Fo c VOLUME XLII NUMBER 10 OCTOBER Rs 100 us On Ec on om ic St u die s 2018 Impact Of Ecological Change On Tribals Conceptualizing Imperialism Surajit Mazumdar Dhirendra Datt Dangwal Revisiting Conceptual Debates In Agrarian Studies Analysing Economic Institutions Taposik Banerjee Purendra Prasad Nature Of Indian Growth Reji K Joseph Societal And Economic Realities Of Caste Shantanu De Roy Interrogating ‘Development’ Padmini Swaminathan Prospects Of Recovery In World Economy Towards Ethical Development Malini Chakravarty Shipra Nigam United For Welfare Mohd. Sanjeer Alam The Book Review / October 2018 11 2 The Book Review / October 2018 Contents Editors Chandra Chari Uma Iyengar Surajit Mazumdar A Theory Of Imperialism by Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik 5 Taposik Banerjee Economic Growth, Efficiency And Inequality edited by Satish K. Jain and Anjan Mukherji 7 Smitha Francis Straight Talk On Trade: Ideas For A Sane World Economy by Dani Rodrik 8 Arindam Banerjee Handbook Of Alternative Theories Of Economic Development edited by Erik Reinert, Jayati Ghosh and Rainer Kattel 10 Dhirendra Datt Dangwal Nature, Knowledge And Development: Critical Essays On The Environmental History Of India edited by Arun Bandopadhyay 11 Chirashree Das Gupta The Birth Of An Indian Profession: Engineers, Industry And The State 1900-1947 by Aparajith Ramnath 13 Agrarian And Other Histories: Essays For Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri edited by Shubhra Chakrabarti and Utsa Patnaik 14 Socio-Economic Surveys Of Three Villages In Karnataka: A Study Of Agrarian Relations edited by Madhura Swaminathan and Arindam Das 16 Dalit Households In Village Economics edited by VK Ramachandran and Madhura Swaminathan 17 Labour, State And Society In Rural India: A Class-Relational Approach by Jonathan Pattenden 19 Sumangala Damodaran Globalization Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective by Neethi P 20 Sona Mitra The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation, And Garments Made In India by Alessandra Mezzadri 23 Macroeconomics And Markets In Developing And Emerging Economies by Ashima Goyal 24 Quarter Century Of Liberalisaton In India: Essays From Economic & Political Weekly by Montek S Ahluwalia, Deepak Nayyar et al 26 Interrogating Inclusive Growth: Poverty And Inequality In India by KP Kannan 27 Economic Growth And Its Distribution In India edited by Pulapre Balakrishnan 29 Globalizing India: How Global Rules And Market Are Shaping India’s Rise To Power by Aseema Sinha 30 Malini Chakravarty Employment, Growth And Development: Essays On A Changing World Economy by Deepak Nayyar 32 Surajit Das Financing Cities In India: Municipal Reforms, Fiscal Accountability And Urban Infrastructure by Prasanna K Mohanty 33 Rethinking Economic Development In Northeast India: The Emerging Dynamics edited by Deepak K Mishra and Vandana Upadhyay 35 Consultant Editor Adnan Farooqui Guest Editor Arindam Banerjee Editorial Advisory Board Romila Thapar Girish Karnad Ritu Menon Chitra Narayanan T.C.A. 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Raj Community Natural Resource Management And Poverty In India: Evidence From Gujarat And Madhya Pradesh by Shashidharan Enarth, Jharna Pathak, Amita Shah, Madhu Verma, and John R Wood 36 Indranil Mukhopadyay Pharmaceutical Industry And Public Policy In Post-Reform India by Reji K Joseph 37 Social Policy: Essays From Economic And Political Weekly edited by Jean Dreze 39 Padmini Swaminathan The Book Review is a non-political, ideologically non-partisan journal which tries to reflect all shades of intellectual opinions and ideas. The views of the reviewers and authors writing for the journal are their own. All reviews and articles published in The Book Review are exclusive to the journal and may not be reprinted without the prior permission of the editors. Published by Chandra Chari for The Book Review Literary Trust, 239 Vasant Enclave, New Delhi 110057. Printed at National Printers, B-56, Naraina Industrial Area Phase-II, New Delhi 110028 The Book Review / October 2018 3 Special Issue On Economic Studies T he period of economic booms has usually seen the discipline of economics drifting with the theoretical methodological fashions of the times. Consequently, policy-making assumes a straitjacketed approach during such periods. The neo-liberal prescriptions of free trade-free market and a ‘small government’ in the economy are such fashions that came to rule since the late 1970s. Fiscal restraint by the state based on an erroneous assumption that economies are at ‘full employment’ and therefore the idea that expanding government expenditures will inevitably raise prices in the economy was one such fashion that swept the global economy in the closing decades of the 20th century. The WTO agreement in 1995 based on a dogmatic free trade philosophy and the raw deal for developing countries forms another such example. Repeated crisis in various parts of the world like the 1980s Latin American debt crisis, the East Asian crisis in 1997 or the dotcom crash of 2001 was not enough to throw the economic ‘dogmas’ out of fashion. The scale and toxicity of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), however, has greatly undermined the confidence on orthodox neo-classical theories that formed the basis of the Washington Consensus. The last decade has witnessed stronger challenges to orthodox economic theory and policy. A defining moment, though of symbolic significance, was when Harvard University students walked out of Gregory Mankiw’s lecture in November, 2011 to protest against those ‘teachings’ of economics that generate and perpetuate starkly unequal societies. In present times, the discipline of economics witnesses a greater contestation of ideas both in the realm of theory and in the domain of policy-making. The rise of far-Right forces to power across the world, including in liberal capitalist countries like the US, have veritably undermined the legitimacy of globalization as a ‘liberating force’. Andre Gunder Frank, the pioneer of Dependency Theory, had observed that any economic crisis at the core of the capitalist system enhanced the space for autonomous development in the periphery. Similarly, a crisis as major as the GFC gives breathing space to the economics discipline. It has generated a new dynamics in economics teaching and research, where scholars are increasingly experimenting with new ideas and frameworks as an alternative to the conservative models, originating from the two ends of the North Atlantic, that had nearly become tantamount to ‘religious faith’. The Indian economy, which weathered the 2008 crisis relatively better, has also witnessed a downturn after 2012. Sluggish growth in agricultural incomes, a banking sector saddled with non-performing assets and poor employment generation are core issues that the economy has been grappling with in recent times. Adventurist policies like demonetization and introduction of Goods and Services Tax have created new challenges. Additionally, global economic developments like the raising of US interest rates and geo-political factors like US-Iran tensions make it more difficult to address these challenges. The peculiar service-led growth process that India has experienced has enhanced socio-economic inequalities and exacerbated ruralurban disparities. The period of economic reforms have witnessed the emergence of a persisting agrarian crisis, intensified conflicts over natural resources like land and minerals, stagnated manufacturing sector and low-skilled and poorly paid job generation in construction and services. Speculative growth in sectors like finance, insurance and real estate has enormously enriched the topmost sections of the population. Tackling such rising inequality requires fresh thinking in policy-making outside the precincts defined by the agenda of neo-liberal financialization. This special issue on economics, comprising 28 reviews of books in different traditions of the economics discipline and on varying economic issues, can be located in the dynamic context outlined above. While the selection of books embodies a wide range of frameworks and lenses of studying the economy, the reviewers further enrich the discourse by their diverse, and often unconventional, way of appraising the books. The issue carries reviews of a set of theoretical works ranging from an analysis of imperialism in the contemporary world, a dissenting analysis of economic growth and its implications for inequality, a questioning of free trade fundamentalism to an attempt at reviving the alternative thoughts on development, which have historically played a significant role in human development. A few reviews of books on economic history dealing with agrarian, industrial and environment histories bring important insights into social development. The issue is benefitted by the reviews of a number of works on the ‘agrarian’ and the ‘rural’, which not only highlight the conditions of farming and rural labour, but also allows an engagement with some of the rural caste mobilizations that the country has witnessed in recent years. The area of macroeconomics and the growth process have been a space for vigorous contestation in the neoliberal policy era. Much of the abstract models and disagreements in macroeconomics have deep implications for the real lives of citizens. A number of reviews of books on macro-economy and the growth process in India provide this opportunity of engagement. A review of a work on demonetization remains of immense significance here. The importance of understanding poverty and engaging with various perspectives on policies to tackle the same cannot be more emphasized in the Indian context. A number of reviews delve into these questions from different vantage points giving the reader an exposure to the rich and diverse ideas on poverty and deprivation and its mitigation. One hopes that this special issue will engage the reader with economic theory and policy in an accessible yet stimulating manner. Arindam Banerjee Parag Waknis Demonetisation And Black Economy by C Rammanohar Reddy Anamitra Roychowdhury Poverty Matters: Covering Deprivation In India by K Nagaraj and Nalini Rajan 42 43 Shipra Nigam Sense And Solidarity: Jholawala Economics For Everyone by Jean Dreze 45 Dipa Sinha Essays In Economics And Other Cheerful Themes: A Dismal Scientist’s Occasional Reflections On The World Around Him by S Subramanian 46 How Solidarity Works For Welfare: Subnationalism And Social Development In India by Prerna Singh 48 Mohd. Sanjeer Alam 4 The Book Review / October 2018 Conceptualizing Imperialism Surajit Mazumdar A THEORY OF IMPERIALISM By Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik. With a Commentary by David Harvey Tulika Books, 2016, pp, 240, R695.00 M arxist conceptions of imperialism as something systemically connected to the capitalist mode of production have focused on examining how the fundamental tendencies of the capitalist mode express themselves concretely in history when the necessary accompaniment of the mode—a class state—is national. Actual living capitalism has never, even in the contemporary age of globalization, been characterized by either a simple and uniform worldwide division of society into the two fundamental classes of the capitalist mode or a single world capitalist state. Neither has capitalist development ever been anywhere a process confined within national economies. Capitalism in fact created a world economy but through a process in which the conquest of territories and regions outside the initial centres of capitalist emergence completed the job of bringing them into the fold of capitalism long before the potential alternative route of their independent transitions to capitalism could even take off—thus creating the hierarchical division of the world into advanced and backward parts. The necessity of conceptualizing imperialism thus derives from the fact that without it one cannot analyse the totality of the contradictions that characterize capitalism and create the conditions for a transformation from it—specifically the unevenness and conflicts inherent in the way in which capitalism established and then maintained its rule over the world. Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik’s latest offering, A Theory of Imperialism, is an addition to the broad genre of Marxist theories of imperialism that have focused on the unequal relationships between different parts of the world associated with capitalism in history. It reinforces from a new angle the core idea found in Patnaik (Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 and The Value of Money, New Delhi: Tulika Press, 2008) that interaction with a non-capitalist periphery is a necessary condition for capitalism’s stability. While some of the key points in the book can be found in the earlier writings of the co-authors, they are brought together in this book with others into a coherent whole. It is a relatively slim volume which includes, in addition to the main text, a sharply critical commentary by David Harvey along with the authors’ re- sponse to it and a more sympathetic foreword by Akeel Bilgrami. A Theory of Imperialism does not seek to displace other theories of imperialism or offer itself as a superior substitute to them. Instead it makes the more modest claim of drawing attention to an important dimension of the structural relationships characterizing capitalism that in the authors’ view has been relatively neglected. This neglect, of which not merely mainstream economics but even Marx and many Marxists are guilty of, is surprising in their opinion, given that it has been critical to capitalism’s existence from its birth to the present and will continue to be so as long as capitalism survives. Insofar as this is the case, it is argued that imperialism remains intrinsic to capitalism for this reason alone, and once this is acknowledged it is impossible to argue that globalization has rendered imperialism as an irrelevant category. The key theoretical imperialism premise on which the idea of the necessity of imperialism in A Theory of Imperialism is built is an acknowledged variant of Ricardo’s analysis of the impact on the capitalist accumulation process of diminishing returns in agriculture. The book invokes for this the Marshallian concept of supply price—it is argued that capitalist accumulation creates an increasing requirement for primary commodities which are subject to increasing supply price. In other words, calling forth an increase in production increases unit costs and therefore the price, because more inferior land has to be used for that additional production. As even such land is increasingly exhausted the increasing supply price becomes steeper and tends towards a vertical supply curve. It is not the adverse effects of this increasing price on profits but the stability of the monetary system or the value of money that A Theory of Imperialism emphasizes. Allowing this increasing supply price to consistently express itself would be destabilizing, it is contended, since no other commodity other than those with increasing supply price can effectively function as a form of wealth holding or store of value in such circumstances—their relative value would always be expected to fall. Capitalist accumulation is therefore sustainable only if it can keep the demand for such commodities under check by finding an ‘outer’ world in which the consumption can be compressed to meet the requirements of capital accumulation. A geographical asymmetry in the natural endowment between tropical and temperate regions—whereby the latter are inherently incapable of producing the range of agricultural commodities that can be grown in tropical regions—forms the second important peg of A Theory of Imperialism. While tropical regions can be potentially selfsufficient, the same cannot be said about the temperate parts of the world. On this count, Ricardo is subject to scathing criticism for deliberately ignoring the fatal implications of this asymmetry for his theory of comparative cost advantage—a problem that also afflicts mainstream neoclassical theory. This geographical asymmetry means that the core of the capitalist accumulation process and metropolitan capital—which happen to be located in or based in the temperate regions—have a permanent dependence on commodities produced in the tropical landmass of the periphery, typically by pre-capitalist producers. In the absence of any land augmenting measures which would lead to an ‘increase in the output per natural unit of land’, these commodities have an increasing supply price. It is then argued that of the two possible ways of overcoming the constraint imposed by a fixed tropical landmass—instead of land augmentation, income deflation in the periphery is the natural mechanism under capitalist conditions. This income deflation which squeezes the consumption in those regions to the extent needed to release the quantities needed by the core without calling forth an increase in supply price, becomes thus essential for the sustenance of capitalThe Book Review / October 2018 5 “ Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik’s latest offering, A Theory of Imperialism, is an addition to the broad genre of Marxist theories of imperialism that have focused on the unequal relationships between different parts of the world associated with capitalism in history. It reinforces from a new angle the core idea found in Patnaik (1997 and 2008) that interaction with a non- capitalist periphery is a necessary condition capitalism’s stability. ” for ism. This squeeze can work in a direct fashion by curbing consumption in the periphery of precisely those commodities needed by the core or indirectly through diversion of land to the production of those commodities at the expense of those that might be consumed in the periphery. Marx’s proposition of capitalist accumulation of wealth at one end being accompanied by increasing immiseration is thereby given a new meaning. Income deflation and squeeze on the consumption of a vast mass of pre-capitalist petty producers rather than their conversion in surplus-value producing wage-labour is the way they are exploited under capitalism. Even if wages do increase of those directly engaged in capitalist commodity production so that they may experience at best a relative immiseration, the squeeze on consumption in the periphery must necessarily result in absolute immiseration or an increase in poverty—in the specific sense of increasing nutritional deprivation that expresses itself in the form of declining per capita foodgrain intake. In A Theory of Imperialism, the income deflation process imposed on the periphery works through a combination of tendencies arising from the spontaneous working of the system and that imposed through the state. The distinction between these two, however, is not very sharp as all the examples cited of the spontaneously working squeezes are in effect contingent on appropriate state actions. Thus, de-industrialization and the drain or unilateral transfer through the system of taxation are mentioned as instances of the spontaneous and state induced squeezes on in- 6 The Book Review / October 2018 come and consumption respectively during the colonial period. Surely, however, de-industrialization in India in the 19th century depended on the one-way free trade policy of the colonial government, and its spread on the promotion of railway development by the same government. This highlights one possible gap in the book—namely that it doesn’t quite engage with the question of the state and the issues related to actions of states being endogenous to the ‘spontaneous’ operation of the capitalist system even as these states could exercise a degree of relative autonomy (in both the national and international domains). Be that as it may, imperialism—a structure of domination by the core over the periphery that can guarantee the appropriate level of income deflation in and extraction from the latter—is intrinsic to capitalism. The question of the state becomes important because the crucial foundation of the A Theory of Imperialiism is the contention that land augmentation in the periphery located in the tropical landmass cannot be the norm in capitalism. The reason this is supposed to be the case in A Theory of Imperialism is that such land augmentation is critically dependent on state action—covering not just land reforms but also state investment and expenditure on a large scale—that states, whether colonial or national, have been too constrained to undertake. This constraint on the states—seen almost as a spontaneous outcome of the working of capitalism—has operated through most of capitalism’s history both before as well as after a brief interlude between the end of the Second World War and advent of neo-liberal globalization. The dirigiste regimes that emerged as a result of the specific political conjuncture created by decolonization and the ‘Communist threat’ were able to undertake some limited measures of land augmentation that eased the constraint for a period of time. However, like the Keynesian demand management regimes in the advanced countries, these are seen by the authors to be aberrations that could not last and the ‘spontaneous’ working of the system was restored by globalization. The limits to this aberration were set by the fact that in the absence of income deflation measures on the periphery, aggregate demand expansion in the core produced a destabilizing effect on the value of money despite land augmentation measures. In other words, it is not simply the level of production of tropical commodities in the periphery that matters but the level of the difference between that production and what is consumed in the periphery itself. If that difference falls short of the demand in the core created by accumulation, the value of money would be destabilized. The book emphasizes the continuity associated with capitalism’s sustained existence rather than the change arising from its historical development that underlie theories of imperialism like Lenin’s. This comes in for sharp criticism from David Harvey on two counts. Firstly, he takes issue with the notion of a fixed and permanent geographical asymmetry on the ground that the geographical environment is also transformed by human action. However, while this may be the case it is not quite clear that such changes can render the natural differences between different regions entirely irrelevant—and therefore this argument does not by itself undermine the book. The second criticism of Harvey is that A Theory of Imperialism does not seem to recognize that many of the relationships and flows of the colonial period have been reversed in the age of globalization. As noted in the response, Harvey surely goes too far in this process of describing the changed reality of world capitalism. More importantly, however, the authors do not deny that there are changes—it is accepted that some of these are important for understanding contemporary imperialism, but some are also only newer ways through which the same result of income deflation in the periphery is obtained. However, there could be questions posed to A Theory of Imperialism that are somewhat different from Harvey’s and which may be relevant to understanding contemporary capitalism. As long as the capitalist accumulation process is subject to a constraint of increasing supply price of some of the commodities for which it creates an expanding demand, the specific geographical locations of their production and of the accumulation process should not matter from the point of view of the stability of capitalism’s monetary system. At the same time, not merely the ability to squeeze their consumption but also the constraints on the augmentation of production that underlie their increasing supply price appear to rest in A Theory of Imperialism on the producers of these commodities being ‘outside’ the direct capitalist production process. In what sense then is the coexistence of capitalism at the core with a spatially separated periphery essential to resolving a problem lying within the capitalist accumulation process? Or is this coexistence and the mutual interaction of the two resolving the problem arising from that very coexistence, which has very much been an outcome of capitalism’s history? Surajit Mazumdar teaches at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Analysing Economic Institutions Taposik Banerjee ECONOMIC GROWTH, EFFICIENCY AND INEQUALITY Edited by Satish K. Jain and Anjan Mukherji Routledge India, 2015, pp. 206, R795.00 E conomic growth is often considered as one of the most important indicators to measure the success of an economic institution. While few would disagree with the importance of growth, the bone of contention would be how to achieve it and at what cost. In economics the concept of growth is linked with the idea of efficiency. Efficient use of resources is supposed to be a major driving factor for economic growth. Researchers as a result often find themselves preoccupied with efficient rules and institutions. Efficiency however is not the only value that economists may be concerned about. There are other social and economic values that one may wish to consider and equality is one such value of immense importance. An outcome that is efficient does not necessarily satisfy the principle of equality. In fact, we often find ourselves in situations where we are forced to choose one value at the cost of another. The consequence of such choice needs to be evaluated carefully. It is therefore imperative that to determine the desirability and purpose of an institution, which may or may not explicitly state its allegiance to some of these values, its outcome be examined thoroughly from the perspective of these values. The book under review is a collection of ten excellent papers that analyse institutions, rules and policies from the perspective of growth, efficiency and inequality. The articles which are written by some accomplished academicians and some young and promising researchers, cover a wide range of economic institutions. The first three papers are concerned with macroeconomic growth. Amitava Bose, in ‘Intersectoral Disparities and Growth’, uses a dual economy model and tries to detect the key variable that explains disparities in sectoral growth. The paper examines whether the sectoral growths converge over time. In the process it checks the validity of the ‘trickle down’ theory. Soumya Datta in ‘Cycles and Crises in a Model of Debt-Financed Investment-Led Growth’, looks for an explanation for the growth cycles that may emerge in a demand constrained closed economy. He makes a cautious claim that such cycles may have an endogenous explanation in the macro-dynamics of debt-financing invest- ment. Gogol Mitra Thakur’s paper ‘PolicyInduced Changes in Income Distribution and Profit-Led Growth in a Developing Economy’, is concerned with the growth experience of several countries under neoliberal policies. While the postKeynesian/Kaleckian literature suggests that these economies would stagnate due to worsening of income inequality unless they are able to increase their trade surplus continuously, in reality many of these economies have failed to maintain trade surplus; some even experienced increasing trade deficit. The paper tries to solve this intriguing puzzle. Amarjyoti Mahanta in his essay ‘A Simple Dynamic Bargaining Model’, analyses a dynamic process of bargaining between two players over a surplus. The paper tries to determine the nature of outcomes that may arise through the bargaining process under different initial points of bargain and different rate of adjustment that the two players may choose. Brati Sankar Chakraborty and Abhirup Sarkar in ‘Increasing Returns, Non-traded Goods and Wage Inequality’, examine the increasing wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labour in different parts of the world. The paper tries to explain the phenomenon in terms of increase in skill premium when trade is liberalized and traded good is produced in a monopolistically competitive market with increasing returns to scale. S Subramanian in ‘Equality, Priority and Distributional Judgements’, takes us on a fascinating journey into the philosophical world of egalitarianism and distributional judgements. He begins with an analysis of the views expressed by Derek Parfit where a distinction has been made between egalitarianism and prioritarianism. He argues that the Pluralist Telic Egalitarianism is not vulnerable to the Levelling Down Objection and is also compatible with a Divided World situation. The paper questions the validity of Parfit’s view that a distinction can be made between egalitarianism and prioritarianism in terms of our concern over relative versus absolute levels of well-being. Auction is one of the ancient forms of market, the relevance of which continues to grow over time. The book has two papers on auction. Rittwik Chatterjee in his paper ‘Contest under Interdependent Valuations’ derives and analyses the equilibrium bidding strategies of contestants, first under linear cost and performance functions and then under non-linear cost and performance functions. Srobonti Chattopadhyay and Rittwik Chatterjee in ‘Auctions and Synergy’ examine auction when the values are either superadditive or subadditive. In a model with two bidders and two units of homogeneous commodity they analyse Vickrey auction separately for positive and negative synergies. The paper then attempts to make a comparison between different forms of auctions under different assumptions about synergy parameters and valuations of bidders. Law and legal institutions play an important role in shaping social and economic outcomes in our society. Economic analysis of these institutions has lately gained considerable importance. Satish K Jain in ‘Negligence as Existence of a Cost-Justified Untaken Precaution and the Efficiency of Liability Rules’, examines the efficiency of liability rules with a notion of negligence which is often used in courts but mostly ignored by the mainstream literature. Negligence can be defined in at least two different ways: (i) if the care level falls short of the due care level, or (ii) if there is some costjustified untaken precaution available. While the former definition allows us to characterize efficient rules in terms of negligence liability, the later definition gives us an impossibility theorem that denies the existence of any efficient liability rule. The present paper can be seen as a continuation of some The Book Review / October 2018 7 previous works by Jain. Although the impossibility result over a larger domain of application was known for some time, one however may wonder if there is any rule that would invariably generate efficient outcome when applied to a smaller domain of application. One important way to restrict the domain of application would be to consider cases where complementarity in the care levels of the two parties is ruled out. The paper shows that no liability rule is efficient for such a restricted domain. In the final chapter, ‘The 11-20 Money Request Game and the Level-k Model: Some Experimental Results’, Sugato Dasgupta, Sanmitra Ghosh and Rajendra P Kundu revisit the 11-20 money game which was first introduced by Arad and Rubinstein. While the results of Arad and Rubinstein cannot be explained by the unique Nash equilibrium of the game, the authors of the present paper confirm the robustness of the result previously obtained by Arad and Rubinstein. The authors however, are not entirely convinced with the rationalization provided by Arad and Rubinstein for the subjects’ behaviour. Using the Cognitive Reflection Test score, the authors have argued that a level-k model should be used with caution to interpret the result of the experiment. The articles are refreshingly contemporary. The book would be immensely helpful for the researchers who specialize in the fields covered by the articles. Technicalities involved in the analysis would however, restrict its readership to scholars who have prior knowledge in the area. It is certainly a valuable addition in the collection of reference books. Taposik Banerjee is with the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University (AUD), Delhi. Book News Book News Is this Azaadi? Everyday Lives of Dalit Agricultural Labourers in a Bihar Vilage by Anand Chakravarti is a study of the living conditions of Dalit agricultural labourers in Muktidih Village in southwest Bihar throws light on the problems they face in accessing the basic necessities of existence, including food, clothing, shelter, health care, and education. Their tribulations are conveyed through their own testimonies. Bihar is the poorest state in India, where the highest proportion of the population (79.3 percent), live in multidimensional poverty. Tulika Books, 2018, pp. 280, R750.00 8 The Book Review / October 2018 Setting The Record Straight On Trade Smitha Francis STRAIGHT TALK ON TRADE: IDEAS FOR A SANE WORLD ECONOMY By Dani Rodrik Princeton University Press, 2017, pp., 336, $22.00 S et against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency and the Brexit vote, Straight Talk on Trade, the latest book by Dani Rodrik, is an attempt to ‘set the record straight’ on trade—about how (mainstream) trade economists should have listened to their critics who warned about trade imbalances and job losses, instead of sticking to economic models that assumed away unemployment and other macroeconomic problems. By exaggerating the benefits of free trade and downplaying its distributional and other costs for fear of empowering the ‘protectionist barbarians’, trade economists fed technocrats and elites’ obsession with hyperglobalization. The same is the case in many other areas related to globalization like financial globalization, the euro zone, economic development strategies, etc. In all of these, he argues, mainstream economists overreached while transferring the contextspecific idiosyncratic results of particular economic models into policy advices. He laments that constructing a more honest narrative about the world economy would have prepared ‘us’ for the eventual backlash. Like its predecessors, and especially his 2010 book The Globalization Paradox, the book criss-crosses the terrain between economics, politics and societal dynamics. It brings together the author’s popular, nontechnical work on globalization, growth, democracy, politics, as well as economics. Drawn from his syndicated columns for ‘Project Syndicate’ as well as other articles and earlier work, and written in a lucid style, the book would be a good read for the interested non-academic on hyper-globalization’s ills. Dani Rodrik has long been a critique of trade fundamentalists. In fact, when his first book Has Globalization Gone Too Far? was published in 1997, he was accused by mainstream economists and commentators of being a protectionist. Ever since, he has been repeatedly warning that hyper-globalization would lead to domestic social disintegration if the balance between markets and states is not recalibrated. Hyper-globalization has delivered outcomes which have alienated the electoral base of traditional political parties across countries, an opportunity grabbed by extreme Rightist forces across the developed and developing world. Offering a counterpoint to the typical globalization narrative, he therefore claims to offer ‘a principled defence of the nationstate’ while re-looking at the question of whether the state is a hindrance, or indispensable to the achievement of desirable economic and social outcomes under globalization. Rightly, his narrative is articulated around a world that is not just politically divided but has heterogeneity in preferences (over risk, stability, equity, and so on) and institutions. Such institutional diversity prevents full economic globalization, which is what is desirable. In this book too, the first chapter, ‘A Better Balance’ emphasizes how getting the balance right between economic openness and policy space management is of huge importance. The chapter titled ‘How Nations Work’ also discusses how the nation-state remains essential to providing the regulatory and legitimizing arrangements on which markets rely. But hyper-globalization, which have included trade and investment agreements that pushed globally harmonized rules into the domestic arena, have weakened domestic governance mechanisms. Addressing concerns that institutional competition as part of liberalization has set off a race to the bottom in regulations, he argues that the only area which has seen some kind of race to the bottom is corporate taxation. This however contradicts the reality on competitive financial liberalization and the lowering of labour and environmental rights in many developing countries in the pursuit of investments or to suit the interests of exporters. In fact, he contradicts himself as he presents evidence that the removal of capital controls (obviously financial liberalization), has been a major factor driving the reduction in corporate tax rates across countries. In ‘Europe’s Struggles’, the author discusses the difficulties that deep economic integration raises for governance and democracy. He uses the Eurozone’s problems—deflation, unemployment and the rise of RightWing political parties—to highlight the undesirable problems that have been brought on by mainstream economists’ insistence on textbook style ‘structural reforms’ and deep integration. Based on hard evidence he points out that rather than economy-wide liberalization and big bang Washington Consensus-style structural reforms promoted by liberalization hawks, growth acceleration in several developing countries have been associated with growth strategies that focused on removing particular binding constraints on growth. This is important evidence that could be learnt from. By contrast, despite all their ‘internal coherence’ and stylized logic, neoclassical models, which claim trade integration will bring about growth convergence across countries, are incapable of explaining why most poor countries remain poor while rich countries get richer and richer. They also fail to explain the dualism, informality and inequalities that exist in many a developing economy, even as inequality has become a feature of advanced economies as well. He discusses many of these country experiences in ‘Work, Industrialization and Democracy’. But more interesting in this long chapter is the discussion linking economic outcomes to democracy, and draws distinctions in development outcomes between electoral democracies, liberal democracies and autocracies. ‘Economists and Their Models’ and ‘The Perils of Economic Consensus’ elaborate on the central point Rodrik raises in the very beginning—that economists, as scientists, should accompany their endorsement of particular position on policy issues with the appropriate caveats related to context specificity, pre-conditions, trade-offs, etc. In ‘Economists, Politics and Ideas’, Rodrik makes the argument that vested interests ‘themselves are shaped by ideas’, or are in fact, ‘hostage to our