ASENEWSLETTER

JANUARYEDITION2018

SPECIAL POINTS OFINTEREST▪ Cover story

▪ Forthcoming events at ASE

-Research Methodology Workshop - The National Conference on SustainableDevelopment

▪ Lit bits – The student zone▪ Poetry• Article• Snapshots Editor-in-chief: Dr. Kavita

Indapurkar

Editor: Neha Thureja

Sub Editors: Sonali Vohra Deeksha Kumar AnukshaMukherjee

Reporters: Anushka Mittal Medha Mehta Simran Aggarwal Vartika Khare

DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

“It gives me immense pleasure to begin thisyear by presenting the January edition of ASENewsletter. Academics is not just confined toclassroom learning. Students must perpetuallyhone their skills by keeping abreast with theworld around. This newsletter shall providethe students a platform for exchanging ideasand showcasing their creativity. It will alsowork as a stimulus to encourage ASE toorganize and participate in various eventswith zeal and enthusiasm. The Faculty atAmity School of Economics will always bethere to guide the students whenever needed.I wish my students the very best and hope thestudents will work hard to achieve greatheights.” -Prof Dr. Shalini Singh Sharma

THE EDITORS SPEAK…

“I am feeling proud to presentyet another issue of AmitySchool of Economics newsletter,which serves as a platform tothe students to display theirskills and beautifully capturethe activities of ASE. Theupcoming activities at ASE willbe an enriching experience thatare worth mentioning. It willhelp them explore new avenuesand in all certainty expandtheir knowledge by reconcilingwith the real world experiences.I wish allthe best to the students of ASEfor their future endeavours.”-Prof. Dr. Kavita Indapurkar

Hello everyone,First of all, a very happy new year to all the teachers,students and administrative staff who help run thedepartment. 2017 was a year of changes, like all theyears in the past. With the new year, everyonebecomes optimistic and has high hopes for life ingeneral.Being students of economics, we all had severaldiscussions last year which focused onimplementation of GST after years of it beingintroduced on paper. In 2016, we hadDemonetization whose effects we are stillexperiencing. With the new year comes New Budgetwhich is the current hot topic among all. My pointbehind mentioning all of these is that we are soengrossed in discussions we forget to silence themind.There will always be tests, assignments, mid-terms,discussions, guest lectures, NTCC, club activities etckeeping you busy throughout. My advice to all of youis to just find 10 minutes during the day to godownstairs, take a walk around, maybe listen tomusic or the sound of the silence and then come back. Life is simple and beautiful. Economics is an abstractscience. Find silence and you'll find the road togetting things done is not that rocky the way it looks.You shall have structured thoughts about GST,Demonetization, NTCC and what not. And as Rumi quoted "Silence gives answers"

-Neha ThurejaPresident, Literary Club

COVER STORY

THE UNSTOPPABLE BITCOIN

Deeksha Kumar, B.A.(Hons),2nd Year

CRYPTOCURRENCY-RISING AND SHININGCryptocurrencies are disruptive economicinnovation having the potential to revolutionizethe current economic structure and change howbanks and financial institutions operate. Theyhave led to the emergence of new markets.Bitcoin is one such innovative concept of adecentralised, peer-to- peer virtual currency. Itsfunctions are autonomous from any centralisedinfluence. It is on the cloud today and eventhough it does not have a physical value it doeshave a huge digital value. Clearly, Bitcoin hasbecome the most importantcryptocurrency today.Bitcoins provide a solution to the doublespending problem without involving anytrusted third-party intermediary. It does this bydistributing the transaction information amongall the users on the network.Every transaction in a bitcoin economy iscontained in a block which also contains theinformation about theprevious block, forming a block chain. Thisblock chain is available over the bitcoinnetwork for users toverify whether the bitcoin being transacted hasbeen previously spent or not. The thousands ofusers present over the network act as theintermediaries. With the evolution of Bitcoins,

The revolutionary change in transactionhandling has the power to change theeconomic structure. To bring security andenable scrutiny, central banks andfinancial institutions maintain a record ofall the transactions undertaken by thepeople. Now with digital currencies, thiseconomic power can be challenged bypeople. This has led to thecreation of a new autonomous body whichcan facilitate transactions. Ultimately, ifadopted on a large scale, Bitcoins can leadto the politicization of money.

