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Volume 1, 1949-1965
Volume 1, 1949-1965
Edited By Pranab Bardhan, Sudipto Mundle, Rohini Somanathan
Reading India: Selections from The Economic Weekly (Volume 1: 1949– 1965) brings together landmark studies in sociology, politics and economics that capture the major analytical and policy debates published in the journal from 1949–65. The articles span a wide range of studies, exploring diverse topics, from the classic anthropological village studies, the politics of caste and religious identity, to economic policy debates on growth and investment, and agricultural and industrial policies.
The volume presents a sample of the many excellent Indian and foreign scholars with a deep knowledge of local and historical contexts and commitment to a new India and will be valuable to scholars of history, sociology, political science, economics and anthropology. Government bodies and policy think-tanks will also find it an important resource.
Authors
Pranab Bardhan, Sudipto Mundle, Rohini Somanathan
Pranab Bardhan, Sudipto Mundle, Rohini Somanathan

Volume 2, 1966–1991
Volume 2, 1966–1991
Edited By Gurpreet Mahajan, Surinder S. Jodhka, Ila Patnaik
Reading India, Vol. II, the second of the three volumes commemorating 50 years of the EPW, brings together a selection of articles from 1966-1991. The essays examine issues related to political representation, electoral processes, policies of reservation, inter-caste and inter-religious conflict, status of women, measurement of poverty, the changing Indian family, rural leadership patterns, economic and social changes taking place in India’s rural economy, affirmative action, the marginalisation of religious minorities, and the trends in economic thinking during this period, which questioned the economic policies of the era and shaped the direction and nature of the post-1991 reforms.
Together, this collections presents analysis, research and debates that are relevant even today for understanding India, reminding us of the value of EPW, the range and depth of the scholarship that it provides.
Authors
Gurpreet Mahajan, Surinder S. Jodhka, Ila Patnaik
Gurpreet Mahajan, Surinder S. Jodhka, Ila Patnaik

Volume 3, 1991–2017
Volume 3, 1991–2017
Edited By Pulapre Balakrishnan, Suhas Palshikar, Nandini Sundar
Reading India, Vol. III (1991–2017), the final commemorative volume celebrating 50 years of the EPW, provides a selection of papers published during this 1991–2017, reflecting on the social, political, and economic changes of the time. The chapters focus on five themes that dominated India’s public sphere: the question of secularism versus communalism; social justice and power-sharing by the backward castes; political configurations in a post-Congress polity; the entrenchment of impunity instead of the rule of law; and the political economy of economic policy.
Focusing on India’s society, economy, and polity, the volume includes research on the environment, health, education, censorship, and free speech, among other themes which have formed subjects of prescient debates that will help us to make sense of the present times as well.
Authors
Pulapre Balakrishnan, Suhas Palshikar, Nandini Sundar
Pulapre Balakrishnan, Suhas Palshikar, Nandini Sundar

Sectarian Violence in India: Hindu–Muslim Conflict, 1966–2015
Sectarian Violence in India: Hindu–Muslim Conflict, 1966–2015
Edited By Sanjay Palshikar and Satish Deshpande
Since Independence, India has witnessed communal clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups. Commentators and social scientists in India have been understandably concerned with these clashes, as well as the peculiar nature of such communal violence in the country. Violent incidents continue to rock the nation, making this field a particularly important area of study.
Sectarian Violence in India offers a cumulative account of social science research on the crucially important subject of communal violence from the late 1960s until about 2015. It brings together a critical selection of articles on sectarian violence in the post-Independence era from the Economic and Political Weekly, a journal that has best represented social scientists over the years and is the single largest source of studies on this subject.
The four sections of this volume study the nature of communal violence in India; offer observations on the theoretical and conceptual issues relating to such violence; probe the complicated and causal role of politics in communal violence; and provide accounts of some of the riots that have occurred in independent India. The chapters cover a wide variety of factors, including—but not limited to—religion, vote bank politics and the trail of money in such seemingly ‘social’ issues. They also explore how such violence affects other social institutions, such as caste and gender.
The volume, which contains the work of some of India’s best-known scholars, will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology and political science.
Authors
Sanjay Palshikar and Satish Deshpande
Sanjay Palshikar and Satish Deshpande

भारतीय नीतियों का सामाजिक पक्ष
भारतीय नीतियों का सामाजिक पक्ष
Edited By Editor Jean Dreze, Co-Editor Kamal Nayan Chaubey
भारतीय नीतियों का सामाजिक पक्ष’ उक्त विषय और उससे जुड़े मुद्दों पर लिखे गये उन आलेखों का संग्रह है, जो पहले इकोनॉमिक ऐंड पॉलिटिकल वीकली में प्रकाशित हो चुके हैं। पुस्तक के 18 अध्याय मुख्यतः इन बिन्दुओं के आसपास केन्द्रित हैं: प्रतिष्ठित विद्वानों द्वारा किये गये इन आलोचनात्मक मुद्दों के व्यापक विश्लेषण को पहली बार किसी एक पुस्तक में समाहित किया गया है। इन अध्ययनों में आँकड़ों की बहुलता है जो इस क्षेत्र मंव शोध करने वालों के लिए काफी उपयोगी साबित होगी।
Authors
Jean Dreze
Jean Dreze

