Kamal Nayan Kabra

The turnover of the commodity futures market has grown exponentially in a short span of time. With a skewed market participation that largely favours speculators, the futures market leaves a lot to be desired as an effective instrument of risk management and price discovery for the benefit of the growers, traders, processors, and other stakeholders in the physical trade. Policymakers have overlooked wider considerations involving the discipline of checks and balances. Owing to the massive size and non-zero-sum game character of these markets, they are likely to introduce a series of unsettling macroeconomic effects, such as a possible redistribution of incomes from the small players to the big speculative financial market entities. The article concludes with a reference to the factors that could have been behind the snags afflicting the present commodities futures policy, and suggests how the needs of the real economy can be satisfied by strengthening the forward trade that is firmly anchored in the physical trade of the farm commodities under reference.

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UNCTAD s Tight-Rope Walk

Vol. 32, Issue No. 25, 21 Jun, 1997

Kamal Nayan Kabra

UNCTAD's Tight-Rope Walk Kamal Nayan Kabra Globalisation and Liberalisation: Development in the face of two Powerful Currents by UNCTAD; New York and Geneva, United Nations, 1996.

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Indian Planning and Liberalisation

Vol. 31, Issue No. 40, 05 Oct, 1996

Kamal Nayan Kabra

Indian Planning and Liberalisation Kamal Nayan Kabra The Eighth Plan marks a change, rather a far-going transformation, of the policy regime which formalises, carries forward and openly puts the seal of approval on a number of halting, unannounced series of policy changes spread over a long period. These changes go towards a redefining of the policy outcomes and thus constitute a serious rewriting of the content of India's development strategy.

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Low-Down on East Asian Growth

Vol. 31, Issue No. 10, 09 Mar, 1996

Kamal Nayan Kabra

A LARGE number of studies* are constantly coming out which deal with question of economic growth, democracy, role of the state and the market, macro and micro economic/industrial policies, and social, cultural and administrative changes in east Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Philippines) mostly during the post-war era. Quite a few of these books are concerned mainly with the South Korean story.1 Some of these books are edited volumes, covering a wide range of scholarship from both the sides of the pacific. Except the Philippines, the saga of growth of all the other countries has come in for detailed examination from many diverse, including cross-sectional comparative perspectives.

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Indian Industrialisation Wide-Angle View

Vol. 30, Issue No. 14, 08 Apr, 1995

Kamal Nayan Kabra

Indian Industrialisation: Wide-Angle View Kamal Nayan Kabra The Political Economy of Industrialisation from Self-Reliance to Globalisation by Dalip S Swamy, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1994; pp 292, Rs 275.

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Nationalisation of Life Insurance in India

Vol. 21, Issue No. 47, 22 Nov, 1986

Kamal Nayan Kabra

Nationalisation of Life Insurance in India Kamal Nayan Kabra Life insurance is a specific illustration of the process of nationalisation where non-ideological, sector or activities- specific compulsions were decisive, It was based on an unannounced quiet inquiry spread over a number of years which showed that neither a code of conduct nor legislation could make private insurers operate to protect the interest of the policyholders. However the Life Insurance Act gave clear evidence of the absence of any doctrinaire bias against the private sector. In the context of the new industrial policy which was then on the anvil, it was essential that nationalisation of life insurance did not give contradictory signals and tilt the power and ideological balance in the Indian economy.

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The Chequered Economy in Black and White Some Questions

Vol. 21, Issue No. 5, 01 Feb, 1986

Kamal Nayan Kabra

3 For the purposes of this analysis I have clasified:
i) Paid village labour to include agricultural and non-agricultural labour for cash or kind inside the village and, therefore, traditionally female; and ii) Wage labour to include agricultural and non-agricultural labour forcash or kind outside the village but including the fields of the village, and, therefore, traditionally male. The distinction is significant in that wage labour opportunities, as so defined, were traditionally available only to men.