A four-day conference on development issues is starting on Saturday, December 7 at Lakeshore Hotel in Gulshan, Dhaka. Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) is going to organize the Annual BIDS Conference on Development (ABCD) 2024 under the theme ‘Equality, Opportunity, Freedom and Self Dignity’.
The conference will serve as a medium to present the research work of eminent researchers of national and international level to bring contemporary issues and debates on development to a wider audience.
A total of 30 research papers, 12 public lectures and two keynote addresses will be presented in the conference in 12 academic sessions. The topics discussed in the session are mainly economic and social restructuring, poverty, inflation, education, health, agriculture, food security, energy, environment, urbanization, child marriage and other development related issues.
Planning and Education Adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud will be present as the chief guest in the inaugural session of the conference. He will deliver a special address at the conference titled ‘Equality’.
In the conference, Chairman of Center for Policy Dialogue Rehman Sobhan will deliver a public lecture titled ‘Agenda for Economic and Social Reform’. Also BIDS Professorial Fellow M. A. ‘Corporate Agriculture’ by Sattar Mandal, ‘Structural Transformation and its Effect on Growth and Poverty’ by IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Jessica Leit, former Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and Professor Yasuyuki Sawada of the University of Tokyo ‘Building Resilience Among the Poor: Lessons from the Field’ ‘- including nine more public Lectures will be presented.
On the 1st and 3rd day will be held of the conference, Cornell University T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, Economics Professor Ravi Kanbur’s ‘Equality and Opportunity’ and Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and Economics Department Professor Stefan Derkon’s keynote speech titled ‘Can Bangladesh Renew Its Elite Bergen for Development?’.
The conference will have several academic sessions. BIDS will have academic sessions on technology, supply chain and employment, education and health, energy, environment, agriculture and land use. In addition, there will be a session on the World Bank’s analysis of poverty in Bangladesh based on the Food Income-Expenditure Survey-2022, IFPRI’s research on agriculture and food security, research methods on poverty and other issues at the University of Bath, UK.