Quarter Century of Liberalisation in India
Quarter Century of Liberalisation in India
Liberalisation officially began in 1991, but the seed for it was sown in the late 1950s by proponents of free markets. The debates over the opening up of the domestic market continued through the 1960s in India, resulting in fitful bursts of reforms. It was only from the mid-1980s that talk of liberalisation gathered steam, culminating in the decision to relax economic norms in 1991. These last twenty-five years since liberalisation have seen animated arguments being exchanged. The collection of essays in this volume captures different ideological positions on the subject and offers an informed, 360-degree analysis on economic liberalisation.
Authors
Montek S Ahluwalia | Deepak Nayyar | Prabhat Patnaik Anjan Chakrabarti T Sabri Öncü | Atul Sood Rajiv Kumar | Pulapre Balakrishnan | Chirashree Das Gupta | Surajit Mazumdar | R Nagaraj | Shantanu De Roy | A V Rajwade | Aseem Shrivastava
Montek S Ahluwalia | Deepak Nayyar | Prabhat Patnaik Anjan Chakrabarti T Sabri Öncü | Atul Sood Rajiv Kumar | Pulapre Balakrishnan | Chirashree Das Gupta | Surajit Mazumdar | R Nagaraj | Shantanu De Roy | A V Rajwade | Aseem Shrivastava

A Handbook of Rural India
A Handbook of Rural India
Edited By Surinder S Jodhka
‘Rural’ and ‘urban’ are the foremost categories through which social life has been visualised and engaged with in modern and contemporary times. The idea of the ‘rural’ or the ‘village’ has been of particular significance in India. British colonisers represented India to the world as a land of ‘village republics’. This representation was so influential that even the nationalist leaders accepted it uncritically.
Gandhi advocated ‘a return to the village’ as the only genuine way to gaining swaraj, or self-rule. Nehru and Ambedkar too saw the village as the site of India’s traditional life; however, to them it was also a signifier of India’s economic backwardness and social ills. These notions have shaped social science scholarship, popular politics and public policy. The idea of such a demographic transition continues to be a core element of state policy and an important indicator of positive social change and economic growth/ modernisation. However, the ‘rural’ in India persists; nearly two-thirds of India’s population still lives in rural settlements.
A Handbook of Rural India, brings together 36 research papers written by some of the leading social scientists, from the early 1950s to the present. It provides a historical perspective on the subject of the ‘rural’ and covers a wide range of topics that have been critical to the imaginings and empirics of village life in contemporary India.
Authors
M N Srinivas | E J Miller | W H Newell | Shrimati Jyotirmoyee Sarma | M W Smith | S C Dube | Adrian C Mayer | André Béteille | V Nath |Ralph H Retzlaff | Baldev Raj Nayar |T N Valunjkar | D N Dhanagare | Nilakantha Rath | Kuldeep Mathur | Shanti George | Sankar Datta | Siwan Anderson | Patrick Francois | Ashok Kotwal | Ashwini Kulkarni | Anirudh Krishna | Mahesh Kapila | Sharad Pathak | Mahendra Porwal | Kiranpal Singh | Virpal Singh | Peter Lanjouw | Abusaleh Shariff | A M Shah | Bernard S Cohn | M S A Rao | Krishna Kumar | John MacDougall | Satish K Arora | Rajni Palriwala | Surinder S Jodhka | Radhika Chopra | U Kalpagam | Prem Chowdhry | Shireen J Jejeebhoy | Dayabati Roy | Pradeep Kumar Panda
M N Srinivas | E J Miller | W H Newell | Shrimati Jyotirmoyee Sarma | M W Smith | S C Dube | Adrian C Mayer | André Béteille | V Nath |Ralph H Retzlaff | Baldev Raj Nayar |T N Valunjkar | D N Dhanagare | Nilakantha Rath | Kuldeep Mathur | Shanti George | Sankar Datta | Siwan Anderson | Patrick Francois | Ashok Kotwal | Ashwini Kulkarni | Anirudh Krishna | Mahesh Kapila | Sharad Pathak | Mahendra Porwal | Kiranpal Singh | Virpal Singh | Peter Lanjouw | Abusaleh Shariff | A M Shah | Bernard S Cohn | M S A Rao | Krishna Kumar | John MacDougall | Satish K Arora | Rajni Palriwala | Surinder S Jodhka | Radhika Chopra | U Kalpagam | Prem Chowdhry | Shireen J Jejeebhoy | Dayabati Roy | Pradeep Kumar Panda

Water: Growing Understanding, Emerging Perspectives
Water: Growing Understanding, Emerging Perspectives
Edited By Mhir Shah and PS Vijayshankar
For decades after independence, Indian planning ignored the need for sustainability and equity in water resource development and management. There was just one way forward, that of harnessing the bounty in our rivers and below the ground. It was only in the 1990s that serious questions began to be raised on our understanding and approach to rivers. This collection of essays, all previously published in the Economic and Political Weekly between 1990 and 2014, reflects the multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary character of water and spans hydrogeology, sociology, economics, political science, geography, history, meteorology, statistics, public policy, energy and ecology. The essays are arranged thematically and chronologically: Water Resource Development and Management, Historical Perspectives, Social and Political Dimensions, Economic Concerns, and Water Policy. With detailing of the huge diversity of concerns and points of departure, Water: Growing Understanding, Emerging Perspectives will be invaluable to students and scholars of sociology, economics, political science, geography, ecology and public policy.
Authors
Baba Amte | Suhas Paranjape | K J Joy | Jayesh Talati | Tushaar Shah | R Maria Saleth | Dinesh K Marothia | Marcus Moench | Navroz K Dubash | Rahul Ranade | P S Vijayshankar | Himanshu Kulkarni | Sunderrajan Krishnan | David Gilmartin | Margreet Zwarteveen | Rohan D’Souza | David Hardiman | Niranjan Pant | Lyla Mehta | Anindita Sarkar | Deepa Joshi | Biksham Gujja | Vinod Goud | Shruti Vispute | Ramaswamy R Iyer | A Vaisyanathan | K Sivasubramaniyan | E Somanathan | R Ravindranath | Isha Ray | Sulochana Gadgil | Siddhartha Gadgil | Avinash Kishore | Shilp Verma | Aditi Mukherji | Partha Sarathi Banerjee | Mihir Shah
Baba Amte | Suhas Paranjape | K J Joy | Jayesh Talati | Tushaar Shah | R Maria Saleth | Dinesh K Marothia | Marcus Moench | Navroz K Dubash | Rahul Ranade | P S Vijayshankar | Himanshu Kulkarni | Sunderrajan Krishnan | David Gilmartin | Margreet Zwarteveen | Rohan D’Souza | David Hardiman | Niranjan Pant | Lyla Mehta | Anindita Sarkar | Deepa Joshi | Biksham Gujja | Vinod Goud | Shruti Vispute | Ramaswamy R Iyer | A Vaisyanathan | K Sivasubramaniyan | E Somanathan | R Ravindranath | Isha Ray | Sulochana Gadgil | Siddhartha Gadgil | Avinash Kishore | Shilp Verma | Aditi Mukherji | Partha Sarathi Banerjee | Mihir Shah

