ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Deena KhatkhateSubscribe to Deena Khatkhate

Anand Chandavarkar (1924-2011): An Economist at Large

A tribute to Anand Chandavarkar, the economist with wide-ranging interests who was also a contributor and friend of the Economic Weekly/EPW over six decades.

Joan Robinson

I received several emails and calls remonstrating that I exaggerated somewhat in my review article on the biographies of “Joan Robinson: The Grand Dame of Economics” (EPW, 8 January) when I used the expression “loathed” for the feelings of economists, engaged in economic discourses with Joan Robi

Joan Robinson: The Grand Dame of Economics

Joan Robinson by G C Harcourt and Prue Kerr (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2009; pp x+270, price not mentioned.

The Provocative Joan Robinson: The Making of a Cambridge Economist by Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes (Durham and London: Duke University Press), 2009; pp xi+302, price not mentioned.

Error in Fact and Naiveté

Chandrashekhar G Ranade in his letter of 14 August (“Second Plan Insights”) says that I did not refer to D R Gadgil as the vice-chairman of the Planning Commission in my review (“Trajectory of a Life in Political Eco nomy”, 24 July).

Trajectory of a Life in Political Economy

Windows of Opportunity: Memoirs of an Economic Adviser by K S Krishnaswamy; Orient BlackSwan in Association with Sameeksha Trust, Hyderabad, 2010; pp 190, Rs 440.

Reprise of the Canons of Development Economics


Reprise of the Canons of Development Economics Deena Khatkhate A fter the end of the second world war, two platforms for the eco- nomic debate, both among academics and policymakers occupied the centre stage. First was the reconstruction of the war-devastated economies of western Europe and, second, development of the former colonies. The first was a relatively simple affair without any need to conceptualise an analytic framework. All that was necessary was a mobilisation of resources, though of massive proportion, to uplift the war-ravaged industrialised economies on a growth trajectory. This was accomplished by a huge resource transfer from the richest country in the world, i e, the US. Since the basic foundation of capitalist enterprise was undamaged and skills of the surviving population to restore it remained intact, those economies revived with great speed and vibrancy and though the World Bank was set up with one of the objectives of helping that process, it played only a peripheral role. Instead the World Bank

A Republic of Letters

With India's independence, new forces were unleashed; the period of negativism and imitativeness had come to an end. However, creativity in thinking was sadly missing. Sachin Chaudhuri's Economic Weekly was in a way therefore a historical necessity. Sachin questioned every premise, made others around him to do likewise, and provoked and prodded the younger ones to be restless, aspiring and to seek answers scientifically to the questions of the times. On the 60th anniversary of its launch, a handful of the many who were associated with EW and Sachin Chaudhuri during the 1950s and thereafter reminisce about the excitement surrounding the journal. These reminiscences will be published in EPW during the course of January. Here the first two essays.

Risk in Attributing Authorship to Quotes

Some time back, in a letter to the editor, I attributed authorship of the famous quote “It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong” to J M Keynes. I did it on the basis of what I read somewhere in the 30 volumes of Keynes’ writings and also in other articles by noted economists.

Reforming the IMF in a New Global Order

This article focuses on the main issues vital for the survival of the International Monetary Fund in the context of rapid and almost revolutionary changes in the world's money and capital markets, the rise of fast growing, emerging economies, and the decline in the use of the institution's resources and consequently in its income. It also discusses the structure of the IMF, the inadequacy of the instruments it currently employs and the new ones being contemplated as part of the Medium-Term Strategy it designed recently.

Utopia of Economic Planning

Whatever be the ideological biases, one must applaud heartily what Sumanta Banerjee wrote in his commentary ‘Thirty Years after the Emergency’ (August 4). He has been forthright in pointing out the dismal record in recent years of the Marxist regimes in West Bengal and Kerala.

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