Kunal Sen to deliver 17th Dr V. K. R. V. Rao Memorial Lecture

Kunal Sen, Director of UNU-WIDER, will deliver the 17^th Dr V. K. R. V. Rao Memorial Lecture on 20 January 2021 on occasion of Founders’ Day at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) in Bangalore, India. The distinguished lecture series, organized in memory of the institute’s founder Professor V. K. R. V. Rao, sets out to address the emerging issues and realities in the contemporary economy and society of India.

Professor Sen’s presentation ‘Finance, gender, and entrepreneurship: India’s informal sector firms’ will share insights on the role played by financial inclusion in entrepreneurship in India’s informal economy, drawing on the recent study carried out with Ira N. Gang and Rajesh Raj Natarajan under UNU-WIDER’s Transforming informal work and livelihoods project.

Held online, the lecture will be attended by the faculty, students, staff of ISEC, and selected invitees from Bangalore University and other participants from Bangalore connected with ISEC as Board of Governors members and life members. 

Professor Sen is the 2020-22 awardee of the prestigious V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professorship, which is awarded by ISEC to scholars of international eminence and is one of India’s most distinguished visiting chairs.

ISEC, established in 1972, is a national centre of excellence specializing in interdisciplinary research and training in social sciences and analyses of critical issues affecting the transformation of economy, polity, and society.