Over the last two decades India has witnessed a rapid rise in the number of private universities. Various state governments have encouraged and justified this growth in order to increase enrolment in higher education, and private capital has welcomed this state encouragement. However, the implications of this move on access to higher education and the variety of other challenges that it presents are debated. Based on higher education enrolment data from the All India Survey on Higher Education, this paper attempts to study the social and academic character of universities to understand the consequences of the rapid growth of private universities for the university space as a whole.
Unrealistic revenue projections leading to strong expenditure compression is primarily responsible for India’s growth deceleration. Growth will decelerate further without a programme of deep fiscal adjustment. How a fiscal space, amounting to over 6% of the gross domestic product, can be freed through such an adjustment programme is demonstrated. This space can be potentially used for an inclusive public expenditure-led strategy for reviving growth.
The initiation of the growth process in the rural economy in India, which is predominantly agriculture-based, needs optimum allocation and careful management of scarce water resources for irrigation. Using primary data, the impact of a tripartite institutional framework—comprising a non-governmental organisation, the funding agency, and the people (forming a community-based organisation)—on rural sustainability is examined. Tobit analysis is used to evaluate the impact of participation on rural sustainability. The results establish that community participation is critical in enhancing rural sustainability in terms of managing indigenous water harvesting structures like johads.
Despite the rhetoric in the budget speech of the finance minister, the larger picture emerging from the recent data is a slowdown in growth and a net decline in employment. Not only is this a case of jobless growth, but also one of job-displacing growth. Men have gained and women have lost. The rural economy has suffered the most. In the meantime, there is a process of downgrading the rights of labour. There is very little to cheer about the economy.
Employment growth in India slowed down drastically during the period 2012 to 2016, after a marginal improvement between March 2010 and March 2012, according to the latest available employment data collected by the Labour Bureau.
Economic Challenges for the Contemporary World: Essays in Honour of Prabhat Patnaik edited by Mausumi Das, Sabyasachi Kar and Nandan Nawn, New Delhi: Sage, 2016; pp 324+xvii,₹1,195.
A measure of economic policy uncertainty or EPU for India is constructed to study its impact on the economy. It is found that gross domestic product growth and fixed investment are negatively related to EPU in India. For instance, if the economic uncertainty were to decrease to the level observed in 2005, India's GDP growth would increase by 0.56%, and fixed investment growth would increase by 1.36%. Additionally, a negative correlation between the Bombay Stock Exchange index and EPU in India is observed, suggesting that increases in EPU lower expectations of future growth or increase perceived risk of listed stocks. Lastly, it is found that firm-level capital expenditure rates are lowered when EPU increases.
The Indian Economy in Transition: Globalization, Capitalism and Development by Anjan Chakraborty, Anup Dhar and Byasdeb Dasgupta; New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2016; pp xx + 422, price not indicated.
Declining growth and a stagnating employment share of manufacturing in a high-growth regime in India are disconcerting, given the pride of place assumed by manufacturing as the "engine of growth." The sustainability of high growth is linked intrinsically to a trajectory that creates gainful employment. This paper argues that the manufacturing sector, which recorded declining employment elasticity in the organised sector, will not be able to mend the gap between growth and employment. Rather the goal of rejuvenating manufacturing has to be contextualised in a larger strategy of full employment with interventions related to demand structures, technology, size structure of firms, as well as a calibrated engagement with the global market.
India has been subject to capricious capital flows since its integration with the global capital markets in the early 1990s. In a bid to balance diverse objectives, India, like many other emerging markets, has resorted to active management of various types of capital flows. This paper finds that while the calibrated liberalisation approach resulted in altering the composition of capital flows towards more stable flows, and has helped India to negotiate the "Trilemma," the use of sporadic capital account management measures in the face of surge or stop of capital flows has not been very effective in achieving their objectives of reducing external vulnerability or mitigating macro-prudential risks.
Monetary policies in advanced economies and emerging markets face quite different challenges at the current juncture. In the advanced countries, current dilemmas derive from the normalisation of unconventional monetary policies. The short-term dilemma is to determine when to start exiting extraordinary policies and selecting appropriate tools, as conventional tools may not be very relevant during this phase. The medium- to long-term challenges relate to the sequencing, pace and mechanics of normalisation. Monetary policy in emerging markets needs to cope with the familiar dilemmas of fiscal dominance, the growth-inflation trade-off and the "impossible trinity." With fiscal parameters in control, and food and commodity prices subdued, the chief dilemma currently confronting emerging markets involves a trade-off between targeting divergent domestic and external cycles. Although they are now better placed to absorb a sudden stop, the impact is likely to be differential, with those with weaker macroeconomic parameters suffering greater pain.