ideas’. He does not mince words in stating that ‘those who chalk up the global financial crisis of 2008–09 to the power of big banks conveniently overlook the legitimizing role played by economists themselves. It was economists and their ideas that made it respectable for policymakers and regulators to believe that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street’ (p. 163). In the next chapter ‘Economics as Policy Innovation’, Rodrik contests the common argument that political systems are stuck in suboptimal situations because powerful special interests block progress towards better outcomes. A persuasive case is made for overcoming vested interests with new policy ideas. Indeed, the most interesting and useful contribution of the book is found in this chapter discussing economics as policy innovation. He brings together a number of successful policy experiments in different country contexts for dealing with specific economic challenges, which sought to overcome political inertia over changing the status quo of vested interests. In ‘What Will Not Work’, Rodrik argues that it is too late to compensate the losers of globalization and thus it is absolutely imperative to change the rules of globalization. In this context, there is a good discussion on the futile muddling of free trade agreements and the necessary role of capital controls. But Rodrik underplays the dire need for international cooperation and rules particularly in the area of finance when he discredits the role of global governance. When he places the onus of domestic financial and macroeconomic stability, full employment, investments in human capital, etc., solely on national governments, he conveniently neglects how sovereign states’ policymaking abilities have been circumscribed by international ‘rules’, the structural adjustment programmes and the resulting globalization itself—specific instances of which he has himself documented in other parts of the book. So when he says the policy choice is of national governments, it is not convincing. In fact, two among the seven commonsense principles of global economic governance that Rodrik discusses in the next chapter ‘New Rules for the Global Economy’ are clearly in response to the prevailing lack of economic sovereignty for many countries: ‘Countries have the right to protect their own regulations and institutions’; and ‘Countries do not have the right to impose their institutions on others’! The penultimate chapter ‘Growth Policies for the Future’ discusses Rodrik’s growth policy recommendations, which he claims, are at once productivity enhancing and socially inclusive. In the final chapter on ‘It’s the Politics, Stupid’, he cautions that if globalization is not to be swept away by the backlash generated by its excesses, we need bold reforms in domestic and global governance, and not tinkering at the edges. Rodrik has not been alone in declaring that standard economic models have been failing miserably to explain the real world economic churning because of which the discipline had begun to lose relevance. But he has done a disservice to not emphasize that this has been the plight of mainstream economics and that there has been a rich and growing tradition of heterodox economics which has been in touch with the lived realities of the real world. In a book focused on discussing the dominance of economic ideas and the influence of economists’ models in policies and global rule making, there is almost total silence on the contribution of various alternate traditions in the discipline. Heterodox economists have made a huge contribution in bringing the ills of globalization to the fore and improving the quality of public debate. The book is reluctant to pursue the central issue in a meaningful way despite the fact that there has been widespread questioning of the applicability of the theoretical constructs framed by standard models. In fact, there is also a growing worldwide movement to offer alternative textbooks for economics teaching, which has emerged out of the exasperation with the continuing undue hold of neoclassical economics over economics curriculum. Despite repeatedly drawing attention to the successful country experiences with interventionist policies (aka mercantilist) which are shunned in the liberal models and the latter’s failure in explaining inequality, financial crises, etc., it is puzzling that Rodrik continues to credit mainstream economists—whose models he holds responsible for globalization’s excesses—with ‘intellectual victory’. Not an economist to shy away from calling globalization’s cheer leaders’ bluff, one only wishes that Dani Rodrik would have been bolder in this book with the benefit of the rich heterodox literature (including his own) and all the different country experiences during more than three decades of neoliberal experiments. Smitha Francis is Consultant at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi. Forthcoming The Book Review Special Issue on Books for Children & Young Adults Volume XLII/No 11/November 2018 Order your copy now The Book Review / October 2018 9 Challenging Theoretical Hegemonies Arindam Banerjee HANDBOOK OF ALTERNATIVE THEORIES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Edited by Erik Reinert, Jayati Ghosh and Rainer Kattel Edward Elgar Publishing, UK, 2018, pp.812 + xxxvi, £50.00 T he Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development is a refreshing initiative of creating an engagement with alternative ideas of development that challenges the four decade-long dominant paradigms of mainstream economic theory and development policies. The discipline of economics, and more so development economics, has witnessed a considerable flattening in terms of ideas and imagination during the period of finance-capital driven globalization. The triple crisis of finance, food and fuel that hit the global economy earlier in this century has remarkably exposed the limitations of the neo-classical economic theories and consequent neoliberal economic policies. Ironically, this poverty of theory and the prolonged crisis in the global economy provides an opportunity to revisit the origins and history of the discipline of economics. The editors of this Handbook precisely use this opportunity to initiate a restoration of the richness of the discipline. A collection of 40 essays, each challenging some aspect of mainstream neo-classical economics, makes this Handbook a must-read for students, practitioners and policy-makers, if one wants to not only make a better sense of the current doldrums in the world economy, but more importantly, for adopting fresh approaches to development in future and not remain captive within the failed reductionist economic paradigms. The essays are organized into three parts. The first part explores development thinking across history and geography engaging with the rich ideas that existed in the nonAnglo-Saxon world within Europe and in the non-European world across the continents of Africa, Latin America and Asia. The second part deals with the various approaches for understanding development ranging from Classical and Marxian outlooks to the Evolutionary and Feminist lens. Finally, the third part brings together essays on diverse aspects of development like the agrarian question, planning, environment, effective demand management and late industrialization, to name a few. While it is neither possible nor desirable to discuss the arguments of each essay within the scope of this review, it would be worthwhile to draw attention to some of 10 The Book Review / October 2018 the coherent critiques of certain fundamental aspects of mainstream economics that have emerged across various essays. Reflecting on the essays across the three parts of the Handbook, one realizes that most of the arguments are drawn from within various traditions of political economy. The second Great Divide in economic thought, represented by the Methodenstreit in the late 19th century, was a false binary that got created between Theory and History. As Schumpeter later observed, the Historical School was not against theory per se, but against ‘universal theory’ which is devoid of social and historical context. Nonetheless, the result of this binary was the emergence of Economics as a discipline that expunged the ‘social’ and the ‘historical’ from its boundaries. Thus, a divergence was created between Political Economy, which practised a wholesome view of the economy in concurrence with society, polity and history, and Economics, which increasingly moved towards axiomatic universal theoretical principles. In this light, this volume can also be viewed as an attempt to bring in the rich traditions of political economy back into the discourse in economics, albeit in an unconventional manner. That the collection of essays is an unconventional engagement with political economy is evident from Part 1, where there is a clear move away from the Anglo-Saxon traditions of political economy, embodied in the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The latter’s economic philosophy was marshalled by the British Empire, often in a reductionist fashion, to impose the principles of free trade and free market on the rest of the world in the 19th century. There was strong policy resistance to the free trade maxim emanating from within Germany and USA, driven by their industrial interests. Such alternative discourses have been clearly obliterated from the development discourse for justifying the neo-liberal prescriptions of the Fund-Bank-WTO triad since the late 1970s. A set of articles by Erik Reinert, Philipp Rossner, Arno Daastol, Sophus Reinart and Wolfgang Dreschler coherently exposes the various theoretical omissions and fallacies of the free trade discourse based on Ricardian comparative advantage, both when Britain pushed for it in the mid-19th century and in more recent times as part of the financeled neoliberal discourse. Reinert draws attention to the two Italian thinkers from the Renaissance, Botero and Serra, and their ideas foregrounding ‘increasing returns’ in manufacturing activities within towns/cities leading to wealth creation. These were early ideas on the significance of industrialization for development of the human race. Unfortunately, Reinert points out that neo-classical economics, enamoured by the concept of ‘equilibrium’ (which required decreasing/ constant returns to scale for its existence), expunged the idea of ‘increasing returns’ from the discipline. Thus was sidelined the rich and diverse experiences of industrial development in different parts of the world. The free trade discourse shifts the focus of policies to exchange of commodities in the internal markets away from the domain of production. By invoking comparative advantage, it tries to restrict industrial production to those countries already in the ‘advanced’ club and relegates the rest to primary commodity producer and exporter. Without the alternative discourse propagated by the likes of Friedrich List in Germany or Alexander Hamilton in the US, one would have not witnessed the spread of industrialization of different parts of the world. The essays on the German tradition of Cameralism, focusing on production, Kathedersozialismus (or the ‘Social Question’) and the ideas of Friedrich List on industrialization clearly underscore three aspects of development. First, manufacturing is not a homogeneous entity driven by given tech- nology but the precise organization of production and an evolving set of institutions is central. Secondly, such organization of production is necessarily qualified by the specified social questions; Kathedersozialismus, in fact, clearly rejects the expelling of the ‘social’ and the historical’ from economic theory and sticks to the political economy tradition. Finally, the Listian ideas on industrialization, the contextual role of protectionism and industry’s linkages with agriculture emphatically states that no ‘one-size-fits-all’ prescription can work for different countries. Colonialism is another aspect of development that keeps coming back across various articles in different ways. Sophus Reinert emphasizes the direct relation between trade and war, evident in intra-Mediterranean conflicts but also in the European conquests of the world since the 16th century. Ali Kadri in his essay on ‘Islam and Capitalism’ states in a more clarified manner that the great divergence between the West and the Rest had to do less with the differing social formations in various regions but was more driven by the aggressive conquests of various trading posts and routes by the European powers. The connection between military power and development continues to the current times centered on the control of scarce natural resources. These discourses are valuable since neo-classical economics have consistently avoided modelling ‘power’ whether that which is embedded in national social structures or that within the international geo-political domain. The economic machinations of colonial empires are elaborated by G Omkarnath in his essay on Indian economic thinking. Both the ‘drain of wealth’ and ‘de-industrialization’ were crucial in the generation and perpetuation of underdevelopment, not only in colonial India but in the wider colonial world. Prabhat Patnaik extends the conceptualization of imperialism to the postcolonial world by focusing on the stability of the ‘value of money’ and how that is possible through an imperialist globalization which continuously squeezes the purchasing power in the ‘non-capitalist’ sectors of the economy. Decolonization was an important intervening conjuncture in the history of development, which allowed and compelled the introduction of diverse approaches to development. The various essays in Part 2 on evolutionary economic theory, feminist approaches, regulation theory, MarxianKaleckian approaches or the balanced-unbalanced growth hypothesis of Albert Hirschman reflect these experiments. A few essays in Part 3 like on the agrarian question of the South by Moyo et al, on effective de- “ The Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Impact Of Ecological Change On Tribals Development is a refreshing initiative of creating an engagement with alternative ideas of development that challenges the four decadelong dominant paradigms of mainstream economic theory and development policies. Dhirendra Datt Dangwal NATURE, KNOWLEDGE AND DEVELOPMENT: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF INDIA Edited by Arun Bandopadhyay Primus Books, Delhi, 2016. pp. ix + 181, R1395.00 ” I mand management by Jan Kregel or on planning in a mixed economy by CP Chandrasekhar capture the challenges on these experiments into which several parts of the world embarked upon after WW II. One is tempted to engage deeply into the myriad complexities of such development experiments, which threw up interesting insights into the workings of diverse economies, much of which has been lost with the onset of financialization. This though must be left to the reader. A couple of essays on the Soviet development thinking and its contradictions and the Chinese experiments with opposing ideas in the Mao-era and the post-Mao period could have been interesting additions to the already rich collection of development thoughts. Also, a greater engagement with the relation between ecology and development, going beyond the concepts of ‘green capitalism’, seems necessary in the context of increasing climate challenges. Controlling the pace of technical change through a social process is an idea that Patnaik mentions in his essay but the same also emerges in the reading of Christopher Freeman by Arocena and Sutz. A more focused engagement with the question of technological choice and alternative social ownership of production may be germane to rethinking development in the ‘Anthropocene’ period. Notwithstanding these observations, the Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development is a much needed intervention in the field of economics and development policy, given that new ideas and rethinking of old paradigms is our only hope of rescuing Development Economics from the troughs into which it has sunk under neoliberal hegemony. Arindam Banerjee teaches economics at the School of Liberal studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. n the last three decades environmental history has grown rapidly and has made significant contribution in developing environmental sensitivity in historical narratives, specifically of the colonial period. Recent works on environmental history have focused on how ecological changes have adversely affected tribal people. This is a new perspective to understand the marginalization of tribals. This book brings together essays which see disruption in the link between tribal subsistence and forests as a major factor in increasing economic vulnerability of tribals. The book has eight chapters including introduction which is followed by two chapters that discuss the larger issues of science, development and ecology: one providing critique of modern science from the ecological perspective and another searching tenets of deep ecology in ancient Indian texts. Tapan Kumar Chattopadhyay shows how modern science acquired a hegemonic position from the 18th century and in the process delegitimized traditional knowledge, which evolved over centuries recognizing ecological limits. By associating with capitalism, modern science and technology focuses more and more on production, without recognizing the limits imposed by nature. This is at the root of the environmental crisis. Research in science and technology in recent years, argues Chattopadhyaya, has increasingly focused on technologies of warfare. Armament industry, he argues, is a major sponsor of research in western universities. Nuclear power and its use in war, as all of us know, has serious implications for life on earth. Chattopadhyay is right to some extent in alerting us of the direction research in science and technology is taking. But he is overlooking the contribution of science and technology in the fields of medicine, transport, communication, information technolgy, etc., areas in which people have really benefitted. He, however, makes it clear that he is not anti-science and does not see anything wrong with it as long as it does not harm the environment. The chapter rightly suggests that The Book Review / October 2018 11 modern science and technology should not aim at controlling nature, rather it should recognize the limits imposed by nature. Priyambada Sarkar in ‘Deep Ecology and Some Ancient Indian Texts: An Overview’ explains the premise of the movement for deep ecology and suggests that some of the ideas of this movement exist in ancient Indian literature. Quoting from the Vedas, Puranas and Smritis she argues that this literature talks about biospheric egalitarianism. There is the idea of treating all living beings as equal in this literature. Many incarnations of God, argues Sarkar, are animals. Even ‘non-living elements are often regarded as God’ (p. 29). Drawing from this literature she finds five major elements addressed to protect the environment. These are: plantation of trees and its importance, wildlife preservation, punishment for deforestation, animal sanctuaries and punishment for killing animals. Many historians have critically analysed this literature and suggested that one needs to be careful while reading these texts for searching for ecological ideas. Not only did expansion of agriculture possibly frequently involved felling of forests, animals were killed in royal hunting as well as for subsistence by common people. There are certain references to punishment for killing animals, cutting trees, etc., in the Arthasatra, but to what extent these were enforced is difficult to say. Hence, although it can be argued that unlike Semitic religions, Hindu religious texts refer to worship of animals and plants and have the possibility of encouraging restraints in dealing with nature. But taking these textual injunctions as having been practised is far-fetched. Other chapters in the book are broadly 12 The Book Review / October 2018 connected to the forest policy under colonial rule. Arun Bandyopadhyay provides a broad survey of forest policies in colonial and postcolonial periods, with special reference to the Bengal and Madras Presidencies. He questions the widely held view that officials of the Madras Presidency opposed the Forest Act of 1878 on the ground that it infringed the rights of villagers in forests. The opposition was, he argues, mainly due to inter-departmental rivalry. He also disagrees with the view that Dietrich Brandis was the precursor of Joint Forest Management. To Bandhyopadhyaya the position of Brandis and Baden-Powell on the issue of village forests was not very different. However, one cannot overlook the fact that Baden-Powell and Brandis, the two main architects of the Forest Act of 1878, differed considerably with each other on many issues. Three core chapters of the book explore links between colonial forest policies and deprivation, starvation, and famines in the tribal belt of India. Biswamoy Pati looks for roots of famines in Kalahandi. In the remote past (pre-medieval, ancient), he argues, tribals were autonomous, lived without any outside intervention. In the medieval period, inroads were made by outsiders in certain tribal regions, like in Kalahandi, to extract tribute. This intrusion introduced feudal elements in tribal society, which otherwise was unstratified and egalitarian. Under colonial rule tribal regions became more open to outsiders. British revenue interests encouraged the entry of market forces in the region which pushed the tribals to the margins. Agrarian structure became more stratified and exploitative. But it was the forest policy which was based on the twin objectives of denying or restricting the rights of people in forests and using forests for commercial purposes that undermined the tribal economy. Depleted forests could hardly support people in difficult times. Simple failure of rain in one season started resulting in starvation and famine. The economy and social structure of Kalahandi was undermined to such an extent that recovery became impossible and the region became metaphorically representative of famine and starvation in India. Chapter 5 focuses on the Hos of Kolhan in Singhbhum. Unlike other areas of Chotanagpur where the British ruled through zamindars, Kolhan was constituted into a Government Estate in 1837 (the author does not provide a reason for this) and was hence under direct British rule. Sanjukta Das Gupta traces changes in the Hos society under colonial rule. The author elaborates on the traditional socio-economic system of Kolhan under which rice cultivation on wet- land was combined with coarse grain cultivation on dryland along with slash and burn cultivation. Forests were inseparable from other economic activities. Village forests near habitation (Hath), which also contained sacred groves, were intricately linked to subsistence of people and were different from the distant forests (Bir), which were feared. As the British pushed people towards sedantarization the traditional economy and customary practices changed. The pressure to pay rent in cash forced people to expand cultivation mainly to grow rice. But this expansion, argues Das Gupta, hardly improved the condition of the people. Further, the traditional economy was seriously undermined when forest policy was introduced in Kolhan in the second half of the 19th century. This policy imposed various restrictions on the use of forest produce by the people while it allowed the forest department to resort to unbridled felling of trees. The disruption in link between agriculture and forests adversely affected the susbsistence economy. Excessive reliance on rice, which became an export commodity, led to further crisis. Rice export resulted in scarcity of foodgrains, often when rains failed. Famine due to crop failure became a frequent phenomenon and people were left with no option but to migrate, mostly to the Assam tea gardens. Vinita Damodran explores similar themes, however, giving more attention to the relation of tribal people with forests. She lists various plants, roots and flowers, consumed by tribal people traditionally on a daily basis. This use of forest resources by tribals became increasingly difficult under colonial forestry. Under the British local tribal heads became zamindars and started asserting their claims over forests. Under the colonial forest policy while restrictions were imposed on tribals, zamindars were free to sell forests to contractors for supplying sleepers to railways. Zamindars also started selling trees to pay their debts, while tribals were subjected to illegal levies for exercising their traditional rights in forests. Consequently, the intricate relationship between tribals and forests was disrupted. This had serious longterm consequences for tribal economy. In the first half of the 19th century there were years of droughts in Chotanagpur, but there were no famines. Damodaran suggests that during scarcity forests came to the rescue of the people. But in the second half, particularly in 1897-99, famines were severe and forests had been already depleted to such an extent that they provided no relief to people. Famine was followed by epidemics, which wiped out a large population. The last chapter takes us away from the tribal issue to a larger rural economy of undivided Andhra Pradesh (AP), where Basu examines Chandra Babu Naidu’s 2020 Vision and working of the watershed development programmes. There are some common overlapping features of the two but these are two different programmes. The Vision 2020 of Naidu for Andhra, conceived in the late 1990s, was to modernize agriculture by providing irrigation, mechanization and consolidation of holdings, combined with an overall objective of reducing poverty. The Vision overlooks the fact, argues Basu, that the majority of the farmers had small holdings, were tenants and landless. To him Vision 2020 is a part of the neo-liberal agenda. Basu is of the view that consolidation and mechanization could result in people losing their land, though he does not have evidence to support his argument. Basu also examines implementation of the watershed development progammes in AP, started in the 1990s with an objective to conserve soil and water, while also addressing broader issues like equity, gender, and food security and sustainable agriculture (p. 143). In AP the focus of these programmes especially was, argues Basu, to uplift Dalits and the poor. Basu contends that watershed programmes were unable to meet their objectives. Rich farmers were the main beneficiaries. Dalits and the poor also gained but only marginally compared to large farmers, although the programmes augmented irrigated areas which possibly helped all farmers. This chapter does not seem to fit in the book. This book brings together well-known published essays exploring the impact of environmental change on tribal economy and society. The tribal economy traditionally was inseparable from forests. The state appropriated forests under colonial rule thereby making it difficult for tribals to access forests for subsistence. This seriously undermined the tribal economy by the end of 19th century and exposed tribals to starvation and famines. Commercially exploited forests were no longer in a position to provide tribals sufficient support for livelihood, forcing them to migrate. This book suggests that this environmental degradation considerably contributed to the marginalization of tribal societies. The book is useful for historians, sociologists and anthropologists interested in the study of tribals. There are many other published articles on environmental change and tribal economy and including some of them in the book would have made it more comprehensive on this subject. Dhirendra Datt Dangwal is currently, Dean School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Institutionalization Of The Engineering Profession In India Chirashree Das Gupta THE BIRTH OF AN INDIAN PROFESSION: ENGINEERS, INDUSTRY AND THE STATE 1900-1947 By Aparajith Ramnath Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2017, pp. 266+ xvi, R895.00 I ndia produces on an average 1.5 million engineers each year. Among the middle class and the lower middle class in contemporary India, a first degree in engineering remains the most coveted dream even though only a small proportion of such graduates actually make it to engineering as a profession given the declining importance of manufacturing and industry in India’s output and employment structure. This essentially middle class aspiration possibly has its material roots in the limited import substituting industrialization policies of the first three decades after Independence. Aparajith Ramnath provides an explanation of the prelude to this aspiration. The Birth of an Indian Profession: Engineers, Industry and the State 1900-1947 provides an account of the rise of engineering as an ‘Indian’ profession under British colonial rule and the conflicts and contestations that led to the proliferation of an entirely new profession in the subcontinent. In doing so, the author’s focus is on institutions and processes of Indianization and industrialization ‘closely related to the educational backgrounds, identities and work cultures of engineers in the first half of the twentieth century’ (p. 14). The rise of the profession is located by the author within the historical peculiarities of India’s limited industrialization under colonialism, a point to which we shall come back later. One of the main arguments in the book is that professional institutions were the terrain of contestation and affirmation of an Indian identity among engineers. The author studies the changes in structure and composition of the engineering cadre spread across the military, the PWD and the Railways and their professional composition in terms of British, Europeans, Eurasians, and Indians between 1858 and 1914. The foundation of professional journals and the formation of professional organizations ‘invoked a collective identity for engineers in India’ (p. 64). However, institutionalized discrimination in recruitment, service conditions and pay were deterrents to this forging of a collective identity and this was manifest in the contestations and demands repeatedly raised by Indians and those domiciled in India. The two processes of industrialization especially of the inter-war period, the need for expanding technical expertise that arose out of that and the simultaneous though limited demands of Indianization, led to the formation of the Institution of Engineers (India) in 1920 in Calcutta. Such an institution was envisioned in the report of the Indian Industrial Commission (1916-18) and was by no means a radical anti-colonial institution. But, as the author shows that the IEI evolved within a decentralized structure and faced hostilities from the PWD Congresses. But the IEI took up a host of governing functions as opposed to the PWD Congresses that met annually for discussion of papers on engineering. The detailed account of the structure and institutional functioning of IEI supplemented by the other professional institutions that predated it both in Britain and those which had chapters in India along with the PWD Congresses presents a very intricate institutional history of the professionalization of a rising discipline in the first half of the twentieth century within the colonial context and its inherent limits. The book presents a detailed account of the Indianization of the Indian railways and the PWD in the inter-war years in a situation where the Indian Railways had a primarily military role, Indian recruits faced a disadvantage in terms of experience as compared to their British counterparts and also the fact that Indians’ loyalty to the colonial regime was suspect (p. 162). The author argues that in both cases ‘…colonial officialdom had to contend with nationalist demands and the changing structure of Indian polity’ in the first half of the twentieth century. The third major argument through a case study of the technical experts in the Tata Steel Works and the Jamshedpur Technical Institute is that a cadre of professionals emerged in the private sector, which were neither loyalist nor nationalist. The book also argues that there existed a two-way relationship between science and technology and the ‘heterogenous and evolving’ colonial state between 1900 and 1947. Thus constitutional reforms, the formation of provincial governments etc., played a role in not only financing and structuring Indianization but also The Book Review / October 2018 13 had an impact in the understanding of the state of the ‘role of its engineers and other officers’ (p. 211). In its conclusion, the book claims that structuring the study of engineers around the themes of Indianization and industrialization serves to situate the history of engineers within the broader framework of Indian history. It is in this claim that several questions also arise. The first question relates to the structures of trade, capital and technology within which the profession of engineering developed in India. These structures cannot be delineated without studying the nature of the capitalist class in India, its composition and fractions and its relationship with the metropole that structured certain colonial dependencies that characterizes the peculiarity of India’s industrialization under colonial rule. AK Bagchi’s Private Investment in India and Nasir Tyabji’s Industrialization and Innovation: The Indian Experience along with other works by these two authors and the works of Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (2005) are some of the glaring missing references in this work. This leaves the framework of industrialization rather inadequate in its positing of the process as either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ in the introduction which is very much a false and needless dichotomy—a point that can be established by the author’s own intricate handling of the institutional history of the IEI and Tata Steel. The second question relates to the relationship between India’s anti-colonial struggle and its emergent engineering professionals. This has two aspects—individuals and institutions. The book does not adequately address either. For example, in the entire delineation of the history of the pro- 14 The Book Review / October 2018 fession, M Visvesvaraya does not feature even though he was one of the central figures in promoting a vision of building institutions that promoted manufacturing and engineering as opposed to mercantile activity and in some ways epitomized the struggle of manufacturers and against traders. This struggle largely shaped the capital and technology constraints that characterized the first half of the twentieth century industrialization process in India and carried over and shaped India’s development trajectory after Independence (Das Gupta 2016). Other important missing institutions are Engineering and Iron Trades Association that later became the Indian Engineering Association (IEA) and the later rise of the Indian Engineering Association challenging the British supremacy of the IEA (Tyabji 2000). The third question relates to the actual direct anti-colonial interventions with an aim towards self reliance in expertise and technology that led to the formation of, for example, the National Council of Education by Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore and others, and Tagore’s own institutional efforts in Sriniketan that had internationalist and humanist underpinnings. These anticolonial efforts in the forging of a professional identity of engineers and technologists have no place in the book essentially because the book rejects at the very outset all approaches except one that sees industrialization as ‘positive’. Thus the framework itself limits the book to archival sources that are bound to present a narrow statist account. To conclude, the book does not really engage with a broad framework of Indian history in the delineation of colonialism, and anti-colonialism and the role of industrialization and Indianization within that even though it claims to do so. But it is certainly an important addition to the empirical institutionist accounts (emanating from the Cambridge School) of specific institutions and processes that shaped the engineering profession in India. References Bagchi, A K (1972), Private Investment in India, 19001939, London, Cambridge University Press. Bhattacharya, S (2005), The Financial Foundations of the British Raj: Ideas and Interests in the Reconstruction of Indian Public Finance 1858-1872, Revised Edition, Hyderabad, Orient Longman. Das Gupta, C (2016), State and Capital in Independent India: Institutions and Accumulation, New Delhi and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Tyabji, N., 2000, Industrialisation And Innovation: The Indian Experience, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks. Chirashree Das Gupta teaches at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Revisiting Conceptual Debates In Agrarian Studies Purendra Prasad AGRARIAN AND OTHER HISTORIES: ESSAYS FOR BINAY BHUSHAN CHAUDHURI Edited by Shubhra Chakrabarti and Utsa Patnaik Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2017, pp. 326, R949.00 S cholars from varied disciplines of social science in the recent past have been engaged in revisiting the concepts of rural, urban, peasant, non-peasant, formal, informal labour, intermediaries, moneylenders, classes of labour, new forms of caste bondage, freedom and un-freedom, given the significant changes in rural and urban India. These conceptual debates have a long historical trajectory as they provide several contextual interpretations from different periods of time. At a time when it is essential to relook at the context in which some of these debates took place, Agrarian and Other Histories provides refreshing insights. By invoking the relevance of the ideas of Professor Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri on the agrarian history of eastern India, the contributors pay a rich tribute to the economic historian through this book. The book attempts to cover four broad themes of agrarian history that Chaudhuri dealt with for about five decades: the concept of peasantry, growth of commercial agriculture in eastern India, the process of ‘depeasantisation’ by which small and marginal peasants gradually lost their land and turned into sharecroppers or hired labourers, and finally the forcible induction of large numbers of tribes and forest dwellers into settled agriculture resulting in spates of rebellion. The introduction by Shubhra Chakrabarti provides a panoptical view of Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri’s contribution to the agrarian history of eastern India by highlighting the decisive role played by the peasant households, zamindars and the colonial state; non-peasant rural agents such as money-lenders, affluent landholders; farmers and agrarian intermediaries (Jotedars) in the rural agrarian structure. The first section consisting of five chapters focus on the conceptual issues of agrarian studies. Dietmar Rothermund recapitulates the discussion on the definition of peasant. He has emphasized how the institutional framework was significant within which the peasants lived and worked. The crucial elements of this framework are prop- erty rights, security of tenure, the availability of credit, the law of contract and the law of inheritance. Discussing the peasant class differentiation, the author highlights the usefulness of Utsa Patnaik’s six classes of landholders. Pointing out the importance of the growth of commercial agriculture, this chapter argues that production for the market did increase peasant enterprise. This is substantiated by providing examples from specific peasant castes such as the Kammas in coastal Andhra, the Gounders of Kongunad in Tamilnadu. Rajat Datta argues that early modern Bengal was characterized by an unprecedented degree of commercialization. The critical facilitators were the webs of connected surface and river communication and a dense lattice of mercantile networks operating out of both towns and villages. While market opportunities expanded and helped in enriching many indigenous traders, it also increased the economic vulnerability of the producers. Shinkchi Taniguchi argues that differentiation among peasantry can occur even in the absence of a land market for peasants through political processes. In fact, differentiation has accelerated by the intrusion of outsiders such as European tea planters and Indian traders from the plains by the development of commercial agriculture and by state intervention as in the case of the Princely State of Koch Bihar*. David Ludden narrates the complex process through which Sylhet was incorporated into British Bengal in 1780. Even as more local farmers bought company land rights, however, remitting Sylhet revenue posed a difficult problem as there were no metal coins, no rich merchants or big bankers in Sylhet. The strict boundary drawn at the base of the northern mountains in 1789 to settle all borders with Khasia rulers * Cooch Behar. in fact defined the Bengalis and the Khasias as people with separate histories, homelands and cultural identities. Neeladri Bhattacharya points out how the colonial state embarked on one of the grandest projects of social engineering in Punjab ostensibly to ‘improve’ landscapes and modernize agrarian spaces while seeking to maximize revenue returns. This chapter highlights that conquest from above was not as easy as the British state imagined. It could not produce an ideal agrarian space, unhindered and unconstrained. The second section discusses the social history of Bengal with the backdrop of the Bengal’s partition, the Bengal Famine of 1943-44 and the social and economic origins of the founders of Calcutta. