Delhi can never be improved — until the rest of India improves!
February 13, 2015 — drsubrotoroyThe fascist solution that was, as I recall, suggested momentarily by a former Congress CM of Delhi, would be to forcibly prevent people from coming in from the outside. Apparently the PRC as a totalitarian regime has some kind of system of internal passports which restricts citizens from travelling into metros on their own free will. That cannot work in free India, where the Constitution would
(1) My 13 Sep 2019 Advice to PM Modi’s Adviser: Let PM address each State Legislature, get all India Govt Accounting & Public Decision Making to have integrity (2) 16 May 2014 Advice from Rajiv Gandhi’s Adviser to Narendra Modi: Do not populate the “Planning Commission” with worthies, scrap it, integrate its assets with the Treasury. And get the nationalised banks & RBI out of the Treasury. Tell them to read my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture with care. Clean Government Accounting & Audit is the Key to Clean Public Finances & a Proper Indian Currency for the First Time Ever
May 16, 2014 — drsubrotoroy13 September 2019
My 13 Sep 2019 Advice to PM Modi’s Adviser: Let PM address each State Legislature, get all India Govt Accounting & Public Decision-Making to have integrity
I recently had a nice chat by email with one of Mr Modi’s economic advisers who knew me from years past. No I do not mean Bibek Debroy who was my stable-mate under Hahn at Cambridge in 1976. This adviser knew me as a colleague briefly in Washington during my American years 1980:1996.
My advice has been as follows:
In 2001 2000 I gave a talk at the RBI on invitation of Bimal Jalan and YV Reddy on the importance of maximum transparency in India’s Union and State Budgets. A Premchand’s *Effective Government Accounting* is really the best book the IMF ever produced, and my aim has been to see it applied to all public budgeting in India, especially in the information age… so any failed BCom or village accountant besides our 4125+ State legislators and all Union legislators and GoI officials can have at hand on demand for free all information about public resources, activities, expenditures, financing thereof etc. Mr Premchand and I met in his offices about 1998 when I last visited America and he thought my work was “light years ahead” of where the Government would reach.
The future PM Narendra Modi came from India to DC in October 1984 where I had been asked by Shekhar Tiwari whom you may know to give a Deendayal lecture, which I did. I recall Modiji well from that time. We have not met since. I should like him to be writing to each State Legislature Speaker seeking to address each State Assembly if they wish to extend an invitation, one by one. The aim of his addressing each State Assembly one by one that wishes to hear him (all will) would be to establish a Union-State link of fiscal cooperation, getting all State Government accounting cleaned up to the Premchand standard, so everyone in the country knows easily or can find out easily what is the state of finance in each State (as well as the Union of course).
It would take a few months plus two dozen rooms and a team of about 40 people to modernize all India Government accounts to the best world standards or even surpass them.
Obviously Planning had to go and I said so publicly in May 2014 as soon as Modiji was elected. At the same time, I said Finance had to be bifurcated, creating a new Ministry of Money and Banking where RBI and all PSU banks could be hived off. Then Finance would be left with doing Budgets, both Union and helping with States, all year round, getting them to the Premchand standard which is, basically, the world standard. Now I see “Corporate Affairs” has been a systemic problem too, because it allows Big Business to have too easy access to the Minister and his/her agenda and the latter never even gets to start normal public finance. Finance without Money and Banking and without Corporate Affairs can and should be handling all Budgets, year round, no lobbying.
You can see in this thread https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1119845358572646400?s=20 up and down what happens as a prototype if the Premchand template gets applied in India.
In the meantime, a monetary disaster is unfolding on the RBI “surplus” issue… there is no surplus… it is a mirage… #RBIMirage. You may see it herein:
https://independentindian.com/2019/08/04/critique-of-monetary-ideas-of-manmohan-modi-the-roy-model-explaining-to-bimal-jalan-nirmala-sitharaman-rbi-etc-what-it-is-they-are-doing-draft-4-august-2019/
I had denounced in 2007 what Manmohan, Montek, Chidambaram had tried which was very similar, and they stopped. Now Modiji, the FM, Bimal Jalan et al have followed suit, even worse. Do tell them.
I completely agree the West, the Russians, etc each have their own agenda (and local agents in Delhi).
The IT revolution has reached everyone in India, working classes especially. Yet worldwide and with us especially public finance and public decision making remain untouched and backward.
It would take 6 months and a small team to apply Premchand to each State’s finances and the Union too. That is not about markets but about govt activities (in the public finance sense) and expenditures, hence political discussion about priorities. All State legislators plus aam janta should become empowered with public finance data. All India is in the States. Hence I would like to see PM address each State legislature one by one… build the fiscal cooperation framework as described. More later…
The root problem is something I started working on in 1993… Hubert Neiss at the IMF asked me “Do you understand the States’ budgets?” because nobody at the Fund or Bank did! I fibbed and said yes, knowing I knew more than they did. 🙂 But seriously
India’s States, the 18 larger of which are as populous as countries,
https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1029412133665169409?s=20
have no control over direct or indirect taxes… hence there is no incentive to either limit expenditure or control incurrence of public debt…
https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1076703533137711104?s=20
Where does all that public debt go? Into banks’ asset sides! Ie all the bad spending decisions of both GoI and States end up as bank assets! So the banks keep sinking!
Where and how PM and this govt must act is to make it the next step that Sardar Patel would have demanded: namely, Sardar gave us the federal democratic set up, he *created* the States, 18 of which are as big as countries (see Table)… Now Sardar would have demanded proper budgeting and spending… *not* garbage “austerity”… but decisions under control and public discussion… civil strife itself will reduce eg in NE… !
Everyone needs to carry forward to the next stage #SardarVallabhaiPatel #StatueOfUnity nation-building: modernization of all gov’t accounts & audit. Everyone in India can & shd know how public resources are being spent & how raised.. exactly..
https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1130661889921433600?s=20
My idea has been #twodozenrooms… in Delhi… joint GoI and State teams… one room each for the 18 larger States https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1029412133665169409 maybe two for UP plus J&K Goa Him Uttarakhand, 7 remaining NE Sisters.. Combined Union & State Finance teams then get all their budgets exactly right.. inc military & railways
getting all govt accounting to the best available world standards… Union, all States, all PSUs, military, railways, everyone
https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1135197723156656128?s=20
a clear head, CAG data, Premchand’s book, 40 desktops and Excel… will take two months 24/7 work… 40 people in each of three shifts…
0700:1500
1500:2300
2300:0700 (graveyard)…
the data are all there with CAG… every activity, every expenditure… every anomaly… gets revealed… who is supposed to discuss spending priorities then? aam janta of course through their 4125+ State level + 800 Union legislators… let there be proper discussion in Assemblies… the State legislatures are dysfunctional, so is Parliament almost! Not because they want to be but because they are uninformed about problems and data!
