Globalization BANERJEE-GUHA, SWAPNA. Neo liberalising the Urban: New Geographies of Power and Injustice in Indian Cities. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.22. 30 May. 2009: 95-107. An adequate understanding of the contemporary neoliberal urban process requires a grasp of its politico-economic ideological framework, multi-scalar institutional forms, diverse socio-political links and multiple contradictions. This paper examines the active engagement of neoliberalism that is not only moulding the concept of urban, but is simultaneously intensifying unevenness in interurban and intra-urban development. It focuses on the National Urban Renewal Mission, the official carrier of neoliberal urbanism, and its various implications. The paper illustrates the process of restructuring in a few cities in different states, most importantly, in Mumbai, the countrys budding international financial centre, with a focus on specific development projects. BASU, DEEPANKAR., DEBARSHI DAS. Political Economy of Contemporary India: Some Comments. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.22. 30 May 2009: 157-159. Two of the most important characteristics of contemporary Indian reality are primary accumulation of capital and the continued existence of a huge pool of surplus labour. Partha Chatterjees attempt at explaining these important features, though insightful, is fraught with numerous theoretical and empirical problems. BHADURI, AMIT. Understanding the Financial Crisis. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.13. 28 March. 2009: 123-126. This paper attempts to understand the nature of the current financial crisis by identifying the main characteristics of the system that became vulnerable to collapse due to falling asset prices. It highlights the shadow banking system, which lacked the explicit backing of a monetary authority on the one hand, and escaped largely its regulation on the other. This system fostered a circular rather than a
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vertical network of credit interdependence, which had its advantages
but was also spectacularly vulnerable. The financial system may be stable and flush with liquidity through injection, but in the absence of sufficient demand for liquidity from the real economy, the depressive economic conditions may continue. The politics of trying to save capitalism by saving only the financial capitalists may well turn out to be the last twist of the knife from free Market fundamentalism to pave the way for a deeper and lasting recession. BHUSHAN, PRASHANT. Misplaced Priorities and Class Bias of the Judiciary. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.14. 4 April 2009: 32-37. The Author argues that it is clear from the recent record of the higher judiciary that the imperative of upholding civil liberties, socioeconomic rights, and environmental protection has been subordinated to agendas such as the war on terror, development and satisfying corporate interests. Far from remaining faithful to the motives that resulted in the institution of public interest litigation, the Supreme Court has tended to act against the interests of the socio-economically backward. CHAUDHURI, SILADITYA and NIVEDITA GUPTA. Levels of Living and Poverty Patterns: A District-Wise Analysis for India. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.9. 28 February 2009:94-110. Most of the contemporary studies of level of living and poverty concentrate only on state-level averages. In view of the growing divergence both between and within the states, disaggregated studies are necessary for accurate identification of the critical areas calling for policy intervention. In the National Sample Survey Organisations Consumer Expenditure Survey held in 2004-05, the sample design had taken districts as strata in both the rural and urban sectors, which makes it possible to get unbiased estimates of parameters at the district level. This paper presents a profile of levels of living, poverty and inequality for all the districts of the 20 major states of India. An attempt has also been made to map poverty in the districts to examine their spatial disparity within and across the states.
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ESWARAN, MUKESH, ASHOK KOTWAL, BHARAT
RAMASWAMI and WILIMA WADHWA. Sectoral Labour Flows and Agricultural Wages in India, 1983-2004: Has Growth Trickled Down?. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.2. 10 January 2009:46-55. This paper examines the evolution of poverty in India through the prism of agricultural wages and employment. It links the movement in wages (and hence poverty) to the fundamental process of sectoral labour flow that underlies economic development. It finds that despite the rapid growth of the non-farm sector, its success in drawing labour from land has been limited. Yet agricultural earnings have increased, demonstrating the pivotal role of agricultural productivity. The stock of the labour force already locked into agriculture is large and the best way to improve living standards would be to boost farm productivity. GLENN, JOHN. Welfare Spending in an Era of Globalization: The North-South Divide. International Relations 23.1. (2009): 27-50. This paper examines the assertion that economic globalization has led to the decline of welfare spending in recent decades. Although it is often argued that the increasing intensity of globalization has led to such a decline in the industrialized states, the paper finds that there has been little, if any, downturn in either levels of state expenditure in general or in levels of welfare spending in particular. However, the experience of the developing states has been rather different. In their case, the last few decades indicate that stagnation or a decline in welfare spending has occurred, particularly during the period of structural adjustment implementation. It is argued that the OECD countries still manage to provide a high level of social welfare to their populations that closely resemble the compensatory state model. In contradistinction, many of the states in the South have struggled to maintain their levels of social expenditure and therefore most resemble Cernys competitive state model. In order to explain these two divergent outcomes, the paper examines the way in which the behaviour of certain key international financial actors (investors, multinational companies, and international financial institutions) differs with regard to these two sets of countries.
