The Political Economy Of India S Economic Development 5000bc To 2022ad Volume I

This book, the first of two volumes, explores India’s economic development from 5000BC through to the India’s independence period from 1947AD to 2022AD. The specific characteristics of economic development in India are examined to help determine development paths India can pursue to create sustainable development in the 21st century. The transition from the primary section to the secondary sector, through the process of industrialisation and in turn the move towards the services sector, is discussed in relation to climate change and the pressure on resources posed by population growth. This book aims to contextualise India’s economic development within the political economy of trade, sustainable development and culture with a particular focus on the institutions that have emerged in the Indian sub-continent since 5000BC. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in economic history, development economics, and the political economy.

‘This book is different from most other attempts to understand the politics of Indian economic development. Breaking down the last 65+ years of Indian development into several episodes of growth, it provides a rich set of insights into the political economy of the Indian development process and is a valuable addition to the literature.’ –Pranab Bardham, University of California, Berkeley, USA ‘Sustained economic growth in the world's largest democracy is critically important to human well-being, but the ups and downs of growth in India are not well-understood. This book provides a fresh and insightful approach to understanding what drives the starts of booms and the onset of slowdowns.’ –Lant Pritchett, Harvard University, USA ‘This is a little book with big arguments. The authors' explanation of the changing character of the deals done between political and business elites makes for the most original contribution to studies of the political economy of Indian development since Pranab Bardhan's seminal work of the early 1980s’ –John Harriss, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada This book moves beyond the usual economic analysis of the Indian growth story and provides a fresh perspective on the determinants of growth episodes in post-independence India, based on its political economy. Using a robust and novel technique, the authors identify four such episodes during this period. The first, running from the 1950s to 1992, was mostly characterized by economic stagnation, with a nascent recovery in the eighties. The second, covering the period 1993 to 2001, witnessed the first growth acceleration in the economy. A second acceleration ran from 2002 to 2010. The fourth and final episode started with the slowdown in 2010 and continues to this day. The book provides a theoretical framework that focuses on rent-structures, institutions and the polity, and demonstrates how changes in these can explain the four growth episodes. Kar and Sen argue that the transitions from one growth episode to another can be explained by the bi-directional relationship between growth outcomes and institutional arrangements, and by the manner in which institutional arrangements and their transitions are determined by the political bargains struck between the elite groups in Indian society.

‘Jha is the right scholar and economist to take readers through the development of the Indian economy. Readers will be in good hands.’ —Edmund Phelps, Columbia University, USA, and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics ‘This is perhaps the best and most scholarly contribution to understanding the Indian Economy and Society. Its rich historical perspective and a profound understanding of how India has evolved into a major economic power set standards of scholarship and analytical rigour that will be hard to surpass". —Raghav Gaiha, University of Manchester, UK ‘Linking of economy and society is increasingly recognised as essential for addressing policy challenges by the current phase of globalisation. As such this study should be valuable not just for those studying India, but also for those interested in global developments.’ —Mukul Asher, National University of Singapore, Singapore ‘This book is a tour-de-force review of the fundamental topics on the Indian political economy and society that are relevant for any committed social scientist to be aware of.’ —Sumit K. Majumdar, University of Texas at Dallas, USA This two-volume work provides an account of how India has been meeting its myriad of economic, political and social challenges and how things are expected to evolve in the future. Despite enormous challenges at the time of independence, India chose to address them within a secular, liberal, democratic framework, which guaranteed several fundamental rights. Challenges included intense mass poverty and hunger, very poor literacy and educational abilities of the population, the task of uniting a country with scores of languages and ethnicities ruled by different entities for decades and persistent threats of external aggression, to name just a few. Over time, incomes and opportunities have expanded enormously and India has regained her self-confidence as a nation. In this first volume, Jha presents a long view of the performance of the Indian economy and discusses key aspects of India’s population, land and labor. In addition, the Indian Constitution and basic structure of governance are analysed within the context of major economic and political developments in independent India.

This monograph is a new and original venture to make an interpretation of the phenomenon of under-development in India. Such an endeavour had not been undertaken by social scientists in the past, and this work is a path-breaking effort by this author. The nature and causes of underdevelopment and backwardness in India, which came under British domination, in spite of the historic background of this country with ancient glory and spiritual history, had been subjected to scientific investigation in this research work. The theoretical contributions of Francois Perroux (1903-1987), the French economist of world reputation, is a special characteristic of this research work. The British domination and the establishment of the British empire had been interpreted by the utilisation of the ideas of Francois Perroux. This is a very special feature of this research work. The author had worked in close collaboration with this economist in Paris for several years. The features of Hinduism in India in relation to the precipitation of under-development is also a special feature of this research work. Political economy as a theme of research endeavour had not taken shape in India at the present epoch. Hence, this endeavour has such a major claim also for this special feature in finding out the causes of backwardness of this ancient country. The features of colonialism which was established in this land are traced in depth while the religious features are given due importance.

This book and its companion volume offer a better understanding of the lessons that Indian policymakers can learn from China’s economic experience over the last 40 years. The aim of the two books together is to evaluate China’s incremental reforms and how these reforms have impacted on the Chinese economy, based on a classical rather than from a neoclassical perspective using a case study method. In this second volume, the author examines knowledge creation, knowledge spillovers and entrepreneurship across both China and India. The comparative study places the theoretical analysis of the previous volume in a real-world context of how China’s economic reforms since 1978 have actually impacted on the country. Its real-world findings of the Chinese economy present a complete perspective on China’s lessons for India as well as at a global context.