Growth imperatives
V. K. NATRAJ
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A festschrift by leading social scientists covering the terrain of development thinking
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FOOTPRINTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE — Essays in Memory of Professor V.K.R.V.Rao Commemorating his Birth Centenary: N. Jayaram and R. S. Deshpande — Editors; Academic Foundation, 4772-73/23 Bharat Ram Road (23 Ansari Road), Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs.1295.
This volume commemorates the birth centenary of V.K.R.V. Rao, one of our foremost institution builders in social sciences. The editors have selected the following themes to capture the essential Rao, namely, development and economic theory, society and development, and India’s development experience. The volume is divided into three sections bearing the above-mentioned titles as themes.
Backwardness
One of the two most interesting pieces in the first section is by Amiya Kumar Bagchi on approaches to explaining backwardness, written with his usual lucidity. Constraints of space prevent even a summary of the issues Bagchi considers, but it is necessary to mention that he specifically rules out a South Korean return to the “developmental state” since it cannot handle the aggressive competition from transnational corporations (TNCs). The other is a wonderful paper by Kaushik Basu who analyses teacher truancy in a refreshingly new and nuanced manner and virtually proves the case for economists utilising the concept of culture while analysing problems that continue with niggling persistence in India such as absenteeism. He remarks that in such an analysis “culture is at least worth a try”, advice which hopefully economists will absorb. One limitation in this section is that the papers do not connect up to a coherent whole. And the editors’ introduction, one wishes, had done more to impart this connectivity.
Participation
The papers in the second section relate better to one another than their counterparts in the first. Ghanshyam Shah has a paper that situates the role of NGOs in the larger socio-economic and political context. Although his material is from Guajarat, several of his inferences and questions are sure to resonate in other parts of the country. A seminal observation of his is worth recounting, namely, that state and civil society are not necessarily antithetical to each other and further, that several struggles initiated, sponsored and conducted by civil society have suffered from a basic limitation in that they have chosen not to concern themselves with matters such as land rights, the problems of the Adivasis etc.
James Manor has a very well written article in which he discusses participatory governance. With his customary sobriety and grounding in empirical reality Manor points out that participation should be promoted indirectly rather than by direct attempts to stimulate it. Kalpana Kannabiran appears to try a shade too hard to prove some synonymity between race and caste, and does not really succeed. Also the writing for the most part is sure to be beyond the reach of any subaltern. Nonetheless she raises teasing questions. T.K.Oommen covers vast ground tracing the principal landmarks in India’s development ethos. The discussion seems not to focus adequately on some critical questions such as how India’s interventionist state yielded place to a market-friendly one due to a combination of exogenous and endogenous forces. In fairness it should be added that this failing is not unique to this paper. Several of them do not touch upon important and contentious issues like the matrix of relations among the upper and backward castes, and the Dalits and the Adivasis. The final section has eight papers on India’s development experience. Ravi Kanbur highlights what he calls hard questions regarding poverty and inequality. He claims no originality but at least to this reviewer there is one refreshing dimension to his inquiry. He does not traverse the same old ground of endlessly measuring poverty. And some questions of his are worthy of further pursuit. R.Radhakrishna in his scholarly paper refers to the generally forgotten fact of the poor being heterogeneous and argues for the need to address poverty by layers such as chronic, moderate etc. He points to India’s mixed record in dealing with poverty: improvement in income growth but not in relation to provision of basic needs; some success in poverty reduction but not in malnutrition. Arguing on similar lines T.S.Papola urges that poverty in India is of too large a dimension to be tackled through special programmes. They can provide safety nets but poverty alleviation would be better served through wage employment, and he seeks programmes as under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
Education
P.R.Panchamukhi discusses the important sphere of education and its prospects in the nexus of globalisation. One question he raises is singled out here: whether the evils resulting from globalisation of higher education through governments are less as compared with the ill-effects of “unscrupulous economically guided private sector-driven globalisation.”
The reviewer is painfully aware that some contributions have not even received a mention but in mitigation offers space as the explanation. In common with most recent publications, even from publishers of repute, the quality of editing, and copy editing in particular, is poor. There are grammatical errors and those of syntax not to speak of more subtle ones like idiomatic infelicity. All in all the volume is a good addition to the development discourse in India.
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