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay talks about the participation of Dalits and Muslims in Bengal partition politics. After Partition, the Dalit peasants were displaced from their ancestral homes by Islamic nationalism in India; while it tried to appropriate them, it was not ready to offer them full citizenship. As they were dispersed in various rufugee camps throughout the country, organized Dalit voices disappeared from the Bengali public space leading to that all powerful myth that caste does not matter in Bengal. Gargi Chakravartty highlights two important points: one, that famine was a man-made calamity caused by bureaucratic corruption and the exploitative zaminari system. Poor peasants sold land worth 10 crore rupees and the displacement of the peasantry on such a large scale was unprecedented. Second, despite this volatile situation, Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti was formed for women’s self-protection, to counter Japanese aggression and to tackle the famine situation. Shubhra Chakrabarti talks about how the indigenous merchants of Bengal collaborated with the Europeans in trade and turned into business tycoons. These merchants continued to dominate the commercial world right up to the first two decades of the 19th century. She also analyses the causes that led to the decline of these commercial magnates from the mid-19th century after the transfer of the Company’s rule to the Crown. The third section essentially analyses Rabindranath Tagore’s political vision through his writings and rural development initiatives. Uma Das Gupta highlights the ideas behind setting up of Sriniketan as a rural development wing of Visva Bharati University. Tagore did not believe that change in property relations would alter the injustice done to peasants and therefore emphasized change in human attitudes and adoption of cooperative methods. Tanika Sarkar analyses three novels of Tagore reflecting on different phases of nationalism and the contexts of class, gender and caste politics. This is quite evident from Tagore’s three passionately angry poems about untouchability and in Ghare Baire the possibility of women’s choice beyond and against conjugality. Anuradha Roy points out that Tagore’s nationalism cannot be understood in terms of stereotypical binaries that feature in most discussions of nationalism, rather in terms of its process. She concludes by saying that Tagore’s nationalism was self-reflexive and introspective. The last section analyses the concept of poverty and the drain of wealth from India to Britain in the context of global diffusion of capitalism. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya talks about the three discursive approaches to poverty in colonial India: one, that of the colonial state’s approach, second, the nationalist view as represented by Dadabhai Naoroji and third, self-representation of poverty by the poor themselves. While the colonial approach reflected utilitarian ideas, the nationalist approach emphasized the structural conditions that sustained deprivation among the agricultural and working classes. Utsa Patnaik discusses the drain of wealth during colonial rule highlighting three propositions: one, the concept of drain and its measurement as articulated by Naoroji and RC Dutt explained the fact that India’s global capitalist export surplus earnings were entirely appropriated by Britain by ‘paying’ local producers out of their own taxes which meant not paying them at all. Second, by the end of the 19th century, the drain became very large with India posting the second largest export surplus earnings in the world for at least four decades before Depression. Third, the gold and foreign exchange earnings thus appropriated from its colonies, especially from India, allowed Britain to export capital to develop Europe, North America and other White settlement regions ensuring rapid diffusion of capitalism in these regions. The book raises important questions on the concepts of nationalism, agrarian and nonagrarian rural world, forced commercialization of agriculture, village-town transactions relevant to the theoretical and empirical debates in contemporary India. The historical accounts and the diverse viewpoints make the book interesting reading, as it maintains consistent academic rigour in all the chapters. Purendra Prasad is Professor and Head, Department of Sociology at the University of Hyderabad. His research focus is on agrarian relations, classcaste dynamics, forced migration, health inequalities and urban transformations. The Book Review / October 2018 15 Understanding Land, Labour And Caste Relations A Kalaiyarasan SOCIO-ECONOMIC SURVEYS OF THREE VILLAGES IN KARNATAKA: A STUDY OF AGRARIAN RELATIONS Edited by Madhura Swaminathan and Arindam Das Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2016, pp. 328, R450.00 K arnataka has acquired a name for itself in recent times for decentralization, local governance and improvements in the social sectors. The State is also known for land reforms and the political assertion of backward castes, influenced by Lohiates, and all these have impacted agrarian life in rural Karnataka. However, the contribution of agriculture and allied activities to the State’s income has been steadily falling. Villages often remain as a place of habitation, blurring the conceptual distinction between villages and cities. The recent agrarian protests across India notwithstanding, studies claim that we have arrived at a ‘postagrarian’ situation exemplified as ‘rurban’ lifestyle. While the various elaborate surveys, including the NSSO led Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers (SAS), offer insights into the broad socio-economic condition of agricultural households, they don’t provide a deeper understanding on the condition of farmers, farming and changing agrarian relations in Indian villages. It is a yawning gap that can be filled only by micro level studies. It is in this context that the contribution of this book edited by Madhura Swaminathan and Arindam Das, rather a field report, assumes significance in understanding the complexities and dynamics of agrarian transformation in the country, particularly Karnataka. We seldom come across a work that offers a comprehensive understanding on land, labour and caste relations together. Since the book under review does exactly that, it is a timely intervention. The report is a product of a larger ‘Project on Agrarian Relations in India’ (PARI) by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies, which has already covered 25 villages in 10 States of India. The stated objectives of PARI include studying ‘village-level production, production systems and livelihoods, and the socioeconomic characteristics of different strata of the rural population by means of detailed village surveys’. This report was based on a survey of three villages, one from each of the three regions in Karnataka. One is Alabujanahalli in Mandya district, a Cauvery irrigated region of southern Karnatataka, the second one is Siresandra in Kolar district, a semi-dry and 16 The Book Review / October 2018 rainfed region of south-eastern Karntaka and the third is Zhapur in Gulbarga district, a dry region of northern Karnataka. Thus the report offers an insight into the sub-regional variation in the nature of agrarian transformation within the State. The report is divided into 13 chapters. After a brief discussion of the PARI and the selection of villages in the preface, the first chapter discusses the agrarian economy of the State at the macro level, including tenancy reforms, and offers an historical overview of the State. The following chapter offers an introduction to the villages. The chapter on ‘Socio-Economic Classes in the Three Villages’ by VK Ramachandran provides a template to understand or do a class analysis in rural India. It offers comprehensive understanding into the meaning, method and definition to the class differentiation. The class analysis that follows moves to the distribution and inequality of land and other issues like asset, income and tenancy relations in the three villages. A unique feature of these surveys is the estimation of household incomes based on detailed data on income from agricultural and non-agricultural sources. To understand asset ownership, ‘Landholding and Irrigation in the Study Villages’ has to be read along with ‘Features of Asset Ownership in the Three Study Villages’. The analysis of asset distribution shows gross inequalities among the three villages due to caste and class differences. While land is the predominant asset, the asset ownership includes animals, means of production and means of transport. Among the three villages, Zhapur displays extreme inequalities in all aspects. Landless households constitute about 45% in the village, compared to 18.1% in Alabujanahalli and 11.4% in Siresandra. The Gini ratios are 0.76, 0.63 and 0.55 respectively. As expected, inequalities are typically shaped by caste. The landless among Dalits constitute about 54% in Zhapur, 31% in Alabujanahalli and 24% in Siresandra. Only Zhapur has a tribal population whose condition is worse than that of Dalits, about 71% of whom are landless. Following the pattern of land holding, Zhapur tops the list in the inequality in as- sets also. The richest 10% of households account for 67% of total assets in Zhapur and the poorer 60% hold only 8.9%. While the richest 10% of households account for 50% of total assets in Alabujanahalli the poorer 60% hold only 14% of the assets. The corresponding figures for Siresandra are 38% and 20% respectively. The access ratio of assets displays gross inequalities by caste. The Dalits own 12% of the total village assets in Zhapur, 3.4% in Alabujanahalli and 13% in Siresandra. The STs own 4.3% of the total village assets in Zhapur. The analysis of income distribution in the three villages follows the asset pattern of inequality. In Zhapur, the richest 10% of households account for 43% of total income of the village and the poorer 60% hold 23%. In Alabujanahalli, the richest 10% of households account for 38% of income and the poorer 60% hold 28% of the income. Inequality is less severe in Siresandra where the richest 10% of households account for 28% of income and the poorer 60% hold 29% of the income. However, in all three villages, an overwhelming majority of cultivators get only meager returns from crop production, but a few get very large incomes through profit and rents. The share of crop production in total income is 25% in Zhapur, 30% in Alabujanahalli and 24% in Siresandra. Again, Zhapur which is a dry region is most diversified with about 53% of total village income coming from non-farm sector, while it is 42% in Alabujanahalli and 28% in Siresandra. The report shows a severe caste disparity in income distribution. In Zhapur where the per capita income of Dalits is 59% of non-Dalits while tribals 66% of per capita income of non-Dalits. In Alabujanahalli, Dalits earn 50% of what non-Dalits earn and in Siresandra, Dalits earn 47% of what nonDalits do. The ability to earn income is decided by one’s occupation. In Zhapur, 61% of households among Dalits are engaged in manual labour as against 31% among nonDalits. Similarly 62 % of households among Dalits are engaged in manual labour against 25% among non-Dalits while the corresponding figures in Siresandra are 31% and 8% respectively. The majority of peasants— small, medium, and rich—and rich capitalist farmers are non-Dalits, classified as backward class (BCs). Not surprisingly, other variables such as education and basic household amenities are also determined by asset ownership. The average educational attainment among landlords and rich peasants is higher than that of poor peasants and manual labourers. For Dalits fall under this category, their position in educational attainment is lower than that of non-Dalits. Like education, class and caste disparity persists in access to basic amenities, too. While basic amenities are still a distant dream in many of these villages, it is elusive for Dalits. The report shows acute deprivation among Dalits in access to basic amenities. In Zhapur, there is no household which has all the amenities surveyed such as pucca house, electricity, drinking water within the homestead and access to lavatory while there is one household in Siresandra which has all the amenities and 28% households in Alabujanahalli thanks to Cauvery irrigation and agrarian surplus in the region. While drivers of deprivation persist, indebtedness has gone up among households in all the three villages. ‘Rural Indebtedness in Karnataka: Findings from Three Village Surveys’ offers a detailed report on source and purpose of debt and their rate of interest. Seventy percent of households are indebted. The informal sector accounts for most of indebtedness except in Alabujanahalli, where the formal sector accounts for 50%. The formal sector accounts for 29% in Zhapur and 34% in Siresandra. The formal loans are largely used by rich farmers from backward castes, naturally who have collaterals—land holdings and a broad asset base. Ninety percent of loans among labourers are informal. The interest rate is implicit and tied to the debt as they lack collateral to avail formal loans. Landlords, peasants and professional moneylenders comprise the ‘informal loan’ sector in all three villages. The model interest rate was as high as 36 %. While the purpose of loans among poor peasants and manual labourers is for consumption, the rich and middle-level peasants borrowed for both production and consumption. While the report, covering a wide range of socio-economic variables, offers a rich analysis of agrarian relations, conditions of farmers, farming and caste-class deprivations in development indicators, it seriously lacks in certain basic aspects. Besides the introductory chapter, the other chapters do not connect to the specific social and political context which would have influenced the variables used in the analysis. The policy and political intervention and caste-class mobilization specific to the region could have been taken into account while analysing these variables. Otherwise what we have is a truncated understanding of the process. The second important aspect is about the caste category. The large scale surveys such as the NSSO offer caste related variables at the macro level; however, they abstract diverse caste groups into broad SCs and OBCs categories. SC or OBC do not refer to a caste. The report uses categories such as the OBC as homogeneous or all non-SCs as OBCs. Caste is relational. They are not a mere collection of identities, and cannot thus be incorporated into such arbitrary administrative categories. Village studies provide a unique opportunity to understand micro processes, and changing caste dynamics. Studies suggest changing the relative position of caste groups and widening intra-caste disparities, which often manifests in the caste protests—the recent examples being the ones by the Jats, Marathas and Patels. Again, in correlation among socio-economic variables, causation becomes tautological—class matters in reproduction of inequality, land or asset ownership decides one’s educational status or well-being or the Dalits are disproportionally concentrated in manual labour as against non-Dalits in land ownership. It would have been fruitful had the report fleshed out these complex relationships taking into account the specificities of the region. Life in these villages is also clearly subject to broad influences and pressures of the region. Otherwise, the report is quite comprehensive and refreshingly unique compared to the recent studies on the agrarian situation in terms of the vastness of data, framework and depth of analysis. The study certainly enhances our understanding of agrarian relation and rural transformation, dominance and deprivation in rural India, Karnataka in particular. Societal And Economic Realities Of Caste Shantanu De Roy DALIT HOUSEHOLDS IN VILLAGE ECONOMICS Edited by VK Ramachandran and Madhura Swaminathan Tulika Books, 2014, pp. 348, R695.00 T he caste system in India has always been an instrument of exploitation and social discrimination for appropriating surpluses in the process of production and exchange. Though the policy makers in India proudly claim it as (one of ) the biggest functioning democracies in the world and had declared untouchability as illegal immediately after Independence, yet, the caste system, which is essentially anti-democratic and violates human rights, continues to hold sway in India, particularly in the rural areas, where oppression has been sharpest. However, studies based on primary data at the village level have been relatively scarce.1 The book under review, in this context, plugs an important gap in the existing literature. According to Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2002) the agrarian question incorporates three inter-related issues.2 First, it deals with the nature, extent and degree of capitalist development in the rural areas; the second aspect deals with the emergence of classes with the development of capitalist production relations and the third component is concerned with class struggle, alliances that must be mobilized for the resolution of the agrarian question. Strikingly, caste does not figure explicitly in any of the components of the agrarian question in India the resolution of which requires identifying and understanding the nature and type of exploitation and discrimination, that is not only economic but has a strong social component as well. According to Ambedkar (1936), …if liberty means the destruction of the dominion which one man holds over another, then obviously it cannot be insisted upon that economic reform must be the one kind of reform worthy of pursuit. If the source of power and dominion is, at any given time or in any given society, social and religious, then social reform and religious reform must be accepted as the necessary sort of reform. The second section of the book has three papers that deal with detailed historical ex1 A Kalayaiarasan is with the Madras Institute of Developement Studies. Shah et al (2004) is an important document that has considered the issue of untouchability in rural India. 2 Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2004). The Book Review / October 2018 17 periences of social and economic deprivation in three of the major States in India, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. It also discusses the historic role played by the Left and progressive forces in these States that combined movements against caste based social and economic exploitation with landlordism and British colonialism in the preIndependence period. In the post-Independence period, directing struggles against the policies of the ruling classes in India became an important agenda of the Left in India. An important outcome of these struggles was the implementation of land reform in Kerala and West Bengal that had given a severe blow to an oppressive landlordism in these States, led to release of productive forces, resulted in marked improvement in human development indicators and overall improvement in the levels of living in the rural areas. These had empowered the historically deprived Dalits economically and socially. In some ways, these papers are responses to an oft-repeated critique that the Indian Left had historically neglected struggles and shied away from implementing policies that were socially emancipatory and given primacy to economic issues at the cost of the former. Four papers in the third section of the book bring to the discussion, economic issues faced by the Dalits in rural India. Three of these papers, based on village level qualitative and quantitative data, focus on the centrality of lack of access to agricultural land and other means of production in terms of providing livelihood security and accentuating social oppression for the poor and the marginalized in the Indian countryside, the bulk of whom are Dalits. Utsa Patnaik has argued that unlike in Europe, in India, a class of propertyless labourers existed in the pre-capitalist economy and society. They were forbidden to get access to land and forced to participate in menial agricultural tasks. According to Patnaik (1983), Their landless servile status was bound up with a specific position in the caste hierarchy: without exception these labourers were termed ‘outcastes’, and the familiar forms of caste discrimination were enforced against them not only by their direct employers but also by the cultivating peasantry. In the post-Independence period, the class character of the state led to compromises in terms of altering the agrarian structure by destroying landlordism. As a result, land monopoly in the rural areas was preserved by allowing the intermediaries to retain large tracts of land in the form of khudkasht, and/or through evictions of ten- 18 The Book Review / October 2018 ants under the garb of ‘direct cultivation’ through hired labour. Whatever minimum pretensions the state had in terms of altering the agrarian structure in a progressive manner for a period of four decades after the onset of planning in 1950, was lost with the implementation of the orthodox structural adjustment programme since the 1990s as the agenda of land reform was sidelined in policy documents. Studies have shown the Gini coefficient of the distribution of land in India to be very high since Independence (see, for instance, Patnaik, 1986 and Ramachandran and Rawal, 2010). These meant that access to land remained concentrated among a small section of the rural population who, invariably, belonged to socially and economically dominant groups, while the bulk of the rural population, devoid of any access to land, were forced to participate as wage labour on onerous terms and conditions and placed at the lowest tiers in the social hierarchy. Typically, the latter have disproportionate shares in terms of ownership over means of production, assets and incomes. The fourth paper, based on secondary data, discusses the disastrous impact of policy shift in the banking system on Dalit households in rural India. The policy of financial liberalization had a distinct bias against the poor and the marginalized, for getting access to cheap finance. Thus, intensification of class exploitation and social oppression are the natural outcomes of the contemporary phase of capitalism with the initiation of orthodox structural adjustment policies. It can be argued, based on these papers, that the liberation of Dalits must be one of the necessary conditions for the resolution of the agrarian question in India. The fourth section of the book incorporates essays primarily based on household surveys in 15 villages, in different agro-ecological settings, across 7 major States in India between 2006-10.3 These surveys were done as part of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India. According to the Census of India 2011, these States accounted for almost 63 per cent of the total Dalit population in rural India. These surveys were done during the period when the Indian economy was experiencing very high growth rates, unprecedented since Independence, and policy makers across the world were showcasing the Indian growth story as the case study of successful market oriented reforms. It was argued that rapid economic growth and opportunities for upward mobility will lead to loosening the strong association between caste and occupation. It was also argued that the present disparities across caste groups are not the outcome of active discrimination in the market driven modern sectors of Indian economy that are not characterized by traditional patron-client relationships; rather, the present-day discriminations are a hangover from the past that will fade out over time once market forces become allencompassing in the economy.4 Five essays in the fourth section of the book conclusively show that Dalits in the rural areas were left out of the neoliberal development trajectory in India. Benefits of growth did not trickle-down to the lowest tiers of the social and economic hierarchy in the rural areas. However, it was also not a case of undifferentiated misery across India, as the studies reveal. A small stratum at the top have continued with the process of accumulation in production in agriculture and outside of it. As a result, in all the villages studied, there existed huge disparities in the ownership of assets, including land and livestock, access to education and access to household amenities in which Dalit households were far worse off as compared to Other Caste households. 5 Whatever little gains Dalits had managed to accrue through government policies in the pre-reform period was lost with the initiation of market oriented reforms. Additionally, withdrawal of the state from economic activities had led to the dilution of the reservation policy in the sphere of employment and education, thereby further jeopardizing the process of economic upward mobility of Dalits. Despite providing vivid accounts of social and economic deprivation of Dalits in rural India based on historical accounts and primary and secondary database, there is an important shortcoming in this book. There is no study in the book that has incorporated the aspect of gender in detail even though the editors have argued that the agrarian question in India remains unresolved without incorporating the issue of gender. The International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) (2009) argued that Dalit women, being at the bottom of caste, class and gender hierarchies, exposes them to systematic gender and caste based discriminations as an outcome of imbalanced social, economic and political power. According to Dalton (2008), 3 4 These villages are in (undivided) Andhra Pradesh (3), Uttar Pradesh (2), Maharashtra (2), Rajasthan (2), Madhya Pradesh (1), Karnataka (3) and West Bengal (2). …the plight of a Dalit woman can be expressed in the phrase of ‘Triple Dalit’ or ‘Thrice Dalit’— See Deshpande (2016) for detailed discussions. Other Castes in most of the study villages were casteHindu households. 5 being a woman, being a poor woman and being a poor Dalit woman… In view of this, a few studies incorporating discrimination and exclusion specific to Dalit women in rural India would have added richness to the content. Nonetheless, these studies enrich our understanding regarding caste based discriminations in rural India in various complex forms, and the ways and means through which it has survived by adapting to new socio-economic changes and taking on newer and insidious forms. Papers in this book reveal that despite having a constitutional obligation to eliminate inequality and caste based deprivations and promote social justice, the Indian state facilitates the former and compromises with the latter goal. Reference Ambedkar, B R (2014), The Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition, Verso Books, London and New York. Dalton, F M P (2008). Transforming Dalit Identity: Ancient Drum Beat, New Song (Master’s thesis). University of Wellington, New Zealand. Retrieved from http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/ handle/10063/329/thesis.pdf? sequence=1 Deshpande, Ashwini (2016), ‘Caste Discrimination in Contemporary India’, in Basu, Kaushik and Stiglitz, E Joseph (eds.) (2016), Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy (Volume II), Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 248-273. International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN). (2009). ‘Violence against Dalit Women’, briefing note prepared for the 11th session of the Human Rights Council. Retrieved from http://www.dalits.nl/pdf/ H R C - 1 1 _ b r i e f i n g _ n o t e _ _Violence_against_Dalit_Women.pdf Patnaik, Utsa (1983), ‘On the Evolution of the Class of Agricultural Labourers in India’, Social Scientist, 11(7), pp. 3-24. ——— (1986), ‘The Agrarian Question and Development of Capitalism in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 21(18), pp. 781-793. ——— (1999), ‘The Cost of Free Trade: The WTO Regime and the Indian Economy’, Social Scientist, 27(11/12), pp. 3-26. ——— (2003), Global Capitalism, Deflation and Agrarian Crisis in Developing Countries, Social Policy and Development Programme Paper Number 15, UNRISD, Geneva. Ramachandran, V K and Swaminathan, Madhura (2002), ‘Introduction’, in Ramachandran, V K and Swaminathan, Madhura(eds.), Agrarian Studies: Essays on Agrarian Relations in Less-developed Countries, Tulika Publishers, New Delhi. Ramachandran, V K Rawal, Vikas (2010), ‘The Impact of Liberalization and Globalization on India’s Agrarian Economy’, Global Labour Journal, 1(1), Special Issue: Globalization and Labour in India and China, pp. 107-130. This is an Open Access journal. Registrar General of India, (2011), Census of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Shah, Ghanshyam et al (2004), Untouchability in Rural India, Sage Publications, New Delhi. Shantanu De Roy teaches Economics in the Department of Policy Studies at TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi. How Poverty Is Generated Partha Saha LABOUR, STATE AND SOCIETY IN RURAL INDIA: A CLASS-RELATIONAL APPROACH By Jonathan Pattenden Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 216, $66.86 I ndia’s high growth has continued handin-hand with rising inequality, and almost unchanged absolute level of poverty despite its falling incidence. A lot has been written about multi-dimensional measures of poverty, its impact on growth, its geographical location, its concentration among certain socio-economic groups, and about its causes and possible remedies. The issue of poverty and deprivation has been dealt with in a technocratic manner, and different methods which have been suggested to deal with this problem are based on success stories from different parts of the world. The book under review is an attempt at filling the vacuum created by the absence of context in the discussions around poverty and the process involved in its generation and regeneration. The book brings out agrarian social relations in contemporary rural India; it attempts to contextualize contemporary changes in rural India, and investigates how different rural classes interact with each other and in the process how poverty gets generated. Even though most of the analysis is based on what has been happening in the fieldwork locations, the author has tried to place the analysis in a larger political economy framework that takes into account things which are not confined within the fieldwork locations. By analysing specific forms of domination and exploitation, this book sheds light on how poverty is generated and regenerated by capitalism. The analysis revolves around class relations between the dominant and the labouring class and how forms of domination have changed over time. Penetration of market economy in general and policies of neo-liberalism have brought about several changes in the village economy and society in general and production relations in particular. Old and traditional forms of domination and exploitation have given way to newer forms which are often mediated by the state. Outsourcing has become a norm resulting in atomized and diversified forms of production, and a fragmented labour market. Growing informalization of employment even within the formal sector has further weakened the collective voice of the workers in most of the developing world. It is in this context that this book explores different forms of accumulation in rural Karnataka which resulted in deprivation and destitution of a vast majority of rural workers. The book identifies that the extent and form of accumulation depended crucially on the nature of diversification of the rural economy. In remote and less diversified rural areas, earlier forms of domination continue to exist, and all kinds of government interventions are successfully subverted by the dominant class. In areas where occupational diversification happened to a significant degree, direct coercive methods of domination and exploitation give way to other forms of domination—but now with connivance of the state, civil society organizations, and community based organizations. While traditional forms of surplus appropriation and accumulation are on the decline in rural India, as also in rural Karnataka, particularly in areas where dependence on the landed class has been on the decline, newer forms of accumulation are emerging where the capture of local government institutions is a method by which the dominant class controls the labouring class. In this regard, five different types of ‘gatekeeping’ were identified in the study locations, and each type was characterized by the amount involved in the process of appropriation and the dominant class that appropriated it. Although the dominant class was different across different types of ‘gatekeeping’, the gatekeeper or the dominant class positioned itself at the interface of state and society. This process of ‘gatekeeping’ is rather complex and not simply a case of the rich keeping away the poor from different benefits provided by the State. There were certain types of ‘gatekeeping’ where the amount of accumulation was much less and the gatekeepers were individuals from poorer and marginalized sections who basically reproduced the status quo by guarding the interest of the dominant landed class. So, essentially, the entire ‘gatekeeping’ exercise is a top down approach where ultimately the interest of the dominant landed class is protected even though the gatekeepers at different levels belonged to different levels in the socio-economic hierarchy. This analysis has The Book Review / October 2018 19 been carried out very succinctly, and it might be asked that if ultimately it was the interest of the dominant landed class that was being protected, what was the necessity of categorizing ‘gatekeeping’ into different hierarchical type? I think the answer lies in the different processes that are involved at different levels and the social nuances that are associated with it. The last section of the book looks into the role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in grass-root mobilization and this is attempted through various case studies including a detailed one based on Jagruthi Mahila Sanghathan (JMS). In this section, the nexus between the government at the local level and CSOs has been analysed, and it has been argued that CSOs basically carried out and implemented the agenda of the government and in the process ‘crowded out’ the possibility of any formation of ‘pro-labour class organization’. Rather than creating an alternative platform demanding re-allocation of resources, CSOs and CBOs are largely dominated by the local dominant class who act as gatekeepers of funds flowing in from various departments and ministries and appropriate major portions of it. By analysing interventions of JMS across different villages in Karnataka, this book has identified three possible outcomes of interventions by CBOs: (a) in villages where the working class was largely dependent on the dominant land owning class for employment and livelihood, there was very little role for CBOs, and any possibility of change in power configuration depended on availability of 20 The Book Review / October 2018 non-farm employment outside the village or government interventions like universal poverty reduction programmes or public works programmes which can reduce dependence on the dominant class; (b) even in a highly class dominated village, grass-root mobilization was possible around protest demonstrations on some issues or through activities like village land improvement promoted by CBOs; (c) micro initiatives by CBOs often could not result in labour mobilization as these initiatives were more focused on sustaining themselves in a highly competitive world. While these observations are absolutely valid, there are certain issues which are to some extent overlooked. First, in a highly unequal power relation, success of grass-root mobilization depends on how long it can be sustained and to what extent it can keep alive the interest of participants on the issue around which mobilization happened. This is rather complex and difficult, but given the considerable amount of fieldwork that has gone into this work, exploring some possibilities would have been worthwhile. Second, the recent experience in MGNREGA and Food Security Act points out unequivocally to the importance of awareness campaigns because even to mobilize on crucial livelihood issues, some minimum degree of awareness is needed to reach out to the masses. CBOs can actually play a very crucial role in just this awareness campaigns. This crucial role of CBOs and its impact are largely overlooked and there seems to be more emphasis on legislation. Third, intrahousehold gender conflicts have significant implications for women’s participation in broader social movements and there are deeper socio-cultural issues which are beyond class relations. Intra-household resource allocation is an important determinant for the success of poverty alleviation programmes. Even though the method adopted in this work largely focuses on class-relational approach, some discussion on these issues would have added more value to this work. Finally, with the increasing mechanization of agriculture, we need to be careful how we define the dominant class, and there is a need to look beyond the definition which is based on the net buyer of labour. Overall, this book is an important contribution to our understanding of the causes of poverty in all its complexities, and is particularly relevant for development practitioners and policy makers. Partha Saha teaches Public Policy at the School of Global Affairs, Ambedkar University (AUD), Delhi. Control, Conflict And Response Sumangala Damodaran GLOBALIZATION LIVED LOCALLY: A LABOUR GEOGRAPHY PERSPECTIVE By Neethi P. