06 | March | 2025 | Mostly Economics

Archive for March 6th, 2025

Psychology in India: A Critical Perspective on its Growing Popularity in Universities

March 6, 2025

I have often wondered at this question: Why has psychology become popular in Indian Universities? It has been a sudden surge especially after the pandemic.

Prof Rachana Johri of BML Munjal University in this TheIndiaForum article explores reasons for the rise:

The search for oneself in these neoliberal times, a job market for psychologists, and the emergence of an “Indian psychology” explain the current popularity of this academic discipline in India. What psychologists should work for is a “psychology for India” rather than an “Indian psychology”.

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Why is land so costly in India?

March 6, 2025

Prof Gurbachan Singh discusses high costs of land in India which eventually leads to high prices of real estate.

Conventional wisdom is that the high price of land in India is mainly due to factors like scarcity of land, population size, black money, urbanisation, nuclear families, high stamp duty, vacant properties, actions of developers and various intermediaries, and the Land Acquisition Act, 2013 (the 2013 Act). This paper takes a different view. High price of land is mainly due to a broadly defined variant of the license-permit-quota (LPQ) Raj in real estate development in urban India. The main policy solution is to phase out such LPQ Raj in urban India. This can, in turn, make it less difficult to amend the pricing provisions in the 2013 Act. Other factors are, in any case, aggravating factors rather than causal factors. Appropriate public policy here is important not just for affordable real estate but for the economy more generally.

Puliyabaazi, the iconic Hindi podcast has an epsiode with Prof Singh where he discusses the paper in details.