Come September 19, St Xavier’s College will turn into a confluence of ideas on how to apply economic theories learnt in class to real-life situations.

The institution’s annual campus summit on economics has been a popular event since its inception and this year’s edition promises to be the biggest so far.

Presidency, Jadavpur University, Lady Brabourne and Loreto are among the 17 institutions that have confirmed their participation in the two-day event, Confluence 2008 — India Unbound:Changing Contours.

“The idea is to tell people that economics is not only about academics,” said Preyoshi Ganguly, a third-year economics honours student of St Xavier’s.

Conjecture, a mock stock-market trading session, is the newest addition to the list of programmes. Participants are required to start with stock or net valuations of their own and then buy and sell stocks. “Price fluctuations will continue through the summit. The one with the highest profit at the end of the second day will be the winner,” one of the organisers said.

The session where papers are presented is called Concatenation. The topics for the presentation are sent to the participating colleges in advance.

“We try to make the topics relevant to the present scenario. In 2006, when the Singur issue came up, we had a paper on land acquisition,” Ganguly said.

The topics for this year include the Political Economy of Oil and its Implication for India, Strategies for Industrialisation in India, Stock Market in India — Its Growth and Prospects and WTO, Agriculture Subsidy and Farmers — Rural India under Reform.

Another popular event is Conquest or the Budding Economist, where participants have to answer a volley of questions on economics and give an extempore speech on a particular topic. “It is one of the toughest because you have to know the subject like the back of your hand. Our records show that people who have done well in this event have gone places,” Ganguly said.

In Conflict, participants have to assume they are World Bank members and engage in a debate on a relevant topic.

The summit also has off-stage events like Congruence or Eco-Cross, the Economics Crossword Puzzle and Concordance or collage-making.

One of the big draws of the summit is the panel discussion with economists.