Articles by Shreekant Sambrani

The Central Statistical Organisation's advance estimate of a decline in the agricultural sector's output in 2009-10 by a mere 0.2% is a highly optimistic forecast. An analysis of the numbers in the latest estimates of foodgrain output and a comparison of output/GDP changes in the drought years of 2002-03 and 2009-10 tells us why.

Economics of Bride-Price and Dowry Rita Bhandari Sambrani Shreekant Sambrani AN immediate reaction to Indira Rajaraman's (1983) analysis of the transition from bride-price to dowry is that this is a subject worthy of urgent and extensive field investigation, as she rightly stresses. Even in the absence of such studies, the analysis under reference raises several questions, which could be discussed in view of admittedly casual, impressionistic, evidence. Two sets of the more important concerns are : (1) How extensive is the phenomenon of transition from bride-price to dowry? Is it possible to deal with it at such broad levels of disaggregation as organised and unorganised sectors, as attempted by Indira Rajaraman? (2) Is her framework of analysis adequate? Can this transition be sufficiently explained on the basis of economics alone?

the training of the two groups over the better part of the last decade. It is our impression, although direct statistical evidence has not been collected, that within the first five years on the job, the two groups display markedly different attitudes towards work and towards wider social concerns. This, on the face of it, appears to be a somewhat puzzling situation, given similarity prior to their entry into the respective occupations, In this paper, we make an attempt to posit an exploratory hypothesis to account for this difference. The hypothesis is advanced on the basis of our impressions regarding the career objectives and demands the respective organisations make on the subjects of this paper. We hope that we will be able to collect sufficient empirical evidence in the future to verify this hypothesis.