So a massive change in our public discourse if aam janta and any legislator can access and discuss top quality public finance data… let them decide and talk about what priorities should be… the mind focuses then on **numbers**… which are hard data… It will be top of the world incidentally… no large country has done this, certainly not the USA etc… corruption also crashes as everyone can see everything…
PM starts the process by writing to the State Speakers… yes seeking an invitation… to address State legislators… **nothing partisan** no political meetings…. just PM and State as Constitutional entities… each State taken seriously one by one… Not three four the same day as he does with tours to NE. The process can take a year or more. The Speakers respond with an invitation or not… a scheduling is done… one by one… no political party favouritism… he speaks addressing serious problems… about concrete decision making and processes… no rhetoric is needed… He gives them a template of their Budget/accounts in the best possible world format… they have to then use all that data, decide what they want to do, how much help do they want in making better decisions… Ie it is a change in process….
As for the private sector, first thing is to get “Corporate Affairs” out of the Finance Ministry! That has become the vehicle of entrenched lobbying! It explains Chidambaram and Jaitley and all of them! Yes I have blasted Big Business for (a) their frauds; (b) their attempts to push risk onto the Government whenever possible… there has been systematic elite capital flight and international arbitrage allowed by both Manmohan and the present Govt!
The Government says to the private sector: we are cleaning up all our accounts, Union States Military Railways etc… all… you had better do the same and fast…!
see too https://twitter.com/subyroy/status/1197137821523480576?s=20
16 May 2014
Mr Modi’s victory is more amazing and bigger than Reagan’s in 1980 or 1984, or Thatcher’s in 1979 or 1984…One hopes one does not have to make comparisons with any earlier times… The interviews he gave in recent days were excellent in their sobriety, quite unlike his sneering rabble-rousing mass speeches… I have said I do not doubt his commitment to India’s national interest, and I add I do not doubt his managerial competence. What does concern me is the vacuum of commonsense as well as expert reasoning around him although that around Sonia-Manmohan was as bad as well as being more pretentious. If Mr Modi can do anything like what I said in Delhi on 3 December 2012, which Manmohan was too incompetent and bureaucratic to even try, he has my applause. The first task is to ****not**** fill up the so-called Planning Commission with BJP worthies and cronies, and instead ***to declare he is closing it down and integrating its assets with the Finance Ministry***… The second is to remove control of the banks and the RBI from the Finance Ministry and create a different agency or department or even Ministry for Money & Banking. Finance (with Planning under it) does the fiscal budgets and government accounting, for Union and States. Money & Banking seeks to bring some slight semblance of integrity to the currency for the first time ever, both at home and abroad. Don’t ask Montek Ahluwalia, don’t ask Rangarajan, for heavens’ sake don’t ask Manmohan Singh or even his young man Raghuram Rajan… Just do it…
18 May 2014
Mr Modi has a unique chance to change the face of Indian governance for the better — and the chance is now, **before** he announces a Cabinet. Essentially, he is beholden to no one in making his choices, he can bring in the maximum amount of commonsense and expert reasoning right at the start.
My first recommendation has been to *scrap the so-called Planning Commission* rather than populate it with BJP cronies and worthies where it was populated by Congress worthies and cronies before. If you start populating it with your cronies then you have lost the plot immediately, as you are needlessly creating vested interests once more, impossible to get rid of later. Vajpayee-Advani lacked the guts and vision to do this. Modi can do it easily. Montek Ahluwalia and Manmohan Singh got the so-called Deputy Chairman to have a higher rank in the Order of Precedence than elected Chief Ministers of States! Ahluwalia attended Union Cabinet meetings and “GOM” meetings as a member without being elected to anything at all. The Planning Commission’s physical assets should be merged under the Finance Ministry immediately with a one-line Executive Order. At the same time, the RBI and the nationalised banks should be removed from the Finance Ministry’s control completely, if necessary into a new Ministry of Money & Banking.
Finance (& Accounts and Planning) are then tasked to get the budgets right, both Union *and* States — *and including the military and the railways*! That is all they do, that should be their full-time year long occupation, nothing more, not listening to or yielding to lobby groups, not allowing anyone to get even faintly close to them, just getting all the Budgets right. Money & Banking would run the nationalised banks on commercial lines (and that means being ready to battle their fat cat unions), plus there is the RBI with its usual banking supervisory and money creation and balance of payments management roles.
Secondly, change the name of the Defence Ministry to the War Ministry or Forces Ministry, Raksha Mantralaya to Yudh Mantralaya or Fauj Mantralaya. India has never fought an aggressive war and is not going to do so now. Every war it has fought has been defensive, so calling it the Defence Ministry is superfluous and even perverse. Calling it the War Ministry tells it what to do, namely, win any war that is thrust on you, any which way you can and at least cost all around. Simple as that. Why it is perverse to talk of a Defence Ministry is because of its fiscal implications. Fat cat peacetime generals, air marshalls and admirals are prevailed upon by foreign weapons’ salesmen acting through ex-servicemen Noida brokers to waste public moneys endlessly on innumerable things which are utterly unrelated to war-fighting capabilities. And there can be no fiscal responsibility ever in India until the military budgets are brought under control. I have called the military budget the Black Hole of Indian public finance, no one knows what goes in or what comes out. And the preparedness for war itself is unknown as well — as the Mumbai massacres showed. Mr Modi and his putative War Minister should simply get the generals, air marshalls and admirals to tell them what plans they have to win different wars thrust upon them in different scenarios; what are their strategies to win those wars, and what resources do they need for those strategies to prevail; that is how you figure out the military budget. All the rest is fat, which only causes corruption and inflation too.