Culture and New Workplaces: Organised Retail and Shopping Malls in India. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.22. 30 May. 2009: 45-54. With a case study of young workers in organised retail in shopping malls in Kolkata, this paper aims to illuminate how emerging labour processes as well as the organisation and culture of new workplaces in India today have far-reaching consequences beyond the economy and is transforming Indian society and politics in profound ways. With the adoption of Market-driven and business-friendly public policy in India, new workplaces like shopping malls are playing a decisive part in crafting suitable workers and citizens, and in reshaping individual subjectivity, consonant with the needs of the Market and of neoliberal governmentality for self-governing citizens and self-driven, pliant workers. The paper shows how young workers seek personal solutions to structurally or systemically generated problems in the economy and at the workplace; emphasise the responsibility, autonomy and agency of the self-driven, enterprising individual; disavow formal party politics and political engagement; negate the significance of the state in public policy; and allow both the government and employers to abdicate any responsibility for workers and citizens well-being. GUDAVARTHY, AJAY. Globalisation and Regionalisation: Mapping the New Continental Drift. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.24. 13 June. 2009:93-100. How far have regional organisations in the south been successful in struggling against neoliberal policies initiated in the northern countries, and actively aided by the international financial institutions? How far have they succeeded in establishing an alternative global regime of development? An assessment of these regional formations in Asia, Africa and Latin America is undertaken to find whether they could fulfil the aspirations for an alternative and just globalisation.
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JELLISSEN, SUSAN M. and FRED M GOTTHEIL. Marx and
Engels: In Praise of Globalization. Contributions to Political Economy 28 June 2009: 35-46. Marxs vision of history unfolding is one of societal transformation from a set of diverse nation states in a capitalist world to a unified economic society in a yet-to-be communist world. The catalyst that sets this unfolding into action is the globalization process. Its trigger mechanism is the innovating capitalist. Enticed into creating new labour-saving technologies by the prospect of reaping higher rates of profit, these capitalists confront unavoidable competition and technology imitation which undermine their advantage and leads ultimately to falling prices and falling rates of profit. Their only recourse is to venture abroad, to globalize, to invest and produce in the less technologically developed economies. This globalization of resource and product Markets is a dual-edged sword: It creates and destroys. It destroys the economic and social fabrics of the less developed economies and creates in its wake a replica of the more technologically advanced. In the end, we are all one global economy, western in character. Marx sees this inevitable globalization process as progressive and praiseworthy. KANNAN, K P. and G RAVEENDRAN. Growth sans Employment: A Quarter Century of Jobless Growth in Indias organised Manufacturing. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.10. 7 March. 2009:80-91. There has been considerable debate in India about the impact of growth on employment especially in the organised manufacturing sector for different periods since the early 1980s. However, changes in the coverage of the Annual Survey of Industries demand a fresh look at the issue over a longer period. This paper attempts such an analysis for 1981-82 to 2004-05. For the period as a whole as well as for two separate periods the pre- and post-reform phases the picture that emerges is one of jobless growth, due to the combined effect of two trends that have cancelled each other out. One set of industries was characterised by employment-creating growth while another set by employment-displacing growth. Over this period, there has been acceleration in capital intensification at the expense of creating employment. A good part of the resultant increase in
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labour productivity was retained by the employers as the product
wage did not increase in proportion to output growth. The workers as a class thus lost in terms of both additional employment and real wages in organised manufacturing sector. KATE, GOODING., and ANNA MARCHRIOT. Including Persons with Disabilities in Social Cash Transfer Programmes in Developing Countries. Journal of International Development 21 March. 2009:685-698. This paper discusses inclusion of persons with disabilities in social cash transfer programmes in developing countries. Drawing on material from literature reviews and interviews, it considers potential challenges in the design of these programmes, particularly barriers to access and the complexities of assessment, and the impact of transfers for persons with disabilities. The paper identifies some key principles for including persons with disabilities in social transfer schemes, specifically: strong legal foundations; participation of persons with disabilities in programme design, implementation and evaluation; and embedding transfers within a wider framework of action to tackle discrimination and empower persons with disabilities. MEHROTRA, SANTOSH and HARSH MANDER. How to Identify the Poor? A Proposal. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.19. 9 May 2009: 37-44. The Census of 2002 to identify the poor in rural areas of India was the third in a quinquennial series. However, it has been appropriately criticised. This paper elaborates on the criticisms, and proposes an alternative set of criteria and methodology for conducting the next (now overdue) census of the rural population to identify the poor. MENON, NIVEDITA. Thinking through the Post nation. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.10. 7 March. 2009: 70-77. A well-known opposition in globalisation debates is the national versus the postnational in which the static nation, defined forever by symbols of identity produced in the now-irrelevant era of nation states, is counter posed to the dynamic postnational corporation,
