Prof. Suryadevara Mahendra Dev has been elected as President of the
Indian Economic Association (IEA) for the next three years starting from
January 2018. Apart from having annual conferences, IEA will help in organising
conferences and seminars to improve the quality of teaching and research in
economics in colleges and universities.
Mahendra Dev, a noted agri-economist, has been elevated as
the Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees of the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI), Washington D.C., USA.
He is the second person from India after Isher Ahluwalia
(who became chairperson) to be appointed to a high position at the IFPRI in 42
years. Dev, who is at present Director & Vice-Chancellor of the Indira
Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) in Mumbai, will formally take
over the new responsibility in January 2018.
The 59-year-old Dev has made significant contributions in
agri development, poverty and public policy, food security, employment
guarantee schemes, farm and non-farm employment. He has been on the board of
IFPRI for the past four years.
The IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to
sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing
countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI has more than 600 employees working in
over 50 countries. It is a research centre of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership
engaged in agricultural research for development.
Reacting to the elevation, Dev told BusinessLine over
telephone that he will pursue the core goals of IFPRI and also focus on climate
change, which has a wide impact on agriculture. Interventions into tackling
malnuturition and providing food security in African, Latin America and the
South Asian nations would be another priority.
Dev hails from Tummapudi, a small village near Tenali in
Andhra Pradesh. After graduating from Loyola College, Vijayawada, he received
his PhD from the Delhi School of Economics and Post-doctoral from Yale
University. He was Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and
Prices, Ministry of Agriculture, and also Director of the Hyderabad-based
Centre for Economic & Social Studies.
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