Thirdly, design a better cabinet on the lines, for example, I would have given to Rajiv Gandhi if he had not been assassinated. Manmohan Singh had 79 Ministers! You only need a dozen senior ones and a dozen junior ones, really…
Don’t set up a committee of worthies to examine all this… Just do it… I will applaud and so will everyone else…
See especially this…
Some of My Works, Interviews etc on India’s Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, Land, etc (an incomplete list)
November 23, 2013 — drsubrotoroy
My “Critique of Monetary Ideas of Manmohan & Modi: the Roy Model explaining to Bimal Jalan, Nirmala Sitharaman, RBI etc what it is they are doing” of 2019 is here.
Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by Subroto Roy & William E James, 1986-1992… pdf copy uploaded 2021
Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India 1984, uploaded as pdf 2021
My Sep 2019 recommendation PM address each State Legislature, get all India Govt Accounting & Public Decision Making to have integrity; 16 May 2014 Advice scrap “Planning Commission”,integrate its assets with the Treasury, get the nationalised banks & RBI out of the Treasury
My critical assessment dated 23 August 2013 of Professors Jagdish Bhagwati & Amartya Sen and Dr Manmohan Singh is here…
My critique of PM Modi’s 8 November 2016 statement began on Twitter immediately, and is summarized here “Modi & Monetary Theory: Economic Consequences of the Prime Minister of India”
My critical assessment dated 19 August 2013 of Professor Raghuram Rajan is here and here.
My 3 Dec 2012 Delhi talk on India’s Money is now available at You-Tube in an audio version here.
My July 2012 article “India’s Money” in the Caymans Financial Review is here and here https://independentindian.com/2012/07/21/my-article-indias-money-in-the-cayman-financial-review-july-2012/
My 5 December 2012 interview by Mr Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, on Lok Sabha TV, the channel of India’s Lower House of Parliament, broadcast for the first time on 9 December 2012 on Lok Sabha TV, is here and here in two parts.
My interview by GDI Impuls banking quarterly of Zürich published on 6 Dec 2012 is here.
My interview by Ragini Bhuyan of Delhi’s Sunday Guardian published on 16 Dec 2012 is here.
“Monetary Integrity and the Rupee” (2008)
https://independentindian.com/2008/09/28/monetary-integrity-and-the-rupee/
“India’s Macroeconomics” (2007)
“Fiscal Instability” (2007)
“Fallacious Finance” (2007)
https://independentindian.com/2007/03/05/fallacious-finance-the-congress-bjp-cpi-m-et-al-may-be-leading-india-to-hyperinflation/
https://independentindian.com/2021/12/01/on-the-simplest-smallest-most-universal-direct-flattax-of-500-rupees-per-annum-for-india-accruing-to-the-states-with-a-bpl-exemption-too/
Budgets & Financial Positions of Three of India’s Most Populous States (combined population c.300 million)…Brought to you especially by Dr Subroto Roy… Feel free to use (with acknowledgment)…
“Growth and Government Delusion” (2008)
https://independentindian.com/2008/02/22/growth-government-delusion/
“Distribution of Govt of India Expenditure (Net of Operational Income) 1995”
https://independentindian.com/2008/07/27/distribution-of-govt-of-india-expenditure-net-of-operational-income-1995/
“India in World Trade & Payments” (2007)
https://independentindian.com/2007/02/12/india-in-world-trade-payments/
“Path of the Indian Rupee 1947-1993″ (1993)
https://independentindian.com/1993/06/01/path-of-the-indian-rupee-1947-1993/
“Our Policy Process” (2007)
https://independentindian.com/2007/02/20/our-policy-process-self-styled-planners-have-controlled-indias-paper-money-for-decades/
“Indian Money and Credit” (2006)
https://independentindian.com/2006/08/06/indian-money-and-credit/
“Indian Money and Banking” (2006)
https://independentindian.com/2006/04/23/indian-money-and-banking/
“Indian Inflation” (2008)
https://independentindian.com/2008/04/16/indian-inflation-upside-down-economics-from-new-delhis-establishment/
How the Liabilities/Assets Ratio of Indian Banks Changed from 84% in 1970 to 108% in 1998 https://independentindian.com/2008/10/20/how-the-liabilitiesassets-ratio-of-indian-banks-changed-from-84-in-1970-to-108-in-1998/
“Growth of Real Income, Money & Prices in India 1869-2004” (2005)
https://independentindian.com/2008/07/28/growth-of-real-income-money-prices-in-india-1869-2004/
“How to Budget” (2008)
https://independentindian.com/2008/02/26/how-to-budget-thrift-not-theft-should-guide-our-public-finances/
“Waffle but No Models of Monetary Policy: The RBI and Financial Repression (2005)”
https://independentindian.com/2005/10/27/waffle-but-no-models-of-monetary-policy-the-rbi-and-financial-repression/
“The Dream Team: A Critique” (2006)
https://independentindian.com/2006/01/08/the-dream-team-a-critique/
“Against Quackery” (2007)
https://independentindian.com/2007/09/24/against-quackery/
“Mistaken Macroeconomics” (2009)
https://independentindian.com/2009/06/12/mistaken-macroeconomics-an-open-letter-to-prime-minister-dr-manmohan-singh/
Towards a Highly Transparent Fiscal & Monetary Framework for India’s Union & State Governments (RBI lecture 29 April 2000)
https://independentindian.com/2000/04/29/towards-a-highly-transparent-fiscal-monetary-framework-for-india%E2%80%99s-union-state-governments/
“The Indian Revolution (2008)”
https://independentindian.com/2008/12/08/the-indian-revolution/
Can India Become an Economic Superpower or Will There Be a Monetary Meltdown? (2005)
https://independentindian.com/2005/05/05/can-india-become-an-economic-superpower-or-will-there-be-a-monetary-meltdown-2005/
Memo to Kaushik Basu, 2010
Land, Liberty, & Value, 2006
https://independentindian.com/2006/12/31/land-liberty-value/
On Land-Grabbing, 2007
https://independentindian.com/2007/01/14/on-land-grabbing/
No Marxist MBAs? An amicus curiae brief for the Honourable High Court
https://independentindian.com/2007/08/29/no-marxist-mbasan-amicus-curae-brief-for-the-honourable-high-court/
Coverage in The *Asian Age*/*Deccan Herald* of 4 Dec 2012.
.
Did Jagdish Bhagwati “originate”, “pioneer”, “intellectually father” India’s 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India’s right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture!