Bitcoin has surged more than 1,000 percentthis year, accelerated by rising interestfrom retail andinstitutional investors who view the digitalcurrency as a possible future means ofexchange and store of value.

Major exchanges like the CME and CBOEhave also legitimized the currency andinvestment credentials by saying they planto introduce futures contracts to theirrespective exchanges, likely furthersupporting theprice.

THE FALLOUT

It is a bit strange that a currency which isslowly becoming so popular in the countryand is increasingly being used by more andmore people has no standing as far as legalityis concerned. It has become a public eye today.

Till now, the Indian Government has onlybeen watching and studying how virtualcurrencies work. By the looks of it, probablythey are going to be patient and will wait tosee how the developed economies respond toit before adopting crypto-currency as itstraddles two very radical and dynamictopics–economy and technology. The Reserve Bank ofIndia (RBI) issued an advisory to public not tobuy and sell virtual currency Bitcoins.

The biggest fear of the RBI, and the incometax department is that Bitcoins willhelp to circulate black money internationallybecause of the simplicity with which thedigital currency can betransacted as opposed to doing it throughbanks which is unregulated and unacceptablein Indian financial system as of now.

SUMMING UP:

Every new currency has to face an uphill battlelegally and technically. The value of Bitcoins willdependupon the ever-fluctuating market value, if thesystem gets widely adopted. Bitcoins need to beaccepted as a placeholder by the merchants forgoods and services, just like any other currency.This has been a challenge to other digital cashoptions, so it is hard to say if bitcoin will be readyto face these barriers. In the view of many, therehas always been a need of a decentralizedcurrency system and bitcoin surely is a huge steptowards censorship-resistant digital currency.

THE ROAD AHEAD:

2016 was the year of Bitcoin as the digitalcurrency grew almost 79% as compared to RussianRuble and Brazil’s Real, the world’s foremost hardcurrencies. It emerged as one of the best bet forthe investors while forex trade, stock exchangetrade and commodity congrats. The reasons forthe Bitcoin to emerge as a whole include reducedremittance, control over the capital and also abetter acceptance. It could be used for crackingdown corruption as well.

FORTHCOMING EVENTSAT ASE…RESEARCH METHODOLOGYWORKSHOP FOR SKILLDEVELOPMENT

The placement cell of ASE in its series ofskill development sessions will bebringing to fore a research methodologyworkshop scheduled for the 8th,9th and10th of February at the Amity campus.At ASE, priority recognition has alwaysbeen accorded to equip its students withskills and knowledge in order to excel inthe professional milieu.The workshop will be conducted by thesenior research analysts from the Centrefor International Projects Trust (CIPT).The focus of this workshop will be on thebasics of research methodology and dataanalytics with the aid of R software,which are the two quintessentialcomponents for budding economists.

The National Conference onSustainable Development

Amity School OfEconomics incollaboration with theCentre of Excellence forSustainableDevelopment , QualityCouncil of India and theCentre for InternationalProjects Trust(CIPT) isproud to organize its 3rd

edition of the nationalconference onSustainableDevelopment, titled“Leveraging SDG’s todrive socio-EconomicDevelopment: Mission2030”on the 22nd and23rd of March.

A glimpse of ASE’s National Conference,2017…

Lit Bits- Thestudent zone

The World of ChaosFamilies are getting smaller.Dreams are getting bigger.Closed ones are far away,Near ones , are not  dearer ,Brands and luxuries are rating standards,Love and kindness, considered as lust andpretence ,Depression and Anxiety, common talking termsfor some.

And the reason is  not too hard to understand,

We are choosing 'robots' over 'humans'.But ,We are not robots with commands ,we are humans with hearts.