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 231+xxii, R795.00 F or over a decade now, the field of labour geography, or the analysis of how industrial relations are shaped by and in turn shape the spaces that they are played out in, has become an important one in understanding contemporary capitalist industrial and labour processes. Emerging from a critique of conventional economic geography, which does not address how labour shapes the geography of capitalism substantially, as also of traditional Marxist analyses of capitalism which assume that the power to shape the places that capital locates production in largely rests with capital, labour geography looks at labour and workers as possessing ways of shaping the geographies of their production and existence as well. This shaping of spaces through place-making, as it is referred to in the literature, by workers also influences the geography of capitalism. Neethi’s book deals with the theme of globalization and labour, employing a labour geography perspective to understand labour control, conflict and response under a globalized regime in Kerala. She asks key questions in the book: Are national governments and organized labour powerless in the face of unfettered deregulation of capital and labour markets? How do workers function as social agents? How do local discourses of globalization play out? What are the spatial elements that come into play in understanding labour control strategies and labour responses? To address these, she presents four case studies, of garments, electronics, food processing and ports in Kerala, each differently yet significantly integrated with global production, to argue against an overarching metanarrative of globalization and to trace features of localized regimes of labour control as well as resistance by labour. She uses a geographically informed alternate perception towards studying work and employment practices, i.e., a geographically sensitive account of social relations of work through capital and labour’s social orientation to space, through place consciousness and a focus on the local. The case studies are presented in the background of a major paradox seen in the State of Kerala: high levels of social development, particularly of indicators relating to women in the fields of health and education on the one hand and the high rates of unemployment combined with the extremely low level of female labour force participation compared to other parts of the country. They are also set against the backdrop of high levels of unionization across all kinds of economic activity and this extending to the informal sector as well, including among women. In a chapter that focuses on the background to Kerala’s experience with labour mobilization and unionization following an introductory chapter that lays out the conceptual framework of labour geography that the author uses in the book, she argues that ‘…the state has been linked to society through a welfare pact that has in effect, within the limits of a capitalist economy, seen the dynamic institutionalization of working class interests’ (p. 39). Rural and urban wage earning classes were always politically incorporated through trade unions and various other formations like welfare boards, self help groups and the like. Further, she points out that in more recent times, the State has tried to ‘reverse’ past trends by making the State investment friendly, exemplified by the Economic Review in the year 2012 declaring it the most globalized State in the country. The first three sectors that the author presents—apparel production in an export promotion park, electronics and home-based production of processed food, are dominated by women workers and hence throw light on labour control and resistance in gendered labour markets. The fourth is the case of privatization of the Cochin port, one of India’s major ports, laying out the idea of the port as a ‘place’ in the labour geography sense and hence focusing on the heterogeneity of the space as well as the different kinds of workers working in it. The cases are laid out in four chapters and then followed by a concluding chapter. The arguments that are made by the author in laying out the case studies are several. First, that there are varieties of labour control strategies, beginning from the recruitment stage, that are employed, reflecting local histories and social norms within the overall context of globalization. For example, local moralities and institutions frame the attitude to the seeking of industrial employment outside the home by women workers. Allowing young girls to go out to work, for example, in apparel parks, is socially legitimized by community and religious institutions, subject to their being provided incentives like transport. The idea of the ‘good’ female worker is sought to be projected by such legitimization exercises and there can be seen community or local level publicization of opportunities and facilitation of employment by Grama Panchayats (in the case of apparel), local Churches (in the case of electronics) and other such institutions. This, interestingly, does not apply to home based employment which, as the vast literature that is available points out, is not acknowledged as work. Second, in the case of apparel and the port, the spaces of work were clearly decreed as working spaces alone, disallowing union representation and political affiliations, reflecting the policies for outward orientation and incentives for ‘global’ production. Third, women workers, despite being in very different industries in comparison to the Cochin port, do not passively accept the terms under which they are employed and employ both direct (in the case of apparel) and less direct (or everyday forms, as in home based food processing and electronics) forms of resistance to protest adverse working conditions. The author documents meticulously the way in which women apparel workers organized themselves into a collective and went on a nine-day strike to protest against their terms of employment, particularly internal transfers without informing them which they referred to as being ‘sold’ from one department to another by the management. She also points out the difficulties of organizing workers in new sectors and spaces by going into the specificities of the sectors in terms of their spatiality and local practices. In the Cochin port, on the other hand, “ Neethi’s book deals with the theme of globalization and labour, employing a labour geography perspective to understand labour control, conflict and response under a globalized regime in Kerala. ” varieties of trade union practices and strategies can be seen, ranging from strong trade unions affiliated to different political parties or formations, working in solidarity with each other, to linking up with international solidarity networks, demonstrating the strength as well as expanding geographical scales of worker organization. The book brings out important dimensions, for the case of Kerala, even as David Harvey’s ‘spatial fix’ perspective would point to how capital shapes geographies of investment and production, how workers’ efforts in shaping their spatial landscape cannot be ignored. The specific local dimensions that shape workers’ own ‘spatial fixes’, as well as workers’ perception of spaces as places, where they consume, produce, socially reproduce, are brought out well. Local labour markets, she demonstrates, are highly varied and interact with specific kinds of production structures in determining outcomes for as well as responses by workers. It is an important contribution to the labour studies literature in India, specifically because it employs a labour geography perspective which is less common for studies on Indian industry and labour. Sumangala Damodaran is with the School of Development Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Book News Book News Demonetisation: A Means to an End by Ramgopal Agarwala, a renowned economist, takes an incisive look at the events that led to demonetisation, the aftermath and the implications. Demonetisation was met with extreme reactions and its results were multifaceted. Several months later, we are still questioning: Is it a disastrous blunder or a leap forward? He sifts through many irrelevant rants, a lot of politically motivated mud-slinging and asks the most important question: What now, what next? Sage Publications, 2017, pp. 224, R359.00 The Book Review / October 2018 21 22 The Book Review / October 2018 Revisiting Garment Value Chains In India Sona Mitra THE SWEATSHOP REGIME: LABOURING BODIES, EXPLOITATION, AND GARMENTS MADE IN INDIA By Alessandra Mezzadri Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 258, R595.00 A large section of the literature analysing the global value chains and global production networks have remained restricted to the analysis of production processes: their organizational structures, nature and character of the variety of governance systems of the value chains as well as the technological arrangements around the same. The literature has often looked at the value chains as a fragmented process of surplus accumulation and thus has limited the analysis to an external boundary, which were unable to transcend such boundaries and integrate with the labour processes within the value chains. The literature around garment value chains also suffered from similar constraints, especially in the context of India, where an analysis of garment industries has remained confined mainly to micro-study based approaches, focused mainly at a particular centre of production or region and attempting to locate it within the larger garment industry in India. These studies have undoubtedly provided invaluable inputs to building a composite understanding of the sector, the processes and organization of production and its impact on the labour processes. However, such literature, especially in the current decade, marks a glaring lacuna in providing a macro overview and a holistic picture of the garment sector as such. The book under review by Alessandra Mezzadri plugs this gap in the literature not only by presenting the complexities involved in both the production and labour processes within the garment sector in India at a national level, but also goes deeper into the issues of labour exploitation, oppression, unfreedom and bodily depletion faced daily by those who are toiling incessantly for pro- “ The book takes the reader through a wonderful journey across the important garment hubs beginning from Northern and Eastern India into the newly emerged garment producing centres of the South. ” ducing these garments that we wear every day. Mezzadri’s book explains the characteristics of the global production system as a joint enterprise against the labouring poor where the multiple actors—global and local buyers, retailers, domestic exporters and producers, merchants and manufacturers, multiple levels of socially differentiated local intermediaries acting as subcontractors along with the institution of family and the consumers—all engage in the practices of producing and reproducing the sweatshop and thus institutionalize the regime of inequality and working poverty. The book takes the reader through a wonderful journey across the important garment hubs beginning from Northern and Eastern India into the newly emerged garment producing centres of the South. Mezzadri elucidates on the process of some older centres of production transforming themselves into mainly trading and commercial centres for the sector, such as Mumbai, while others replicating the global assembly lines to reinvent themselves such as in the many Southern centres. The others however use the older production structures and techniques to maintain their uniqueness and thrive on pre-existing organizations of production such as the Northern centres, especially the NCR and surrounding regions and to some extent thrive on product specialization and the lack of innovation to be on the decline, such as in the hubs of Kolkata. To highlight an old yet interesting quote also reproduced in the book, Mezzadri, in her pusuit to trace the garment sector, truly trails the following, ‘Fashion is born in Mumbai, matures in Delhi, ages in Chennai and dies in Kolkata.’ In all these centres, she effectively shows the existence of social differentiation feeding into the organization of production, the product differentiation, the complexities associated with the circulation of labour, all of which not only pre-exist sweatshops but assist in reproducing them in an unending manner. The author describes in a detailed and scholarly way the changes in the distinct circuits as she moves across the landscapes based on the regional patterns of product special- ization, the composition of sweatshops and the social profile of the labouring poor within them. Her narrative involves elucidating mainly three differential strands of the labouring poor within the ‘abode of production’ or more commonly known as sweatshops—class, caste and gender—which act as a key asset for the several actors identified within the production structures to strategically utilize for surplus extraction. A major point underscored in her analysis is about exploiting these existing social differentiations and creating newer differentiations in order to further fragment the sector which in turn facilitates profit maximization as well as creates certain ‘temporarily permanent’ structures for institutionalizing a pervasively unequal garment shop-floor whether in factories, workshops or inside homes. In the process of her description and theorization of the sweatshops, she mainly builds her arguments based on a Marxian and feminist framework to elucidate on the narrative of the garment workforce in India. Her work draws majorly upon the seminal works of eminent scholars such as Henry Bernstein and Jairas Banaji for explaining the changes in the mode of production and the differentiating classes of labour existing within capitalism on the framework developed by Jan Breman and Barbara HarrisWhite to explain the caste-based social differentiation and their interrelations with the labouring process in India to explain the processes in the garments industry; and lastly on the works of Maria Mies and Silvia Federici to elucidate on the pre-existing forms of patriarchal stereotypes which facilitate the exploitation and oppression of the female The Book Review / October 2018 23 labouring bodies under a capitalist production process. Using these in the context of India, the author makes a crucial point about the global garment production system based on bondage, unfreedom and perhaps also ‘modern slavery’ through which our clothes are stitched and delivered via complex channels into high-end retail outlets before getting into our wardrobes. This, she argues emphatically, is anything but ‘modernisation’ of the sector under globalized capitalism, as is usually claimed. Mezzadri concludes as follows, Studying contemporary capitalism through the lens of the sweatshop regime, first warns against facile modernizing narratives. Second, it significantly contributes to debates on ‘modern slavery’. Third, it suggests a number of important lessons for the debate on ethical consumerism and ethical trade interventions. However, the book stops short from getting into greater depths of the relationship between labour and capital in India as it has evolved post-Independence, based on the collusion of state and the then Indian bourgeoisie, which had a great impact upon the development of industries, including garments in India. The narrative makes passing references to the same, for example, in terms of the transitions witnessed by the control of the sector from merchants to manufacturers and other players, or in keeping garments restricted as labour-intensive SMEs for a long period, which, according to the author, is also responsible for continuing and extending the informal and thus unequal arrangements in most segments of garment production till date. While one agrees with this point, it is also important to connect the contemporary arrangements with the fallacious notions of ‘limited divisibility of capital’ under a regime of globalized and neoliberalized capitalism. This part of the argument though not absent completely appears as marginal to the narrative thus presented. It may very well remain outside the scope of the study but including and building upon it to explain the current subordination of labour would have added extra value to the discourse. Another important point in the book relates to the presentation of the Northern circuits as more ‘male-dominated’ due to old production structures and product specializations compared to the newly emerged Southern circuits, which include more women in the production process, albeit due to a specific kind of patriarchal stereo-typification of women bodies. While it correctly raises the issues of visibility and invisibility of women’s contribution to the garments 24 The Book Review / October 2018 industry adequately, the argument could have also been historicized by delving a little into the complex historical patterns of women’s work in India. It has been well documented that women in the North and East have had a much lower work participation rates compared to that of women in the South. A large part of women’s entry into the southern segments of garment production in the current regime also used that historical basis to be able to bring in more women into its fold, where patriarchal restrictions played out differently than in other regions. Despite the above, Mezzadri’s book with its in-depth analysis is a reflection of her scholarly rigour. The book undoubtedly contributes great value to the discourse of the labour processes in the garment value chains in India and also feeds into the international discourse which hardly gets into such depths of analysing labouring bodies. The discussions provide a fresh look into the ‘sweatshops’ as a complex site of exploitation using a framework which is not too commonly explored. Not only does the book provide detailed explorations of the contemporary issues plaguing labour within the sector, in places the arguments do derive greatly from the history of garment and textile production in India. The book, in my opinion, thus has a long shelf-life and would be invaluable for anyone researching on the garments sector in India in future. A last point is on the editing of the book which should have been much more meticulous than the current edition displays. Apart from regular errors related to missing information on abbreviations and typographical errors, certain colloquial names of places, forms of craft and even names of institutes have been spelt erroneously throughout the book. These may be corrected in future editions. Sona Mitra is an economist and independent researcher, currently working as a consultant with UNDP-India. Book News Book News Domestic Workers of the World Unite! A Gobal Movement for Dignity and Human Rights by Jennifer N Fish, drawing on over a decade’s worth of research, plus interviews with a number of key movement leaders and domestic workers, presents the compelling stories of the pioneering women who, while struggling to fight for rights in their own countries, mobilized transnationally to enact change. New York University Press, 2017, pp. 320, $30.00 Contentions In Macroeconomics Rohit Azad MACROECONOMICS AND MARKETS IN DEVELOPING AND EMERGING ECONOMIES By Ashima Goyal Routledge India, 2016, pp. 394, R1095.00 W ith the world still reeling under what has been correctly identified as the biggest crisis since the Great Depression, interest in macroeconomics as a subject has got reignited. The crisis which originated in the US later spread across Europe and has also adversely impacted the so-called ‘emerging’ economies. Since this book addresses the latter, it is important to see it in the light of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the churning going on in macroeconomics as a subject. Keynesian economics has been broadly divided into two camps, which draw their lineage from the old camps of a similar nature. The old camp was divided between the two Cambridges of the MIT, USA and of Cambridge University, UK. The former constituted of economists like John Hicks, Paul Samuelson, James Tobin came to be known as the Neoclassical Synthesis, whereas the latter constituted of Keynes’s contemporaries like Michal Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, which was named as the post-Keynesian Economics. In line with the old division, the two trends today have kept this debate, albeit in a more elaborate and nuanced form, alive. On the one hand, the New Keynesian economics (the current mainstream macroeconomics) stresses on the rigidity in wages and prices (resulting from efficiency wages, insider-outsider models etc.) as the impediment to full employment in the economy. These rigidities, therefore, open the possibility for policy intervention in the short run but only in the short run. On the other hand, contemporary post-Keynesians stress on the role of money and expectations in explaining involuntary unemployment. In fact in sharp contrast to the New Keynesian tradition, Keynes’s own analysis of unemployment was developed in a world of flexible prices (with rigid nominal wage), thereby showing that rigidity of prices was never at the core of either explaining lack of demand (or involuntary unemployment) or effectiveness of policy. This book self confessedly falls in the New Keynesian tradition. When looked at within the mainstream tradition of macro- economics, this text is truly a concise form of its various arguments, especially its open economy version. Interpreting that framework for an economy like ours will make significant contributions to this field. A rival of this book is another popular book titled Development Macroeconomics co-authored by Pierre-Richard Agenor and Peter J Montiel but its subject matter is Latin American economies. The Latin American rivals draw intellectually on its predecessor, Lance Taylor’s Structuralist Macroeconomics, even though their methodology is quite mainstream. Since this book presents itself as a textbook based on a developing country, I would like to review it in that light and not as whether it is doing justice to the new Keynesian framework. To my mind, textbooks should always be taken more seriously than other books since they help form the opinions of students and teachers. So, any text-book should be representative of the overall state of the subject. Unfortunately this book completely overlooks the extensive work on the macroeconomics of Emerging and Developing Economies (EDEs) under the name of Structuralist Macroeconomics. Should any of this matter? I believe so. The conception of an economy, developing or developed alike, is vastly different between these two traditions. One of these beliefs, to which this textbook belongs, that the reason an economy is stuck with underutilization of resources i.e., labour and capital, is because the prices are not allowed to fall sufficiently to clear the markets for labour and capital. Monetary policy is effective in situations such as these since rigidity of prices ensures non-neutrality of money. A corollary of this argument would be that in the absence of such rigidities, the economy functions with full utilization of resources and that money in neutral. The primary concern of this school is accordingly focussed on finding the reasons for such rigidities. Important though such research may be in our quest to understand rigidities, they have got the wrong end of the stick. Rigidity of prices have nothing to do with either under-utilization or efficacy of monetary policy. The ills of the economic system lies elsewhere. The Keynes-Kalecki tradition, in sharp contrast, argues that the reason an economy is stuck with under-utilized resources is because investment demand is not enough to utilize all the available resources. Price rigidity (Kalecki) or no rigidity (Keynes) do not play any role in keeping the economy from achieving full utilization of its resources. The policy implications of such an understanding is very different from the previous tradition. Instead of relying exclusively on monetary policy, which at best has an indirect influence on investment through the interest rate, this tradition argues for an astute combination of fiscal and monetary policy with the latter playing second fiddle to the former. The omnipotent monetary policy of the new Keynesian tradition either as a stimulus to employment or to control inflation is seen more sceptically here. An expansionary monetary policy, whether through quantitative easing or a declining interest rate, can influence the level of activity only if the interest rate that the central bank fixes influences the rates of interest on long term loans. And even if it does that, investment needs to be sensitive to the interest rates for this policy to yield results. In situations of under-utilization of capacity, merely a fall in the cost of loans will not bring forth higher investment, thereby undermining the stimulating role that monetary policy can perhaps play in situations of otherwise buoyant demand. As for inflation targeting, the effectiveness of monetary policy is centrally dependent on a fall in investment demand which brings the inflation down. If there is no or little trade-off between output and inflation (huge reserves of labour), then such a policy is likely to do more harm than good since it would require a big trade-off in terms of employment and output to bring about a marginal, if at all, decline in inflation. This will be particularly so if it’s a cost-push inflation, which is most often the case in developing countries. The author herself quotes from her co-authored paper (‘Separating Shocks from Cyclicality in Indian Aggregate Supply’, with Shruti Tripathi, Journal of Asian Economics, 38, pp. 93-103, 2015) ‘Goyal and Tripathi (2015) ... support the elastic longer-run supply and the dominance of supply shocks’ (emphasis added). This argument on the shape of the Aggregate Supply Curve (especially for the long run) stands in contrast with the New Keynesian. Then an obvious question that arises is if a framework needs to be altered so much as to make it the same as another framework, why not just work with the latter? A few other things to quarrel with in the open economy bits of the book is that while discussing the capital account, one gets the impression that it is the capital account which is adjusting to the current account whereas it is more likely the reverse especially for EDEs which are normally not the preferred destinations for capital flows. So, it’s not the foreign financing needs of an EDE that is the primary determinant of the volume or frequency of capital flows but the push factors of economies which are owners of such finance. For example, Nepal (or even India) tomorrow cannot decide to run heavy current account deficits which it doesn’t have the capacity to finance. The author brings to light an important problem of the Mundell-Flemming (MF) model i.e., its assumption of static price expectations but the text leaves out an even more critical omission that the MF model can be blamed for. While the MF model seeks to deal with an open economy, it lacks a foreign exchange market equation. The entire MF model hangs on its assumption of a capital account adjusting to the needs of the current account, which is quite contrary to the lived experience of most of the EDEs. The policy implications are vastly different depending on which way the causality runs in the current to the capital account. The authors quite succinctly elaborate on different forms of arbitrage conditions that would hold under varying conditions of information, risk aversion etc., in the currency markets. These conditions have been discussed in detail and laid out clearly. I have just one issue to add. While the author says ‘[i]f we distinguish between risk and uncertainty the latter is not amenable to mathematical treatment, like risk is’, most of the chapter is spent on dealing with risk in the currency markets. I believe students should not get dissuaded from studying aspects of an economy which cannot always be mathematically derived. In a world driven by uncertainty, stressing on risk alone takes away the complexity of an economic phenomenon. The Book Review / October 2018 25 “ This book self confessedly falls in the New Keynesian tradition. When looked at within the mainstream tradition of macroeconomics, Emerging Contradictions In Development Vinoj Abraham QUARTER CENTURY OF LIBERALISATON IN INDIA: ESSAYS FROM ECONOMIC & POLITICAL WEEKLY By Montek S Ahluwalia, Deepak Nayyar et al Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 252, R495.00 this text is truly a concise form of its various arguments, especially its open economy version. ” However, the author is aware of these limitations of risk-based analysis and is upfront about it. While during discussions on expectations, the current macroeconomic theory draws a distinction between the economic ‘fundamentals’ and the non-fundamentals (say froth), it is never clear what determines these fundamentals. This distinction is used so frequently that one doesn’t feel the need to elaborate on what goes into determining these so-called fundamentals. These chapters, which also have these ‘fundamentals’ running through do not do justice to what constitutes the set of fundamentals. Would the conclusions change if the fundamentals themselves were a function of the expectations in which case there is a two-way causality running from expectations to economic outcomes. Wouldn’t then there be a problem of defining the fundamentals? The long and short of it is that the distinction between risk and uncertainty that Keynes was so careful about has been given a miss in most of macroeconomics today. While the author is careful in acknowledging it, the text focuses only on a risk-based analysis. All in all, this is a book that attempts to bring the new Keynesian macroeconomic framework closer to the realities of developing countries, particularly in the South Asian region. In that sense, it is surely a companion to its Latin American counterpart. By itself, it is an important feat since an unaltered new Keynesian framework, which has the developed countries as its subject, cannot surely be taught as it is for countries with situations vastly different from those in the West. Despite this achievement, I am afraid, this book looks at the world with a blinkered vision even as the crisis in the discipline demands opening up the ways of enquiry. Rohit Azad teaches at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. 26 The Book Review / October 2018 T he economic era since 1991 has been a mixed bag for development. While the economy showed a sustained growth of around 5 to 7 percent per annum, throughout the period, sometimes even growing at double digits, structural transformation had bypassed the industrial sector growth, the key sector for productivity enhancement. Growth, propelled by the new and emerging sectors also were carrying in its wave the skilled and the urban youth, but left behind were large swathes of the less skilled and the rural. Poverty rates had declined, arguably to some extent, yet not so effectively as in the immediate period preceding liberalization, however calorie consumption had certainly declined. Inequality has widened, across regions and interpersonal. Foreign investment flow has ever since been mounting, capital and stock markets expanding, while credit access and availability for productive investment had slowed down as well as private domestic investment has stagnated. Big infrastructure projects in mega and metro cities, as well as connecting these cities have multiplied, while the small and medium urban centres are imploding. Such contradictory signals of development since liberalization call out for arguments that can elucidate. Quarter Century of Liberalisaton in India is a collection of essays explaining these emerging contradictions in development since liberalization. It primarily seeks to answer the questions: How did India wake up in 1991? Who rang the bells and for whom did the bells ring? This collection of essays that appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly between July 2016 and March 2017, is an excellent analytical gaze at the recent past, on liberalization, its promises and its discontents. Rich in arguements, the works of some of the most persistent and persuasive authors have been included in the volume. The volume would be particularly interesting for those who want to read the views of both sides of this sharply divided debate on liberalization and its prospects in India. A general consensus among all the authors is that liberalization has been a period of high growth. Further, while growth had accelerated, it has been exclusionary in nature. However, the sharpest contestations arise on the causative conditions that led to liberalization, the emergent nature of state and the future prospects of liberalization. The essays in the volume are neatly classified into three running themes, the first theme discusses the circumstances of economic liberalization in 1991. The second theme addresses the process of transition, its successes and failures. The third theme looks into specific key sectors and their performances. The two papers on the landmark year 1991 by Montek S Ahulwalia and Deepak Nayyar could be read in juxtaposition. Both the authors were in the thick of the plot when the act was carried out. Yet, their vantage point of the unfolding economic drama have led them to interpret the roots of the events of 1991 to different locales, sometimes even countering—one taking the view that the idea of liberalization was a long thought out home grown plan, the other that liberalization was a short term response to a looming threat on the government’s finances, not considering the developmental needs of the state. The focus of the next three articles is the changing role of the state under liberalization and global capital. Prabhat Patnaik and Anjan Chakrabarty focus on the rise of global capital and the role of the state in building institutions that would calibrate India into an economic space for predatory forms of capital. Patnaik’s article discusses the mechanics of neo-liberal capital and its implications in terms of hunger, inequality and disguised unemployment. He further draws attention to the internal contradictions of capitalism and its need to expand on price bubbles. Anjan takes a philosophical look at the idea of liberalization and the transforming role of the state in disciplining and creating consent for neo-liberal capital. Sabri Oncu draws parallels from across the globe on liberalization and financialization being offered as the only sustainable alternative to move towards, in the discourse on development. He urges the need for prioritizing long term productive credit rather than financializing a rent seeking economy. While the exclusionary nature of growth is a recurring theme throughout, its process is brought to the fore by Atul Sood, which is reflected by Rajeev Kumar as well. However, the authors take different positions in understanding the role of the state. While Sood posits the state as an active agent in creating this exclusionary character of the economy, Rajeev Kumar sees a benign role of the state, that of inaction, that created the exclusionary spaces. Sood argues that the state in the liberalized regime has acquired new characteristics; far from being the typical neo-classical state of minimal market intervention and maximum governance, the state has become a manipulator for the big players, shaping laws, rules and policies to further their interests. While this was done in a covert manner couched in the discourse of governance, the recent phase since 2014 has seen this nature of the state in blunt force, and a parallel politics of silencing the other voices has been deployed to expand this agenda. Rajiv Kumar also argues that the growth process was pro-rich as it disentangled the accumulation process for the rich while it withdrew from its responsibilities towards basic needs such as education and health and left the key livelihood sector, the agriculture sector, unattended. Further, the nexus between politician and crony capital vitiated the atmosphere. In Rajeev’s scheme of argument, therefore, the period after 2014, under Narendra Modi has seen pro-poor governance reforms and is hopeful of growth being less exclusionary. Taking stock of the macroeconomic performance since liberalization Pulapre Balakrishnan concludes that the stated objectives of structural reforms in terms of easing of balance of payment constraint, greater growth and efficiency through enhanced competition has been partially achieved in specific sectors. However, he has singled out the lack of growth in public goods, infrastructure in particular which is stretching the private economy to its limits. Besides, sagging public infrastructure is depleting the quality of life as well. The slackness in capital formation is reiterated by R Nagraj and Shantanu De Roy in the industrial and agricultural sectors respectively. Roy decries the reformist argument of favaourable terms of trade for agriculture. On the contrary, growth and productivity performance of the sector in general had worsened in the post-reform period. Countering the reform argument Nagraj takes the structuralist view that poor agriculture growth and the