August 23, 2013 — drsubrotoroyDid Jagdish Bhagwati “originate”, “pioneer”, “intellectually father” India’s 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India’s right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture!
[See also “I’m on my way out”: Siddhartha Shankar Ray (1920-2010)…An Economist’s Tribute”; “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”; “Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-1991″
Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by Subroto Roy & William E James, 1986-1992… pdf copy uploaded 2021
Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, edited by William E James & Subroto Roy, 1986-1993… pdf copy uploaded 2021
Critique of Amartya Sen: A Tragedy of Plagiarism, Fake News, Dissimulation
Contents
Part I: Facts vs Fiction, Flattery, Falsification, etc
1. Problem
2. Rajiv Gandhi, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Milton Friedman & Myself
3. Jagdish Bhagwati & Manmohan Singh? That just don’t fly!
4. Amartya Sen’s Half-Baked Communism: “To each according to his need”?
Part II: India’s Right Road Forward Now: Some Thoughtful Analysis for Grown Ups
5. Transcending a Left-Right/Congress-BJP Divide in Indian Politics
6. Budgeting Military & Foreign Policy
7. Solving the Kashmir Problem & Relations with Pakistan
8. Dealing with Communist China
9. Towards Coherence in Public Accounting, Public Finance & Public Decision-Making
10. India’s Money: Towards Currency Integrity at Home & Abroad
Part I: Facts vs Fiction, Flattery, Falsification, etc
1. Problem
Arvind Panagariya says in the Times of India of 27 July 2013
“…if in 1991 India embraced many of the Track-I reforms, writings by Sen played no role in it… The intellectual origins of the reforms are to be found instead in the writings of Bhagwati, both solely and jointly with Padma Desai and T N Srinivasan….”
Now Amartya Sen has not claimed involvement in the 1991 economic reforms so we are left with Panagariya claiming
“The intellectual origins of the reforms are to be found instead in the writings of Bhagwati…”
Should we suppose Professor Panagariya’s master and co-author Jagdish Bhagwati himself substantially believes and claims the same? Three recent statements from Professor Bhagwati suffice by way of evidence:
(A) Bhagwati said to parliamentarians in the Lok Sabha on 2 December 2010 about the pre-1991 situation:
“This policy framework had been questioned, and its total overhaul advocated, by me and Padma Desai in writings through the late 1960s which culminated in our book, India: Planning for Industrialization (Oxford University Press: 1970) with a huge blowback at the time from virtually all the other leading economists and policymakers who were unable to think outside the box. In the end, our views prevailed and the changes which would transform the economy began, after an external payments crisis in 1991, under the forceful leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was the Finance Minister at the time….”
(B) Bhagwati said to Economic Times on 28 July 2013:
“When finance minister Manmohan Singh was in New York in 1992, he had a lunch for many big CEOs whom he was trying to seduce to come to India. He also invited me and my wife, Padma Desai, to the lunch. As we came in, the FM introduced us to the invitees and said: ‘These friends of mine wrote almost a quarter century ago [India: Planning for Industrialisation was published in 1970 by Oxford] recommending all the reforms we are now undertaking. If we had accepted the advice then, we would not be having this lunch as you would already be in India’.”
(C) And Bhagwati said in Business Standard of 9 August 2013:
“… I was among the intellectual pioneers of the Track I reforms that transformed our economy and reduced poverty, and witness to that is provided by the Prime Minister’s many pronouncements and by noted economists like Deena Khatkhate.. I believe no one has accused Mr. Sen of being the intellectual father of these reforms. So, the fact is that this huge event in the economic life of India passed him by…”
From these pronouncements it seems fair to conclude Professors Bhagwati and Panagariya are claiming Bhagwati has been the principal author of “the intellectual origins” of India’s 1991 reforms, has been their “intellectual father” or at the very least has been “among the intellectual pioneers” of the reform (“among” his own collaborators and friends, since none else is mentioned). Bhagwati has said too his friend Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister participated in the process while quoting Manmohan as having said Bhagwati was the principal author.
Bhagwati’s opponent in current debate, Amartya Sen, has been in agreement with him that Manmohan, their common friend during college days at Cambridge in the 1950s, was a principal originating the 1991 reforms, saying to Forbes in 2006:
“When Manmohan Singh came to office in the early 1990s as the newly appointed finance minister, in a government led by the Congress Party, he knew these problems well enough, as someone who had been strongly involved in government administration for a long time.”
In my experience, such sorts of claims, even in their weakest form, have been, at best, scientifically sloppy and unscholarly, at worst mendacious suppressio veri/suggestio falsi, and in between these best and worst interpretations, examples of academic self-delusion and mutual flattery. We shall see Bhagwati’s opponent, Amartya Sen, has denied academic paternity of recent policies he has spawned while appearing to claim academic paternity of things he has not! Everyone may have reasonably expected greater self-knowledge, wisdom and scholarly values of such eminent academics. Their current spat has instead seemed to reveal something rather dismal and self-serving.
You can decide for yourself where the truth, ever such an elusive and fragile thing, happens to be and what is best done about it. Here is some evidence.
2. Rajiv Gandhi, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Milton Friedman & Myself
Professor Arvind Panagariya is evidently an American economics professor of Indian national origin who holds the Jagdish Bhagwati Chair of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University. I am afraid I had not known his name until he mentioned my name in Economic Times of 24 October 2001. He said
In mentioning the volume “edited by Subroto Roy and William E James”, Professor Panagariya did not appear to find the normal scientific civility to identify our work by name, date or publisher. So here that is now:
This was a book published in 1992 by the late Tejeshwar Singh for Sage. It resulted from the University of Hawaii Manoa perestroika-for-India project, that I and Ted James created and led between 1986 and 1992/93. (Yes, Hawaii — not Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia or even Penn, whose India-policy programs were Johnny-come-latelies a decade or more later…) There is a sister-volume too on Pakistan, created by a parallel project Ted and I had led at the same time (both now in pdf):
In 2004 from Britain, I wrote to the 9/11 Commission saying if our plan to study Afghanistan after India and Pakistan had not been thwarted by malign local forces among our sponsors themselves, we, a decade before the September 11 2001 attacks on the USA, may just have come up with a pre-emptive academic analysis. It was not to be.
