The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, and Taalasamudaya is organising a public lecture on “Caste, Reservation and Social Mobility in India: 1857-2017” by Dr Tamoghna Halder on 03 September 2026 from 4:15 PM to 5:30 PM in the Conference Hall, Ground Floor Training Centre, NLSIU.

About the Lecture

Title: Caste, Reservation and Social Mobility in India: 1857 – 2017
Introducing a novel data set on graduates from Bengal (India) for the period 1857-2017, I show that social mobility in India continues to be low at the level of caste groups. By simulating counterfactual estimates, I show that perfect compliance to reservation policy could have doubled the mobility for the marginalised caste groups. In contrast, persistence of upper castes among elites remains unperturbed despite the demographic shocks caused by the Partition of India (1947). Contrary to the dominant wisdom, I show that caste-based

Profile of Speaker

Dr Tamoghna Halder is an applied economist whose research examines how historical institutions, both formal and informal, have persistent and long-term effects on inequality, human capital accumulation, growth, development, and diversity. His doctoral research includes the use of archived graduation records of students from elite universities to trace patterns of group-level social mobility across different caste and religious groups in India over the past 150 years. His research involves the analysis of economic information from historical texts and institutional records. His research interests span Economic History, Labour Economics, Development Economics, and Political Economy.

Dr Halder has taught Economics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including the course “How to Teach Economics” for PhD students at the University of California, Davis. He currently teaches Intermediate Microeconomics at the undergraduate level and Economics of Identity at the postgraduate level at Azim Premji University. He is also a regular contributor of opinion articles to Al Jazeera.