poor infrastructure investment are hampering industrial growth. He further argues for a developmental state through strategic interventions for bolstering the manufacturing sector. Looking at the changes in fiscal policy and Centre-State relations Chirashree Das Gupta and Surajit Mazumdar argue that there has been a change in the resolving of Centre-State relations from political conflicts to techno-managerialism post reforms. Market based fiscal prudence was to be achieved mainly through expenditure compression as tax mobilization was weakening, which in turn answers the question of weakening public investment. The fiscal powers of the States would continue to erode under the GST regime, thus weakening the position of the States vis-à-vis the Centre. AV Rajwade traces the major changes in the monetary and exchange rate policy since 1991. On analysing the performance, he argues that while the external account is robust in quantity it is wanting in quality. He further pleads for the case of an exchange rate targeting approach rather than the currently followed inflation targeting. Aseem Srivastava takes a look at the jobless growth and the rising resentment in the country, ecological and cultural loss that is associated with growing consumerism and individuation of the society. The book, as stated above is a broad sweep of the Indian economy since 1991. Though a collection of essays, one can feel the continuity in the conversation as one moves from one essay to the other. It must be cautioned that many of them are aimed at articulating their case, conversing to a generally informed reader. For supporting rigorous empirical evidences for the arguments made, one may have to read their other works. Most of these essays are on the economic angle of liberalization, though its ramifications are wider, into social, cultural and political realms of Indian society. Vinoj Abraham is with the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Questioning Trickledown Economics Shouvik Chakraborty INTERROGATING INCLUSIVE GROWTH: POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN INDIA By KP Kannan Routledge India, 2014, pp. 332, R1095.00 K P Kannan’s book is an empirical study on India analysing the socio-economic developments of the Indian economy since the onset of the liberalization process. Kannan, through empirics, questions the validity of the mainstream economic concept of trickle-down economics in the context of the Indian economy. He also analyses another question, which has recently drawn the attention of many social scientists. It is to empirically check whether, in the Indian context, there is any significant correlation between the social status of an individual identified by caste, religion, work status with their economic prosperity. Based on his findings, Kannan argues that the ‘success’ story of India’s growing economy has left out a major section (more than threefourths) of the Indian population, who are the Aam-Aadmi or the ‘common man’. He also finds that, in India, people belonging to SC/ST and Muslims are the worst sufferers, and, mainly those associated with the informal economy. It thus opens up a space for further debate and discussion, not only among the policymakers but also among the progressive political organizations, to determine the future agenda of the Indian economy. Based on the NSSO surveys of Employment-Unemployment and Consumption Expenditure, Kannan, using the latter, classified each sample household as belonging to ‘extremely poor’, ‘poor’, ‘marginal’, ‘vulnerable’, ‘middle income’, and ‘high income’ group depending on their monthly per capita expenditures. The results based on the survey done in 2004-05 show that around threequarter of the Indian population is poor and vulnerable, which implies that this vulnerable group is subsisting on an average per capita expenditure below USD 2 per day. Among them, the two social groups which are at the bottom are the SC/ST and the Muslims, followed by the OBCs. The top layer comprises the ‘Others’. Kannan, not surprisingly, finds a strong correlation between no or low level of education and, their ‘informal’ work status, and therefore, poverty and vulnerability. In his State-wise analysis, the scenario is very similar to the all-India situation. The author reports, as of 2005, The Book Review / October 2018 27 there is only one State in India, Punjab, where the majority is neither poor nor vulnerable. Through an econometric analysis of all the Indian States, Kannan finds that the low social status and low level of education impacts significantly on poverty and vulnerability individually rather than as an interacting force. No Indian was an exception to the relationship between informal work status and poverty and vulnerability. The regional inequality in poverty and vulnerability is overwhelmed by social inequality across majority of States. In these States, an overwhelming ratio of adults with low levels of education in three social groups—SC/ST, Muslims and OBC—are also poor and vulnerable. Furthermore, the author finds that in all communities and across social groups there is a class of better-offs in contemporary India, which, nonetheless, varies with social identity. These findings bring forth the importance of an interdisciplinary approach in social science to understand the social trends in the Indian context. One theoretical framework which has helped to better understand the complicated relationship between class, race and gender in the western world is the ‘intersectionality’ theory—the term first coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw (Crenshaw, 1989). Kannan, in this study, does not analyse gender in detail, which, if included in the analysis, could have made it a more exciting read. The analysis also needs an update beyond 2004-05 as more recent NSSO surveys are available which will help the readers to get a flavour of the more recent trends. One of the critical factors, as put forward by Kannan, why this neoliberal high- 28 The Book Review / October 2018 growth period has failed to alleviate poverty is because it did not create enough jobs for the Indian working population. Using the ASI data spanning from 1981-82 to 200405 for the organized manufacturing sector in India, he finds that the phenomenon of jobless growth is going on for almost the entire period of study, although the process is not uniform across industries. According to him, the high growth in the organized manufacturing sector has been due to an increase in labour productivity, which has profound implications for the distribution of the gross surplus between capital and labour. Further analysis shows that the share of wages declined during the study period as well as there was a slowdown in the rate of growth in real wages of the Indian working class, except those of the paid supervisory workers and managerial staff, who benefitted from this neoliberal process in terms of salaries, wages and perks. In the era of liberalization, the Indian working class had lost out in terms of both additional employment as well as real wages. The findings of this study are in congruence with the international experience, especially the Asian countries. According to ILO (International Institute for Labour Studies and ILO, 2011), since the early 1990s ‘the wage share—the share of domestic income that goes to labour—has declined in almost three-quarters of the 69 countries’. The report also notes that ‘the drop in the wages is more pronounced in emerging and developing countries than in advanced ones’, especially the Asian countries, where the wage share since 1994 has declined by roughly 20 percentage points. The bargaining power of workers in a developing economy is also correlated with the type of employment, in particular, whether the worker is in a formal or informal sector. Kannan finds, based on the NSS 2004-05 survey, that 86.3 per cent of the Indian workforce is employed in the informal economy, where ‘informality’ is defined by the lack of any employment and social security benefits provided by the employer. The study finds that nearly 80 per cent of India’s informal workforce is poor and vulnerable. Even within the organized sector, there has been a substantial increase in the level of informal employment over these years. While analysing the employment distribution between formal and informal sectors in India, Kannan introduces some numbers on gender. Not surprisingly, based on the NFHS-3 data, he finds that women along with their men from the top social group experience the least incidence of poverty while women from the bottom layer experience the most. One crucial paradox in the study and the explanation for which seems to be inadequate is that the wage rates in the informal sector of the female workers belonging to SC/ST, Muslim and OBC category are higher than those of the ‘Other’. Given the high level of informal employment in India, Kannan rightly makes a strong case for social security benefits in the unorganized or informal sector based on the two categories of basic social security and contingent social security. Given the lack of such social security measures, he portrays the importance of the NREGS scheme which is a ‘rightsbased’ programme for ensuring basic social security in India. However, since labour is in the concurrent list of the Indian Constitution, both the Centre and the State governments have the power to legislate on this subject. Given a strong history of the labour movement, Kerala is in the forefront among the Indian States, to evolve a model of social security for informal sector workers. Tamil Nadu also provides substantial coverage and social security benefits to the informal sector workers. An interesting observation made by the author is the conspicuous absence of any statutory provisioning of social security for informal workers in the State of West Bengal, in spite of more than three decades of pro-worker government in that State. Thus, Kannan debunks the entire campaign of the inclusivity of the high growth process in post-liberalization India. He shows that there was some marginal improvement in the social conditions of the populace during the UPA-I government (20042009), although that too was skewed in favour of urban India. Therefore, in totality, the neoliberal period has, thus, led to growing divergence and inequality in India. This growing divergence in various categories based on region, social, and wealth is a cause for concern and should attract the urgent attention of policymakers. This book, therefore, provides empirical evidence to substantiate some of the major concerns related to the socio-economic development of the Indian economy like poverty, unemployment, and inequality that have aggravated with the high growth experience of the Indian economy since the 1990s. Despite these concerns, there are also opportunities for the policymakers and progressive political parties which are worth mentioning. This book brings out an essential point that economic empowerment is not a sufficient condition to ensure social empowerment. It is a necessary condition, though not a sufficient one. Hence, these diversities within a class based on various social identities need to be an integrative part of any progressive socio-political movement for a bet- “ An interesting observation made by the author is the conspicuous absence of any Nature Of Indian Growth Reji K Joseph statutory provisioning of social ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ITS DISTRIBUTION IN INDIA security for informal workers Edited by Pulapre Balakrishnan Economic and Political Weekly and Orient BlackSwan, 2015, pp. 497, R850.00 in the State of West Bengal, in spite of more than three decades of pro-worker government in that State. ” ter future. Another critical area which deserves more attention is gender. Even in this depressing scenario, there have been new forms of union movements emerging, especially among the self-employed women in India. The increasing level of female employment is characteristic of the neoliberal era, which is a significant change (Smith, 2016). Notwithstanding the risks of entrenching gender division among workers through various exploitative measures, an increase in female employment and their unionization has a potentially liberating effect. South Korea’s experience, in this context, deserves particular attention (Mikyoung, 2003). References Crenshaw, K., 1989. ‘Demarginalizing The Intersection Of Race And Sex: A Black Feminist Critique Of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory And Antiracist Politics’. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), pp. 139-167. International Institute for Labour Studies and ILO, 2011. World of Work Report 2011: Making Markets Work for Jobs, Geneva: The International Institute for Labour Studies. Mikyoung, K., 2003. ‘South Korean Women Workers’ Labor Resistance in the Era of Export-Oriented Industrialization, 1970-1980’. Development and Society, 32(1), pp. 77-101.’ Smith, J., 2016. Imperialism in the Twenty-first Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis. 1st ed. New York: Monthly Review Press. Shouvik Chakraborty is Research Assistant Professor at the Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. Book News Book News Debt Management in India by Charan Singh is a comprehensive analysis of the implications of rising public debt in India. It specifically investigates the implications of domestic debt on consumption, the effect of monetized debt on prices, the long-term relationship between domestic debt and growth, and the separation of debt and monetary management. Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 296, R750.00 T he book under review is a collection of 22 essays published in EPW on the theme of economic growth in India and its distribution between 2005 and 2014 divided into four sections. The first section, ‘The Long View of Growth in India’, containing four chapters, provides an overview of trends in economic growth in India in the last century, from 1900 to 2005. The trends in growth of GDP shows that there was a trend break in 1950-51; economy grew much faster in the second half of last century. Between 1900 and 1947, the growth in per-capita GDP was near stagnant for undivided India; whereas between 1947 and 2004, GDP per-capita grew 250%. Within the second half of last century itself, there was another trend break in 1980-81. Per capita GDP grew at the annual rate of 3.6% after 1980-81 as compared to 1.4% prior to 1980-81. Therefore, Deepak Nayyar argues that the economic performance of India cannot be attributed to the economic reforms initiated in 1991-92; the post-Independence view of economic growth suggests a trend break in 1980-81 and not in 1990-91. Atul Kohli attributes the trend break in 1980-81 to the shift in the postemergency political economy. After Emergency, Indira Gandhi chose to shun the state centric model, which she had pursued in the initial years of 1970s. She sought alliance with big business, prioritizing economic growth and downplaying distributive concerns. Her approach shifted away from Left leaning state intervention founded on socialist principles to Right leaning state intervention where a capitalist path of development is envisaged. Kohli suggests that the realization of difficulties in implementing anti-poverty measures such as land reforms and the experience of state support of private producers helping agricultural revolution in India leading to the Green Revolution might have changed the approach of Indira Gandhi. This section, however, does not discuss the issue of distribution of economic growth during the last century. The other three sections are focused on economic growth after 1991. Section two, ‘Recent Growth and Structural Change’ (4 chapters), analyses the key aspects of the high growth during the last decade. India had reached a rate of annual growth of close to 9% during 2003-04 to 2007-08. This was an investment driven growth, boosted by massive influx of private capital as against the conventional consumption driven growth. The private capital inflows had reached 10% of GDP by 2007-08. This high growth period, however, was also a high inflation period. Nevertheless, there was a decline in growth since 2009-10. There was also a decline in the public capital formation since this year. According to Pulapre Balakrishnan, the government might have assumed that growth will continue regardless of the contribution of public capital formation. Maitreesh Ghatak argues that such fast growth, in developing countries, can put stress on the economy. Two such instances of stress have been issues related to acquisition of land and addressing the issue of development of human capital. A major feature of the high growth was that much of the output came from narrowly defined industries and services. Most of the incremental investment went to organized manufacturing whose share in the Gross Fixed Capital Formation had increased from 20.4% in 2000-01 to 28.6% in 2007-08. But the domestic output had stagnated around 15% of GDP. This implies either the rise in capital intensity of manufacturing or growing excess capacity or both. Another major feature of this investment driven growth, as pointed out by R Nagaraj, is that only 40% of the FDI inflows went into potentially productive activities. The remaining 60% consisted of private equity, venture capital and round tripped Indian capital. While round tripping of Indian capital is a major concern, characterization of FDI in productive sectors as more desirable and private equity and venture capital investments as less desirable forms of investment is a delicate issue. At the conceptual level, FDI implies control or significant influence of for- The Book Review / October 2018 29 eign investors over domestic enterprises. It is assumed that with control or influence, foreign MNCs will be able to change the behaviour of domestic enterprises for better outcomes. But the question that is ignored here is whether control or influence over domestic enterprises is desirable in all circumstances. How will domestic enterprises pursue an independent path of growth when they are controlled by foreign entities? For those domestic enterprises looking only for financial collaboration and not for any other form of collaboration to pursue their own independent strategies, private equity or venture capital, which do not generally tend to exert control or influence may be a more desirable option. Private equity and venture capital have their limitation as they are focused on short-term returns, but their positive contributions should be acknowledged. Section three, ‘The Sectors’ and Section four, ‘Inclusion’, of seven chapters each, look into the impact of economic reforms since 1991 on different sectors and the distribution of gains from economic growth. The Green Revolution had increased the share of agriculture in GDP from less than 1% to more than 3%. However, during the post1991 phase there is deceleration in the growth of agricultural GDP. This is due to diversion of resources away from agriculture, decline in the public and private investment in agriculture and inadequate provisioning of public goods in agriculture, which would have multiplier effects. To revive the agricultural sector, better technologies need to be adopted, public R&D should be hiked and credit to the agricultural sector has to be increased. Although both the chapters on agriculture discuss technology, they do not deliberate on genetic modification technology, which has been debated passionately in India for some time. Unfortunately there is no article addressing the impact of reforms on the manufacturing sector, especially the production aspects, and the nature of growth of the service sector although Sudip Chaudhuri’s paper addresses the issue of trade deficit in the manufacturing sector and Archana Aggarwal looks into employment aspects in the services sector. The paper by Chaudhuri points out that trade deficit improved till 2000 and thereafter worsened. He attributes improvement in trade deficit not to economic reforms since 1991 but to the industrial policy of the past, especially in the pharmaceuticals sector. It takes some time to establish the acquired competence. Whereas the worsening of trade deficit is an outcome of economic reforms since 1991 which helped the MNCs and adversely affected domestic en- 30 The Book Review / October 2018 terprises. Withdrawal of government regulations and freedom to the private sector is good for those firms which have acquired capabilities and are in a position to take those capabilities forward, which is not the case with most enterprises in the developing countries. It is suggested that government needs to regulate MNCs and support indigenous efforts. One needs to keep in mind that regulation of MNCs is easier said than done in this current globalized world. Various international agreements which countries like India are party to restrict the ability of the governments to regulate MNCs. Archana Aggarwal argues that the growth in the services sector is concentrated in selected sectors like business services, which are skill intensive in nature. Most of the jobs in services is in low productivity informal activities and most of the labour force is trapped in this. Indira Hirway opens the section on Inclusion by providing a conceptual treatment to inclusion and a detailed account of challenges for inclusive growth under neoliberal economic reforms. The proponents of neoliberal economic reforms argue that high growth which is inclusive is possible. But in reality the share of profits grow much faster than the share of wages under neo-liberal economic reforms, thus accentuating inequality. Under neoliberal policies, re-distribution does not work effectively as the growth process which is exclusionary in nature overpowers the former. Hirway makes two suggestions for ensuring inclusiveness in the development process. One, change macroeconomic policies to make it reflect reality by the inclusion of natural resources and unpaid work into the framework. Two, adoption of a rights based approach, which requires provisions for education, health, infrastructure and services. This will increase the productivity of workers and enhance the aggregate demand in the economy. Hirway has very briefly touched upon rights based approach to development. Ideally, there should have been a dedicated chapter on the complementarity of human rights based approach to development and inclusive development. Apparently, the editor was constrained in commissioning new papers or selecting papers published outside of EPW. Other papers in this section agree on the conclusion that inequality has increased in the post-1991 period. Inequality has various dimensions including rural–urban and casual–regular. Major part of the gains from economic growth during the post-1991 period have gone to urban households. Reji K Joseph is Associate Professor in the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi. Global Restructuring and Transformative Business Order Siddhartha Mukerji GLOBALIZING INDIA: HOW GLOBAL RULES AND MARKET ARE SHAPING INDIA’S RISE TO POWER By Aseema Sinha Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 2018, pp. 354, $35.99 A deluge of literature has emerged in recent times to explain India’s globalization and how it resulted from a continuous process of interaction between state and non-state actors. The book under review serves as a relevant addition to such literature. It looks at the interplay of domestic and global factors that have shaped India’s trade policies and poses the central puzzle of India’s globalization in the introductory chapter which is that the rapid changes ushered in since the year 2001 comes as a surprise for the rest of the world. The critical role of wood-reformers, a term that the author uses recurrently for the coalition of actors within the global framework of trade rules and regulations, is noteworthy in this regard. Most importantly, India’s increasing negotiating capacity in such forums as G-20 has given a new strength to its position as an international player. Viewing shifts in domestic interests and economic strategies, a more regular and well-informed corporatist interaction between state and non-state actors is seen to be in place since the beginning of the new millennium. This is in contrast with the fragmented trade regime till the 1990s. While domestic dynamics accompanied by the structural changes of the 1980s were more effective to push for reforms of the 1990s, deeper integration of the 2000s is seen to be driven more by global drivers particularly global rules and markets. How this has occurred is a central objective of study in this book. It is clear that the integration has not been an easy ball game with a package of push and pull factors posed by external actors and institutions. This is well evinced by the cases of textile and pharmaceutical sectors of India. The theoretical framework that is aptly termed as Global-design-in-motion weaves the local and global elements in a triangular fashion. The impact of the interaction on domestic actors are enlisted as transaction costs, sovereignty and private costs, legal framing and information revelation. These costs are not mutually exclusive as one may trigger the impact of the other. For instance, the high transaction costs of international rules may produce sovereignty and even private costs. A contradiction emerges when it is argued that WTO rules are complex and technical and yet they reduce the transaction costs as theorized by Rational Choice Institutionalism. However, counter-intuitively the difficulties emerging in such negotiations are seen to strengthen the state’s negotiating power and enhance the possibilities of greater institutional reform. The second pertinent point that emerges from the theoretical-cum-empirical discussion is that the global organizations vary in the extent to which their rules and norms limit state sovereignty to ensure compliance. As shown, India serves as a classic case of a re-formed state with enhanced negotiating capacity that is counter-intuitively a result of negotiation rigours at WTO. Many instances of India losing cases in the WTO are cited with the government getting back with better capacities to manage deals with global and local business. Moreover, India is seen to be partnering with like-minded and equally powerful nations like Brazil in international forums like the G-20 to achieve a higher order of leadership in the WTO visà-vis the United States and the European Community. This also in a way gives strength to other aspiring nations to pose a challenge to western hegemony in the WTO and other multilateral forums. Externalities have also provided incentives to transform structures internally by laying a definite institutional foundation to handle complexities of global negotiations. This is well illustrated by the re-ordering of the Ministry of Commerce, the nodal agency for managing trade policies, to create an administration best suited to deal with trade-related matters negotiated in the WTO. Other instances of organizational restructuring in response to WTOgenerated constraints have been identified as intellectual property rights, tariffs and anti-dumping. Evidently, these instances make a strong case for India’s prowess in managing globalization. These home-grown developments reflect strong and autonomous state actions in incorporating global norms to enhance India’s scientific and economic capabilities. Contrarily, this interpretation controverts the earlier claim about state’s circumscribed autonomy amidst deeper global engagements. The contradiction is thus inherent in the argument about the state’s sovereignty costs along with its rising capacity in managing global trade to maximize its national interests. The sectoral studies present an empirical portrayal of the state’s enhancing capacities generated by globally-negotiated norms and regulations that incur higher costs and constraints. Selection of Indian pharmaceuticals and textiles as case studies appears condign considering their comparative advantage in international trade. To begin with, pharmaceuticals posits a case of an emerging business constituency of patent supporters to take the WTO’s stringent patent norms in their stride. This illustration may also be appropriate to understand the political economy of transformation in a sector where protectionist interests have remained historically embedded and resistance was still unmanageable in the early-1990s when structural transformation was under way. An additional uncertainty suspected was the fragmentation within the industry with diverse interests, preferences and business strategies that made collective action difficult in the face of TRIPS compliance. Yet, as observed, the change happened quickly with India subscribing to TRIPS thoroughly in 2005. This is accredited to an emerging coalition of big companies, local and multinational, favouring TRIPS after realignments following the tedious compliance process since 1995. Continuous reference has been made to the attitudinal change within the topnotch management of Ranbaxy, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in India. Ranbaxy’s storyline shows how ideas within a business community change fast in response to global market dynamics. This may be true for other big players who felt the necessity of re-adjustment to expand their global reach. In this entire episode of transformation however, the critical involvement of state institutions in directing change within society and resolving and managing collective action problems seems to be miss- ing. Transforming internal preferences seems to be solely emerging from the re-adjustment dilemma posed by TRIPS. Secondly, the fate of smaller players that found re-adjustment difficult even after the institutionalization of patent remains a puzzle. The author recounts yet another complementary story of global stimulation with textiles. As a more difficult nut to crack, the textiles industry has traversed through harsher realities of politics and business fragmentation. The difficult terrain that the industry has passed through before it emerged as a collective entity post-2000 is historically traced in this book. The industry has been most vulnerable to trade union resistance evinced by the long-drawn Bombay textile mill workers strike in the past. Also, fragmentation has been far deeper than in other sectors with similar traits. With respect to these two predicaments, the transformation has been shown to be a daunting task. Second, two phases of transformation starting from the 1980s have been clearly distinguished in terms of innovations, strategies and R&D by the textile industry to expand its global outreach. To substantiate this, initiatives and efforts of individual enterprises in both big and small segments have been outlined. The illustrations given clearly corroborate the globalization thesis entailing reorientation of the industry with better accommodation to global rules and constraints. Methodologically, the formulation can be interpreted as global stimulus being the necessary condition and internal support the sufficient one. The textiles story seems more complex than pharmaceuticals and yet follows the same logic of global stimulus for commercial expansion. Ironically, the complexity has produced greater incentives for globalization resolving collective action problems. As observed, the re-adjustment by smaller producers in the pharmaceutical sector has been hard even after the institutionalization of product patent as against their counterparts in the textiles sector who quickly found new ways of strategizing and innovating in the face of a transformed global business order. Probably, the state’s more coordinated role towards catalysing collective action in the textile sector in anticipation of global restructuring as envisaged by the author is an answer to the comparative dilemma. In contrast, as shown, the restrictive state policies of the past not only created difficulties of consolidation but also inhibited the induction of sophisticated technologies much required in making globally competitive products. The story is taken forward to outline the incremental policy changes in the 1980s The Book Review / October 2018 31 rightly termed as ‘one step forward, two steps behind’. This differs slightly from Atul Kohli’s observation about the drive towards liberalization in the mid to late-1980s as ‘two steps forward, one step behind’. It also shows that in textile industry, the interests resisting liberalization were far more entrenched than other sectors. The 1982 strike is a testimony to this. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the pattern of transformative business order in response to global restructuring. In the given theoretical-cum-empirical framework, the state’s guardian and educative role has been critical in institutionalizing global norms and stimulating private capital to establish an industrial order akin to the transformed global order. Although the autonomy question in the face of sovereignty costs still remains puzzling, a new political economy with deeper engagement between the global, state and local institutions is clearly envisaged. What shape this networking is going to take in future will largely depend on the modalities of globalization and the complexities of interest articulation at sectoral levels, but a more active state intervention to pursue globalization is undoubtedly foreseen for the future course of development in India. This prediction is consistent with the author’s disagreement with the ongoing claim about the state’s retreat under globalization. Propositions embodying relevant arguments about India’s response to global rules and markets run consistently through logically-sequenced eight chapters and the language used is simple and lucid. Use of graphs and tables makes the writing illustrative and empirically well investigated. To conclude, the book serves well for a wide audience including academicians, policy makers, business professionals, students and research scholars and is especially useful for those doing research in political economy and business management. Siddhartha Mukerji is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow. Book News Book News India Connected: How the Smartphone is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy by Ravi Agrawal takes readers on a journey across India, through remote rural villages and massive metropolises, to highlight how one tiny device—the smartphone—is effecting staggering changes across all facets of Indian life. Oxford University Press, 2018, pp 230, R550.00 32 The Book Review / October 2018 Prospects Of Recovery In World Economy Malini Chakravarty EMPLOYMENT, GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT: ESSAYS ON A CHANGING WORLD ECONOMY By Deepak Nayyar Routledge, New York, 2017, pp. 260, R895.00 B urgeoning unemployment and the feeble prospect of recovery in world economy are undoubtedly the most pressing problems facing both developing and developed countries today. Coming at this juncture, the book under review by the well-known heterodox economist, Deepak Nayyar, is indeed a welcome read. The common theme running through the collection of essays, written between 2010 and 2016, is that of the centrality of employment in bringing about sustainable growth and development in the contemporary world. The book is divided into three parts: employment and development; growth and development; and development, polity and society, with the essays being grouped into these three thematic clusters. The first set of essays provides a macroeconomic perspective on some of the critical issues plaguing world economy and explores the challenges and the possible solutions to deal with these problems. The first chapter of the volume examines the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries and argues that the crisis provides an opportunity for rethinking macroeconomic objectives so as to make outcomes more conducive to development. In this context, the author argues that developing countries such as China, India and Brazil could weather the crisis better compared to other countries because they were relatively more restrained with regard to financial sector liberalization, had a large home market and adopted countercyclical policies to counter the effects of the crisis. The experience of these countries provides important lessons for other developing countries in reorienting their macroeconomic policies and objectives. Regarding the prospects of recovery in world economy, Nayyar contends that the situation remains bleak as most of the industrialized countries have gone back to adopting orthodox policies after the initial adoption of countercyclical policies. Return to the same set of policies that led to the crisis in the first place will not help in bringing about recovery that is sustainable. The only way to achieve sustainable recovery is by progressively eliminating global imbalances. Since global imbalances basically reflect gaps between income and expenditure and the skewed distribution of income, he argues that sustainable recovery requires reducing economic inequality within countries. That in turn requires raising the share of wages in GDP and making full employment the primary objective of macroeconomic policies. While international collective action is imperative for achieving this, the author also concedes that ‘the willingness and the ability of governments to coordinate, in terms of implementing such collective action, are not quite there’ (p. 26). However, he feels that the increased economic significance of developing countries provides an important window of opportunity so that, ‘even in the current world of unequal partners, these developing countries as a group could exercise influence to reshape the rules and institutions that govern the global economy.’ In the next essay the author states that employment is the key to providing a sustainable solution to the twin problems of slowing growth and rising economic inequality afflicting world economy in the post-crisis era. It elucidates how globalization and the quest to be more price competitive vis-àvis rival countries, among other things, have led to the phenomenon of jobless growth all over the world. The obsessive focus of orthodox macroeconomics on the supply side at the cost of completely ignoring the demand side means that wages are only seen as cost and not as income. It is, therefore, no surprise that the era of globalization has been one of wage repression and low employment growth. This in turn has also dampened output growth through the worsening distribution of income. In such a scenario achieving sustainable recovery, the author contends, requires placing ‘full employment centre stage once again as the primary objective of macroeconomic policies, in both industrialized countries and emerging economies’ (p. 40). For, ‘it is only increased employment that can provide a sustainable solution to the crisis and in the process deliver growth with equity’ (p. 40). The discussion on the link between macroeconomics and human development is interesting for a number of reasons. The author takes the view that while it is known that macroeconomic policies impact human development, what is often missed out is that the direction of the causation runs both ways. While the former link is known, the latter is rarely explored explicitly in the literature and hence the discussion can be very useful for students and researchers. The other interesting aspect of this essay is that it shows how employment (or the lack of it) plays a central role in determining whether the impact of macroeconomics on human development and vice versa, will be positive or negative. The second part of the book covers a wide range of issues related to the rising significance of the global South and the implications it has for the world economy in general and developing countries in particular. The first chapter in this section looks at the trajectory of the rise of the developing countries in a historical perspective. In this context the author argues that even though the balance of economic power is beginning to shift in favour of developing countries, the catching up so far has been concentrated in a few developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Moreover, growth in these countries has not been transformed into well being of the people. The challenge would be to sustain this catching up of developing countries as a whole, for that would require that developing countries adopt development strategies which ensure that growth, employment creation and social progress move in tandem. It is only then that growth in these economies (which is the root cause for the rise in relative importance of developing countries) and hence their rise in the world economy, can be sustained over the longer run. In ‘The Emerging Asian Giants and Economic Development in Africa’, the author is of the opinion that the rise of the two Asian giants—China and India—will have important implications for economic development in Africa. The implications can be either positive or negative and will depend on whether economic growth in these two countries is complementary or competitive to economic growth in Africa. Other than this, the growing presence of China and India can also help to reduce the dominance of the West and their influence on African countries. This would provide the African countries with more choices, options and space to evolve their own strategies for growth. However, if the economic engagement of the Asian giants with Africa, particularly that of China, perpetuates the old North-South pattern of trade, it would inhibit rather than foster development in African countries. In the last chapter of the section, Nayyar provides a fascinating account of the evolution of BRICS and the reasons underlying its rise in the world economy. He argues that the importance of BRICS is not limited to the sphere of economics but extends to the realm of politics as well. He feels that while the economic importance of BRICS is yet to play out fully, it is already discernible in the realm of politics. Saying that it is difficult to envisage how reality will unfold in the time to come, Nayyar takes the view that coordination and cooperation between these countries has the potential to even exercise influence on multilateral institutions to ‘reshape rules and create policy space’ for developing countries. The final part of the book comprising two chapters looks at select aspects of polity and society to explore the intersection of globalization with democracy and discrimination respectively. While many of the arguments are known, particularly to those schooled in heterodox economics, it is still worth repeating them. If not for anything else, simply for the reason that it challenges orthodox economic thinking which lie at the root of the present crisis facing the world economy. One point to note however is that there is quite a bit of repetition in the arguments as well as the examples used in some of the chapters. This can be quite disconcerting for the reader, even when appreciating the author’s point that some overlap may be inevitable and even necessary. Having said that, what makes the book particularly valuable is that it covers a wide gamut of complex issues that confront world economy and attempts to tie all of it down to enable a better understanding of the prospects and challenges facing the world today. Malini Chakravarty is Additional Coordinator, Research, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), New Delhi. Reforming Urban Public Finance In India Surajit Das FINANCING CITIES IN INDIA: MUNICIPAL REFORMS, FISCAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE By Prasanna K. Mohanty Sage Publications, 2016, pp. 328, R950.00 I n the book under review, Prasanna K Mohanty seeks to argue for reform in the municipal finance of the urban local bodies (ULBs) in India. The author was Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad and has also served as Vice-Chairman of the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority, Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh and Mission Director of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in the State. A bureaucrat cum academic, the author is placed advantageously for dealing with this topic due to his in-depth theoretical knowledge and vast ground level experience. The author points out that the need for enhancing public spending in urban areas (particularly in infrastructure) is really pressing in India, however, urban local bodies do not have enough resources to do that. There are three ways to empower the municipalities and the corporations viz. by increasing their own tax and non-tax revenues, by increasing inter-governmental transfers to the urban local bodies (i.e., transfer from Central or State governments to ULBs) and by allowing them to borrow money from the market by floating municipal bonds. The book upholds the benefit principle as the guiding principle for levying taxes and user charges. It also advocates increasing the tax base for the ULBs mainly through land value tax and property tax and also by broadening the tax base through less exemptions. The book also lays emphasis on various user charges including charges for water, sewerage, solid waste collection, public transport etc., and on benefit charges like development charges and impact fees. It talks about vertical and horizontal imbalances (i.e., mismatch between expenditure requirements and own revenue of all the local bodies and inequality among local bodies) in intergovernmental transfers and argues for a formula-based transfer system assigning weights to fiscal need, fiscal capacity and fiscal effort factors. The book suggests comprehensive reforms in municipal finance to enhance the creditworthiness of municipalities, apart from deThe Book Review / October 2018 33 velopment of the municipal bond market. It also advocates public private partnerships (PPPs) and points out that tools like tax increment financing (TIF) would enable public authorities to trade anticipated future revenues for a present infrastructure programme. Finally, it suggests a roadmap and sets a target of enhancing the ULBs’ expenditure from 1 percent to 5 percent of GDP with 2 percent of GDP earmarked for the capital expenditure. To set the context of our discussion, let us first consider the big picture of public finance in India. Our total government expenditure is less than 27 percent of GDP including all the three tiers of government. The combined fiscal deficit of the Centre and the States is around 6 percent of GDP and the government revenue is around 21 percent of GDP. The combined tax revenue is around 17 percent of GDP, which is one of the lowest in the world and the rest 4 percent of GDP is non-tax revenue of the government. It is mentioned in the book that the aggregate municipal expenditure was only 1 percent of GDP in 2012-13, with its own tax revenue of 0.33 percent, non-tax revenue of 0.20 percent and transfer of 0.46 percent. These numbers are much less than that of the OECD countries (see table 10.1); however, the average total tax-GDP ratio in those countries are also much higher than 17 percent of GDP (OECD average is 34 percent). Now, if we have to enhance the ULB spending from 1 percent to 5 percent of GDP, either we need to reduce expenditures of the Central and/or the State governments or we need to increase the tax-GDP ratio substantially or the combined fiscal deficit would go up. The book seems to suggest some com- 34 The Book Review / October 2018 bination of the last two by increasing benefit tax and user charges and by floating municipal bonds. It is an undeniable fact that the government needs to spend more money for urban development. It is also important to decentralize the expenditure pattern and spending more money through the local bodies. I cannot agree more with the author when he argues that the intergovernmental transfers to the local bodies should be made formulabased in the direction of reducing vertical and horizontal fiscal imbalances, keeping both equity and effort aspects in mind. I have a little difference of opinion regarding the strict benefit approach-based framework (same tax rate for rich and poor weighted by use or consumption) with less or no exemptions, given the existence of very high degree of urban inequality in the country. However, the importance of enhancing ULBs’ own tax and non-tax revenues is undeniable. Probably, the ‘benefit approach among those who have ability to pay (relatively well-off section of the population)’ may be a prudent way to go forward. The cost of collection of benefit taxes and user charges to actual collection ratio would be relatively much higher for the bottom 75 to 80 percent of the urban population; additionally, it would aggravate urban inequality. Exemptions of the poorer section of population may actually make the tax/user fee more efficient. The structure of property tax can be made very progressive instead of a flat rate. The criticisms of PPP models, particularly in the Indian context, are also well known—it is public investment for private profit, in most cases. My main discomfort, however, lies vis-à-vis the proposal for developing a vibrant municipal bonds market in India. First of all, the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal deficit would be the same, at the aggregate level, irrespective of whether it is incurred by the Central government or by the State governments or by the local bodies. Therefore, whether the ULBs borrow directly from the domestic capital market or the Central or the State governments borrow on their behalf and transfer the money to the ULBs does not really make any difference from a macroeconomic point of view. Secondly, it would create further inequality among the ULBs. The author himself acknowledges that ‘the access of smaller municipalities to bonds may not be possible due to their poor finances’. The ULBs would be judged according to their ‘credit-rating’. Even within one municipal corporation, some projects would be rated higher than the other projects from the profit point of view. Unlike other government bonds, the interest rate would vary on the municipal bonds depending on their credit ratings. So, the priorities and preferences of ULBs may be influenced by profitability (credit-worthiness) considerations. The author talks about the US model of municipal bond market. However, after the experience of the financial crisis in the US, we know how risky this municipal bond markets can be. Why do we have to necessarily conceive a financial architecture in the country which is more fragile and vulnerable in nature than the existing one? People have faith in government bonds because they are risk free and the government paper is as good as money. But, the risk would vary in case of municipal bonds across ULBs and projects. Therefore, the expected return and the interest rate would also vary accordingly. Only a few big corporations would be able to attract funds at cheaper rate, that too for some lucrative projects, which would have a flow of revenue/user charge in the days to come. It would surely widen the inequalities among various local bodies. Moreover, at the aggregate level, the ULBs are found to spend significantly less than the available funds. Therefore, the constraints lie elsewhere. It is an interesting proposal to raise the ULB spending to 5 percent of GDP with 2 percent earmarked for the capital expenditure. Similarly, in India, the government expenditure is abysmally low on health, on education and on many other important things. If everything has to rise as a proportion of GDP, then the total government expenditure has to rise substantially from 27 percent of GDP. Given any cap on the fiscal deficit to GDP ratio, the government revenue has to substantially rise as a proportion of GDP. Our tax rates are not low, given the international standards. The tax-GDP ratio is low in India because of low tax base and because of low compliance due to poor tax administration, lack of information network and corruption. Some urban infrastructures are created directly by the Central and the State governments, too. Many people live in rural areas in our country—rural local bodies are also important. Given all this, I think, the proposal for increasing the ULB spending by 4 percentage points, is in the right direction but on the higher side. Notwithstanding the critical insights, this is an interesting book which correctly lays emphasis on the serious need to reform urban public finance in India, given the increasing urbanization and the state of the urban areas, cities and small towns, in the country. Surajit Das teaches at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Development In The North East Binoy Goswami RETHINKING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NORTHEAST INDIA: THE EMERGING DYNAMICS Edited by Deepak K. Mishra and Vandana Upadhyay Routledge India, 2017, pp. 456, R1295.00 N otwithstanding some scholarly works on disparate issues, works that systematically engage with the process of economic development of the Northeast region (NER) of India are few and far between. This book fills this gap to a large extent by examining the implications of economic reforms initiated in 1991 in India for economic development in NER. The editors in the ‘introduction’ locate the NER in a globalizing India in the light of the debate on ‘globalization and marginalization’, and provide a brief outline of the book. The development trajectory of the NE region that has unfolded as impact of and responses to the ongoing process of globalization is examined, providing an account of the possible turn that this process may take if the promised benefits of the Look East Policy (LEP) are realized. ‘Globalization and the Indian Himalayan States: Mitigating or Accentuating Marginalization?’ by TS Papola suggests that the NE States have gained very little from globalization in terms of external trade and investment, and in fact, the region faces the possibility of further economic marginalization. Though simple and limited in scope, the analysis provides useful insights into the recent development process of the region. Atul Sarma’s paper, ‘Economically Integrating Northeast India with Southeast Asia’ analyses how the NE region as the gateway of India is poised to gain through market integration with South and East Asian countries once the LEP is fully implemented. Piecing together historical information, the author provides valuable lessons on types of market integration, which may fetch benefits for the people of the region. ‘India’s Entry into the ASEAN: Some Implications for the Northeast’ by Alokesh Baruah echoes similar concerns. ‘Economic Performances of the NorthEastern Region in the Post-Liberalisation period’ by Mrinal Kanti Dutta and Ira Das examines the growth trends in per capita income, those in NSDP of the NE States and the region as a whole vis-à-vis the national trends, and the changes in sectoral composition of the NSDP. Much of these findings are already known. ‘Employment Challenges in the North-Eastern Region of India: Post-Reform Trends and Dimensions’ by Partha Pratim Sahu and Rajeev Kumar looks into the dynamics of the workforce and labour force participation, employment avenues for women, and the employment content of growth in terms of employment elasticity and labour productivity. The analysis is conventional but useful since only a few studies exist on issues related to employment and labour in the context of the NER of India. ‘Fiscal Issues for the North-Eastern Region’ by Prabhat Kumar examines the fiscal performances of the NE region in terms of the conventional fiscal indicators. The analysis in the chapter reconfirms the findings from existing literature. ‘Land Laws, Development and Globalization in Northeast India’ by Walter Fernandes narrates how transition to individual property right on land enshrined in formal law ignores the role of land as community sustenance, and thereby results in alienation of indigenous people. Certain issues, such as the absence of land records, power structure within the community level institutions, nexus between the elites of community and the state, which are also responsible for displacement of masses from common land, do not receive adequate attention of the author. ‘Agricultural Credits in Assam: A Review of Recent Trends’ by Saundarjya Borbora and Gopal Kumar Sarma analyses the trend in institutional credit flow in Assam across sources, land-size classes and locations vis-à-vis NER and India. The statistical analyses undertaken in this chapter to gauge productivity of agricultural credit and to measure its impact on agricultural GDP are not very insightful. ‘Agrarian Transformation in Mountain Economies: Field Insights from Arunachal Pradesh’ by Deepak K Mishra describes the changes in the spheres of land and labour relations, commercialization of agriculture and process of accumulation in the mountain economy of Arunachal Pradesh in the last fifteen years. This chapter provides important insights into the complex capitalist transition that is underway even in remote hill economies. ‘Understanding the Sluggish Industrialization Process in Northeast India: How do the Industrial Policies Help?’ by Kalyan Das evaluates the effectiveness of the policy of providing subsidies to promote industri- alization in the region, and finds it ineffective. Drawing on literature, he suggests that solving the problems of market access and competition, and finance could go a long way in fostering industrial growth in this part of the country. This chapter is a noble attempt at understanding the sluggish growth of industrialization in the NER. ‘Performance and Potential of the Unorganized Manufacturing Sector: A Brief Study of the North-Eastern States’ by Dipa Mukherjee and Rajarshi Majumder examines the growth of the unorganized manufacturing sector (UMS) in the NE States in terms of number of enterprises and employment in rural and urban areas, and their distribution across size classes. Further, contributions of this sector to manufacturing output and NSDP and labour productivity therein have been analysed. Some of these issues have been analysed in chapter 12 also and their findings are reconfirmed. The remaining chapters deliberate upon certain aspects of human development and human security in the NER. ‘Emerging Issues of Human Development in Northeast India’ by Nirod Chandra Roy finds the status of human development in the region to be gloomy except for the State of Sikkim. A discussion on the status of human development of different social, religious and ethnic groups of people would have been more insightful. ‘Poverty and Nutrition in the North Eastern Region of India’ by Veronica Pala and Amaresh Dubey presents a comparative analysis of incidence of poverty and nutritional intake in all NE States during 199394, 2004-05 and 2011-12. By analysing the nutritional intake of SC, ST and non-ST/SC The Book Review / October 2018 35 separately, the authors have dug deep into these issues. ‘Educational Disparities in Northeast India’ by Vandana Upadhyay presents comparative statistics of gender and region in educational disparities but does not explain the variations in these statistics across States in terms of State-specific socio-economic realities. Abhijit Sharma’s paper on ‘Microfinance in the Northeastern Region: Growth and Challenges’ looks into the status of the microfinance sector and analyses its strength and limitations in the NER along with State-specific insights. Two existing models of promoting Self Help Groups have been compared, which helps the readers to understand as to what may work in the context of the region as far as financial inclusion through microfinance is concerned. ‘Inclusive Development, Citizenship and Globalization: The Case of Arunachal Pradesh’ construes the process of Economic Citizenship and its implications for inclusive development through the lens of ethnicity in the context of Arunachal Pradesh. Barbara Harriss-White, Deepak K Mishra and Aseem Prakash have provided an admirable account of how capitalist development and differentiated processes of economic citizenship coexist with state patronage. ‘Governance and Human Security Issues in Northeast India’ by Archana Upadhyay narrates the impediments to human security in the NER through the prism of governance. Focus is on repercussions of the prevailing security and constitutional arrangements, which have been designed to assuage identity aspirations of different groups of people. Certain other sources of insecurity such as human trafficking, environmental degradation which are relevant for the NER and can be looked at through the lens of governance, have not been discussed explicitly. The book would have been comprehensive in its treatment of the subject, had the following issues been dealt with. First, the editors suggest in the preface and introduction that the objective of the book is to unravel the changes that have taken place in the NER against the backdrop of the larger changes happening in the sphere of economy at the national and global level. Only a few chapters keep this objective in sight. Second, the treatment of the agriculture sector lacks in content. Given the sluggish growth of industry and the fact that the region may not gain in immediate future through market integration, agriculture sector as the major employer can contribute in a big way to economic development by exploring the complementarities of agriculture in the hills and those in the plains. No attempt has been made to assess the performance of the sector and the role it has played in the economic development of NER. Third, identity aspirations of different groups of people play a major role in shaping various political and economic outcomes in the region. The book has rightfully devoted sufficient space and attention to this issue. However, the focus has been overwhelmingly on ethnicity, and other important aspects of identity aspirations such as language and religion do not receive any attention. Finally, had the editors built a consolidated roadmap for development of the NER based on the findings from individual chapters, the utility of the book would have increased many fold. Notwithstanding these limitations, the editors have done a commendable job of putting together the research outputs of scholars from within and outside the region. Unlike most of the existing works on the NER, authors of this volume go beyond the conventional narrative of security-development nexus, and thereby provide a fresh perspective. The book will be useful for anyone keen on understanding the process of economic development in the NER. Binoy Goswami teaches economics at the South Asian University, New Delhi. Natural Resources And Institutions Nandan Nawn COMMUNITY NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND POVERTY IN INDIA: EVIDENCE FROM GUJARAT AND MADHYA PRADESH By Shashidharan Enarth, Jharna Pathak, Amita Shah, Madhu Verma, and John R Wood Sage Publications, 2016, pp. xiv + 414 , R1150.00 G overnance and management of resources of (mostly) natural origin assume importance in countries where a predominant section of people draw use-values, livelihood or income—depending on the nature of the relevant economic system—from these. In India, most such spaces to which there exists varying degrees of de facto access by members of a local community or a village or tribe, even while de jure property right exists with the State— unlike a ‘common property resource’—are termed as ‘common pool resources’. Study of institutional arrangements for governing these resources has been a lifelong passion for Elinor Ostrom, the only woman recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences. Economists have studied the extent of dependence of households on these resources. 36 The Book Review / October 2018 Data collected by the National Sample Survey Organisation in 54th round (1988) showed that it is the rural poor for whom the average value of collections from such common pool resources was the highest. Granting management responsibilities of such resources to the users by the state in the nineteen nineties was marked a departure in from the then existing (entirely) centrally managed regime. Not only would it save the costs of maintaining an elaborate state apparatus, it would gel nicely with its neo-liberal posturing. What began in 1990 with the National Watershed Development Programme for Rainfed Areas or the Ministry of Environment and Forests notification on Joint Forest Management, was extended to many other resources in later years. These two, along with Participatory Irrigation Management and Inland Fishing Cooperatives are covered in the book under review. Each of these programmes warranted community level institutional arrangements. The book addresses two questions in this context: (a) whether the ‘promises’ of community management regime could be realized, and in particular (b) could it benefit the poor. The book identifies a number of commonalities across these programmes: enhancing productivity while ensuring sustainability of the resource; the assumption of incentivizing beneficiaries towards effective resource use through grant of ‘power’; continuation of partial control of the state on the management; creation of a new, usually a village level institution consisting of end users facilitating their interest; participation of the users in the institution; equitable distribution of benefits and costs to the users; improvement in the livelihoods for the most marginalized. The book covers and compares 30 village-level institutions across two States: a relatively well-off Gujarat with a gradual grounds up approach involving grass-roots organization, and a relatively poorer Madhya Pradesh with a top-down, rapid and government led approach. Chapter 1 introduces the research problems and the context of Community Natural Resource Management (CNRM) in India, besides offering a brief history on the evolution of each of these institutions explaining the method behind selection of samples. The authors maintain that samples were not even representative of the State concerned, let alone India. Students and researchers will find the chapter titled ‘Comparative CNRM: From Concepts to Field Research’ most interesting. The authors make the process involved in attaining conceptual clarity threadbare over a number of phrases that their research warranted: community, natural resource, decentralization, institution, governance, equity, impact on income and expenditure, and poverty. Undoubtedly such a laborious exercise is more important for a work that weaves its story from the ground-up or that intends to compare practices across States and institutions or that required common understanding by individual authors studying specific institutions, like the book under review, but this step by step guide can be considered as a manual for any research. Each of the four following chapters engage with one particular institution. Each identifies general constraints associated with the functioning of the relevant institution, engages deeper at the State level and compares the governance structures, and finally presents findings of case-studies against a set of questions, to inquire into the degree of success in achieving the multiple goals, around effective, equitable and sustainable management of the resource with particular emphasis on benefitting the poor. Description of the methods behind conducting village sur- vey by Jharna Pathak on Inland Fisheries (p. 125) and by Madhu Verma on Forests (p. 309) may be mentioned specifically. Explanation of institutional processes by Amita Shah on watershed development projects (p. 202) is noteworthy as well. Chapter seven titled ‘Conclusion: Comparing CNRM Institutions and Their Impact on Poverty in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh’ uses the institution specific findings on various qualitative parameters from the previous four chapters to identify recurring patterns across institutions. The final chapter titled ‘CNRM and Poverty in India: The Way Forward’ lists empirically grounded policy recommendations. They include: inadequate decentralization thwarting decision making autonomy of the institutions managing the resource; lack of capacity building to make the programme genuinely inclusive at the village level; less than required attention to prevent ‘elite capture’ of the institutions; lack of attention to already existing factors that drives a wedge between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ such as class and caste, allowing cornering of benefits by a few. None of these are new. Yet those searching for an exhaustive account of functioning of village level institutions managing natural resources and its impact on the users will find this book fascinating. The details enable the reader to zoom into a ‘high definition’ almost ground level view. Further, the level and intensity of academic rigour that is maintained consistently throughout the book makes it distinct from the other works in this field. Nandan Nawn teaches at TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi. nnletter@gmail.com Book News Book News Making Cars in the New India: Industry, Precarity and Informality by Tom Barnes is based upon extensive field research in India’s National Capital Region. The book is the first to focus on labour relations in the Indian auto industry. It proposes the theory that conflict in the auto industry has been driven by twin forces: first, the intersection of global networks of auto manufacturing with regional social structures which have always relied on informal and precariouslyemployed workers; and, second, the systematic displacement of securely-employed ‘regular workers’ by waves of precariouslyemployed ‘de facto informal workers’. Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 261, R5909.00 Pharma Policy Reforms In India Indranil Mukhopadyay PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY AND PUBLIC POLICY IN POST-REFORM INDIA By Reji K. Joseph Routledge, 2016, South Asia Edition, New York, pp. 231, R895.00 T he contribution of Indian pharmaceutical companies in making lifesaving medicines accessible to millions of patients across the world, particularly reaching out to countries which had severe crisis of financing medicines for diseases like HIV&AIDS, malaria, have given the industry a special place—it is called the pharmacy of the world. The fact that India is the third largest producer of medicines in terms of the volume and 14th in terms of value not only depicts the size of the pharmaceutical industry in India, it is also reflective of the relative advantages in terms of prices. India’s pharmaceutical exports are not only eleventh in the globe, our export prices are among the cheapest. The policy environment that led to the enormous success of the pharmaceutical industry in India and gave it solid grounding to compete with global leaders, has been altered through a series of ‘reforms’ in the last three decades. These reforms, ranging from manufacturing practices, trade, intellectual property rights and regulation of prices, have led to structural transformation in the pharmaceutical industry with far-reaching consequences on access to medicines. Reji Joseph’s effort to systematically document these policy reforms, analyse their implications with data and present complex arguments with rather simple language is unquestionably commendable. The five core chapters of the book deal with various aspects of pharmaceutical policy, trade in pharmaceuticals, research and development and above all the issue of price regulation. In the first chapter, while creating an overview of the pharmaceutical industry in India, Joseph highlights how an industry essentially dominated by foreign multinationals is gradually transformed into a vibrant global hub of pharmaceutical production. It is interesting to note that the larger national goal of self-reliance is realized through carefully crafted evidence based policies which addressed systemic deficiencies on one hand and create incentives for domestic manufacturers to expand their production capacity in strategic sectors like bulk The Book Review / October 2018 37 drug production. The success of the ‘penicillin project’ in the late 1950s where with the help of WHO, penicillin was domestically produced, bypassing the MNCs. This worked as a major boost to domestic industry which was producing so far low quality pharma products. Another crucial landmark is the Patent Act of 1970, which allowed Indian pharmaceutical companies to manufacture patented medicines using alternative processes. The 1970 Patent Act helped faster introduction of new medicines in the Indian market and at the same time helped drugs to be priced at a lower level. The Act in combination with considerable public investments in Research and Development; emphasis on production of bulk drugs, which are essential elements of drug production, and a series of protective measures including the MRTP Act of 1969, helped the indigenous pharmaceutical industry to flourish considerably, become competent, self-reliant and self-sufficient and were known globally for their competency. By late 1980s domestic pharma companies produced more than half of pharma demand and more than four-fifth of bulk drugs. India being a signatory to the TRIPS Agreement, the Patent Act of 1970 had to be replaced and product patent was reintroduced in 2005—the issue has been discussed in the book. Though introduction of product patent remains a major cause of concern with long terms implications on prices, some of the key flexibilities were incorporated into the Indian Patent Act 2005. These include the possibility of the pre-grant and postgrant opposition, the possibility of compulsory licensing and data exclusivity. Joseph brings to our attention the fact that both US and EU are putting pressure on India to deregulate these safeguards and sign Free 38 The Book Review / October 2018 Trade Agreements which are designed in a way to extend the scope of product patent by allowing various forms of ever-greening of patents and relaxing various data exclusivity clauses, which could be potentially dangerous for the industry as well as people’s access to medicines. Reforms in the pharmaceutical sector were expedited through modification of the Drug Policy of 1986. Among the key reforms, licensing requirements were almost completely abolished for all bulk drugs and their intermediaries, requirements for production of bulk drugs and restrictions in using imported bulk drugs were liberalized, foreign investments up to 51% was permitted through direct approval route, along with considerable changes in the drug price control system. According to Joseph, these reforms have positive effects on growth in production, sales and exports. The fact that there are a large number of firms exporting medicines with approval from USFDA corroborates what he says. However, his analysis also points out that market concentration has grown over the reform years, with top ten firms having more than a third of the overall market. Though there are a large number of firms engaged in pharmaceutical markets, which gives us the impression that it is a competitive market, it has to be noted that pharmaceuticals is not a single market, as every single therapeutic category represents a distinct sub-market. In some of the submarkets top ten firms control more than 90% of sales, representing a very high degree of concentration. Increasing presence of market concentration and considerable market failures due to information asymmetry exposes the pharmaceutical sector to mark-up prices and demand inducement and in this process creates barriers to access to life saving commodities. Price control mechanisms have played a crucial role in improving access to medicine and also in providing strategic direction to foster growth of the pharmaceutical industry. Joseph discusses the reforms in price control mechanism quite extensively in ‘An Overview of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry and Health’ as well as in ‘IPRs and Access to Medicines’ . The initial phases on price control, through various Drug Price Control Orders (DPCOs), focused on fixing prices based on ex-factory costs of essential medicines and allowed a certain percentage of markup over it. In the 1970s and 1980s the approach gradually expanded to bring in pretax profits into consideration, evolve differential strategies based on degree of essentiality of the medicines, rationalization and quality control. By the late 1980s as many as 342 drugs with 90 percent of market share was under price control. The subsequent decades saw series of liberalizing measures which gradually reduced government control over prices. Currently only 17 percent of the market remains under price control. The key feature of the reforms in DPCOs of 1995 was to introduce the criteria of market competition and annual turnover in identifying drugs for price control, clearly ignoring the aspect of public health requirements. Through the new criteria 74 bulk drugs and their formulations were brought under control. Joseph reviews studies to draw home the point that liberalization of prices lead to sharper increases in drug prices, compared to the general price index. Prices of decontrolled medicines, including the ones which were essential in nature, have increased sharply, with possible negative implications on access. The issue of essentiality of medicines was brought back under the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy of 2012 (NPPP2012) and incorporated DPCO 2013 as all drugs under National List of Essential Medicines were brought under price control. Though this seems to be a major step in the right direction, the NPPP 2012 changed the entire formula of price control from a cost based formula to a market based one, where ceiling prices are determined on the basis of the average price of all brands of medicines, each having a market share of at least 1 percent, thus limiting the overall efficacy of price control. Joseph argues with his analysis of 10 drugs that market based pricing