Milton Friedman’s chapter that we published for the first time was a memorandum he wrote in November 1955 for the Government of India which the GoI had effectively suppressed. I came to know of it while a doctoral student at Cambridge under Frank Hahn, when at a conference at Oxford about 1979-1980, Peter Tamas Bauer sat me down beside him and told me the story. Later in Blacksburg about 1981, N. Georgescu-Roegen on a visit from Vanderbilt University told me the same thing. Specifically, Georgescu-Roegen told me that leading Indian academics had almost insulted Milton in public which Milton had borne gamely; that after Milton had given a talk in Delhi to VKRV Rao’s graduate-students, a talk Georgescu-Roegen had been present at, VKRV Rao had addressed the students and told them in all seriousness “You have heard what Professor Friedman has to say, if you repeat what he has said in your exams, you will fail”.
In 1981-1982 my doctoral thesis emerged, titled “On liberty & economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”,
My late great master in economic theory, Frank Hahn (1925-2013), found what I had written to be a “good thesis” bringing “a good knowledge of economics and of philosophy to bear on the literature on economic planning”, saying I had shown “a good knowledge of economic theory” and my “critique of Development Economics was powerful not only on methodological but also on economic theory grounds”.
I myself said about it decades later “My original doctoral topic in 1976 ‘A monetary theory for India’ had to be altered not only due to paucity of monetary data at the time but because the problems of India’s political economy and allocation of resources in the real economy were far more pressing. The thesis that emerged in 1982 … was a full frontal assault from the point of view of microeconomic theory on the “development planning” to which everyone routinely declared their fidelity, from New Delhi’s bureaucrats and Oxford’s “development” school to McNamara’s World Bank with its Indian staffers. Frank Hahn protected my inchoate liberal arguments for India; and when no internal examiner could be found, Cambridge showed its greatness by appointing two externals, Bliss at Oxford and Hutchison at Birmingham, both Cambridge men. “Economic Theory and Development Economics” was presented to the American Economic Association in December 1982 in company of Solow, Chenery, Streeten, and other eminences…” How I landed on that eminent AEA panel in December 1982 was because its convener Professor George Rosen of the University of Illinois recruited me overnight — as a replacement for Jagdish Bhagwati, who had had to return to India suddenly because of a parental death. The results were published in 1983 in World Development.
Soon afterwards, London’s Institute of Economic Affairs published Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India. This slim work (now in pdf) was the first classical liberal critique of post-Mahalonobis Indian economic thought since BR Shenoy’s original criticism decades earlier. It became the subject of The Times’ lead editorial on its day of publication 29 May 1984 — provoking the Indian High Commission in London to send copies to the Finance Ministry in Delhi where it apparently caused a stir, or so I was told years later by Amaresh Bagchi who was a recipient of it at the Ministry.
The Times had said
“When Mr. Dennis Healey in the Commons recently stated that Hongkong, with one per cent of the population of India has twice India’s trade, he was making an important point about Hongkong but an equally important point about India. If Hongkong with one per cent of its population and less than 0.03 per cert of India’s land area (without even water as a natural resource) can so outpace India, there must be something terribly wrong with the way Indian governments have managed their affairs, and there is. A paper by an Indian economist published today (Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India by Subroto Roy, IEA £1.80) shows how Asia’s largest democracy is gradually being stifled by the imposition of economic policies whose woeful effect and rhetorical unreality find their echo all over the Third World. As with many of Britain’s former imperial possessions, the rot set in long before independence. But as with most of the other former dependencies, the instrument of economic regulation and bureaucratic control set up by the British has been used decisively and expansively to consolidate a statist regime which inhibits free enterprise, minimizes economic success and consolidates the power of government in all spheres of the economy. We hear little of this side of things when India rattles the borrowing bowl or denigrates her creditors for want of further munificence. How could Indian officials explain their poor performance relative to Hongkong? Dr Roy has the answers for them. He lists the causes as a large and heavily subsidized public sector, labyrinthine control over private enterprise, forcibly depressed agricultural prices, massive import substitution, government monopoly of foreign exchange transactions, artificially overvalued currency and the extensive politicization of the labour market, not to mention the corruption which is an inevitable side effect of an economy which depends on the arbitrament of bureaucrats. The first Indian government under Nehru took its cue from Nehru’s admiration of the Soviet economy, which led him to believe that the only policy for India was socialism in which there would be “no private property except in a restricted sense and the replacement of the private profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service.” Consequently, the Indian government has now either a full monopoly or is one of a few oligipolists in banking, insurance, railways, airlines, cement, steel, chemicals, fertilizers, ship-building, breweries, telephones and wrist-watches. No businessman can expand his operation while there is any surplus capacity anywhere in that sector. He needs government approval to modernize, alter his price-structure, or change his labour shift. It is not surprising that a recent study of those developing countries which account for most manufactured exports from the Third World shows that India’s share fell from 65 percent in 1953 to 10 per cent in 1973; nor, with the numerous restrictions on inter-state movement of grains, that India has over the years suffered more from an inability to cope with famine than during the Raj when famine drill was centrally organized and skillfully executed without restriction. Nehru’s attraction for the Soviet model has been inherited by his daughter, Mrs. Gandhi. Her policies have clearly positioned India more towards the Soviet Union than the West. The consequences of this, as Dr Roy states, is that a bias can be seen in “the antipathy and pessimism towards market institutions found among the urban public, and sympathy and optimism to be found for collectivist or statist ones.” All that India has to show for it is the delivery of thousands of tanks in exchange for bartered goods, and the erection of steel mills and other heavy industry which help to perpetuate the unfortunate obsession with industrial performance at the expense of agricultural growth and the relief of rural poverty.”…..
I felt there were inaccuracies in this and so replied dated 4 June which The Times published on 16 June 1984:
Milton and I met for the first time in the Fall of 1984 at the Mont Pelerin Society meetings at Cambridge when I gave him a copy of the IEA monograph, which he came to think extremely well of. I told him I had heard of his 1955 document and asked him for it; he sent me the original blue/purple version of this soon thereafter.
[That original document was, incidentally, in my professorial office among all my books, papers, theses and other academic items including my gown when I was attacked in 2003 by a corrupt gang at IIT Kharagpur — all yet to be returned to me by IIT despite a High Court order during my present ongoing battle against corruption there over a USD 1.9 million scam !… Without having ever wished to, I have had to battle India’s notorious corruption first hand for a decade!]
