Articles by Keshab Das

A close look at the data on flow of bank credit to the micro and small enterprise sector in India since the 1970s reveals that the strategic intent of reorienting the industrial policy in the mid-2000s by carving out a new category called the micro, small and medium enterprises has not served any useful purpose in terms of making institutional credit available to the mses. It is also observed that the pro-market financial inclusion rhetoric of the second half of the current decade has not helped the msmes, especially those engaged in manufacturing activities, to enhance access to bank credit. The much-publicised Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency scheme, at the same time, appears as a mere window dressing as it has not infused any new funds into the system.

Sakti Prasad Padhi was a model of an outstanding thinker. Uncompromising and conscientious, this brilliant economist was yet gentle in his articulation of his perspectives on economic theory and the problems of underdevelopment in the deprived regions. A tribute to his life and work.

Based on primary source material, this paper unravels the undermining of development of vital transport infrastructure in Orissa, namely, Paradeep port and a proposed railway line for exploiting the rich mineral resources of the stateâ??s hinterland. As the analysis suggests, quite apart from the importance of the contemporary macroeconomic strategies and the inefficiency of resource use, an explanation in a quasi-federal set-up of continuing regional deprivation must be sought in the design of the politico-bureaucratic pressure tactics and the process by which major public sector investment proposals eventually have to succumb to the compulsions of contingent politics of vested interests.