Articles by Dev Nathan

The question of establishing a value chain in mobile phones that is free of coltan (a mineral used in capacitors, essential for these phones) is not only one of tracing the path of supply of this mineral. Traceability needs to be backed by measures to support artisanal miners through local facilitation centres and finance, and with steps to establish a credible state, one responsible to its citizens, including the miners.

Why are politicians and bureaucrats in Jharkhand uninterested in spending central development funds even when the state is so backward? And why are they not apprehensive about what this would do to their electoral fortunes? The Madhu Koda case supplies the answers. The ruling elite relies on a share of the rents or super profits from issuing licences for the state's massive mineral resources. And the vote-gathering system is largely based on kinship and community ties, rather than on interest groups demanding various benefits.

Genocide in Darfur is the reason that has been invoked by the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant against the president of Sudan. The conflict situation in Darfur, which had deteriorated into ethnic cleansing and numerous other crimes, owes itself to the nature of the primary accumulation process that disrupted the earlier forms of reconciliation and redistribution between the ethnic communities in the region.

The article discusses the implications of the entry of labour from China, India and Russia into the global labour force. It looks at global demand requirements for the absorption of this labour force and the possibility of bargaining for improved working conditions within globalised production networks. The article concludes with the global conditions of action to build an international countervailing power.

Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development by Joseph E Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005; DEV NATHAN In the market system there is a manner of equality that has both positive and negative effects. As compared to feudal or casteist systems that prescribe who can consume what, the market does not recognise the individual behind the buyer. This is a positive advance due to the market system. At the same time, the market is blind to the strengths and weaknesses and the capabilities that the buyer and seller bring to the market. Equality of access is taken to be equality of opportunity. The perniciousness of this doctrine of equality of access is seen vividly in the case of international trade. Does equal access mean equal opportunity? In the current version of the three worlds (developed, developing and least developed countries (LDCs)) equal access to each other