I published Milton’s document for the first time on 21 May 1989 at the conference of the Hawaii project over the loud objection of assorted leftists…
Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Manmohan Singh or any of their acolytes will not be seen in this group photograph dated 21 May 1989 at the UH President’s House, because they were not there. The Government of India was represented by the Ambassador to Washington, PK Kaul, as well as the Consul General in San Francisco, KS Rana (later Ambassador to Germany), besides the founding head of ICRIER who had invited himself.
Manmohan Singh was not there as he precisely represented the Indian economic policy establishment I had been determined to reform! In any case, he had left India about 1987 on his last assignment before retirement, with Julius Nyerere of Tanzania relating to the “South-South Commission”.
I have said over more than a half dozen years now that there is no evidence whatsoever of Manmohan Singh having been a liberal economist in any sense of that word at any time before 1991, and scant evidence that he originated any liberal economic ideas since. The widespread worldwide notion that he is to be credited for originating a sudden transformation of India from a path of pseudo-socialism to one of pseudo-liberalism has been without basis in evidence — almost entirely a political fiction, though an explicable one and one which has served, as such political fictions do, the purposes of those who invent them.
Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen were in their mid 50s and were two of the three senior-most Indians in US academic economics at the time. I and Ted James, both in our 30s, decided to invite both Bhagwati and Sen to the Hawaii project-conference as distinguished guests but to do so somewhat insincerely late in the day, predicting they would decline, which is what they did, yet they had come to be formally informed of what we were doing. We had a very serious attitude that was inspired a bit, I might say, by Oppenheimer’s secret “Manhattan project” and we wanted neither press-publicity nor anyone to become the star who ended up hogging the microphone or the limelight.
Besides, and most important of all, neither Bhagwati nor Sen had done work in the areas we were centrally interested in, namely, India’s macroeconomic and foreign trade framework and fiscal and monetary policies.
Bhagwati, after his excellent 1970 work with Padma Desai for the OECD on Indian industry and trade, also co-authored with TN Srinivasan a fine 1975 volume for the NBER Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development: India.
TN Srinivasan was the third of the three senior-most Indian economists at the time in US academia; his work made us want to invite him as one of our main economic authors, and we charged him with writing the excellent chapter in Foundations that he came to do titled “Planning and Foreign Trade Reconsidered”.
The other main economist author we had hoped for was Sukhamoy Chakravarty from Delhi University and the Government of India’s Planning Commission, whom I had known since 1977 when I had been given his office at the Delhi School of Economics as a Visiting Assistant Professor while he was on sabbatical; despite my pleading he would not come due to ill health; he strongly recommended C Rangarajan, telling me Rangarajan had been the main author with him of the crucial 1985 RBI report on monetary policy; and he signed and gave me his last personal copy of that report dating it 14 July 1987. Rangarajan said he could not come and recommended the head of the NIPFP, Amaresh Bagchi, promising to write jointly with him the chapter on monetary policy and public finance.
Along with Milton Friedman’s suppressed 1955 memorandum which I was publishing for the first time in 1989, TN Srinivasan and Amaresh Bagchi authored the three main economic policy chapters that we felt we wanted.
Other chapters we commissioned had to do with the state of governance (James Manor), federalism (Bhagwan Dua), Punjab and similar problems (PR Brass), agriculture (K Subbarao, as proposed by CH Hanumantha Rao), health (Anil Deolalikar, through open advertisement), and a historical assessment of the roots of economic policy (BR Tomlinson, as proposed by Anil Seal). On the vital subject of education we failed to agree with the expert we wanted very much (JBG Tilak, as proposed by George Psacharopolous) and so we had to cover the subject cursorily in our introduction mentioning his work. And decades later, I apologised to Professor Dietmar Rothermund of Heidelberg University for having been so blinkered in the Anglo-American tradition at the time as to not having obtained his participation in the project.
[The sister-volume we commissioned in parallel on Pakistan’s political economy had among its authors Francis Robinson, Akbar Ahmed, Shirin Tahir-Kehli, Robert La Porte, Shahid Javed Burki, Mohsin Khan, Mahmood Hasan Khan, Naved Hamid, John Adams and Shahrukh Khan; this book came to be published in Pakistan in 1993 to good reviews but apparently was then lost by its publisher and is yet to be found; the military and religious clergy had been deliberately not invited by us though the name of Pervez Musharraf had I think arisen, and the military and religious clergy in fact came to rule the roost through the 1990s in Pakistan; the volume, two decades old, takes on fresh relevance with the new civilian governments of recent years.] [Postscript 27 November 2015: See my strident critique at Twitter of KM Kasuri, P Musharraf et al e.g. at https://independentindian.com/2011/11/22/pakistans-point-of-view-or-points-of-view-on-kashmir-my-as-yet-undelivered-lahore-lecture-part-i/ passing off ideas they have taken from this volume without acknowledgement, ideas which have in any case become defunct to their author, myself.]
Milton himself said this about his experience with me in his memoirs:
And Milton wrote on my behalf when I came to be attacked, being Indian, at the very University that had sponsored us:
My obituary notice at his passing in 2006 said: “My association with Milton has been the zenith of my engagement with academic economics…. I was a doctoral student of his bitter enemy yet for over two decades he not only treated me with unfailing courtesy and affection, he supported me in lonely righteous battles: doing for me what he said he had never done before, which was to stand as an expert witness in a United States Federal Court. I will miss him much though I know that he, as a man of reason, would not have wished me to….”
In August 1990 in Delhi I came to tell Siddhartha Shankar Ray about the unpublished India-manuscript resulting from the Hawaii project that was in my possession as it headed to its publisher.
Ray was a family-friend whose maternal grandfather CR Das led the Congress Party before MK Gandhi and had been a friend and colleague of my great grandfather SN Roy in Bengal’s politics in the 1920s; Ray had also consented to stand on my behalf as Senior Counsel in a matter in the Supreme Court of India.
Ray was involved in daily political parlays at his Delhi home with other Congress Party personages led by PV Narasimha Rao. These senior regional figures seemed to me to be keeping their national leader, Rajiv Gandhi, aloof in splendid isolation at 10 Jan Path.
