mismatched to its labor force and customer demands.’ opined Dr. M. M. Goel, Professor of Economics &Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kurukshetra University , Kurukshetra. He was addressing the participants of the annual conference of the Indian Association of Social Science Institutions at Punjabi University Patiala on Oct.31. His topic was ‘Challenges and Relevance of Economics as Queen of Social Sciences in Present Scenario’. Lt. Gen. (Dr.) DDS Sandhu, Vice- Chancellor deputed Professor Goel to attend the said conference on his behalf.
The present economic crisis compelled us to believe that economics is not sufficient to solve all the problems of the people. As economists, we are in danger of failing to become even what Keynes thought the best we could hope for, the “dentists” of social science–competent technicians in a distant but better world,said Professor Goel while chairing a technical session in the conference.
To make economics sufficient, we have to look around and avoid plagiarism (the intellectual theft) in our research endeavors which is a moral and ethical offence rather than a legal one. Data on socio -economic indicators with all its limitations are essentially required for doing research in social sciences which are useful for making projections for perspective development planning, said Professor Goel .