Economic Reforms And Productivity Growth In Indian Industries

This volume comprehensively captures trends in productivity and its determinants in the post-reform period for Indian manufacturing. It provides an up-to-date survey of different methods employed in measuring productivity and their applications across organized and unorganized sectors, including food, beverages, furniture, gems, chemicals, petroleum and rubber, metals and minerals, paper products, publishing, textiles, etc. The essays examine the uneven impact of economic reforms and growth on the performance of the manufacturing sector. This will be especially useful to students and scholars of economics, business and management, policymakers and governmental agencies, particularly those interested in Indian economy and manufacturing.

During the last two decades, India has experienced a high growth rate, but the contribution from productivity growth and technological progress has been very low. This has resulted in a poor performance in the employment generation in the formal sector, and this book examines this phenomenon and the Indian growth pattern. Using primary and secondary data, the book looks at the impact of economic reform on technological change and total productivity growth, and in turn its impact on the labour market. It examines the effect of trade reform on the form and functioning of labour markets, and goes on to look at the impact of the global financial crisis on the Indian labour market. Offering interesting modelling exercises and empirical verifications that bring fresh ideas and new content, this book is of interest to academics in the fields of development economics, international economics and South Asian studies.

The book presents a comprehensive study of the impact of policy reforms on output, employment, and productivity growth across sectors of India since 1991. It showcases varied responses from different sectors as they faced different degrees of policy interventions, and challenges or opportunities as regards markets, technology, and availability of skills and other complementary resources. The book also discusses the contributions of the service sector on India’s GDP and employment. The book throws light on the phenomena of rising inequality and persistent poverty which continues to shadow and be a hallmark of post-reform India, despite high economic growth. It underlines the failure of these reforms to bring about major change in social and economic organizations and institutions. The book’s contents stress on the criticality of addressing these issues as they have a serious potential of jeopardizing the country’s ability to maintain high growth momentum. With these pertinent topics, the book would be of interest not only to the research community, but also to policy makers and practitioners of various sectors addressed here.

With reference to India.

Kosaraju Leela Krishna, b. 1935, Indian economist; contributed articles.

This paper explores the causes of India's productivity surge around 1980, more than a decade before serious economic reforms were initiated. Trade liberalization, expansionary demand, a favorable external environment, and improved agricultural performance did not play a role. We find evidence that the trigger may have been an attitudinal shift by the government in the early 1980s that unlike the reforms of the 1990s, was probusiness rather than promarket in character, favoring the interests of existing businesses rather than new entrants or consumers. A relatively small shift elicited a large productivity response, because India was far away from its income-possibility frontier. Registered manufacturing, which had been built up in previous decades, played an important role in determining which states took advantage of the changed environment.