Ecolore '21

Report on Ecolore ’21

On February 9, 2021, ECOLORE, an annual inter-collegiate fest, was organized by the department of Economics. Since its inception in 2014, ECOLORE has been a well-cherished hologram of an initiative of the Economics department. It takes an effort to spur critical thinking among students, so that they can reflect upon and analyze some glaring issues emerging in the broader socio-economic and political fabric of the contemporary world. Accordingly, this year, which is irrevocably bearing the trail of COVID-19 Pandemic, one most formidable and deadly onslaught on mankind of the memorable time, ECOLORE finds its pretext on ‘Digital Revolution and the Post-Pandemic World: Challenges and Prospects’. Thus, the theme of this year’s ECOLORE revolves primarily around the economic implications of the very extant and vibrant digital revolution particularly in the emergent market economies like India, as it thrived in the worldwide economic and social mayhem hurled upon by the ongoing pandemic. The mode of conduct of this event has been obviously virtual, first time in the profile of ECOLORE. The program set in with an inaugural address by the Hon’ble Principal, Sr. (Dr.) Christine Coutinho, followed by a keynote address by Prof. Arijita Dutta, from University of Calcutta, whose erudite and nuanced reflections on ‘Digitalisation: A magic bullet in post-pandemic era?’ hot the right chord in terms of how advent of digital technology and its seemingly increasing spread across the commercial and social ecosystem would work towards placing the crisis-ravaged economy on a new and better normal. Now coming to main course of this program where, in the first phase two events were going simultaneously at two break-out rooms as created in Zoom platform, namely ‘Pitch the Plight’ (a paper-presentation event) and ‘Ace-Analyst’ (a case-study event), followed by the second phase featuring debating round, namely, ‘Words over Swords’. The motion was ‘Frugal Innovation or Juggad is the indispensable game-changer for less developing economies post-pandemic’ However, beside these, there was one offline event also. It was an essay writing competition (Track on Tract) with the topic ‘Digital Revolution and Post-Pandemic World: Prospects and Challenges’. Each event was judged by academicians with profound knowledge and expertise. Debate was judged by an eminent personality in the field of debate along with an academician. The moderator for debate was Ms. Devika Chirimar, an ex-student of the department, currently pursuing research at Georgetown University, USA. Ten colleges of Kolkata participated in different events of ECOLORE ’21. The programme ended with the valedictory session wherein the results were declared for all participating colleges in the events mentioned above. In the paper-presentation event, Loreto College bagged the first place, followed by The Heritage College, while in the case-study event it was Maulana Azad College notching the first position followed by Loreto College. In the debate, all three positions, namely, the best speaker for and the best speaker against the motion and the best team, went to Loreto College. Even for the essay-writing competition Sohini Chakraborty, 3rd Year student, of Loreto College grabbed the the first position jointly with Akash Dey from Maulana Azad College. All the events were highly appreciated by the judges. The programme was concluded with a formal Vote of Thanks by Soumili Basu, a 3rd year student of the department and a word of salutation by Dr. Mausumi Kar of Women’s Christian College who served as a judge for the event Track on Tract.