Social Policy
Social Policy
Edited By Jean Dreze
The reach of social policy in India has expanded significantly in recent years. Facilities such as schools and anganwadis (child care centres) have become an accepted norm for every village; health centres are more accessible and better equipped; nutrition programmes, public works and social security pensions are reaching larger numbers of people than before. Some of these benefits now take the form of enforceable legal entitlements.
Yet the performance of these social programmes is far from ideal. Most Indian states still have a long way to go in putting in place effective social policies that directly address the interests, demands and rights of the unprivileged.
Social Policy is a collection of essays, previously published in the Economic & Political Weekly, on these and related issues. The 24 chapters have been clustered around six major themes: ‘health’, ‘education’, ‘food security’, ‘employment guarantee’, ‘pensions and cash transfers’ and ‘inequality and social exclusion’. For the first time, wide-ranging analyses of these critical issues by distinguished scholars are brought together in a single volume. The wealth of data presented in these studies will be invaluable to researchers in this field.
With an introduction by Jean Drèze, Social Policy will be an indispensible read for students and scholars of sociology, economics, political science and development studies.
Authors
Monica Das Gupta | Abhijit Banerjee | Angus Deaton | Esther Duflo | Jishnu Das | Jeffrey Hammer | Diane Coffey | Aashish Gupta | Payal Hathi | Nidhi Khurana | Dean Spears | Nikhil Srivastav | Sangita Vyas | Rukmini Banerji | Rachel Glennerster | Daniel Keniston | Stuti Khemani | Marc Shotland | D D Karopady | Geeta Gandhi Kingdon | Vandana Sipahimalani-Rao | Vimala Ramachandran | Taramani Naorem | Jean Drèze | Dipa Sinha | Reetika Khera | Puja Dutta | Rinku Murgai | Martin Ravallion | Dominique van de Walle | Yanyan Liu | Christopher B Barrett | Nandini Nayak | Krushna Ranaware | Upasak Das | Ashwini Kulkarni | Sudha Narayanan | Saloni Chopra | Jessica Pudussery | Shrayana Bhattacharya | Maria Mini Jos | Soumya Kapoor Mehta | P Balasubramanian | T K Sundari Ravindran | Thomas E Weisskopf | Sukhadeo Thorat | Joel Lee | Ravinder Kaur | Ramachandra Guha
Monica Das Gupta | Abhijit Banerjee | Angus Deaton | Esther Duflo | Jishnu Das | Jeffrey Hammer | Diane Coffey | Aashish Gupta | Payal Hathi | Nidhi Khurana | Dean Spears | Nikhil Srivastav | Sangita Vyas | Rukmini Banerji | Rachel Glennerster | Daniel Keniston | Stuti Khemani | Marc Shotland | D D Karopady | Geeta Gandhi Kingdon | Vandana Sipahimalani-Rao | Vimala Ramachandran | Taramani Naorem | Jean Drèze | Dipa Sinha | Reetika Khera | Puja Dutta | Rinku Murgai | Martin Ravallion | Dominique van de Walle | Yanyan Liu | Christopher B Barrett | Nandini Nayak | Krushna Ranaware | Upasak Das | Ashwini Kulkarni | Sudha Narayanan | Saloni Chopra | Jessica Pudussery | Shrayana Bhattacharya | Maria Mini Jos | Soumya Kapoor Mehta | P Balasubramanian | T K Sundari Ravindran | Thomas E Weisskopf | Sukhadeo Thorat | Joel Lee | Ravinder Kaur | Ramachandra Guha

