| Pub. Date | : Apr, 2022 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Applied Economics |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJAE50422 |
| Author Name | : Interviewed by GRK Murty |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Economics |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 26 |
The literature on first-generation college students reveals that owing to the lack of agency and the social and cultural capital deemed necessary to be successful, they face many challenges and structural barriers on their path to higher education. But that had no bearing on a young student of class X, the son of a tenant farmer, called Kamaiah, who indeed was the first in the family to hope, dream, and aspire for higher education.
Driven by a strong determination to construct a life of his own, he requested the headmaster to let him join the stream of composite mathematics and also switch over to the English medium. Despite stern warnings about the challenges embedded in such a move, as if already evaluated the marginal utility of these two streams of mathematics, he resolutely pursued his desire. Finally, he won the heart of the headmaster and joined the composite mathematics stream, which he considers as the turning point in his life.
That being his determination, he could not only secure a good percentage of marks in class XII but also obtained admission to an engineering course at SV University, Tirupati. However, owing to financial constraints, he had to join BA at a local college. Then passing BA with first-class and 5th rank in the university, he joined MA Economics at SV University, Tirupati. Successfully negotiating the 'unchartered cultural territory'-negotiating the two worlds of home and university-he obtained an MA Economics degree, followed by MA in Econometrics, and finally defying the hurdles in the path, obtained PhD from one of the nation's prestigious institutes, IIT Bombay.
Imbibing the value system of his father, who preferred his son to live in self-respect as a peasant rather than as a clerk, Dr Kamaiah, shunning all his financial compulsions, finally began his career as a Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad, in 1981 and worked on a project, "Agricultural Growth and Potential in Andhra Pradesh". In 1983, he shifted to the National Institute of Bank Management, Mumbai/Pune, where he worked as faculty till 1988. In 1988, he shifted to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, as an Associate Professor. Here he researched exchange rate behavior and forecasting, and agricultural yields jointly with others.