A Discourse On Economic Development

A Discourse on Economic Development is based on two recently published books by Kartik Roy. Governance Institutions and Economic Development: Emerging China, India, East Asia presented an in-depth analysis of the reasons for successes and failures of these nations developmental efforts. Economic, Environmental and Political Governance in China, Japan, India, Brazil, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam brought acknowledged the urgency of the need for countries political leaders to follow the teachings of Kautilya, Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi and to make serious efforts to implement those lessons in practice. It is worth noting here Mancur Olsons famous remarks that economic decisions are unlikely to be taken in the collective interest of individuals due to bargaining costs and the problem of free riders, unless they are members of small groups. Such a coalition of self-interest individuals is likely to try to redistribute income towards itself instead of working to raise efficiency and national income for the full benefit of the entire population and country. Hence, the authors feel that it is more likely that in all democracies rather than in autocracies, members of the ministry will form Olsons coalition of self-interest fulfilling persons who are semi-literate, have rarely been engaged in any income earning activity, and who are adept at taking recourse to dishonest means to fill up their pockets, as well as to attain glory, and who have no knowledge of the teachings of Kautilya, Confucius, Khaldun, Marx, Gandhi and other great men of the past. Likewise, they will have no interest in their implementation on practice. In this book, the authors have made an effort to create a synergy between the theory and practice in economic development.

Post-colonial, post-modern and feminist critiques have challenged the ways we theorise and practice development. Development is not just the conclusion of economic logic; its histories reveal a legacy of contested power, illuminating the contemporary battlefields of knowledge. These essays explore the language of development, its rhetoric and meaning within different political and institutional contexts. The contested ideas behind world development are explained, with illustrative material, sensitive to place and time, chiefly drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America. This book examines the power of development to imagine new worlds and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of national and global disorder.

This book investigates the belief patterns that underly alternative perspectives of development thought and policy. It discusses the differing theories and models of development in a discursive manner to highlight the importance of interaction between academic discourse and everyday life experiences. Utilizing insights drawn from the history of ideas, economic history, philosophy and political economy, the author shows how the field of development economics has evolved.

Nuclear power is often characterized as a "green technology." Technologies are rarely, if ever, socially isolated artefacts. Instead, they materially represent an embodiment of values and priorities. Nuclear power is no different. It is a product of a particular political economy and the question is whether that political economy can helpfully engage with the challenge of addressing the environmental crisis on a finite, inequitable and shared planet. For developing countries like India, who are presently making infrastructure investments which will have long legacies, it is imperative that these investments wrestle with such questions and prove themselves capable of sufficiency, greater equality and inclusiveness. This book offers a critique of civilian nuclear power as a green energy strategy for India and develops and proposes an alternative "synergy for sustainability." It situates nuclear power as a socio-technical infrastructure embodying a particular development discourse and practice of energy and economic development. The book reveals the political economy of this arrangement and examines the latter’s ability to respond to the environmental crisis. Manu V. Mathai argues that the existing overwhelmingly growth-focused, highly technology-centric approach for organizing economic activity is unsustainable and needs to be reformed. Within this imperative for change, nuclear power in India is found to be and is characterized as an "authoritarian technology." Based on this political economy critique the book proposes an alternative, a synergy of ideas from the fields of development economics, energy planning and science, technology and society studies.

Connecting post-colonial and feminist scholarship to economic theory, this book explains how modern economics has helped to constitute an expert discourse of development that marginalizes alternative perspectives and practices. It assesses theories of modernization, structural adjustment, and globalization.

Revised versions of lectures delivered by the author at the North Eastern Regional Centre of the Indian Council of Social Science Research in March 2004.

Development studies textbooks and courses have sometimes tended to avoid significant economic content. However, without an understanding of the economic aspects of international development many of the more complex issues cannot be fully comprehended. Economics and Development Studies makes the economic dimension of discourse around controversial issues in international development accessible to second and third year undergraduate students working towards degrees in development studies. Following an introductory chapter outlining the connections between development economics and development studies, this book consists of eight substantive chapters dealing with the nature of development economics, economic growth and structural change, economic growth and developing countries, economic growth and economic development since 1960, the global economy and the Third World, developing countries and international trade, economics and development policy, and poverty, equality and development economists, with a tenth concluding chapter. This book synthesizes existing development economics literature in order to identify the salient issues and controversies and make them accessible and understandable. The concern is to distinguish differences within the economics profession, and between economists and non-economists, so that the reader can make informed judgments about the sources of these differences, and about their impact on policy analysis and policy advice. The book features explanatory text boxes, tables and diagrams, suggestions for further reading, and a listing of the economic concepts used in the chapters.

The primary purpose of this edited collection is to evaluate critically the relationship between local government and national economic development. It focuses on how the relationship between local government and development is structured, and the specific institutional arrangements at national and subnational levels that might facilitate local government's assumption of the role of development agent. In light of the contradictory outcomes of development and implied experimentation with new modalities, post-development discourse provides a useful explanatory framework for the book. Schoburgh, Martin and Gatchair's central argument is that the pursuit of national developmental goals is given a sustainable foundation when development planning and strategies take into account elements that have the potential to determine the rate of social transformation. Their emphasis on localism establishes a clear link between local government and local economic development in the context of developing countries.

By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development--for both rich and poor--in the twenty-first century. Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority of people--he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically restain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.