Economics & Politics

The Department of Economics & Politics began its journey as a separate department in 1953 under the Siksha-Bhavana (Institute of Science). Later it came under the Vidya Bhavana (Institute of Social Sciences) and the first batch of postgraduate students came out in 1958 and the first PhD was awarded in 1969. Currently the Department is placed in the building ‘Vidya-Bhavana Angana’. The Department offers UG, PG, MPhil and PhD courses, under the guidance of eminent professors. From the very outset, the Department focused on both theoretical and empirical research in the areas of agriculture and rural development, macroeconomics, international trade, industrial organization, growth economics, political economy, environment-resource economics, public economics & policies, economics of corruption and so on. Much of this research has been carried out in collaboration with the well-known Indian and international economists, as well as with other departments/centres of Visva-Bharati (like the AgroEconomic Research Centre, Santiniketan and Amiya Kumar Dasgupta Centre of Planning and Development, Santiniketan) and has won recognition in India and broad. Faculty members have also obtained fellowships offered by government and non-government agencies for undertaking research in foreign universities and institutions. They have also taught and worked in well-known national and international institutions and published widely in reputed journals in India and abroad. Students who have passed out of the Department are placed in different prestigious national and international institutions. The UGC awarded the Department, financial assistance at the level of DRS-I for five years from 1.4.2009 to 31.03.2014 under the Special Assistance Programme (SAP). Given the success of DRS–I, the Department was sanctioned more than 1 crore rupees under DRS–II which was successfully run from April 2015 to March 2020. Several luminaries in the field of Economics visited us in different programmes like the research methodology workshop, international and national seminars and conferences, research scholars’ and students’ workshops.