Economic Growth and its Distribution in India
Economic Growth and its Distribution in India
Edited By Pulapre Balakrishnan
After a boom in the early twenty-first century, India witnessed a macroeconomic reversal marked by a slowdown in growth that has lasted a little longer than the boom. At the same time, a fresh criterion of governance, namely inclusion, has emerged and become a priority for the state. Written against the backdrop of these developments, the essays in this volume represent a range of perspectives and methods pertaining to the study of growth and its distribution in India.
The essays in Section I take the long view of growth in the country. They represent issues of abiding interest and provide the canvas upon which the rest of the articles may be seen as placed. Section II takes a macro view of the recent history of the economy. The essays explore the reasons for the shift from a regime of high growth and low inflation to one of low growth and high inflation, deconstruct the ‘dream run’ of the economy over 2003–08, and evaluate the United Progressive Alliance government’s performance.
Section III comprises essays that study the economy at the next level down, covering its agriculture, industry and services. Another essay reflects upon the desirable space for finance in India, a topic that has assumed some relevance after the global recession. Finally, the essays in Section IV address the emergence into the public sphere of the idea that growth must be inclusive. Accordingly, the essays here assess the extent to which recent growth has been inclusive, approaching the issue from various angles.
Assembling authoritative voices on the economy of contemporary India, this volume will be indispensable for students of economics, management, development studies and public policy. It will also prove useful to policymakers and journalists.
Authors
Deepak Nayyar | Atul Kohli| Neeraj Hatekar | Ambrish Dongre| Maitreesh Ghatak| Parikshit Ghosh | Ashok Kotwal | R Nagaraj | Pulapre Balakrishnan | Hans P Binswanger-Mkhize | Bhupat M Desai | Errol D’Souza | John W Mellor | Vijay Paul Sharma | Prabhakar Tamboli | Ramesh Chand | Shinoj Parappurathu | Sudip Chaudhuri | Archana Aggarwal | Aditya Mohan Jadhav | V Nagi Reddy | C Veeramani | R H Patil | Indira Hirway | Kirit S Parikh | Probal P Ghosh | M Eswaran | A Kotwal | B Ramaswami | W Wadhwa | Sandip Sarkar | Balwant Singh Mehta | Santosh Mehrotra | Jajati Parida | Sharmistha Sinha | Ankita Gandhi Motiram | Ashish Singh
Deepak Nayyar | Atul Kohli| Neeraj Hatekar | Ambrish Dongre| Maitreesh Ghatak| Parikshit Ghosh | Ashok Kotwal | R Nagaraj | Pulapre Balakrishnan | Hans P Binswanger-Mkhize | Bhupat M Desai | Errol D’Souza | John W Mellor | Vijay Paul Sharma | Prabhakar Tamboli | Ramesh Chand | Shinoj Parappurathu | Sudip Chaudhuri | Archana Aggarwal | Aditya Mohan Jadhav | V Nagi Reddy | C Veeramani | R H Patil | Indira Hirway | Kirit S Parikh | Probal P Ghosh | M Eswaran | A Kotwal | B Ramaswami | W Wadhwa | Sandip Sarkar | Balwant Singh Mehta | Santosh Mehrotra | Jajati Parida | Sharmistha Sinha | Ankita Gandhi Motiram | Ashish Singh

The Problem of Caste
The Problem of Caste
Edited By Satish Deshpande
Caste is one of the oldest concerns of the social sciences in India that continues to be relevant even today. This book tracks how scholars from different disciplines have responded to the caste question in independent India and highlights recent shifts in perspective.
The general perception about caste is that it is an outdated concept that was slowly but inevitably dying out until it was revived by colonial policies and promoted by vested interests and electoral politics after independence. However, this hegemonic perception changed irrevocably in the 1990s after the controversial reservations for the Other Backward Classes recommended by the Mandal Commission. Mandal triggered a new awakening by revealing that only a privileged upper caste minority believed in the declining significance of caste—for the vast majority of Indians caste continued to be a crucial determinant of life opportunities.
This volume collects significant writings spanning seven decades, three generations and several disciplines. The introduction contextualises established perspectives in relation to emergent concerns, and is followed by forty essays organised into six sections.
The first section offers a sample of disciplinary responses ranging from sociology to law. The second explores the relationship between caste and class, while the third highlights the interplay between caste and politics.
The fourth section covers old and new challenges in law and policy. Emergent research areas are represented in section five and section six showcases post-Mandal innovations in caste studies.
This transdisciplinary volume brings together sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, economists and others. It will be essential reading for students and scholars across these disciplines.
Authors
Satish Deshpande | Irawati Karve | M N Srinivas | Dipankar Gupta | André Béteille | Rajni Kothari | Kumkum Roy | Sukhadeo Thorat | Katherine S Newman | Marc Galanter | Sundar Sarukkai | Gopal Guru | D L Sheth | Anand Chakravarti | Carol Upadhya | Ashwini Deshpande | Katherine S Newman | Meena Gopal | Baldev Raj Nayar | Gail Omvedt | Mohan Ram | I P Desai | K Balagopal | Sudha Pai | Anand Teltumbde | Surinder S Jodhka | Ghanshyam Shah | Marc Galanter | K Bealagopal | Susie Tharu | M Madhava Prasad | Rekha Pappu| K Satyanarayana | Padmanabh Samarendra | Satish Deshpande | Mary E John | Uma Chakravarti | Prem Chowdhry | V Geetha | Sharmila Rege | S Anandhi | J Jeyaranjan | Rajan Krishnan | Rekha Raj |Kancha Ilaiah | Aditya Nigam |M S S Pandian
Satish Deshpande | Irawati Karve | M N Srinivas | Dipankar Gupta | André Béteille | Rajni Kothari | Kumkum Roy | Sukhadeo Thorat | Katherine S Newman | Marc Galanter | Sundar Sarukkai | Gopal Guru | D L Sheth | Anand Chakravarti | Carol Upadhya | Ashwini Deshpande | Katherine S Newman | Meena Gopal | Baldev Raj Nayar | Gail Omvedt | Mohan Ram | I P Desai | K Balagopal | Sudha Pai | Anand Teltumbde | Surinder S Jodhka | Ghanshyam Shah | Marc Galanter | K Bealagopal | Susie Tharu | M Madhava Prasad | Rekha Pappu| K Satyanarayana | Padmanabh Samarendra | Satish Deshpande | Mary E John | Uma Chakravarti | Prem Chowdhry | V Geetha | Sharmila Rege | S Anandhi | J Jeyaranjan | Rajan Krishnan | Rekha Raj |Kancha Ilaiah | Aditya Nigam |M S S Pandian

