Rethinking Development Vibhooti Shukla The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment edited by Charles K Wilber and Kenneth P Jameson, fifth edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1992; pp xvi + 656.
Rural Non-Farm Employment in India Issues and Policy Vibhooti Shukla This paper is a sequel to an earlier article, which introduced and implemented a regional model of rural non- agricultural activity for the districts of Maharashtra in a manner sensitive to the sector's spatial and functional linkages with agriculture and urban activities. Regression analysis with versions of that model is performed to further examine specific issues and evaluate hypotheses in a policy-relevant framework. Four broad sets of questions are selected for discussion here: (1) How strong are the linkages of the rural non-farm sector with agriculture and what is their predominant nature? (2) What is the character of the rural labour supply insofar as it relates to employment in this sector? (3) What are the salient demand-side features of the structure of rural non-farm industry? and (4) What forms of governmental interventions, if any, have had an impact on the size and share of this sector in the rural economy?
A Regional Model and Its Empirical Application to Maharashtra Vibhooti Shukla The performance and potential of rural non-agricultural activity in India have been the subject of much recent discussion. This paper attempts to formulate a model of this Sector that takes into account its functional linkages with agriculture and urban activity through an explicit recognition of their spatial dimension in a more comprehensive way than permitted by purely sectoral or micro approaches to the problem. The outlines of a unifying regional labour demand-and-supply framework capable of exploring alternative hypotheses and of addressing relevant policy issues in an empirically organised fashion is delineated. The model is implemented through multiple regression analysis of the determinants of levels of and changes in overall rural non-farm activity and its industrially disaggregated components across the districts of Maharashtra. Apart from a general validation of the explanatory power of the model and a quantitative documentation of the role of hypothesised influences in a manner usually consistent with theoretical expectations, these exercises reveal an interesting structural heterogeneity between various non-farm subsectors in their labour force composition and regional correlates.
