Articles by Nasir Tyabji

Although the structural reforms, initiated in 1991, did not lead to any appreciable increase in either the efficiency or the export orientation of Indian manufacturing firms, unexpectedly, there has been a visible improvement in manufacturing design capabilities in certain segments, for instance, in the motor vehicle sector. The paper suggests that the development of "frugal engineering"--an approach of "frugality" in resolving complex design problems--is a real advance. It suggests, further, that this approach developed from the experiences of the procedures laid down in the phased manufacturing programme of the 1950s, and first found expression in the successful forays into some specific export markets by Indian vehicle manufacturers in the late 1970s and 1980s. Although this design expertise cannot solve the problems of manufacturing efficiency, particularly across the wider industrial sphere, it indicates that Indian firms have the expertise to resolve problems related to the manufacturing sphere if strategic goals are appropriately set by managers.

The resignation of T T Krishnamachari from the finance ministership in early 1958 was the culmination of three developments evolving concurrently. The first was the M C Chagla Commission of Enquiry Report, which ultimately led to Jawaharlal Nehru accepting Krishnamachari's resignation. The second, the "Mundhra episode" was media managed with the encouragement of industrial interests who found that the controls established as part of the industrialisation drive accompanying the Second Five-Year Plan made serious and unacceptable inroads in private capitalist decision-making. The third development involved social engineering, a concerted effort to push the bearers of merchant and usurer capital towards industrial capitalist norms. This paper, based on contemporary records, argues that the more profound reasons for Krishnamachari's fall was the "Rama Rau affair" of late 1956. It holds that the institutional subordination of the Reserve Bank of India was intended to mould monetary policy to the requirements of industrial development. It concludes that Krishnamachari tripped in attempting to coerce street-smart businessmen in control of industry to behave like true industrialists.

Flat-footed entry into globalisation and the terrible events in Gujarat have perhaps jolted the Indian bourgeoisie into a new phase in their quest for modernity.

Technology and Dialectics Nasir Tyabji The industrial revolution was defined by the phenomenon of the application of systematically acquired knowledge (of thermodynamics) to the improvement of production methods (the steam engine). The implications of this lay, decisively, in opening the area of knowledge of production methods, in general, to human enquiry. This was given the (refurbished) name of technology, and accorded a central role in the dialectics of capitalism. Later, the 1931 International Conference on the History of Science and Technology formulated key ideas in the dialectics of technology. This groundwork laid the basis for substantial advances in the history of technology in the subsequent years.

Rediscovery of India Nasir Tyabji As it was in Europe, secularism in India is an intrinsic part of the process of the emergence of a modern identity of the people of a multi-language and multi-ethnic society, the necessity for which is being continuously generated by industrialisation and urbanisation: The emergence of this identity, however, has been hampered by the failure at the political level: the inability to evolve political units appropriate for the expression of regional aspirations, to entrench and extend the process of agrarian reforms, and to unify and modernise the systems of personal law, etc.