Background

Taking the opportunity of the visit by Michel Walton, Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and former Adviser for poverty and human development in Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Bank, the World Bank Tokyo Office will organize a public seminar "Can a social democratic resolution resolve issues of inequality and incentives in India?" featuring his presentation to discuss social democracy in India.

The speaker's theme stems from the recognition that social democracy has been most successful, politically, economically and socially, in Europe, and most of all in Scandinavia. These are relatively equal and, especially in the case of Scandinavia, homogeneous societies, at least until recent times. Does it make sense to consider a social democratic resolution for India that is both much poorer, more unequal, more heterogeneous and emerging into globalized capitalism at a much later stage than the European countries?