The unCommon In Common Sense

Join us for a lecture that begins with a simple riddle, and ends by unsettling one of our deepest reflexes.

About the Lecture

When a plane crashes, we seldom blame aeronautical engineers. When a medicine fails someone we know, we seldom blame doctors as a profession. When social media wreaks havoc, we rarely summon technologists to account for every social consequence.

And yet there is one group we blame for almost everything.

When markets fail. When prices rise. When growth slows. When inequality deepens. When policy backfires. You turn to them, often with accusation, sometimes with expectation, and demand that they fix what may not even be theirs to fix.

Who are they? Blending humour, policy experience, and intellectual provocation, the session invites us to look at what we casually call “common sense” and to discover what is deeply uncommon about it.

About the Speaker

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University in 1983. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute the same year and became a full professor in 1991. He founded the India Development Foundation in 2003 and currently serves as its Managing Trustee and Research Director.

Over the course of his career, he has helped establish major academic institutions, including the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shiv Nadar University, the Indian School of Public Policy, and the School of Liberal Studies at UPES. Internationally, he has held the Chair Professorship of Emerging Market Finance at the University of Groningen and continues as Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 2008, during the global financial crisis, he was appointed Advisor to the Finance Minister of India. He has served on advisory councils for the World Bank, the Competition Commission of India, and several global academic institutions. His work has shaped major policy reforms in India, including steel decontrol and energy pricing reforms.

A widely published scholar with numerous books and articles in economics and finance, his current research spans policy, finance, and law — informed by decades of engagement at the intersection of academia, government, and industry.

About unLecture

unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from college who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an otherwise ordinary evening into a conversation you may think about long after it ends.