Ray told me he and his wife had been in London in May 1984 on the day The Times had written its lead editorial on my work and they had seen it with excitement. Upon hearing of the Hawaii project and the manuscript I had with me, Ray immediately insisted of his own accord that I must meet Rajiv Gandhi, and that he would be arranging a meeting.
Hence it came to be a month later that a copy of the manuscript of the completed Hawaii project was be given by my hand on 18 September 1990 to Rajiv Gandhi, then Leader of the Opposition and Congress President, an encounter I have quite fully described elsewhere. I offered to get a copy to the PM, VP Singh, too but a key aide of his showed no interest in receiving it.
Rajiv made me a senior adviser, and I have claimed principal authorship of the 22 March 1991 draft of the Congress manifesto that actually shook and changed the political thinking of the Congress on economic matters in the direction Rajiv had desired and as I had advised him at our initial 18 September 1990 meeting.
“… He began by talking about how important he felt panchayati raj was, and said he had been on the verge of passing major legislation on it but then lost the election. He asked me if I could spend some time thinking about it, and that he would get the papers sent to me. I said I would and remarked panchayati raj might be seen as decentralized provision of public goods, and gave the economist’s definition of public goods as those essential for the functioning of the market economy, like the Rule of Law, roads, fresh water, and sanitation, but which were unlikely to appear through competitive forces.
I distinguished between federal, state and local levels and said many of the most significant public goods were best provided locally. Rajiv had not heard the term “public goods” before, and he beamed a smile and his eyes lit up as he voiced the words slowly, seeming to like the concept immensely. It occurred to me he had been by choice a pilot of commercial aircraft. Now he seemed intrigued to find there could be systematic ways of thinking about navigating a country’s governance by common pursuit of reasonable judgement. I said the public sector’s wastefulness had drained scarce resources that should have gone instead to provide public goods. Since the public sector was owned by the public, it could be privatised by giving away its shares to the public, preferably to panchayats of the poorest villages. The shares would become tradable, drawing out black money, and inducing a historic redistribution of wealth while at the same time achieving greater efficiency by transferring the public sector to private hands. Rajiv seemed to like that idea too, and said he tried to follow a maxim of Indira Gandhi’s that every policy should be seen in terms of how it affected the common man. I wryly said the common man often spent away his money on alcohol, to which he said at once it might be better to think of the common woman instead. (This remark of Rajiv’s may have influenced the “aam admi” slogan of the 2004 election, as all Congress Lok Sabha MPs of the previous Parliament came to receive a previous version of the present narrative.)
Our project had identified the Congress’s lack of internal elections as a problem; when I raised it, Rajiv spoke of how he, as Congress President, had been trying to tackle the issue of bogus electoral rolls. I said the judiciary seemed to be in a mess due to the backlog of cases; many of which seemed related to land or rent control, and it may be risky to move towards a free economy without a properly functioning judicial system or at least a viable system of contractual enforcement. I said a lot of problems which should be handled by the law in the courts in India were instead getting politicised and decided on the streets. Rajiv had seen the problems of the judiciary and said he had good relations with the Chief Justice’s office, which could be put to use to improve the working of the judiciary.
The project had worked on Pakistan as well, and I went on to say we should solve the problem with Pakistan in a definitive manner. Rajiv spoke of how close his government had been in 1988 to a mutual withdrawal from Siachen. But Zia-ul-Haq was then killed and it became more difficult to implement the same thing with Benazir Bhutto, because, he said, as a democrat, she was playing to anti-Indian sentiments while he had found it somewhat easier to deal with the military. I pressed him on the long-term future relationship between the countries and he agreed a common market was the only real long-term solution. I wondered if he could find himself in a position to make a bold move like offering to go to Pakistan and addressing their Parliament to break the impasse. He did not say anything but seemed to think about the idea. Rajiv mentioned a recent Time magazine cover of Indian naval potential, which had caused an excessive stir in Delhi. He then talked about his visit to China, which seemed to him an important step towards normalization. He said he had not seen (or been shown) any absolute poverty in China of the sort we have in India. He talked about the Gulf situation, saying he did not disagree with the embargo of Iraq except he wished the ships enforcing the embargo had been under the U.N. flag. The meeting seemed to go on and on, and I was embarrassed at perhaps having taken too much time and that he was being too polite to get me to go. V. George had interrupted with news that Sheila Dixit (as I recall) had just been arrested by the U. P. Government, and there were evidently people waiting. Just before we finally stood up I expressed a hope that he was looking to the future of India with an eye to a modern political and economic agenda for the next election, rather than getting bogged down with domestic political events of the moment. That was the kind of hopefulness that had attracted many of my generation in 1985. I said I would happily work in any way to help define a long-term agenda. His eyes lit up and as we shook hands to say goodbye, he said he would be in touch with me again…. The next day I was called and asked to stay in Delhi for a few days, as Mr. Gandhi wanted me to meet some people…..