- Anushka Mittal, Ba(Hons),3rd year

A day like that oneThere are days when you are not able to walk outof your house with that pretty smile on your face,the one that makes people believe that you’re okay.There are days when your outer shell justbreaks, and you’re not able to hold yourselftogether anymore.

There are days when the light in your eyes isn’table to shine any longer and the waterfall of tearscan’t be held back anymore.There are days when you realise just how weakyou are on the inside, because a cold gust of windshatters the pieces of your heart, which you hadtaped together with so much strength.There are days when you can’t seem to face itanymore, you wish all of it ended, all of it stopped.And usually, these days bring with them, the tearsyou had been holding for so long, the memoriesyou had buried deep within the seas of your heartand the kind of tiredness you rarely ever feel.But, these are the days which make you realise thatyou are human, after all. This is when you realisethat you can be so much stronger, so much betterand so much more, you.

And it’s okay, because, the strongest of peoplebreak sometimes, the happiest of faces crysometimes and the liveliest of souls feel deadsometimes.- Medha Mehta, Ba(Hons),1st year

The PunishmentThe punishment was announced,And the culprits were asked to die,But, was that enough, to,Answer a girl’s cry.Life sentence for them made,Everyone happy and contented,But the girl who beared all that,

Still lamented.Those devils tore her apart,Left her bleeding,

Paying no attention to any of her pleading.She was beaten, torn, left to die,They killed her dreams, just,For their hunger to satisfy.It took four years for the people,To claim it as a crime,God will never forgive you,Just wait for your time.

Now, God is waiting to meet you up there,

To give you the punishment,No human will ever dare.Its time to break all your spell,May you all burn in the fire of HELL..-Simran Agarwal, Ba(Hons),2nd year.

Follow your lead

What is Dream? It is something that gives adirection to life. It stops life from gettingstuck. Though the human nature is suchthat one cannot stop visualizing a dreambut there are certain things that become anobstacle in our quest to achieve our dream.These can be rejection, fear of failure, social,political or economical reasons, or even ourself. Even before the child is born or knowswhat aim is, parents start making aims for it.So the child keeps that aim in mind andstarts working towards it. Then that childstarts to grow, develop a conscience, think,dream, aspire and imagine.The realization of the previously set aimmakes him fearful and less confident in thepursuithis own dreams. There is almost negligibledifference between a dream and an aim.Aim is directed towards a set goal but therecan be many dreams. To choose an aimfrom among those dreams should be hispersonal decision and not someone else's.However, there are only a few people whoactually work towards making a change,others just talk about it. So, instead of justspeaking and discussing about making achange, make a change. Always follow yourlead. Step out a little out of your comfortzone if you want to create a comfortablesociety, where everyone is free to pursue his

- Vartika Khare, B. A. (hons.), 2ND Year

Together for PeaceDown rolls the scroll of a heart,Longing for a beautiful worldCradled in the bounties of love and peaceA unity of belief gently twirled.

Let the destruction flung be forgottenLet all violence cease;Let the ways of the world so functionWhere a hand in hand wields peace.

For all the ill mired with violence and sinsImagine an alternate universeWhere war is just a figment of our imaginationWhere ‘Separatist’ is just an uncanny wordWhere a unified voice is thereTo mend the fractious ways of the world.

In togetherness we see a kernel of hope,To bring back peace to its right placeEnlivening and magical the moment shall beLike the celebration of homecoming with a bird song.

-Sonali VohraMa , 1st year

SNAPSHOTS…

Life isn’t black and white, it’s a million grey areas .Captured By- Ritvik Saini,Ba(hons),1st year

Children see magic because they look for it .Captured By: Priyam Pande ,Ba(hons),2nd Year

…And every dew drop paints a bow.Captured By: Akash Mehta, Ba(Hons) 1st year

Whether , big or small , narrow or wide , happinesscan be found in every street.Captured by : Anuksha Mukherjee, Ba(Hons),3rd Year