In the keynote address of the symposium, Professor Abhijit Sen, Former Member, Planning Commission and Professor at JNU, New Delhi, said that the event was a great opportunity to take forward the collective effort to engage with the challenges of uncertainty, inequality and injustice while recasting the sustainability issues for the good society. His lecture was focused on the issue of efficiency in the market economy to provide the just society. He distinguished the pathways of good society by first defining the two extremes, one, the State taking everything and individual doing nothing, and the second, the State doing nothing and individual doing everything. Individual get all together to do something however defined, to do something for society.

In terms of pathways, where does our road leads? In the simplest terms, up to a point, market can deliver under certain assumption, like, the private property are well defined, people are hugely selfish, not too many economies of scale, and with no externalities. In these conditions, market delivers efficiently. Externalities are defined as input of someone's production function makes an entry into the consumption function of another. This makes it difficult for the market to work efficiently. He then elaborated the concept of the Just Society, where all of the individual have the means and the motivation to participate. The Just Society will be one in which personal and political freedom will be more securely ensured than it has ever been in the past. Just society is full outcome of individual and society, it cannot come through market. He cited the example of successful cooperative movement, of AMUL, led by Dr. Kurien, as the ability to bring on the scale of activities (the economies of scale) which not only brought market surplus but also transform and society in large.

He spoke about the larger role of state in the society. In this context, he delineated the externality and equalizing effects of growth. Growth might be increasing inequality but it is increasing hope of the individual as well. One of the fallouts of this could be, increase in tax collection by the State, which will give them more money to redistribute. Thus, the higher the growth the higher the distribution. However, the growth story in India has nothing been equalising due to the inefficiency in the system. He emphasized the importance of defining growth and equity to understand the pathways. The divisions do not exist in the efficient world, this world is very inefficient.