UNESCO Event : Pr. Jayati Ghosh Economist interviewed by Dr. Gustavo Merino, UNESCO director

Dear Jayati, thank you for being here at UNESCO to deliver the Albert Hirschman Lectures, the second edition. We're very happy to have you here. And as you know, this is organized by the Management of Social Transformations Program, the MOST program of UNESCO. And you've been long thinking of the need to rethink economic paradigms and development, and that is development research and practice, and that's something that's very close to MOST. Can you tell us why it's important, what we should be looking at? I know it's a big question, but—

It's a big question, but it is so important because in fact, if we ignore this structural transformation that you are now so concerned with, we lose out completely in terms of actual development. If you look at successful development experiences of the past half century, they have all actually involved significant structural transformation of different kinds. And we cannot now focus on very micro initiatives and thinking only about fixing a little problem there or addressing some poor people somewhere else. We have to be thinking bigger. And it's important to think bigger because we've been through 3 decades of ravaging the idea of state-led transformations. And now we have to bring that back. We have to think about how a state that is accountable to its people will create the conditions for equitable growth, for sustainable expansion, for an economy that is in harmony with society and the planet and nature. And that cannot happen if we just rely on markets or enable private capital to just do what it wants.

Indeed, thank you very much. I fully agree. There's a lot of work. Thank you very much, Aditi.

You're most welcome.