Industrial policy seems to be attempting a comeback to the centre stage of policy discussions. In a given milieu of global economic conditions, it offers opportunities for developing economies to restructure production. The challenges, however, are multiple, necessitating a move away from conventional policy paradigms and towards a set of forward-looking, futuristic elements.
Erasing the Binary Distinction of Developed and Underdeveloped: A Comparative Study of the Emergence of the Large-scale Steel Industry in Imperial Russia, Imperial Britain, Imperial America, and Colonial India, 1880–1914 by Vinay Bahl, US: Shunya, 2019; pp 417, price not indicated.
A micro-ethnographic study is done in a village using participatory research tools in order to highlight the patterns of public goods segregation and access. The factors influencing the social groups in their decision-making at the local level are also highlighted.
The Art of Economic Catch-up: Barriers, Detours and Leapfrogging in Innovation Systems by Keun Lee, Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne, New Delhi and Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 2019; pp xxiii + 279, price not indicated.
Resurgent Asia: Diversity in Development by Deepak Nayyar, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp xx + 295, ₹ 895.
Asian Transformations: An Inquiry into the Development of Nations edited by Deepak Nayyar, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp xxiv + 577, price not indicated.
Asia’s Journey to Prosperity: Policy, Market, and Technology Over 50 Years by Asian Development Bank, Manila: ADB, 2020 (ebook), http://dx.doi.org/10.22617/TCS190290.
Has India deindustrialised prematurely, after three decades of free market reforms? Probably not. The manufacturing sector’s share in gross domestic product has stagnated, and Kuznetsian structural transformation has stalled. The dispersion and rankings of the major states’ manufacturing employment and output shares have broadly remained unchanged. In the top and bottom 50 districts, the share of manufacturing employment in total employment has remained constant since 1991. Yet, the district-level spatial concentration of employment by industry has increased, and the coefficient of localisation is rising. Thus, the industrial change discernible at the micro level seems too feeble to show up in the aggregate.
Whether the “practising Adivasi” or the practitioners of traditional knowledge are subjects of different rationality is examined here. Through a study of the Lepcha traditional practices in the east Himalayas, it is argued that the practising Adivasi or indigenous peoples are indeed presenting empirical sites of “ethico-political articulations,” or “Ecosophy,” a term Félix Guattari uses in The Three Ecologies to advocate a normative theory and a “futuristic” approach. The study affirms that the recalcitrant Adivasis, who, as groups of our times, are presenting us with life-sustaining zones of pristine biodiversity as alternatives to the nature-devouring, deep industrialisation models of the modern state.
The agricultural sector has performed worse than the other sectors over the years. The shares of non-agricultural employment and output have increased, while70% of agricultural householdscannot meet their low consumptionneeds even after diversification of sources of income. An analysis of budgetary provisions for the rural economy suggests that the government has not done enough to address some of these well-documented problems, and does not have the required vision to substantially increase rural employment opportunities.
How significant are industrial dispersal policy incentives for agglomeration of organised manufacturing in India? Using plant-level data for 1997-98, the locational choices of 66 manufacturing industries in 21 Indian states are investigated. First, the degree of agglomeration (Ellison-Glaeser index) is calculated in each of these industries to ascertain in which states they are clustered, followed by an econometric investigation of industrial dispersal policy after controlling for different factors that affect agglomeration. The analysis yields that the dispersal policy has not been successful in most specifications. Factors like presence of infrastructure, coastlines, and labour market pooling determine agglomeration. The results also indicate that the nature of the product, high electricity tariff, and per capita energy gap have induced several industries to disperse.
