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The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) is to host the Infosys Prize lecture on gender equality titled, ‘Missing Girls’, on December 15 (Friday), 2017, between 4.30 pm and 5.30 pm, at the IIMB auditorium.
The talk will be delivered by Professor Kaivan Munshi, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge, UK. Prof Kaivin Munshi’s lecture is being hosted by IIMB’s Research and Publications Office along with the Centre for Public Policy led by Professors Jishnu Hazra, Rupa Chanda and Arnab Mukherji, faculty at IIMB.
The talk is part of the Infosys Prize Lecture series. This award of the Infosys Science Foundation is given annually to honour outstanding achievements of contemporary researchers and scientists across six categories: Engineering and Computer Sciences, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences, each carrying a prize of a gold medal, a citation and a purse of Rs 65 lakh.
The award intends to celebrate success in research and stand as a marker of excellence in these fields. A jury, comprising eminent leaders in each of these fields, evaluates the achievements of the nominees against the standards of international research, placing the winners on par with the finest researchers in the world.
The Infosys Prize 2016 for Social Sciences (Economics) was awarded to Dr. Kaivan Munshi in recognition of his remarkably deep analysis of the multifaceted role of communities, such as ethnic groups and castes, in the process of economic development.
Sex selection through female foeticide, infanticide, or neglect is an extreme manifestation of gender discrimination. Eminent economist and philosopher Professor Amartya Sen brought sex selection to public attention over 25 years ago when he famously claimed that 100 million women were ‘missing’ in Asia. India has made tremendous economic progress since then, and we would expect this progress to be accompanied by greater gender equality. However, sex selection has intensified over time and spread throughout the country.
Professor Munshi's research provides an explanation for this disturbing phenomenon, which is based on the structure of the caste-based marriage institution in India and its interaction with economic development. The empirical evidence, based on new data, indicates that sex selection is not confined to a few castes (jatis) or a few districts, as commonly believed, but may be a more pervasive phenomenon among relatively wealthy households of all castes, with accompanying implications for the design of optimal policy.
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