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located everywhere and nowhere, resisting the parochialism of
national pride and national symbols. The term postnational is developed here in a sense different from that promoted by corporations and the self-defined global civil society, which conceives of it simply as spaces above and beyond the nation state. Moreover, in a world in which dominant discourses valorise flows, fluidity and translatability, the term postnational may offer us a vantage point that insists on location in the face of translatability, while simultaneously insisting that location is autonomous of the nation state. MUKHERJI, RAHUL. The State, Economic Growth and Development in India. India Review 8.1. January-March. 2009: 81106. The Indian state has been more penetrated by social actors than many East and Southeast Asian states. Unlike China, India could neither abolish private enterprise nor could it embrace globalization with the same speed and ferocity. Both complete state-driven nationalization and state-driven globalization would demand a state, which would have much greater command over interest groups like industrialists, farmers and trade unions. Policies favouring economic growth and development in India needed to evolve gradually after building a social consensus on those policies. This is a model of development driven by a relationship between the state and society, where the power of the state, even in its commanding moments, was moderated by the power of social actors. Developmental ideas were debated within the state. Substantial economic policy change would require building upon a historical path of gradual changes in ideas and policies, punctuated by economic crises. This paper demonstrates how this dynamic is critical for explaining the politics of the green revolution and consequent self-sufficiency in food grains, as well as for understanding the Indias globalization beyond 1991. It is a story of getting to higher rates of economic growth in a gradual and circuitous way after building a policy consensus among diverse stakeholders. Economic crises aided the arrival of a new consensus.
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OOMMEN, T.K. Development Policy and the Nature of Society:
Understanding the Kerala Model. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.13. 28 March. 2009: 25-31. The quality of life is usually measured by three interrelated dimensions such as the human development index, the human freedom index, and the human distress profile. In Kerala, in spite of high HDI, the rates of suicide, crime, drug addiction, unemployment, etc, are high compared to other states. This essay argues that a high quality of life should register a high HDI, the maximum HFI and minimum HDP. It is necessary to work towards this complex objective if Kerala wants to sustain its claim to a high quality of life. PATNAIK, PRABHAT. The Economic Crisis and Contemporary Capitalism. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.13. 28 March 2009:47-54. A democratic agenda for coming out of the recession must have at least five elements: first, the nationalisation of financial institutions in the leading capitalist countries where they have basically become insolvent; second, controls on cross border financial flows; third, protection introduced to defend peasants and other petty producers of primary commodities (ideally through agreements among producing countries) in the case of all commodities whose world prices are demand-determined (as opposed to cost-determined); fourth, a coordinated fiscal stimulus to the world economy provided by a group of leading countries; and fifth, a system of grants whereby the increased surpluses generated by such a stimulus are given as grants to the less (or least) developed countries on the condition that they do not merely add these to their reserves. SAMANTARAYA, AMARESH. An Index to Assess the Stance of Monetary Policy in India in the Post-Reform Period. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.20. 16 May. 2009:46-50. The Reserve Bank of India has formally adopted the multiple indicator approach in the conduct of monetary policy since April 1998. During this period, sole reliance on traditional indicators of monetary aggregates or policy rates is not adequate to reflect the stance of monetary policy. This paper develops a monetary policy
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index by synthesising the extracted signals from the policy
documents and quantitative information embedded in key indicators. The MPI so constructed was used to assess the impact of monetary policy on macroeconomic variables such as interest rates, bank credit, inflation, and output growth during the post-reform period. It was observed that while monetary policy has an instant influence on interest rates, the impact on inflation and output was realised with a lag of around 6 to 18 months. SANYAL, KALYAN and RAJESH BHATTACHARYA. Beyond the Factory: Globalisation, Informalisation of Production and the New Locations of Labour. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.22. 30 May 2009:35-44. This essay foregrounds the phenomenon of informalised selfemployment and explores its implications for potentially new forms of labour activism. The relation which defines the new location of labour is one in which the labourer is no longer a source of surplus, rather he/she is an unwanted possessor or occupier of economic resources from which he/she must be divorced to free those resources for use in the circuit of capital. This process of dispossession without proletarianisation or exploitation is referred to as exclusion. The traditional contradiction between wage-labour and capital is overshadowed by the contradiction between capital and a surplus labour force. Class politics traditionally focused on exploitation of wage-labour must reinvent itself to address the other great political movement shaping up around the exclusion of labour. SHARMA, NARESH KUMAR. Special Economic Zones: Socioeconomic Implications. Economic and Political Weekly XLIV.20. 16 May 2009:18-21. This report of a conference held at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study on special economic zones raises doubts about their desirability on different counts. It is centred around three themes: (1) SEZs and economic development; (2) SEZs and distributive implications; and (3) SEZs and the legal issues.