Articles by Errol D Souza

In an attempt to carry along all sections of society the budget has measures to improve the farmers' lot, has not changed the direct tax structure so as not to hurt the middle class, and has given protection to industry whilst increasing expenditure on infrastructure. This accommodative stance has not allowed the government to rein in the fiscal deficit and the budgetary targets may not be met. New measures are needed to strengthen the institutional weaknesses of the financial system such as raising liability limits on shareholders, giving tax sops for NPAs taken off the books of banks, and limiting entry into banking. With indirect taxes still a dominant source of revenue, the exemption limit for personal taxes needs to be reduced and all savings exempted from such taxation so that the introduction of a full-fledged VAT is not regressive. With the emphasis of the agricultural reforms on the terms of trade being misplaced, total factor productivity improvements via research and investments in agricultural infrastructure are called for.

The process by which the new economic policy regime was introduced and the conditions under which support for its acceptance was garnered have not received adequate attention and is the subject of this essay. It is argued that the distributional struggle whereby attempts are made to pass the burden of stabilisation on to other sections of society is at the heart of a reform programme, including India's.

Economic Reforms: Ringside View Errol D'Souza Towards Sustainable Growth: Essays in Fiscal and Financial Sector Reforms in India by Raja J Chelliah; Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1996; pp 220, Rs 375.

Poverty and Power: The Role of Institutions and the Market in Development edited by John Cameron with Hans Ramharak and Ken Cole; Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1995; Rs 395, THE 1980s witnessed the demise of the Structuralist position in development studies and the ascent of the neo-liberal position which relentlessly criticised two characteristics of the Structuralist tradition. Firstly, they charged the Structuralists for de-emphasising the importance of relative prices as a means of affecting distributive and productive outcomes. The Structuralists emphasised non-price variables such as big investment pushes (Rosenstein-Rodan) and the cumulative causation of inequality (Myrdal) as important in affecting economic responses. Secondly, the style and extent of state intervention favoured by Structuralists was also criticised by the neo-liberals. The Structuralists assumed that reformist states exist. This assumption was also criticised by the Marxists who pointed out that redistribution of incomes would be against the interests of the owners of capital as well as by the non-Marxists who argued that governments have to reward interest groups that keep them in power and so would not jeopardise the status quo.

Property Rights Errol D'Souza Peter de Souza There are various levels and arguments involved in the debate on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Four aspects have merited attention, the consequentialist, where the dispute is shown to be primarily empirical the intrinsic, where the disagreement concerns the norms of a free society, the incentive, where IPRs are seen as incentives that are socially beneficial, and the desert, where the inventor's desert is the basis of dispute. The authors make a case for an alternative patent regime.