Higher Education in India: In Search of Equality, Quality and Quantity
Higher Education in India: In Search of Equality, Quality and Quantity
Edited By Jandhyala B G Tilak
India has a large network of around 634 universities and 33,000 colleges with 817,000 teachers spread across the length and breadth of the country.
Despite its massive geographical reach, higher education in India has had its share of problems.
This volume is a collection of essays which discusses these problems like inclusiveness and the impact of reservation on education, the problems of mediocrity, shortage of funds, dwindling numbers of faculty and the unemployment of the educated youth, to name a few.
Tracing the history of higher education in India from the days of Nalanda and Takshashila, Jandhyala B. G. Tilak in his introduction explains why it is necessary to have a vision and a roadmap for this.
It includes diverse perspectives and case studies on a few educational institutes like the University of Mysore (pp. 239-251), IITs (pp. 309-25) to explain these issues.
Authors
André Béteille | Shiv Visvanathan | Suma Chitnis | Satish Deshpande | K Sundaram | Rakesh Basant | Gitanjali Sen | Jayati Ghosh | Thomas E Weisskopf | Lloyd I Rudolph | Susanne Hoeber Rudolph | A M Shah | Errol D’Souza | G D Sharma | M D Apte | Glynn L Wood | D P Chaudhri | Potluri Rao | R Gopinathan Nair and D Ajit | D T Lakdawala | K R Shah | Chitra Sivakumar | Amrik Singh | Jandhyala B G Tilak | Anindita Chakrabarti | Rama Joglekar | Karuna Chanana | Saumen Chattopadhyay | Samuel Paul | Deepak Nayyar | Amrik Singh | V M Dandekar | M Anandakrishnan | Thomas Joseph
André Béteille | Shiv Visvanathan | Suma Chitnis | Satish Deshpande | K Sundaram | Rakesh Basant | Gitanjali Sen | Jayati Ghosh | Thomas E Weisskopf | Lloyd I Rudolph | Susanne Hoeber Rudolph | A M Shah | Errol D’Souza | G D Sharma | M D Apte | Glynn L Wood | D P Chaudhri | Potluri Rao | R Gopinathan Nair and D Ajit | D T Lakdawala | K R Shah | Chitra Sivakumar | Amrik Singh | Jandhyala B G Tilak | Anindita Chakrabarti | Rama Joglekar | Karuna Chanana | Saumen Chattopadhyay | Samuel Paul | Deepak Nayyar | Amrik Singh | V M Dandekar | M Anandakrishnan | Thomas Joseph

Environment, Technology and Development
Environment, Technology and Development
Edited By Rohan D'souza
Drawn from the rich archival holdings of the Economic & Political Weekly, theessays in this volume capture the intense discussions in India that were debated as problems and questions over the environment, technology and development. As a collection, this volume proposes a fresh and new analytical coherence for these essays by resituating them with an engaging introduction under the broader themes of criticality and subversion. Consequently, these writings will speak not only to several contemporary academic and policy concerns but are also meant to provide a meaningful sense of how ideas on the environment, technology and development were interrelated and shaped in various types of political discourses in India, most notably from the 1970s onwards.
This volume is intended to address the needs of a rapidly growing interest in interdisciplinary programmes and will also carry appeal amongst development and policy practitioners and those who wish to pursue interdisciplinary research questions.
Authors
M V Ramana | Ashwin Kumar | Shiv Visvanathan | Chandrika Parmar | John Kurien | T R Thankappan Achari | Gregor Meerganz von Medeazza | Mahasveta Devi | Rohan D’Souza | G Vijay | Dinesh Mohan | Geetam Tiwari | Philippe Cullet | Barbara Harriss-White | Sunali Rohra | Nigel Singh | C H Hanumantha Rao | P P Nikhil Raj | P A Azeez | Rahul Gupta | Sumita Gupta Gangopadhyay | Hiren Gohain | Arundhuti Roy Choudhury | Amulya Kumar | N Reddy | K Krishna Prasad | Annu Jalais | Charul Bharwada | Vinay Mahajan | Sudha Srivastava | Dipti Mukherji | Manshi Asher | Jayanta Bandyopadhyay | Vandana Shiva | Arjun Makhijani | L C Jain
M V Ramana | Ashwin Kumar | Shiv Visvanathan | Chandrika Parmar | John Kurien | T R Thankappan Achari | Gregor Meerganz von Medeazza | Mahasveta Devi | Rohan D’Souza | G Vijay | Dinesh Mohan | Geetam Tiwari | Philippe Cullet | Barbara Harriss-White | Sunali Rohra | Nigel Singh | C H Hanumantha Rao | P P Nikhil Raj | P A Azeez | Rahul Gupta | Sumita Gupta Gangopadhyay | Hiren Gohain | Arundhuti Roy Choudhury | Amulya Kumar | N Reddy | K Krishna Prasad | Annu Jalais | Charul Bharwada | Vinay Mahajan | Sudha Srivastava | Dipti Mukherji | Manshi Asher | Jayanta Bandyopadhyay | Vandana Shiva | Arjun Makhijani | L C Jain

Decentralisation and Local Governments: The Indian Experience
Decentralisation and Local Governments: The Indian Experience
Edited By T R Raghunandan
The idea of devolving power to local governments was part of the larger political debate during the Indian national movement. It had strong advocates like Mahatma Gandhi who felt that the panchayats had to be the basis of government in independent India. This volume maps the trajectory that decentralisation of government has taken in the decades following Independence and discusses the constitutional changes and policy decisions that make governance more accountable to and accessible for the common man. It presents a set of twenty-five readings that analyse the impact of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, which gave autonomy to the institutions of both rural and urban governance.
Authors
T R Raghunandan | V M Sirsikar | Nirmal Mukarji | C H Hanumantha Rao | B K Chandrashekar |Norma Alvares | Niraja Gopal Jayal | Mani Shankar Aiyar | Benjamin Powis | Amitabh Behar | Yamini Aiyar | Ahalya S Bhat | Suman Kolhar | Aarathi Chellappa | H Anand | Raghabendra Chattopadhyay | Esther Duflo | Nirmala Buch | Ramesh Ramanathan | M A Oommen | Indira Rajaraman | Darshy Sinha | Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal | M Govinda Rao | U A Vasanth Rao | Mary E John|Pratap Ranjan Jena | Manish Gupta | Pranab Bardhan | Sandip Mitra | Dilip Mookherjee | Abhirup Sarkar | M A Oommen | J Devika | Binitha V Thampi
T R Raghunandan | V M Sirsikar | Nirmal Mukarji | C H Hanumantha Rao | B K Chandrashekar |Norma Alvares | Niraja Gopal Jayal | Mani Shankar Aiyar | Benjamin Powis | Amitabh Behar | Yamini Aiyar | Ahalya S Bhat | Suman Kolhar | Aarathi Chellappa | H Anand | Raghabendra Chattopadhyay | Esther Duflo | Nirmala Buch | Ramesh Ramanathan | M A Oommen | Indira Rajaraman | Darshy Sinha | Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal | M Govinda Rao | U A Vasanth Rao | Mary E John|Pratap Ranjan Jena | Manish Gupta | Pranab Bardhan | Sandip Mitra | Dilip Mookherjee | Abhirup Sarkar | M A Oommen | J Devika | Binitha V Thampi

