Below is given the Table of Contents of the
Issues listed above:
Volume 58.
No 2. July – September 2010
ARTICLES
/ 1
Formulating Future Just Policies
Applying the Delhi Sustainable
Development Law Principles Maja Goepel
The nature of the concept of
sustainability makes it difficult to
coordinate and monitor the
implementation of sustainable
development in the formulation of
effective policy. The International
Law Association (ILA) at its meeting
in New Delhi in 2002 offered a set
of seven "principles of
international law relating to
sustainable development" as a
definitive tool to inform the
formulation of policy and
potentially legal arrangements. This
article describes a research project
by the World Future Council (WFC)
that used these principles as the
basis for a methodology to assess
and evaluate how a range of policies
might contribute to sustainable
development in the interest of
future generations. Three "best"
policies on food security are
evaluated and their common
characteristics are identified. The
article finally discusses how policy
assessments based on principles
accepted internationally might
contribute to accelerated, effective
and coherent implementation of
sustainable development, even where
the prevailing institutional
approach treats ecological, social,
economic and cultural ssues as
separate factors.
This article presents the results of
a group project that involves the
expertise of many members of the
World Future Council, in particular
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, and
the meticulous research of Niamh
McMahon. The reflections on the
value and potential of a principled
policy assessment, however, are mine
alone and may differ from those of
other persons having
followed the research project.
The article has first been published
in Sustainability 2(6), 2010. I
thank the guest editors of that
issue for their support and
feedback, in particular Professor
John Dernbach, and the anonymous
reviewers for very fruitful
comments. Alice Vincent was the
champion of proof reading.
Growth, Inequality, and
the Role of the State(s) in Modern
India Derek D. Headey and Abu N.M.
Wahid
This paper assesses the growth and
inequality trends over the last two
decades of Indian development. An
analysis of these trends suggests
that fast national growth rates have
been accompanied by rising
interstate inequality as well as
rising regional inequalities within
faster growing states. We argue that
this undesirable outcome has been
attributable to India’s inefficient
Federal development policies and a
relatively less productive
relationship between Central and
state/local governments. The paper
concludes with a recommendation to
reform initiatives which could
improve the incentive structures for
policymakers at the Federal, state,
and local levels.
Derek D. Headey, International Food
Policy Research Institute, Ethiopia.
Email:
d.headey@cgiar.org
Abu N.M. Wahid, Tennessee State
University, USA. Email:
awahid@tnstate.edu
ARTICLES / 3
India’s Trade in Services L.G. Burange, Sheetal J. Chaddha
and Poonam Kapoor
Acknowledging the growing
significance of the service sector
in India and across the globe the
paper analyses services trade in
India, its composition, revealed
comparative advantage of various
sub-sectors of services and compares
their growth in the pre and post-liberalisation
period. The paper illustrates that
during post-liberalisation period
India’s exports have grown at a
compound annual growth rate of 19.34
per cent per annum while imports
have registered 15.91 per cent
growth. In case of exports, all
sub-sectors of services have seen
phenomenal growth in the post-reform
period, surpassing the growth in
world exports of the same
categories. However, India’s
services export basket is
concentrated in a few services and
there is need to diversify into
other sub-sector of services where
India enjoys a comparative
advantage. The opening up of the
economy has certainly propelled the
growth of services and its trade,
but India needs to give focused
attention to sustain this growth.
L.G. Burange, Professor, Department
of Economics, University of Mumbai,
Mumbai.
E-mail:
lgburange@hotmail.com
Sheetal J. Chaddha, Assistant
Professor, Smt. Mithibai Motiram
Kundnani College of Commerce and
Economics, Mumbai. E-mail:
drschaddha@gmail.com
Poonam Kapoor, Research Scholar,
Department of Economics, University
of Mumbai, Mumbai. E-mail:
poonamkapoor@isfgroup.in
ARTICLES
/ 4
Data for Assessing the Contribution
of Informal Sector B.S. Prakash
Initial recognition of the informal
sector was on the basis of its
‘typical characteristics’ and
considered mainly a feature of
developing economies. Subsequent
understanding of the sector, led to
its conceptualisation as a segment
of the unincorporated ‘household
sector’ engaged in economic
activities as ‘household
enterprises’. Policies of
globalisation resulted in marking
its presence even in the more
developed economies. These
developments necessitated a further
review of the conceptual
distinctions in the early 2000s.
Making a brief review of these
developments, the paper relates the
situation to the official data
system in India. Some issues which
remain to be addressed are
highlighted.
B.S. Prakash, Associate Professor,
Economics, School of Social
Sciences, IGNOU, New Delhi.
Email:
bagurprakash@ignou.ac.in
ARTICLES
/ 5
A Comparative Study of Traditional
and
Scientific Shrimp Farming in West
Bengal
A Technical Efficiency Analysis Poulomi Bhattacharya
Applying a Stochastic Frontier
Production (SFP) to farm level data
from shrimp farming in West
Bengal, this paper examines
technical efficiency and its
determinants in both scientific and
traditional shrimp farming systems.
The empirical results suggest high
degrees of technical inefficiency
among the shrimp farmers at
household level. This necessitates
government policy initiatives and
extension programmes which will help
the shrimp farmers especially the
traditional ones of the state to
utilise the best of their resources
and enhance their production
substantially. The government should
also give adequate attention to
small shrimp producers by providing
them credit and other extension
facilities.
Poulomi Bhattacharya, Associate
Fellow, National Council of Applied
Economic Research, New Delhi, India.