has brought down the prices of medicines considerably and benefitted patients in the short run. The provision of annual revisions in prices as per the wholesale price index (WPI), however, limits the possibility of long run containment on prices. The new DPCO is also argued to be against firms which are more efficient in terms of lower cost of production as ceiling prices gravitate towards weighted average prices. A comparison of medicine prices under the current system of market based pricing with cost based pricing shows that cost based pricing could effectively bring down prices by 2 to 4 times for select sets of medicines (Shrinivasan 2018). This challenges Joseph’s proposition that market based pricing formula has been effective in bringing prices down and clearly indicates that cost based pricing can be much more effective in controlling medicine prices. The peculiar nature of the pharmaceutical market is that market leaders are also price leaders. To make the price control system more effective and limit the market power of leaders, Joseph argues for manda- tory prescription of generic names by doctors. The current practice in India is that doctors write the brand names of generic medicines and this helps larger companies to ensure greater share in market despite having higher prices of their products. Another measure which has greater potential in overcoming price differentiation could be to stop selling generic medicines with their brand names altogether (Shrinivasan 2018 op cit.). This practice is already in place in other countries like Australia and is seen as an effective measure. Though the Indian pharmaceutical sector has played a crucial role in improving access to medicines in different parts of the world, in our own country medicines remain a cause of misery for many. Every year around 34 million people are pushed to poverty because they need to purchase medicines from their pocket (Mukhopadhyay 2017). A third of the population do not have access to life saving medicines. An effective way of improving access to medicines could be free distribution of all medicines under EML through public hospitals. This has been successfully demonstrated in Tamil Nadu for the last two decades and in recent times in Rajasthan. An alternative procurement and distribution system does not only improve access, it can also be one of the most effective measures in controlling market prices of medicine. Joseph’s analysis could have been much more comprehensive if his in-depth review of pharmaceutical policies were complemented with some detailed analysis of the barriers to access medicines and discussion on possible government engagement in improving access—unfortunately this aspect remains rather scanty in this book. Reference Shrinivasan (2018). ‘Medicine Prices Can Be Drastically Reduced—And Immediately’. Unpublished AIDAN document. Mukhopadhyay I (2017). ‘When Medicines Cause Misery’; Common Cause, Vol XXXVI, No 2, April-June 2017. Indranil Mukhopadhyay teaches at the School of Government and Public Policy, OP Jindal University, Haryana. Book News Book News Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks who Made it Boom) by Adam Fisher reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley– from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way. Hatchette, 2018, pp. 494, R699.00 Interrogating ‘Development’ Padmini Swaminathan SOCIAL POLICY: ESSAYS FROM ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY Edited by Jean Dreze Orient BlackSwan, 2016, Hyderabad, India, pp. 478, R795.00 S ocial Policy brings together an impressive and wide-ranging set of articles drawn from the Economic and Political Weekly to provide readers with a glimpse of how welfare programmes aimed at alleviating the adverse outcomes of omissions and commissions of economic growth in India, have actually worked on the ground. Apart from the Introduction, the book is divided into six sections covering the themes of Health, Education, Food Security, Employment Guarantee, Social Security Pensions and Cash Transfers, and, Inequality and Social Exclusion. What follows is a brief discussion of the salient points emerging from each of the themes; we will return to the Introduction at the end. The four papers included under the theme of Health cover aspects of public health (Monica Das Gupta); healthcare delivery in rural Rajasthan (Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton and Esther Duflo); quality of medical care in Delhi (Jishnu Das and Jeffrey Hammer); and, revealed preference for open defecation (Diane Coffey, et al). Fundamental to the ‘dangerous’ neglect of public health in Independent India as pointed out by Das Gupta is the fact that ‘Public Health acts which constitute the legislative framework for public health provision, have not been updated and rationalized since the colonial era... progressive strangulation of funds for what ought to be routine public health services... dying cadre of public health staff are occupied by people who lack the required qualifications’, among others (pp. 27-29). The exploration of why rural people (howsoever poor) in Rajasthan do not access the public health system revealed a range of deficits in the manner in which the services are (or are not) delivered—high rates of absenteeism among health personnel leading to closure of facilities, frustrating efforts of people who try to access these facilities at considerable cost in terms of travel. Further, the paper captures concretely the several ways in which public health facilities are rendered unfree on the ground. A disturbing conclusion of the paper is that people on the ground have come to expect very little from existing systems and therefore ‘(I)mproving the quality of healthcare in an environment where the clients themselves are not particu- larly interested in complaining about what they are getting, will not be easy’ (p. 46). Using notions of competence (what do medical care providers know?) and practice (what do medical care providers do?), Das and Hammer explore the phenomenon of ‘quality of medical care’; among other things they establish that there are two types of errors. Type 1 errors arise when providers do something when it is not called for (over-medication); Type 2 errors arise when providers fail to provide services when essential. ‘We find the private sector particularly prone to Type 1 errors and the public sector prone to Type II errors’ (p. 50). The methodology and findings of this paper have significant policy implications. In the current push for Swachh Bharat, the paper by Coffey, et. al., raises an important query about the stubborn persistence of open defecation particularly among rural north Indians when compared to the rest of the world, calling it a ‘unique human development emergency’ (p. 93). Further, the authors observe, ‘... we find that many people have a revealed preference for open defecation, such that merely providing latrine “access” without promoting latrine use is unlikely to importantly reduce open defecation’ (p. 75). The responses of most people on the ground preferring open defecation, among other things, reveal that they did not consider this practice as a threat to health in general; neither were the majority of those surveyed able to connect infectious causes of diarrhoeal diseases among children with open defecation/non-use of latrine, even if the latter was available. Under the theme of Education, the papers selected cover aspects such as local participation in primary education (Banerjee, et al.,); impact of school choice on learning outcomes (DD Karopady); status and impact of para-teachers (Geeta Gandhi Kingdon The Book Review / October 2018 39 and Sipahimalani-Rao); and, prevalence of exclusionary practices in schools adversely impacting Dalit and tribal children (Vimala Ramachandran and Taramani Naorem). Discussing the findings from a baseline study aimed at capturing ‘local participation’, Banerjee, et al., are constrained to note that not only are gaps in knowledge of current status of primary education huge, but are combined with general lack of awareness about what can be done to improve matters followed by low collective involvement in improving the situation (pp. 110-111). The authors therefore question policies that aim to create new institutions based on belief/ faith in the effectiveness of local participation. From a large study that explored the private school scenario in India, Karopady has concentrated on capturing the impact of providing school choice to disadvantaged children in rural areas of Andhra Pradesh. An important finding is that those disadvantaged children who moved to private schools on obtaining scholarship have not benefited much from this move when compared to their counterparts who have chosen to remain in government schools. It is Karopady’s contention that the reasons for such unremarkable performance may need to be looked at, largely outside the school context. While private schools seem not to be addressing the fact that their processes are not helping all children, additionally, Karopady is critical of government schools that are unable to address learning outcomes despite being endowed with teachers who are ‘more qualified, more trained and better paid than their private school counterparts’ (p. 131). The near institutionalization of hiring teachers on contract across the country forms the subject matter of the paper by Kingdon and Sipahimalani-Rao; the pro and con debates relating to this phenomenon are several, covering economics (cost of hiring and training regular teachers to cater to expanding numbers of students attending schools); sociology of education (absenteeism, not engaged enough with the weak and students belonging to marginalized communities, etc.). An important observation that the authors make in their conclusion which merits attention for its policy implications is the conflation of the issue of equity (in pay and working conditions among regular and para teachers) with the issue of efficacy or quality of education imparted by para teachers, where available evidence does not support the contention of para teachers lowering the quality of education imparted (p. 154). In exploring ‘what it means to be a Dalit or Tribal child in our schools’ in six States, Ramachandran and Naorem make two in- 40 The Book Review / October 2018 teresting observations whose policy implications need more nuanced analysis than offered by the authors: one, that the government elementary schools in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are not as exclusive and they serve children from all social groups, unlike Andhra Pradesh where most forward caste children do not attend government schools. Two, a little later the authors note that while social stratification is characteristic of all the three societies of AP, Bihar and Rajasthan, ‘explicit caste based discrimination is not so evident in schools in Andhra Pradesh or in Bihar while in Rajasthan discrimination was explicit’ (p. 161). Reading the two observations together, it seems to us that merely making schools inclusive (where all castes are represented) cannot tackle the issue of discrimination, which, unless addressed frontally through various measures, could turn out to be more harmful. It is also not clear from the paper how much diversity the authors noted among the teaching community in the States covered by the study and also whether teacher training included courses on how to tackle aspects of discrimination in class and among students. The theme of Food Security is discussed by four papers: Dreze’s paper linking Democracy and Right to Food explicitly questions the ‘deafening silence surrounding hunger and nutrition issues in India’ thereby making it imperative ‘to reflect on the nature and limitations of Indian democracy’ (p. 184). While Right to Food intuitively indicates freedom from hunger, Dreze brings out the complexities involved, legal and otherwise, in operationalizing this right and manner in which this right has been given concrete shape through programmes such as the PDS, Mid-day meals, and the like, which programmes only when taken together, rather than in isolation, ‘hold the promise of radical change in public priorities and democratic politics’ (p. 194). Dipa Sinha’s paper on Rethinking ICDS based on the work of M V Foundation in mobilizing the community for protection of child health has important lessons for how ‘to help create an environment where the community felt responsible for the well-being of the children born in the village’ (p. 208). Reetika Khera’s very prescriptive paper borne out of a horrendous tragedy that befell children served Mid-Day meals in Bihar in 2013, lists the set of things that need to be put in place to ensure that quality meals are served to children. Another paper by Khera on the functioning of the PDS based on a survey conducted in nine States, examines and, thereby attempts to explain several different aspects that are associated with the PDS— role in ensuring food security, corruption in administration and leakages along the system, state initiatives in addressing smooth functioning and delivery, people’s perceptions on cash transfers versus subsidized grain distribution from PDS outlets, etc. This fairly exhaustive study underscores a fundamental point, namely, that context matters. And thus, unless the survey findings are related to the context in which they were captured, any one explanation taken out of context and turned into a ‘one-size fit-all’ policy would do more harm than good to the functioning of this important programme. The four papers on Employment Guarantee cover various aspects of the functioning, reach and administration of MGNREGA. While several aspects get repeated in the different papers (no fault of the authors), together they do interrogate this important ‘right to work’ Act of 2005. Dutta et al, in their paper, using NSSO 2009-10 data examine how far the programme has met the aspect of demand for work in different States. Among other things, the authors find that participation rates are only weakly correlated with rural poverty across States (p. 259); that higher overall participation rates tend to come with better targeting performance and lower rationing rates (p. 268); that women’s participation rate is about twice their share of other casual wage work (p. 272); while demand for work tends to be higher in poorer States, actual participation rates are not as a rule any higher in poorer States (p. 275); that poorer States tend to see both more rationing of work and lower casual wages (p. 276). Several of these aspects get repeated in the paper by Liu and Barrett but the significant conclusion of this chapter is that, ‘at the national level, the administrative rationing of MGNREGA jobs is not pro-poor but, rather, exhibits a sort of middle-class bias as households near the poverty line are more likely to receive the jobs they seek than are poorer households...’ (p. 297). Khera and Nayak capture the perceptions of women NREGA workers in their field based study conducted in six north Indian States. Among the several important observations captured include: ‘the fact that NREGA work is offered by the local government rather than by a private employer in some ways frees potential women workers from caste-and-community based strictures related to who they can and cannot work with’ (p. 305); ‘interview after interview provides insights into how NREGA employment is helping women take charge of their lives in little (and no so little) ways’ (p. 307). The authors however do not problematize enough the abysmally low numbers of days of employment provided under NREGA, and whether or not NREGA work supplements work available outside of it. In the absence of this information the claim of NREGA work enabling women to take charge of their lives sound too tall. The Maharashtra MGNREGA study by Ranaware, et al., is among the more interesting in this lot; it explores the phenomenon of asset creation under the scheme, including the condition and quality of these assets. The authors find that about 5 percent of works did not exist at the time of enumeration (p. 324); that the assets created benefit small and marginal farmers, even if 25% of the works were on lands owned by medium and large farmers (p. 325); relatively low representation of SC and ST beneficiaries in works on private land (p. 328); an overwhelming majority of respondents stated that they were able to expand area under cultivation and grow extra crop on hitherto fallow land (p. 333). On the whole the survey conveyed that the MNREGA works are pro-agriculture (p. 338). The significance of Social Security Pensions and Cash transfers in the lives of the poor and widows in particular is brought out in different ways through the four papers covered under this theme. Based on an evaluation study conducted in 10 States, Chopra and Pudussery discuss the reach, mode of delivery, amount and usage of the schemes covered. An important finding of the study is that most States top up several times the low amounts provided by the Centre; of equal significance is that about 75% of the respondents confirmed receipt of the pension, even as one-fifth of them reported that they received less than their full entitlement. The mode of payment of pensions however revealed the insensitive face of the government in that most pensioners had to make repeated trips to collect their meagre amount while the system made no provision to address persons with disability; again, while large scale malpractices were not reported, about 5% of those listed had actually passed away. Bhattacharya et al., assess the performance of elderly and widow pension schemes based on primary field surveys conducted in Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh chosen for the diverse manner in which the schemes operated in each of these States. Coverage by States are often larger than if Centre’s criteria are strictly adopted; nevertheless, the survey finds that the need for multiple documentation resulted in rejection of applications and hence less coverage. The most important factor that militated against requisite scaling up of the programme had to do with how connected the applicants were with local politicians or party workers. The paper also discusses in detail the nature of leakages and concludes by stating how the system expects that the ‘poor must prove they exist in the world of administrative records, and incur costs to make claims’ (p. 376). Based on a cross-sectional survey covering 20 villages across five chosen districts in Tamil Nadu, Balasubramanian and TK Sundari Ravindran’s paper discusses the implementation of the maternity benefit scheme in order to capture the reach of the scheme to eligible women, as well as the characteristics of those women who failed to receive the benefit. The survey revealed that 53% of the women who became ineligible for the scheme by reason of having a higher order pregnancy belonged to the SC/ST community; interestingly, a higher proportion of higher caste women (33.6%) were beneficiaries of the scheme as compared to lower caste groups (25.3% for SC/ST and 17.8% for MBCs) (p. 384). The findings of the paper make some telling comments on the celebrated Tamil Nadu social services delivery model: while institutional deliveries have increased, proportion of those who applied and did not receive benefits were disproportionately more among the landless and SC/ ST; variations across districts were also significant. The important outcome not discussed in the paper is whether the scheme has resulted in increased birth weight among newborns. Narayanan’s paper on debate relating to cash transfers provides an illuminating review of existing literature on the theme drawn from the experience of various countries. The significant takeaway from the paper is that ‘remarkable successes have been in contexts where there is extensive public provisioning of services so that CCTS have been designed as demand-side incentives for human capital investment, complementing supply-side, public provisioning of services’ (emphasis mine) (p. 399). In the section on ‘Inequality and Social Exclusion’ we have four papers: Thomas E Weisskopf discusses the aspect of economic inequality characteristic of India’s growth story and elaborates on the consequences of the persistence and continued increase in such inequality despite reductions in absolute poverty. He also alludes to the example of Brazil that has managed to combine growth with reduction in economic inequality through appropriate social policies, something which India has failed to achieve. Sukhdeo Thorat and Joel Lee, using the examples of the functioning of the Mid-Day Meal scheme and PDS, explicate the manner in which caste discrimination has crept into their functioning: through opposition to appointment of Dalits as cooks; through physical location of PDS shops in dominant caste localities; through caste-based favouritism in the manner in which goods are distributed through the PDS. A forceful argument put forth by the authors considering that PDS dealers are government actors is that untouchability practised by the dealers amounts to blatant defiance of the Indian Constitution. Ravinder Kaur’s paper is aimed at mapping the adverse consequences of sex selection and gender imbalance in India and China through six interconnected themes, namely, marriage squeeze, surplus males and violence against women, impact on marriage patterns and practices, marriage payments and economic behaviour, effects on men’s sexual behaviour, effects on women’s status and gender equity prospects. Needless to add, while much of such discussion takes place as part of women’s issues and therefore in Women’s Studies forum, the impact and social implications of particular patterns of development on demographic outcomes and vice versa are rarely discussed as part of development studies. Guha’s paper on ‘Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy’ centrally addresses the complete indifference and comprehensive marginalization of tribals in the discourse and practice of economic development in India. While Naxalite activities have benefited the Adivasis to some extent in their struggle against the State, Guha cautions against reading too much into this, since the principal aim of the Naxalites is not advancement of Adivasis per se but to capture state power through armed conflict. ‘There is thus a double tragedy at work in tribal India. The first tragedy is that the state has treated its Adivasi citizens with contempt and condescension. The second tragedy is that their presumed protectors, the Naxalites, offer no long term solution either’ (p. 471). While Dreze needs to be commended for the selection of the above articles, his Introduction could have enhanced considerably the worth of the volume if it had also dealt with the more theoretical aspects of what constitutes social policy and what differentiates social policy from say, public policy. As of now, the volume has reduced social policy to the six themes mentioned above. In the absence of a conceptualization of social policy, it becomes difficult to comprehend why other themes such as, for example, development of infrastructure, equally important for human development, has not found a place in a volume on social policy. Padmini Swaminathan is Visiting Professor, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad. The Book Review / October 2018 41 Impact Of Policy Shock Parag Waknis DEMONETISATION AND BLACK ECONOMY By C. Rammanohar Reddy Orient BlackSwan, 2017, pp. 272, R295.00 T he book under review by C Rammanohar Reddy is a timely addition to the literature on demonetization and indeed a very comprehensive one at that. Directed at the lay reader, it provides a succinct discussion of the context, history, and impact of the November 8, 2016 demonetization announcement by Prime Minister Modi that rendered all currency notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 illegal for use in transactions. These currency denominations formed about 86% of the total notes in circulation and given that India is predominantly a cash based economy, the economic disruption that ensued was monumental. The primary and very important contribution of the book is the construction of a narrative about the impact of policy shock when there was hardly any real time official data available as the shock rippled across different sectors of the economy. The book is divided into four sections of roughly 3-4 chapters each. The first section deals with the concepts of black money and black economy and its estimation. It also outlines the Indian and global experiences with demonetization as 2016 was not the first time that such an exercise was carried out in India or in the world. Section II details the action on black money in years prior to 2016 and provides a rich discussion of the context, design, and implementation of the 2016 demonetization exercise. Section III chronicles the substantive human impact of the policy action and provides a brief discussion on the connection between black money and politics. Section IV details the impact of demonetization on the banking system and the RBI. It concludes with a discussion on what lies in future after such a major policy shock for the Indian economy. The initial chapters talk about basic notions of black money and black economy in detail along with the issues related to its estimation especially given its overlap with the overall shadow or informal economy. The author correctly points out the flows of black money in and out of legal transactions making it hard to tackle and account the extent of it. Further in the first section, the book presents a detailed discussion of alternative options to demonetization that could have 42 The Book Review / October 2018 been less disruptive and possibly more effective. It provides a very interesting historical context to the current demonetization exercise in terms of the ones implemented in 1948 and 1978 and lessons that were highlighted from those policy episodes. What is the size of the black economy is a difficult question as there is no one way to tease out the measure from the available data. The author clearly outlines the different approaches that have been used so far and what we can conclude about the size of the black economy in India from these exercises. He talks about the literature on shadow economy reviewed in Enste and Schneider (2000) and related literature but quickly discounts it arguing that the reasons for the existence of informality in India is different from that in developed countries. I think that such a conclusion may be premature given that the countries studied in this literature are not just developed ones but a considerable number of middle- and low-income countries. The main criticism against this literature though, as Jim Thomas (1999) successfully argues, is the lack of theory behind all the measurement exercises. In Section II, the author acknowledges that demonetization is not the only or even an effective way to address generation of black money hoarded by some. It comes at the cost to many. He provides a detailed discussion and analysis based on the white paper that was brought out in 2012 by government in response to the public outcry against the issue of pervasive corruption. He points out that black money transactions take place in cash as well as through the financial system and therefore the obsession with minimizing cash transactions is totally misplaced. In ‘Promotion of “Less Cash” Economy’ (p. 87), he tackles the issues involved in the shift towards digital payment systems. The chapter highlights the state of the existing infrastructure as compared to the requirements for a successful digitalization. It also includes a brief discussion of changes in official narratives surrounding the policy from an action against black money to a movement towards ‘less-cash’ economy. In Section III, ‘Distress and Despair’ (p. 105) gives the details of the impact of demonetization on the economy based on the richly documented experiences of people and episodes of despair resulting from loss of incomes and employment from all the sectors in the economy. The discussion is primarily based on media reports that the author has collated to successfully construct a cohesive narrative of the human impact of demonetization. Despite the regional variation in this impact—for example, agricultural produce was harvested after November 8 in the North and prior to that in the South leading to a differential impact of liquidity shortage—a collective reading of such reports clearly shows that more or less all the sectors were affected immediately or eventually. The shock hit the vulnerable sections of the society, i.e., the informal economy, casual agricultural workers, hardest. Reading all the gut-wrenching stories of the people impacted by this policy, one gets an effective glimpse of the human impact of the policy shock. Reddy talks about the pervasive use of black money in politics making clear the vested interests of all the political parties in not raising the issue of politics and black money. The author clearly spells out the Herculean task that the RBI faced in terms of remonetizing the economy as fast as possible. Given the discussion on the capacity of printing presses and logistics involved in replacing currency notes, it is probably not surprising it took almost two years for the currency in circulation to go back to its predemonetization level. While providing a clear discussion on the impact on RBI’s balance sheet and the accounting of its transactions with the Central government, the author highlights the impact on RBI’s credibility and reputation. The chapter on black money and gold rightly points out the special place gold has in Indian society—especially related to women’s rights and their financial security. Therefore, it might be prudent to concentrate on other sources of black money than disturb the current status quo in relation to gold holdings. In the concluding chapter ‘What Next’, the author outlines his thoughts on what lies or should lie in the future of the Indian economy after demonetization of 2016. In relation to the digitalization narrative he points out that considerable progress was being made independently on digitization of payments, financial inclusion, mobile payments, electronic clearing and settlement systems, and so on in the years prior to 2016. The most important question therefore remains—was it really necessary to put the economy through the unprecedented distress and despair to steer it in the direction that RBI had already been pursuing for at least a decade prior? The latest data release that showed that the economy indeed slowed down considerably for at least four quarters (CSO 2018) and that almost all the demonetized currency was deposited in the banking system (RBI 2018) only vindicates the author’s analysis of what can be termed as a colossal policy mistake in the history of Independent India. I think the author drives home the point successfully towards the end of the book that tackling the problem of the black money will require fundamental changes—one that includes changes in ‘governance, practices, and attitudes’ (p. 188). These changes go to the heart of the institutional framework that governs the economic, social, and political life of us as Indians and require serious and deliberate policy initiatives than dramatic but ineffective policy surprises like demonetization. References: CSO, 2018, Press note on provisional estimates of annual national income, 2017-18 and quarterly estimates of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter (p. 4) OF 2017-18. Dominik H. Enste & Friedrich Schneider, 2000, ‘Shadow Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences,’ Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pp. 77-114, March. RBI 2018, Annual Report 2017-18. Thomas, Jim, 1999, ‘Quantifying the Black Economy: “Measurement without Theory” Yet Again?,’ Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(456), pp. 381-389, June. Parag Waknis teaches economics at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University (AUD), Delhi. Understanding Deprivation To Eliminate It Anamitra Roychowdhury POVERTY MATTERS: COVERING DEPRIVATION IN INDIA By K. Nagaraj with Nalini Rajan Orient BlackSwan, 2017, pp. 184, R775.00 K Nagaraj, a pioneer in studying farmers’ suicide in India, is now demanding our attention with his new book on identifying the parameters of deprivation for making it a thing of the past. Written with Nalini Rajan, the book is primarily targeted at journalists, in the hope that they eventually speak truth to power. The book has four sections, with the first section setting the agenda for journalists in India: ‘The democratic agenda of the journalist is simply being pro-poor. The poor, after all, constitute the majority in this country’ (p. 6). The authors, however, citing several examples in chapters 1 and 2 show that this is not the case with the Indian media presently. Rather, correspondents, often unknowingly, sensationalize certain public health issues at the behest of entrenched vested interests and at worst ‘lavish consumption by a minority is [deliberately] passed off as a phenomenon found among Indians in general …’ (p. 9). This trend, the book alerts us, would mean that ‘over time, the problem of deprivation is likely to go off the public radar’ (p. 11). The core of the book is to resist such tendencies. Section 1 ends with a discussion on different data sets related to the subject, along with defining deprivation from basic minimum subsistence in chapter 3 (ideally should have gone to the next section). Section 2 and 3 carry the central message of the book. While section 2 primarily concentrates on biological subsistence—measuring absolute poverty—employing the income criterion, section 3 broadens the definition of deprivation along the lines of ‘capability approach’ championed by Amartya Sen. One of the remarkable features of the book is its systematic account of (income) poverty measurement from the first principles and mostly being self-contained. Essentially, biological subsistence is defined in terms of nutritional requirement, which is tied purely to calorific norms. In India, anyone consuming 2400 kilocalories/day in rural areas and 2100 kilocalories/day in urban areas is not considered poor. For 1973-74, poverty line was calculated by considering actual consumption data of households in each expenditure class and then identifying the consumption/commodity basket that met the required calorie norms; cost of this commodity basket was defined as the poverty line and anyone spending less was counted as poor. This is the direct method of poverty estimation. Chapter 4 cogently discusses these issues. This method, however, was discontinued in later years and the government simply adjusted the 1973-74 poverty line for inflation. This is the indirect method of poverty estimation, where a new poverty line is obtained by updating the old poverty line with a suitable consumer price index. A detailed discussion of the indirect method and its implication is available in chapter 5. What is the rationale for abandoning the direct method? The authors suspect that the reason lies in political economy; while the indirect method shows steep fall in rural (urban) poverty from 56.4 (49) percent in 1973-74 to 25.7 (13.7) percent in 201112, the direct method shows 87 (65) percent of rural (urban) population poor in 2011-12. Elected governments naturally prefer declining poverty figures. Moreover, when different welfare programmes, including poverty alleviation drive, are targeted for the poor—falling poverty saves on government money. Lower poverty figures are also useful to showcase the success of neoliberal policies. Since state support is a matter of life and death for the poor, herein lies the importance of measuring poverty with utmost honesty. Now the indirect method assumes that the consumption basket of poor remained fixed for four decades; more precisely, the ratio of household expenditure on food and nonfood items has not changed between 197374 and 2011-12. But this is simply untenable, inter alia, because of vanishing common property resources. For example, poor households relied more on firewood for cooking fuel back in 1973-74. Many of them were forced to buy kerosene in 2011-12. Since, proportionately more expenditure is incurred on kerosene, this shifts expenditure from food to non-food items—which a simple updating of the 1973-74 consumption basket for inflation, misses. Declining food expenditure adversely impacts calorie intake, consequently, direct poverty estimates are usually higher. The Book Review / October 2018 43 Advocates of the indirect method, including the Tendulkar Committee Report (TCR), argue that 1973-74 poverty figures should be delinked from calorie norms. Their argument banks on mechanization of agriculture, reducing the drudgery of work in addition to producing disguised unemployment—both leading to lower calorific requirements. However, the strongest argument in favour of reducing calorie norms from 2400 to 1800 kilocalories/day is based on a 1981 study by PV Sukhatme. The study however, did not go unchallenged. VN Dandekar pointed out, comparing the nutritional requirements of British soldiers— enjoying greater dietary choice—with Indian poor is fundamentally erroneous (see pp. 7375 for details). Nonetheless, TCR reduced calorie thresholds and employed the indirect method. Additionally, various techniques adopted by the Planning Commission to obtain lower poverty estimates are succinctly discussed in chapter 6. These include: (a) using inflated consumption figures from National Accounts to demonstrate higher calorie intake; (b) updating 1973-74 poverty line with the price index registering lower inflation; (c) arbitrarily changing the established monthly reference period for food consumption to oneweek reference period showing higher consumption. With academics pointing out the obvious problems of data manipulation, the Planning Commission realized the necessity to overhaul the poverty estimation methodology, leading to the TCR. Chapter 7 discusses 44 The Book Review / October 2018 this in detail. TCR conceded that the consumption basket of 1973-74 is no longer relevant today. In addition to food, TCR allowed items like education, healthcare, housing, clothing, footwear and fuel to be explicitly regarded in the subsistence basket. This is undoubtedly welcome and goes back to David Ricardo, who appreciated the influence of ‘customs and habits’ in defining subsistence. TCR, however, reduced calorie norms and stuck to the indirect method. Therefore, the problems of the indirect method persist. With regard to reducing the calorie norms TCR cites the example of Bihar with high calorie intake but low outcomes in child malnutrition, infant mortality etc., whereas, Tamil Nadu and Kerala with low calorie intake have high outcome indicators. This indeed is a puzzle and the book could have broken new ground by engaging with this debate in detail. However, for Bihar, one may point out that higher ‘entitlements’ need not necessarily