Village Society
Village Society
Edited By Surinder S Jodhka
This volume presents a set of readings which primarily focus on the social, political and cultural aspects of village life. A few readings discuss issues of agrarian change and the economy of rural India. A comprehensive introduction provides a detailed historical analysis of the study of rural India, the changes in rural social life, and the forces shaping life in villages today. The articles, drawn from writings over four decades (1972 to 2010), cover various features of village society: caste and community, land and labour, migration, discrimination and use of common property resources, among others. The volume will be a single reference point for some of the best published works in the field.
Authors
M N Srinivas | André Béteille | Surinder S Jodhka | G K Lieten | K L Sharma | Mukul Sharma | G K Karanth | Pratap C Aggarwal | Jishnu Das | Roger Jeffery | Patricia Jeffery | Andrew Lyon | Leela Gulati | Sudha Pai | Jagpal Singh | Anil Kumar Vaddiraju | Dipankar Gupta | John Harriss | J Jeyaranjan | K Nagaraj | N S Jodha
M N Srinivas | André Béteille | Surinder S Jodhka | G K Lieten | K L Sharma | Mukul Sharma | G K Karanth | Pratap C Aggarwal | Jishnu Das | Roger Jeffery | Patricia Jeffery | Andrew Lyon | Leela Gulati | Sudha Pai | Jagpal Singh | Anil Kumar Vaddiraju | Dipankar Gupta | John Harriss | J Jeyaranjan | K Nagaraj | N S Jodha

Women and Work
Women and Work
Edited By Padmini Swaminathan
The notion of ‘work and employment’ of ‘work and employment’ for women is complex. While economic factors predominantly determine a man’s participation in employment, the reasons why women work, or do not work, or whether they work part-time or full-time, can be diverse and are often rooted in a complex interplay of economic, cultural, social and personal factors.
In India, as in most other parts of the world, fewer women participate in employment compared to men. This is the backdrop against which Women and Work analyses a wide range of issues—from what counts for ‘work’ to the economic contribution of women to how gendering of work has many significant and related consequences.
The introduction talks of how oppression faced by wage-earning women is the result of patriarchal norms and capitalist relations of production. It also demonstrates how policies and programmes anchored around data based on national income accounts and/or labour force surveys seriously disadvantage women in more ways than one.
Divided into four sections, the articles focus on women engaged in varied work—paddy-growers in West Bengal, beedi-rollers in Tamil Nadu, laceworkers in Andhra Pradesh and bardancers in Maharashtra—all of whom live and work in dismal conditions, and earn paltry incomes.
Bringing together well-known sociologists and economists, this volume will be useful for students and scholars of sociology, economics, political science and women’s studies.
Authors
Maithreyi Krishnaraj | Maria Mies | Bina Agarwal | Prem Chowdhry | Ujvala Rajadhyaksksha | Swati Smita | Joan P Mencher | K Saradamoni | Devaki Jain | Indira Hirway | Deepita Chakravarty | Ishita Chakravarty | Uma Kothari | J Jeyaranjan | Padmini Swaminathan | Meena Gopal | Millie Nihila | Srilatha Bathiwala | Miriam Sharma | Urmila Vanjani | J Jeyaranjan
Maithreyi Krishnaraj | Maria Mies | Bina Agarwal | Prem Chowdhry | Ujvala Rajadhyaksksha | Swati Smita | Joan P Mencher | K Saradamoni | Devaki Jain | Indira Hirway | Deepita Chakravarty | Ishita Chakravarty | Uma Kothari | J Jeyaranjan | Padmini Swaminathan | Meena Gopal | Millie Nihila | Srilatha Bathiwala | Miriam Sharma | Urmila Vanjani | J Jeyaranjan

The Adivasi Question: Issues of Land, Forest and Livelihood
The Adivasi Question: Issues of Land, Forest and Livelihood
Edited By Indra Munshi
Depletion and destruction of forests have eroded the already fragile survival base of adivasis across the country. Deprived of their traditional livelihoods, an alarmingly large number of adivasis have been displaced to make way for development projects. Many have been forced to migrate to other rural areas, the urban fringes or cities in search of work, leading to further alienation.
This systematic alienation, however, is not a modern-day phenomenon. Invasion of adivasi territories, for the most part, commenced during the colonial era and later intensified during the post-colonial period. The Adivasi Question situates the issues concerning the adivasis in a historical context while discussing the challenges they face today.
The introduction examines how the loss of land and livelihood began under the British administration. The British brought tribal land under their control and weaned the adivasis away from shifting cultivation. It analyses how the colonial government forced a section of the adivasis to take up cultivation on lower rates of assessment, thereby making them dependent on the landlord-moneylender-trader nexus for their survival.
The articles, drawn from writings of almost four decades, discuss questions of community rights and ownership, management of forests, the state’s rehabilitation policies, and the Forest Rights Act and its implications. It presents diverse perspectives in the form of case studies specific to different regions and provides valuable analytical insights.
Bringing together contributions by well-known sociologists, historians and environmental activists, this book will be an indispensible read for students and scholars of environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and policy-analysts.
Authors
Ramachandra Guha | Sanjeeva Kumar | Ashok K Upadhyaya | E Selvarajan | Nitya Rao | B B Mohanty | Brian Lobo | K Balagopal | Sohel Firdos | Pankaj Sekhsaria | DN| Judy Whitehead | Sagari R Ramdas | Neela Mukherjee | Mathew Areeparampil | Asmita Kabra | Renu Modi | M Gopinath Reddy | K Anil Kumar | P Trinadha Rao | Oliver Springate-Baginski | Indra Munshi | Jyothis Sathyapalan | Mahesh Rangarajan | Madhav Gadgil | Dev Nathan | Govind Kelkar | Emmanuel D’Silva | B Nagnath | Amita Baviskar
Ramachandra Guha | Sanjeeva Kumar | Ashok K Upadhyaya | E Selvarajan | Nitya Rao | B B Mohanty | Brian Lobo | K Balagopal | Sohel Firdos | Pankaj Sekhsaria | DN| Judy Whitehead | Sagari R Ramdas | Neela Mukherjee | Mathew Areeparampil | Asmita Kabra | Renu Modi | M Gopinath Reddy | K Anil Kumar | P Trinadha Rao | Oliver Springate-Baginski | Indra Munshi | Jyothis Sathyapalan | Mahesh Rangarajan | Madhav Gadgil | Dev Nathan | Govind Kelkar | Emmanuel D’Silva | B Nagnath | Amita Baviskar

