State And Capitalist Development In India

This book seeks to encourage dialectical methods through the interaction of economic, political and social factors to approach social analysis. It examines various emerging issues in society in the era of globalization. The issues raised in the critique will benefit scholars in comprehending social reality with a new perspective and approach. This book will help policymakers look at more realistic conclusions for policy making. This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Recognising the different ways that capitalism is theorised, this book explores various aspects of contemporary capitalism in India. Using field research at a local level to engage with larger issues, it raises questions about the varieties and processes of capitalism, and about the different roles played by the state. With its focus on India, the book demonstrates the continuing relevance of the comparative political economy of development for the analysis of contemporary capitalism. Beginning with an exploration of capitalism in agriculture and rural development, it goes on to discuss rural labour, small town entrepreneurs, and technical change and competition in rural and urban manufacturing, highlighting the relationships between agricultural and non-agricultural firms and employment. An analysis of processes of commodification and their interaction with uncommodified areas of the economy makes use of the ‘knowledge economy’ as a case study. Other chapters look at the political economy of energy as a driver of accumulation in contradiction with both capital and labour, and at how the political economy of policy processes regulating energy highlights the fragmentary nature of the Indian state. Finally, a chapter on the processes and agencies involved in the export of wealth argues that this plays a crucial role in concealing the exploitation of labour in India. Bringing together scholars who have engaged with classical political economy to advance the understanding of contemporary capitalism in South Asia, and distinctive in its use of an interdisciplinary political economy approach, the book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Politics, Political Economy and Development Studies.

This book critically discusses the changing relationship between the Indian state and capital by examining the mediating role of society in influencing developmental outcomes. It theorizes the state’s changing context allowing the discussion of its pursuit of contradictory economic and social welfare goals simultaneously. Both structural and ideological factors are argued to contribute to a shifting context, but the centrality of re-distributive politics and the contradictions therein explain a lot of what the state does and cannot do. The book also examines what the state aspires to do but structurally cannot accomplish either because of the scale of the problem or the dysfunctionality that sets in with continuous reforms. The collection provides rich evidence on the contested forms of governance arising from changing contexts and shifting roles of the state. Readers will benefit from this recasting of the Indian state in terms of the actual forms of intervention today. Changing Contexts and Shifting Roles of the Indian State is a timely book. At a time when the question of the role of the state in promoting more inclusive forms of development has never been more urgent, this book provides a range of powerful and insightful case studies of how a changing Indian capitalism is impacting and in turn being impacted by the multi-stranded role of the Indian state. Patrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Brown University, Providence. Since the early 1990s, the Indian economy has moved away from a statist model of development to a more market-oriented one. However, very little scholarship exists that attempts to analyse India’s recent development experience from a political economy lens. This book, which is edited by two of India’s reputed scholars in the political economy of development, addresses this important gap in the literature. It provides an insightful account of the role of the state and the market in India’s economic resurgence in the last three decades. The book also contributes to a fresh understanding of what is meant by a twenty-first century developmental state in a globalised world. The book will be valuable reading for all scholars of India, as well as to researchers in the political economy of development. Kunal Sen, Director, United Nations University – World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki. This collection gives us a richer and more layered understanding of the Indian contemporary State. Rather than see the State as an unchanging entity with unchanging interests, the book argues that the role of the State changes with the context and with the change in political regime. Thus, taking contradictory decisions such as greater dispossession of land from the peasantry and expansion of the universe of economic rights is explainable. The argument is that we can have a better understanding when we see the Indian State as dealing with the ebb and flow of a democracy. C. Rammanohar Reddy, Former Editor, Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai.

Why does capitalist development give rise to political alliances between the state and certain economically dominant classes? Addressing this question, Professor Banerjee uses an evolutionary approach to social structure to develop a theory of the interaction within and among business and manufacturing firms--a theory that highlights those aspects of market processes that promote the formation of dominant economic classes. Structural-evolutionary conceptions of property relations and of state planning and regulation are developed and combined with the market model. According to Professor Banerjee, the market, property relations, and state administration form a self-sustaining structure that simultaneously develops the economy in an uneven and clustered fashion and gives rise to a "dominant alliance" between a segment of the state and the fastest-accumulating classes in the economy. He applies his model to India during the 1956-1975 period, examining the industrialization process of the Second and Third plans, the crisis of the mid-1960s, and the Green Revolution.

India's capitalist transformation has been spatially uneven. Combining several analytical approaches, the contributors identify socio-spatial regularities some contiguous with state boundaries, some transcending states and some contained within them - while providing evidence about the spatial unevenness of India's capitalist development. The volume has 9 chapters, each with a unique focus: Introduction: Space and Capitalist Change in Contemporary India; Elisabetta Basile, Barbara Harriss-White and Christine Lutringer 1. Mapping Regions of Agrarian Capitalism in India; Deepak K Mishra and Barbara Harriss-White 2. Mapping Agro-Ecological Zones in India; Kunal Sen and Richard Palmer-Jones 3. Uneven Capitalist Development and Peasant Mobilisations: Perspectives from Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh; Christine Lutringer 4 Regions and Capitalist Transition in India: Arunachal Pradesh in a Comparative Perspective; Deepak K Mishra 5 Mapping the World of Women's Work in India; Saraswati Raju 6. A Spatial Analysis of the Incorporation of Dalits into the Indian Business Economy; Kaushal Kishore Vidyarthee 7. Constructing Spatialised Knowledge on Urban Poverty: (Multiple) Dimensions, Mapping Spaces and Claim-Making in Urban Governance; ISA Baud 8. Reciprocity as Regulation. Exploring Methodologies in Urban Design for the Informal Economy of the Historic Pete, Bengaluru, India; Champaka Rajagopal 9. Mapping the Territories of Luxury: Spatial and Symbolic Reassertions of Inequality in Indian Cities; Isabelle Milbert