translate to greater ‘capabilities’. As for Kerala and Tamil Nadu, they also rank very high on account of farmers’ suicide— evidently more research is needed on this front. Does 21.9 percent aggregate poverty estimate in 2011-12, employing TCR methodology, inspire confidence? The authors could have dealt with this question more deeply. However, evidence compiled in section 3 and TCR’s own logic point otherwise. For example, the same outcome variables used by TCR to debunk calorie norms, cast doubt on the poverty figures obtained by it. With 21.9 percent poor in 2011-12—how could NFHS-4 in 2015 record among children, 36 percent under weight, over 40 percent malnourished, 29.4 percent chronically malnourished and 58 percent anaemic? More so when the nutritional requirement of children is less than adults and probably shows that reducing calorie norm is premature. Broadening the definition of deprivation, chapter 8 explains the widely popular Human Development Index (HDI) and its components. The section on HDI computation suggests arithmetic mean is used to obtain the aggregate index (p. 89). This technique, however, was abandoned in 2010 and geometric mean is used now. Finally, India is compared with other countries and how different States within India stand on the HDI scale. The chapter ends with the promise to ‘delve deeper into three major indicators that make up the HDI—health, gender and literacy’ (p. 92). The next three chapters discuss these topics. Although there is a separate gender index computed by UNDP, however, gender is not a component of HDI. The chapter on health discusses standard topics in the area and contains a wealth of information. Gender is discussed in chapter 10 and the hypothesis that India’s sex ratio has stabilized after 1961 is challenged with the evidence on child sex ratio. The material and sociological explanation of female infanticide in northern States and Tamil Nadu is illuminating. Discussion on literacy in chapter 11 is mostly descriptive and self-explanatory. The final section of the book gives an overview of the Indian economy. Chapter 12 compares the ‘trickle-down’ theory with the ‘inclusive’ growth theory at some length. However, the hypothetical example in page 125—with Rs 800 as nominal poverty line— showing poverty eradication with ‘inclusive growth’ approach is incorrect. The critique of Ricardo’s trade theory is incomplete and silent on the material fallacy that afflicts it. The relation between population and poverty is discussed in chapter 13 and the Malthusian view is contrasted with the demographic transition theory—emphasizing the role of women’s agency in controlling population. The concluding chapter provides a panoramic view of the economy covering diverse topics like agriculture, food security, employment, credit, among others. It calls for universalizing welfare programmes for a people-oriented development project. In this development trajectory journalists have to play the role of a watchdog and authors appeal to their good intentions. However, the recent revelations of Cobrapost raise deeper questions about the basic revenue model of media houses and careful scrutiny of their accounts should be on the agenda. Anamitra Roychowdhury teaches at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Book News Book News Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: A Framework for Future Trade Rules? by Abhijit Das and Shailja Singh offers a balanced and objective analysis of the likely impact of the TPP template of rules on developing countries such as India and significantly contributes to the ongoing debate regarding India’s ideal stance. This book will be useful for policymakers, trade lawyers, policy analysts, academics, economists and government officials, especially those from developing countries. Sage Publications, 2017, pp. 364, R1095.00 Towards Ethical Development Shipra Nigam SENSE AND SOLIDARITY: JHOLAWALA ECONOMICS FOR EVERYONE By Jean Dreze Permanent Black, 2017, pp. 354, R395.00 T he book is a collection of the author’s previously published essays written between 2000-2017 with a fresh general introduction, section-wise commentaries and bibliographic additions. The themes encompass a whole range of development issues, namely drought and hunger, poverty, school meals, healthcare, child development and elementary education, employment guarantee and food security and PDS. Then there are chapters on corporate power and technology (and their hold on public policy such as in the relentless drive for Aaadhar), war and peace (focussing on nuclear deterrence and Kashmir) and a ‘top up’ section on varied issues connected to the other themes in the author’s underlying philosophical vision for an ethical social development path. Jean Dreze is one of the country’s most well known development economists, known for his influential work on hunger, poverty and gender inequality in particular. He also has worked with an extensive team of colleagues over the years, including Nobel Laureate economists Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton, his partner Bela Bhatia, also a scholar and activist, and his long-term research-collaborator and frequent co-author Reetika Khera. At the same time, he is equally at home with his activist collaborators, the ‘jholawalas’—ranging from right to information activists to field researchers, rural workers and even student volunteers. He then, despite his disclaimer to the contrary, is the ultimate ‘jholawala economist’, who is ‘found not only in universities, governments and corporate sector, but also among the public at large—working with civic organisations, trade unions, political parties, alternative media, the peace movement or just freelance’ (p. 20). The methodological distinction of his work not surprisingly hence lies in emphasizing the importance of experience, ethical values and democratic debate in the world of public policy and public action besides the current dominance of evidence based policy making, expert knowledge and academic research. In outlining an agenda for ‘action oriented research’, an effort to achieve practical change through democratic means and processes, he regards ‘pursuit of knowl- edge as a collective endeavour’ with research as helping with ‘useful arguments and evidence that contribute to more effective action’. Here the expert and the activist learn from each other’s knowledge and from field insights and the lived experiences of the actual stakeholders and intended beneficiaries. Far from seeing research and activism as antagonistic, he dismisses the idea of objectivity as a mythical neutrality or distance (that is in any case nonexistent within institutions of power or even within academia), emphasizing objectivity requires ‘intellectual honesty, not an abdication of convictions’. And his own convictions lie in the idea of social development as the move towards creation of a good society, where ethical progress is as important as improvements in quantitative indicators, when viewed from the lens of the marginalized. The essence of the book then lies in the distilling of almost two decades of work and field experiences from this positionality, combining deep insights with passionate conviction, a broad scholarship and a keen eye for details. Economics, philosophy and extensive field experience are all brought together in critically assessing and chronicling aspects of India’s social development and the ups and downs in the course of the formulation and implementation of social policies over this period from this perspective. So anecdotes and lived experiences abound with empirical evidence and field insights all through—while contextualizing existing conditions, while gauging the ground impact of social policies ranging from midday meals in government schools to NREGA to PDS and food security to health care schemes and ICDS, and while pointing out the existing loopholes and the nitti-gritties that determine the effectiveness of their actual implementation. The book begins with a bleak picture from Dreze’s office of ‘Hundreds of young men, many emaciated and dishevelled ... have walked twenty or thirty kilometres with this stupendous load (smuggled coal) to sell it in Ranchi and earn just enough to feed their families’ (p. 1). As we proceed, it brings in glimpses of the harrowing living conditions and dysfunctionality of the basic public delivery system in far flung corners of the coun- try—amongst Sahariyas of western Madhya Pradesh, the Bhuiyans of Palamau, and the Pahari Korwas of Surjuga in Chhattisgarh. To the story of an old man carrying enormous loads over long distances to earn less than a bare minimum for survival in the context of starvation deaths in Kashipur. To Dablu from Latehar district, a young adivasi casual labourer with a dependent family, paralysed by an unfortunate accident and unable to get a BPL card for months due to absurd bureaucratic hurdles. This while millions of tonnes of foodgrains lay rotting in the godowns of FCI. These serve as stark reminders of the continued precariousness of the everyday existence of India’s underprivileged masses and contextualize the environment in which social policies become so essential in restoring a bare minimum of humanity for our collective conscience. The critical eye for detail with an overall grasp of reality brings out the nuts and bolts of what worked and what did not work: the problems of identification and class vulnerabilities in targeting of schemes like distribution of foodgrains under the PDS, of corruption and middlemen, of abysmal infrastructure and unhygienic conditions in public schools and the occasional incidents of food poisoning and continued caste discrimination in the context of mid-day meal schemes, of politically motivated resistance to effective simple measures like addition of eggs to the meals; the contradictions in ‘creating accountability’ under NREGA with routine violation of state obligations like providing work on demand and timely payment. NREGA here is pithily summarized as a ‘proworker law implemented by an anti-worker system’ (p. 143). The Book Review / October 2018 45 “ The essence of the book then lies in the distilling of almost two decades of work and field experiences from this positionality, combining deep insights with passionate conviction, a broad scholarship and a keen eye for details. ” Equally significant is the rare chronicling of gradual changes and improvements over time from repeated field visits and empirical evidence: from the quiet progress and growing accomplishments of the mid-day meals as one of ‘India’ s most effective social programmes’ with their positive impact on school attendance, child nutrition, pupil achievements and even in countering caste discrimination to some extent, to some distinct improvements and systemic turnarounds in public delivery of basic services with moves like universalization and expansion of PDS in initially laggard States such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. The positive changes in school participation, infrastructural development and the effective provision of school incentives (from mid-day meals to free bicycles); the role of NREGA in providing a wide range of benefits from supplementing livelihood security to creation of useful infrastructure (here he effectively takes issue with critics); the efficacy of measures such as direct payment transfers through bank and post office accounts, of NGO awareness campaigns and social audits in policy implementation and fight against corruption, are highlighted. The differences amongst States on these social development indicators are also touched upon, with consistent high achievers like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the less than average performance of Gujarat and the continued laggardness of BIMARU States despite some improvements and achievements overtime. And so are the huge tasks that remain—improving transparency and accountability and participation across the board, improving the quality of school education and classroom learning, of the continued deep flaws in India’s health care system despite some improvements under specific initiatives such as NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) and JSY (Janani Suraksha Yojana). The sections on corporate power and technocracy, war and peace and top up bring out the other side of this system speaking 46 The Book Review / October 2018 about the corridors of power and privilege: of the nexus between the state and corporate power and the disproportionate influence of technocracy in determining public policy; and the convergence of these interests in strengthening surveillance powers of the state behind the relentless drive for projects like Aadhar; of war-mongering by the state against its own citizens; of the ‘bullet train syndrome’, drawing ‘attention to a pervasive feature of public policy in India; the tendency to create separate public facilities for the privileged and the rest, and, quite often, to give priority to the former instead of aiming at decent services for all. This pattern helps to understand India’s education system, its health care institutions, and many other aspects of economic and social policy in India’ (p. 261). The last chapter ends on a philosophical note, in advocating the case for public spiritedness as a ‘reasoned habit of consideration for the public interest’ in contrast to the reigning supremacy of ‘rational self interest’ in driving the theoretical discourse of mainstream economic thought. In these chronicles then comes alive the work, experience and insights of Dreze which weave a narrative of incremental change despite overwhelming odds and enormous challenges which remain. The god of small things lies in connecting the little dots, the hard painstaking unsung labour that goes behind it, and provides ample food for thought to help piece together a way forward amidst the chaos of an infinitely complex political democracy. The significance of this book at a time when almost two decades of lessons learnt in public policy for tackling endemic hunger, poverty and social inequalities are in real danger of being overtaken by the ‘bullet train syndrome’ cannot be underestimated. More than ever, the ‘jholawala’ today has become a term of abuse and hate mongering in large sections of India’s corporate sponsored media. More than ever, the very idea of ‘public spiritedness’ has been subverted in whetting the public appetite for such abuse amidst rampant media trials and witch hunts of dissenting voices. Here, Dreze’s eloquent appeal for a good society as one where ethical progress is deemed to be as important as improvements in traditional development indicators assumes greater significance than ever before. Shipra Nigam is a consultant economist who has worked with various national and international organizations on areas of macroeconomics of growth and development, development policy and feminist economics. Rethinking Economics Dipa Sinha ESSAYS IN ECONOMICS AND OTHER CHEERFUL THEMES: A DISMAL SCIENTIST’S OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS ON THE WORLD AROUND HIM By S. Subramanian Sage Publications, India, 2014, pp. 203, R850.00 E conomics, particularly development economics, is often criticized (and rightly so) for its narrow approach and increasing disconnect from the real world. Increasing inequality, persistent poverty and failure to create employment are all issues currently facing the world that economics does not seem to be addressing adequately. For instance, Ghosh (2015) has argued that there has been a shift in emphasis in development economics from being concerned with transformation (structural, institutional and normative) to just a focus on poverty alleviation. It has therefore become important to not just critically appraise the contents of development economics today, but also for economists to contribute to literature that broadens the scope of topics covered. In the book under review here, Subramanian puts together a collection of a number of his ‘less academic writings’ written between 2001 and 2013, over a wide range of issues. Although this is not the explicit intention, one of the central messages that comes out of the book is to bring back to economics concerns related to politics, society and philosophy. Addressed to ‘young students of economics—undergraduates and postgraduates who are still not so “mature” as to have quite forsaken their taste for reasoning and relevance in favour of more alluring temptations of comfort and accommodation’ (p. xiii), the book is accessible to the general reader while at the same time provokes the expert to reconsider a number of concerns that one had taken for granted. The book is divided into three parts. The first called ‘Of Home and the World’ includes nine articles on themes such as global and domestic deprivation and disparity. The second, ‘Between Economics and Philosophy’ has four essays on themes ‘at the intersection of economics, philosophy and political science’ (p. xii). And the third part, aptly called ‘Miscellaneous Mistakes’ includes four essays covering a range of issues including cricket, the state of institutions, justice and social choice theory. The book covers a wide landscape ranging from the definition of poverty, inequality and deprivation to whether the creamy layer of SCs and STs should be exempted from getting preferential treatment in jobs and higher education. What is striking as one reads this book is the uncanny relevance of the essays written over a decade back to contemporary issues of concern in the Indian economy, society and polity. Subramanian’s discussion on the silence in ordinary conversations, in the media and in academic institutions in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots and the justification of the silence based on the moral reasoning (consequentialist or deontic) has an almost eerie significance in the current context of mob lynching, cow vigilantism and killing of all forms of dissent. The warning he gives in this context, ‘if you will not brook the iniquities of caste, class and communal divisions of this country, just wait and see how much worse it can and will get. The wages of resisting moral justice are moral catastrophes—which you, and you alone, will have brought upon your heads’ (p. 106) seems like a prediction for 2018 made in 2002, which nobody paid heed to. Not just on the issue of communal violence and divisions in society, but also on the neglect of human development and the single-minded focus on growth, poor investments and public spending on issues such as education and health, not enough attention being paid to increasing inequality are all issues that different essays in the book address. In terms of the themes that emerge from the book, probably the most important is the issue of the scope of economics itself. The author shows how development cannot be reduced to economic growth alone and that issues of social justice, human development and human rights are integral to the study of economics. As Amartya Sen has pointed out, ‘the real limitations of traditional development economics arose not from the choice of means to the end of economic growth, but in the insufficient recognition that economic growth was no more than the means to some other objectives’ (Sen, 1983: 753). Understanding and measuring deprivation also cannot be reduced exclusively to income and consumption related metrics. In one of the essays in the book, using a capability failure ratio (CFR) as an alternate measure of deprivation (an index of three dimensions of human achievement: knowledge, child-survival and a decent income-related standard of living), Subramanian discusses the extent of global deprivation and disparity. In another essay on the status of the child in India he presents a number of indicators related to child poverty such as child mortality, malnutrition and sex ratio. In explaining the presence of such disparity, he includes a historical analysis and political economy perspective including the shared history of colonialism and the politics of trade, aid and structural adjustment. The essays discussing the interplay between economics and philosophy bring to the forefront thoughts on the ideas of justice, egalitarianism, the values of liberty and equality. Through these essays the importance of normative values in informing development policy is also brought out. A number of alternate ways of looking at poverty and inequality are proposed—such as focussing on both the headcount ratio and aggregate poverty or for the Economic Survey to include quintile income statistics to bring the attention to inclusive development. A related theme across the book is a critique of the methods and indicators used by economists. The premise though not explicitly stated anywhere is a call for democratizing economics as well as other social sciences. At different points in the book there is a criticism of overemphasis of mathematics, as well as complicated empirical work or theoretical literature embedded in postmodern jargon. This will probably be taken more seriously given the fact that it is coming from an economist who has himself written extensively using sophisticated mathematical models as well as empirical ones. One of the messages laced in the book is to simplify academics and academic language for others to understand. Throughout the book, one finds small nuggets which offer a peek into what the author thinks about the use of jargon as well as the emphasis on sophisticated mathematical techniques to explain economic problems. For example, ‘…while a considerable quantity of “mainstream” economics (arguably) employs mathematics or formalism in the cause of pretentious and hollow “theoremmongering”, there is also constructive uses to which the tradition (or habit) of formalization can be put. One of these is to clarify the basis of claims made in positive and normative reasoning, and thereby to advance the possibility of disagreement founded in understanding rather than misunderstanding’ (p. 161). Therefore, he is critical and appreciative at the same time. Here, the lesson is that while academic rigour is definitely important, there cannot be the hegemony of a specific kind of economics on defining what rigour is—be it mathematical, empirical or theoretical of any persuasion. This is particularly relevant in the context of policy making where in recent years, there has been an increasing influence of development economists who are votaries of ‘evidence-based policy making’. Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) are placed on some sort of a pedestal as far as ‘evidence’ is concerned and it is argued that all other bases for policy decisions is futile. In this context, Jean Dreze’s contention that while economists can contribute to policy debates and discussions, they have no particular privilege over those from different disciplines and even other walks of life such as civil society activists is especially relevant (Dreze, 2018). In an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Subramanian (2015) exposes the shallowness of mainstream development economics where economists seem to perceive their role more in justifying existing poverty and inequality rather than finding solutions to overcome them. Written in the form of a note to budding development economists, he says for instance, ‘You can please the establishment silly by doing some really snazzy econometric work which demonstrates that, in appropriate adult-equivalent units, two square meals are actually three circular meals (or four rectangular meals under a suitably normalized B– P Approximation, whatever that might mean: who the hell’s going to know the difference anyway?)’ (p. 2015). By putting together such diverse articles in one place, this book also shows the complexity of human lives and the impossibility of studying them through simplistic disciplinary lenses. The discussion is a much The Book Review / October 2018 47 needed one and will hopefully result in the discipline being rescued from the path it has taken into trying to be more of a natural science than a social science. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, there is a re-opening across the world on what should be taught as basic economics in undergraduate and graduate courses. For instance a group of economists from across the world have got together to create an online resource called Core (Curriculum Open access Resources in Economics) Economics to aid teachers of the subject to introduce it in a way that is more ‘accessible, relevant and real-world economics’1. Another international network called Rethinking Economics has been formed for ‘building a better economics in society and the classroom’ and one of the ways they do it is through ‘democratising economics through creative, jargon-free workshops and classes’.2 While the book has been written for the general reader, it is also important for economists, especially teachers of economics to read it—and to introspect on what it is that we are teaching our students. 1 2 https://www.core-econ.org/ http://www.rethinkeconomics.org/ References Drèze, J., 2018. ‘Evidence, Policy and Politics: A Commentary on Deaton and Cartwright’. Social Science and Medicine, Vol 210C, pp. 45-47. Ghosh, J., 2015. ‘The Poverty Alleviation Way to Development’. Frontline, August 19 2015 (magazine), available at https://www.frontline.in/columns/ Jayati_Ghosh/the-poverty-alleviation-way-to-development/article7549958.ece (accessed on 21 August 2018) Sen, A., 1983. ‘Development: Which Way Now?’ The Economic Journal, 93(372), pp.745-762. Subramanian, S., 2015. ‘A Child’s Primer’. Economic and Political Weekly, 50(12), pp. 69-70. Dipa Sinha is Faculty at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University (AUD), Delhi. Book News Book News Communication Strategies For Corporate Leaders: Implications for the Global Market by Pragyan Rath and Apoorva Bharadwaj examines managerial communication from seminal theoretical and demonstrative vantage points through interdisciplinary amalgamation of the sciences and the liberal arts. It presents new paradigms which can act as game changers in tug-of-war business situations in the corporate world. Routledge India, 2018, pp. 268, R895.00 48 The Book Review / October 2018 United For Welfare Mohd. Sanjeer Alam HOW SOLIDARITY WORKS FOR WELFARE: SUBNATIONALISM AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA By Prerna Singh Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 2015, pp. xv+297, $31.99 D evelopment is a founding belief of modernity and a bedrock concept of political economy and social policy. Though understood and conceptualized variously to give rise to many versions of it, the idea of development, in the most basic sense, means making ‘a better life for everyone’. In spite of being subjected to severe criticism and disagreement over methods of achieving, the idea of development is a powerful emotive sociopolitical ideal to mobilize people and reflective of the best of human aspirations. Yet, the ideal of development, understood as ‘better life for everyone’, does not seem to be universally realizable. Despite well meaning efforts and repeated resolves over decades, most nations especially in the Third World continue to grapple with improving the lives of the majority of people. Most people in this part of the world live in subhuman conditions; are unable to meet essential needs: a better house and sufficient food to maintain good health; affordable services available to everyone; and being treated with dignity and respect. Development, in spite of being the largest humanitarian project for several decades, has occurred remarkably differentially both across and within nations. Within the national boundaries, some parts/regions have performed better than others in meeting the basic needs of the people; some social/ethnic groups have been far more able to appropriate benefits of developmental process than others. In brief, persistent socio-spatial inequalities in accessing public goods and services belie democracy’s promise of dismantling socially entrenched and spatially embedded inequalities to ensure a better life for all. Disparities in developmental initiatives, processes and outcomes within and across nations have engaged scholars across the globe to ask and answer a number of fundamental questions. Is development (understood even in minimal terms, that is, making better life for all) attainable universally? What explains differentials in developmental processes and outcomes within and across nations? In dealing with or seeking answer to these questions, social scientists have used a basket of socio-demographic, economic, cultural and political variables (viz., population growth, human capital, ethnic diver- sity and conflict, geographical location and resource base, sociopolitical culture, nature of the party system and political competition and the role of civil society) and come up with myriad explanations and conclusions. And yet, the puzzles swirling around disparities in development remain unresolved. The book under review is a serious scholarly attempt towards accounting for inter-State differentials in social development in India by employing an important and unconventional independent variable— subnationalism or subnational solidarity. The core argument of this important scholarly piece of work is that the States marked by the presence of subnational solidarity are characterized by significantly higher public spending in and better delivery of public goods and services namely education and health than those States deficient in relative social cohesion. In other words, the strength of subnational solidarity plays a crucial and determining role to push ruling elites for giving higher priority to those policies that contribute to making a better life for everyone. Why should subnational solidarity matter? The author argues and it stands to reason that ‘in states with a powerful popular subnational identification, indi- viduals tend to show greater awareness of and involvement with public life, and consequently are more likely to be involved with the provision of public services. By ensuring that public services function more effectively, societal involvement can therefore augment the effects of progressive State social policy. In contrast, in States where there is little popular subnational solidarity, people will tend to be less emotionally aroused or mobilized, and consequently less inclined to take an interest in and be involved with the political life of the province. As a result, it is unlikely that people will organize or approach State officials to provide feedback about potential inefficiencies in public service delivery. The absence of popular involvement with public services might in this way limit the gains of a progressive social policy’ (p. 39). In order to foreground the ‘subnational thesis’ and to demonstrate how relative cohesion of sociopolitical communities may foster social development, the author undertakes comparative historical analysis of two pairs of States that stand almost poles apart on social development indicators—Kerala and Tamil Nadu (representing the presence of strong subnational solidarity) and Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (representing weaker subnationalism). It is shown that in the late 1800s both Tamil Nadu and Kerala had low levels of development, and the two States had not yet witnessed the emergence of subnational identity. By 1880s Tamil Nadu left Kerala behind in matters of education and health. During this period, subnational identity had taken strong roots in Tamil Nadu. However, the gap between Tamil Nadu and Kerala closed by the closing years of the nineteenth century due largely to the emergence of Malayali subnationalism, leading to a dramatic increase in education and health expenditures. On the other hand, social development outcomes in both Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan Book News Book News A Business History of India: Enterprise and the Emergence of Capitalism from 1700 by Tirthankar Roy bridges the approaches of business and economic history, illustrating the development of a distinctive regional capitalism. On each occasion of growth, connections with the global economy helped firms and entrepreneurs better manage risks. Making these deep connections between India’s economic past and present Roy shows why history matters in its remaking of capitalism today. Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 298, R6461.00 “ It is true that Indian States are not just functional bureaucratic apparatus taking developmental policy decisions, but powerful sites of symbolic and reproduction cultural that are themselves culturally and politically expressed. ” were roughly comparable to Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the closing decades of the nineteenth century but the former (Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan) slipped way behind the latter (Kerala and Tamil Nadu) as socially and ethnically divided socio-political community in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan led to social welfare being framed almost exclusively in terms of advancement of particular castes and/ or communities rather than the entire State, and thus impeded social development. The empirical/statistical analysis undergirds the relationship between presence/absence of a sense of subnational solidarity and the pace of social development. The statistical exercise carried out not just for the four case study States but for major Indian States confirms the theoretical expectations, that is, greater the sense of social solidarity among the masses as well as political elites, higher is the public spending on public goods and more effective delivery of public services, leading to faster pace of overall development. Even after controlling for a range of alternative explanations, the variable of subnationalism (constructed as an index using four indicators—language, subnational mobilization, absence of separatist movement and subnationalist party— Book News Book News has an additional and significant impact on social expenditures and social development. Undoubtedly, the historical/theoretical insights solidly backed by rigorous empirical scrutiny add to the strength of the book and make it an outstanding work in the long line of research on the theme of ‘sub-national variations in social development’. Some analytical problems remain though. Nevertheless, the most important one is the ‘state as the unit of analysis’. It is true that Indian States are not just functional bureaucratic apparatus taking developmental policy decisions, but powerful sites of symbolic and cultural reproduction that are themselves culturally and politically expressed. And yet, inter-state analysis of a phenomenon or say social development pattern often appears to be misleading especially from the point of view of framing social policy and assessing effectiveness of the delivery of public goods and services. In brief, State level aggregation of policy outcomes grossly misses interesting patterns within States or at the lower levels—region, district etc. The second problem is of relatively small ‘N’ or sample size that often puts researchers on their toes while interpreting the results of multivariate statistical analyses. The author is aware of this particular problem and admits to it (p. 32). In spite of limitations, this study offers a number of recommendations associated with instituting and executing social policies. By invoking a novel idea of subnational solidarity and using sophisticated methodologies in explaining inter-state variations in social policy outcomes, the book makes an important contribution to the vast and still expanding scholarship in the field of political economy of provisioning of social infrastructure as well as public goods and delivery of public services. Mohd. Sanjeer Alam is Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Book News Book News How Do Small Farmers Fare? Evidence from Village Studies in India by Madhura Swaminathan and Sandipan Baksi is the outcome of a two-year research project undertaken by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies and supported by the Rosa Luxemberg Stiftung (New Delhi). The objective of the project was to examine the socioeconomic characteristics and viability of small producers in different agro-ecological regions of India, locating them in the broader context of the capitalist development of Indian agriculture. The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks teaches by example, detailing the development of an investment philosophy that fully acknowledges the complexities of investing and the perils of the financial world. Marks expounds on such concepts as ‘second-level thinking’, the price/value relationship, patient opportunism, and defensive investing. Frankly and honestly assessing his own decisions–and occasional missteps–he provides valuable lessons for critical thinking, risk assessment, and investment strategy. Tulika Books, 2018, pp. 368, R995.00 HarperCollins, 2018, pp. 180, R399.00 The Book Review / October 2018 49 Book News Book News Book News Book News Book News Book News management and food security. It shows that women are bearing the brunt of the increase in rural economic distress at the turn of the century, with spillover effects on their physical and social wellbeing. Sage Publications, 2009, pp. 230, R650.00 Productivity Dynamics in Emerging and Industrialized Countries edited by Deb Kusum Das engages with the study of productivity dynamics in the emerging and industrialized economies. The essays address crucial aspects, such as the roles of human capital, investment accounting and datasets, that help understand productivity performance of global economy and its several regions. Routledge, 2018, pp. 660, R1995.00 Bearing the Brunt: Impact of Rural Distress on Women by Swarna S Vepa discusses the gendered impact of rural economic distress with respect to employment, agricultural production, natural resource 50 The Book Review / October 2018 Labour Law Reforms in India: All in the Name of Jobs (Critical Political Economy of South Asia) by Anamitra Roychowdhury provides a theoretical framework to understand the subject, and empirically examines to what extent India’s ‘jobless growth’ may be attributed to labour laws. There is a pervasive view that the country’s low manufacturing base and inability to generate jobs is primarily due to rigid labour laws. Therefore, job creation is sought to be boosted by reforming labour laws. However, the book argues that if labour laws are made flexible, then there are adverse consequences for workers: dismantled job security weakens workers’ bargaining power, incapacitates trade union movement, skews class distribution of output, dilutes workers’ rights, and renders them vulnerable. Routledge India, 2018, pp. 336, R9626.00 The Book Review / October 2018 51 Posting Date: 10th & 11th of every month at N.D. PSO Publishing Date: 8th of every month 52 The Book Review / October 2018 Postal Registration No DL-SW-01/4079/2018-20 R.N.I.No. 28686/76 ISSN: No. 0970-4175 Total no. of pages 52