Economic Reforms and Growth in India
Economic Reforms and Growth in India
Edited By Pulapre Balakrishnan
This volume investigates the nature of economic growth in India, its pace over time, its relationship to changes in the policy regime and the role of the external sector, and uses data to evaluate the policies that have implicitly underpinned the changes. Presenting a range of approaches, views and conclusions, this collection comprises papers from the Economic & Political Weekly that are marked by an empirical awareness necessary for an understanding of a growth history. The articles reflect a certain groundedness in their approach in that they privilege content/context over methodology.
The introduction outlines the importance of putting together the writings of almost a decade on the subject, explains why the issue of development is conspicuous by its absence, and presents this book as a complement to studies addressing a wider set of issues around the economy since 1990.
The book is thematically divided into five sections. The first two are macroscopic in nature, focusing on the overall economic growth. While section one provides an overview, of the subject, attributing causes and delineating the phases of economic growth, the papers in the second section are largely statistical and reflect the progress made by econometricians in devising estimation methodologies. The two sections identify growth regimes and structural breaks in the Indian economy.
The third section focuses on sectoral performances, in particular agricultural and industrial growth, intersectoral linkages, the role of trade and capital flows, and the sources of growth of India’s exports before and after economic reforms. Section four presents data and analyses of inter-state variations in economic growth and regional inequality. The last section analyses the political economy of growth in India. It throws light on the systemic implications of socio-economic changes, their effect on the poor, and the relationship between economic growth and social development.
This volume is an important addition to the literature on post-liberalisation economic growth in India. It will be useful to students and scholars of economics and management.
Authors
Deepak Nayyar | Rakesh Mohan | Atul Kohli | Arvind Panagariya | Neeraj Hatekar | Ambrish Dongre | Jessica Seddon Wallack | Pulapre Balakrishnan | M Parameswaran | Ravindra H Dholakia | Ramesh Chand| S S Raju | L M Pandey | R Nagaraj | D V S Sastry| Balwant Singh| Kaushik Bhattacharya | N K Unnikrishnan |Tanushree Mazumdar | C Veeramani | Ravindra H Dholakia |Montek S Ahluwalia|Richard T Shand|Shashanka Bhide | Amit Bhaduri| Pranab Bardhan| C S C Sekhar
Deepak Nayyar | Rakesh Mohan | Atul Kohli | Arvind Panagariya | Neeraj Hatekar | Ambrish Dongre | Jessica Seddon Wallack | Pulapre Balakrishnan | M Parameswaran | Ravindra H Dholakia | Ramesh Chand| S S Raju | L M Pandey | R Nagaraj | D V S Sastry| Balwant Singh| Kaushik Bhattacharya | N K Unnikrishnan |Tanushree Mazumdar | C Veeramani | Ravindra H Dholakia |Montek S Ahluwalia|Richard T Shand|Shashanka Bhide | Amit Bhaduri| Pranab Bardhan| C S C Sekhar

Windows of Opportunity: Memoirs of an Economic Advisor
Windows of Opportunity: Memoirs of an Economic Advisor
K. S. Krishnaswamy was a leading light in the Reserve Bank of India and the Planning Commission between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. He retired as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank.
Armed with a doctorate from the London School of Economics he began his career at a time when the road was rocky for newly independent India. The author vividly captures the optimism, commitment and desire to do well among policy makers in those days. His ringside view of the pulls and pressures within the administration and outside it, the hopes that sustained a majority in the bureaucracy and the lasting ties he formed with many he came in contact with are compelling on their own. Even more relevant is what he has to say about the political agendas eroding the Reserve Bank’s autonomy and degrading democratic institutions since the late 1960s.
Windows of Opportunity however is not a political polemic; it is a ruminative memoir by one who saw much happen, and not happen, at a time when everything seemed possible and promising in India.
Authors
K S Krishnaswamy
K S Krishnaswamy