Email:
bpoulomi@yahoo.com
ARTICLES
/ 6
Towards Understanding the
Process of
Agricultural Diversification in
India Brajesh Jha and Amarnath Tripathi
The present study attempts to
understand the determinants of
agricultural diversification in the
country by collecting information at
different levels of aggregation. The
study regressed alternate measures
of diversification namely, the
Simpson’s diversity index and per
cent area under non-food crops, on
several factors such as income, land
distribution, irrigation intensity,
institutional credit, road density,
urbanisation, and market
penetration. The regression analysis
suggests that increased road density
and urbanisation encourages
commercialisation of agriculture and
with commercialisation, farms in a
region are increasingly specialised
under certain crops and crop-groups
as per the natural and acquired
resource endowment of the region.
Brajesh Jha, Associate Professor,
Agricultural Economic Research Unit,
Institute of Economic Growth,
University of Delhi.
Email:
brajesh@iegindia.org
Amarnath Tripathi, Research
Assistant (Grade-I), Agricultural
Economic Research Unit,
Institute of Economic Growth,
University of Delhi.
Email:
amarnathtripathi@rediffmail.com
ARTICLES
/ 7
Causality between Inflation
and Growth in India
An Empirical Investigation Bhavana S. Kantawala
There are various theories as well
as empirical studies which end up
with contradictory conclusions
regarding inflation-growth
relationship. The present study,
therefore, attempts to examine the
direction of causality between
inflation-growth in the context of
the Indian economy for the period
1951-52 to 2006-07. It also examines
the relationship between: (1)
agricultural growth and agricultural
inflation, and (2) manufactured
growth and inflation of manufactured
products. The study also tries to
examine these for two time intervals
also, i.e., 1951-52 to 1989-90 and
1990-91 to 2006-07. Augmented Dickey
Fuller (ADF) and Phillips" Perron
(PP) tests are applied to test for
the stationarity of the series and
Granger Causality test is applied to
examine the direction of causality.
The results obtained from the study
show that the causality runs from
growth to inflation. An increase in
growth reduces inflation rate.
Agricultural growth not only results
in fall in agricultural inflation
but also of aggregate inflation in
the economy. Thus it shows the
importance of agricultural sector in
the Indian economy. But for the
post-reforms era, agricultural
growth pushed agricultural
inflation.
Bhavana S. Kantawala, Professor of
Economics, M.S. University of
Baroda, Vadodara.
E-mail:
bhavana.kantawala@gmail.com
COMMUNICATION
FOR DEBATE & RESEARCH / 1
Introducing Conditional Cash
Transfers in India
A Proposal for Five CCTs Santosh Mehrotra
This paper makes the case for
converting some of the massive
subsidies and significant
expenditures on directly targeted
poverty reduction programmes
into conditional cash transfers (CCTs).
All the five CCTs it proposes would
be primarily targeted at the below
poverty line (BPL) population. It
also addresses the minimum
requirements to ensure that CCTs
succeed, and actually reach the poor
instead of meeting the fate of usual
directly targeted poverty reduction
programmes. It also notes the fact
that while the identification of the
poor has so far proved beset with
errors of exclusion and inclusion,
those can be mostly resolved through
a revised methodology that has
already been almost finalised, and
will be implemented by 2010.
Santosh Mehrotra, Director-General,
Instutute of Applied Manpower
Research.
Email:
santosh.mehrotra@nic.in
COMMUNICATION FOR DEBATE AND
RESEARCH / 2
The Future of Sustainable
Development Martin Khor
The world is in even graver crisis
almost two decades after the
promises made at the 1992 Earth
Summit. A new Rio Summit in 2012
will aim to close the gaps and
discuss new
problems.
Paradox of Chronic Poverty and
High Growth Rates in
Emerging Economies of South Asia
under Reforms Raj Kumar Sen and Somnath Hazra
This paper analyses the perspective
of chronic poverty in three most
populous countries of South Asia
namely India, Bangladesh and
Pakistan, which share some common
features responsible for chronic
poverty. The paper also discusses
the dynamics of chronic poverty in
these countries over time with
emphasis on a comparative analysis
made between the pre- and
post-reform periods. It has been
observed that chronic poverty
persists during both the prereform
and post-reform periods. It is
pointed out that, even after
globalisation, and realisation of
high growth, poorest persons in this
country are still facing high levels
of risks on various fronts like
financial, economic, food security,
climate change etc. It is
categorically recommended that a
labour-intensive people- riendly
development paradigm based on the
antyodaya principle can only change
the present grim scenario of South
Asian chronic poverty.
Raj Kumar Sen, Director, Centre for
Studies in Environment and
Sustainable Development and
Professor of Economics, Rabindra
Bharati University, Kolkata.
Email:
rk_sen25@rediffmail.com
Somnath Hazra, Senior Consultant
(Forest and Climate change) C-TRAN
Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Bhubaneswar,
Orissa.
Email:
somu.durg@gmail.com ;
somu.durg@rediffmail.com
REVIEW ARTICLE / 1
Ancient
Indian Economic Thought: Relevance
for Today
(Authors: Ratanlal Basu and Rajkumar
Sen, pp. 199; Price Rs. 550. Jaipur:
Rawat Publications).
Reviewed by Dr. P.R. Panchamukhi,
Chairman, Centre for
Multi-Disciplinary Development
Research, Dharwad, Karnataka.
Email:
panchamukhipr@gmail.com
-july-sept,2010.jpg)