China After 1978: Craters on the Moon
China After 1978: Craters on the Moon
The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60th anniversary on 1 October 2009. December 2008 marked 30 years since the Chinese Communist Party’s decision to launch ‘market reforms’. The breathtakingly rapid economic growth witnessed after 1978 has attracted worldwide attention. But the condition of more than 350 million workers is abysmal, especially that of the migrants among them. The stagnation of peasant incomes had fuelled a huge, historically unprecedented migration into the cities—over the past 25 years, some 150-200 million persons, including women, migrated from the countryside to the urban areas in search of jobs.
Why do the migrants put up with so much hardship in the urban factories? Has post-reform China forsaken the earlier goal of ‘socialist equality’? What has been the contribution of rural industries to regional development, alleviation of poverty and spatial inequality, and in relieving the grim employment situation? How has the meltdown in the global economy in the second half of 2008 affected the domestic economy? What of the current leadership’s call for a ‘harmonious society’? Does it signal an important ‘course correction’?
Authors
Nirmal Kumar Chandra | Ching Kwan Lee | Mark Selden | Carl Riskin | Shaoguang Wang | Manoranjan Mohanty | Chris Bramall | Dic Lo | Yu Zhang | Pun Ngai | Dale Jiajun Wen | Robert Weil | Minqli Li | Guilhem Fabre
Nirmal Kumar Chandra | Ching Kwan Lee | Mark Selden | Carl Riskin | Shaoguang Wang | Manoranjan Mohanty | Chris Bramall | Dic Lo | Yu Zhang | Pun Ngai | Dale Jiajun Wen | Robert Weil | Minqli Li | Guilhem Fabre

Global Economic and Financial Crisis
Global Economic and Financial Crisis
A collapse in housing prices in the United States in the middle of 2007 led to a rise in defaults in loan repayments and then rapidly to major losses in financial institutions across the world. The financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 took little time to turn into the global economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, leaving no country and no sector untouched and has become the worst contraction since the Depression of the 1930s. The structure of financial “innovation” that drove growth for close to a quarter of a century has turned out to be a house of cards. Governments and central banks are now rethinking the organization and role of banks. The incentives given to executives of the financial institutions to promote profits at all costs have been put under scrutiny. This volume puts together a collection of essays on a number of aspects of the global economic and financial crisis that were first published in the Economic & Political Weekly in early 2009. Economists and policy makers from across the world cover six areas from a global and Indian perspective. One set of articles discusses the structural causes of the financial crisis. A second focuses on banking and offers solutions for the future. A third examines the role of the US dollar in the unfolding of the crisis. A fourth area of study is the impact on global income distribution. A fifth set of essays takes a long-term view of policy choices confronting the governments of the world. A separate section assesses the downturn in India, the state of the domestic financial sector, the impact on the informal economy and the reforms necessary to prevent another crisis. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in and concerned about the global economic and financial crisis.
Authors
Robert Wade | Prabhat Patnaik | Arvind Subramanian | John Williamson | C P Chandrasekhar | Andrew Sheng | William K Black | James Crotty | Gerald Epstein | Mihir Rakshit | T T Ram Mohan | Dilip M Nachane | Amit Bhaduri | Pulin B Nayak | Arjun Jayadev | Anush Kapadia | Özlem Onaran | Dan La Botz | Korkut Ertürk | Ramaa Vasudevan
Robert Wade | Prabhat Patnaik | Arvind Subramanian | John Williamson | C P Chandrasekhar | Andrew Sheng | William K Black | James Crotty | Gerald Epstein | Mihir Rakshit | T T Ram Mohan | Dilip M Nachane | Amit Bhaduri | Pulin B Nayak | Arjun Jayadev | Anush Kapadia | Özlem Onaran | Dan La Botz | Korkut Ertürk | Ramaa Vasudevan

1857: Essays from Economic and Political Weekly
1857: Essays from Economic and Political Weekly
This volume marks the sesquicentennial of the events of 1857, in which multi-pronged, widespread and in many instances, organised resistance broke out against the British across north India. The contributions in this volume look at several aspects of 1857, and assess its events not merely in terms of their immediately, but in the repercussions that they had politically, socially, and militarily. The essays look at how historiography has accorded its own interpretation to 1857 and its effects, an interpretation that is changing even today.
The collection has been grouped into five sections, each of which explores diverse aspects of 1857. The first section looks at historical perspectives and is titled "Then and Now;" the second, "Sepoys and Soldiers" looks at the military aspects; the third, "The Margins" is from the point of view of Dalits; the fourth, "Fictional Representations" studies how 1857 has been depicted in literature; and the fifth, "The Arts and 1857" looks at 1857 as it has inspired films, music, and fine art. Held together with a preface by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, the essays in this volume—that range in theme and subject from historiography and military engagements, to the dalit viranganas idealised in traditional songs and the "unconventional protagonists" in mutiny novels—converge on one common goal: to enrich the existing national debates on the 1857 Uprising.
Authors
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay | Biswamoy Pati | Dipesh Chakrabarty | Peter Robb | Michael H Fisher | Anu Kumar | Jyotirmaya Sharma | Kaushik Roy | Sabyasachi Dasgupta | Badri Narayan | Charu Gupta | Shashank Sinha | Aishwarya Lakshmi | Indrani Sen | Swarupa Gupta | Rochona Majumdar | Lata Singh | Jon Barlow | Lakshmi Subramanian
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay | Biswamoy Pati | Dipesh Chakrabarty | Peter Robb | Michael H Fisher | Anu Kumar | Jyotirmaya Sharma | Kaushik Roy | Sabyasachi Dasgupta | Badri Narayan | Charu Gupta | Shashank Sinha | Aishwarya Lakshmi | Indrani Sen | Swarupa Gupta | Rochona Majumdar | Lata Singh | Jon Barlow | Lakshmi Subramanian

Inclusive Growth : K N Raj's Essays on Economic Development
Inclusive Growth : K N Raj's Essays on Economic Development
Edited By Ashoka Mody
The Essays in this book reflect Professor K.N. Raj’s abiding interest in economic growth as a fundamental mechanical for lifting the poor and the disadvantaged. Raj was also concerned that the political bargaining process may end up undermining growth and not provide support to those who were excluded from access to economic opportunities. These essays, many of them classics and all published in the economic weekly and economic and political weekly, are drawn together in this volume both for their commentary on the last half century of economic development and for their contemporary relevance for understanding the political Economy of development in India and elsewhere.
Authors
K N Raj
K N Raj
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