… That night Krishna Rao dropped me at Tughlak Road where I used to stay with friends. In the car I told him, as he was a military man with heavy security cover for himself as a former Governor of J&K, that it seemed to me Rajiv’s security was being unprofessionally handled, that he was vulnerable to a professional assassin. Krishna Rao asked me if I had seen anything specific by way of vulnerability. With John Kennedy and De Gaulle in mind, I said I feared Rajiv was open to a long-distance sniper, especially when he was on his campaign trips around the country. This was one of several attempts I made since October 1990 to convey my clear impression to whomever I thought might have an effect that Rajiv seemed to me extremely vulnerable. Rajiv had been on sadhbhavana journeys, back and forth into and out of Delhi. I had heard he was fed up with his security apparatus, and I was not surprised given it seemed at the time rather bureaucratized. It would not have been appropriate for me to tell him directly that he seemed to me to be vulnerable, since I was a newcomer and a complete amateur about security issues, and besides if he agreed he might seem to himself to be cowardly or have to get even closer to his security apparatus. Instead I pressed the subject relentlessly with whomever I could. I suggested specifically two things: (a) that the system in place at Rajiv’s residence and on his itineraries be tested, preferably by some internationally recognized specialists in counter-terrorism; (b) that Rajiv be encouraged to announce a shadow-cabinet. The first would increase the cost of terrorism, the second would reduce the potential political benefit expected by terrorists out to kill him. On the former, it was pleaded that security was a matter being run by the V. P. Singh and then Chandrashekhar Governments at the time. On the latter, it was said that appointing a shadow cabinet might give the appointees the wrong idea, and lead to a challenge to Rajiv’s leadership. This seemed to me wrong, as there was nothing to fear from healthy internal contests for power so long as they were conducted in a structured democratic framework. I pressed to know how public Rajiv’s itinerary was when he travelled. I was told it was known to everyone and that was the only way it could be since Rajiv wanted to be close to the people waiting to see him and had been criticized for being too aloof. This seemed to me totally wrong and I suggested that if Rajiv wanted to be seen as meeting the crowds waiting for him then that should be done by planning to make random stops on the road that his entourage would take. This would at least add some confusion to the planning of potential terrorists out to kill him. When I pressed relentlessly, it was said I should probably speak to “Madame”, i.e. to Mrs. Rajiv Gandhi. That seemed to me highly inappropriate, as I could not be said to be known to her and I should not want to unduly concern her in the event it was I who was completely wrong in my assessment of the danger. The response that it was not in Congress’s hands, that it was the responsibility of the VP Singh and later the Chandrashekhar Governments, seemed to me completely irrelevant since Congress in its own interests had a grave responsibility to protect Rajiv Gandhi irrespective of what the Government’s security people were doing or not doing. Rajiv was at the apex of the power structure of the party, and a key symbol of secularism and progress for the entire country. Losing him would be quite irreparable to the party and the country. It shocked me that the assumption was not being made that there were almost certainly professional killers actively out to kill Rajiv Gandhi — this loving family man and hapless pilot of India’s ship of state who did not seem to have wished to make enemies among India’s terrorists but whom the fates had conspired to make a target. The most bizarre and frustrating response I got from several respondents was that I should not mention the matter at all as otherwise the threat would become enlarged and the prospect made more likely! This I later realized was a primitive superstitious response of the same sort as wearing amulets and believing in Ptolemaic astrological charts that assume the Sun goes around the Earth — centuries after Kepler and Copernicus. Perhaps the entry of scientific causality and rationality is where we must begin in the reform of India’s governance and economy. What was especially repugnant after Rajiv’s assassination was to hear it said by his enemies that it marked an end to “dynastic” politics in India. This struck me as being devoid of all sense because the unanswerable reason for protecting Rajiv Gandhi was that we in India, if we are to have any pretensions at all to being a civilized and open democratic society, cannot tolerate terrorism and assassination as means of political change. Either we are constitutional democrats willing to fight for the privileges of a liberal social order, or ours is truly a primitive and savage anarchy concealed beneath a veneer of fake Westernization….. Proceedings began when Rajiv arrived. This elite audience mobbed him just as the farmers had mobbed him earlier. He saw me and beamed a smile in recognition, and I smiled back but made no attempt to draw near him in the crush. He gave a short very apt speech on the role the United Nations might have in the new post-Gulf War world. Then he launched the book, and left for an investiture at Rashtrapati Bhavan. We waited for our meeting with him, which finally happened in the afternoon. Rajiv was plainly at the point of exhaustion and still hard-pressed for time. He seemed pleased to see me and apologized for not talking in the morning. Regarding the March 22 draft, he said he had not read it but that he would be doing so. He said he expected the central focus of the manifesto to be on economic reform, and an economic point of view in foreign policy, and in addition an emphasis on justice and the law courts. I remembered our September 18 conversation and had tried to put in justice and the courts into our draft but had been over-ruled by others. I now said the social returns of investment in the judiciary were high but was drowned out again. Rajiv was clearly agitated that day by the BJP and blurted out he did not really feel he understood what on earth they were on about. He said about his own family, “We’re not religious or anything like that, we don’t pray every day.” I felt again what I had felt before, that here was a tragic hero of India who had not really wished to be more than a happy family man until he reluctantly was made into a national leader against his will. We were with him for an hour or so. As we were leaving, he said quickly at the end of the meeting he wished to see me on my own and would be arranging a meeting. One of our group was staying back to ask him a favour. Just before we left, I managed to say to him what I felt was imperative: “The Iraq situation isn’t as it seems, it’s a lot deeper than it’s been made out to be.” He looked at me with a serious look and said “Yes I know, I know.” It was decided Pitroda would be in touch with each of us in the next 24 hours. During this time Narasimha Rao’s manifesto committee would read the draft and any questions they had would be sent to us. We were supposed to be on call for 24 hours. The call never came. Given the near total lack of system and organization I had seen over the months, I was not surprised. Krishna Rao and I waited another 48 hours, and then each of us left Delhi. Before going I dropped by to see Krishnamurty, and we talked at length. He talked especially about the lack of the idea of teamwork in India. Krishnamurty said he had read everything I had written for the group and learned a lot. I said that managing the economic reform would be a critical job and the difference between success and failure was thin….”
“… I got the afternoon train to Calcutta and before long left for America to bring my son home for his summer holidays with me. In Singapore, the news suddenly said Rajiv Gandhi had been killed. All India wept. What killed him was not merely a singular act of criminal terrorism, but the system of humbug, incompetence and sycophancy that surrounds politics in India and elsewhere. I was numbed by rage and sorrow, and did not return to Delhi….”
In December 1991, I visited Rajiv’s widow at 10 Jan Path to express my condolences, the only time I have met her, and I gave her for her records a taped copy of Rajiv’s long-distance telephone conversations with me during the Gulf War earlier that year. She seemed an extremely shy taciturn figure in deep mourning, and I do not think the little I said to her about her late husband’s relationship with me was comprehended. Nor was it the time or place for more to be said.
In September 1993, at a special luncheon at the Indian Ambassador’s Residence in Washington, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, then the Ambassador to Washington, pointed at me and declared to Manmohan Singh, then Finance Minister, in presence of Manmohan’s key aides accompanying him including MS Ahluwalia, NK Singh, C Rangarajan and others,
“Congress manifesto was written on his computer”.
This was accurate enough to the extent that the 22 March 1991 draft as asked for by Rajiv and that came to explicitly affect policy had been and remains on my then-new NEC laptop.
At the Ambassador’s luncheon, I gave Manmohan Singh a copy of the Foundations book as a gift. My father who knew him in the early 1970s through MG Kaul, ICS, had sent him a copy of my 1984 IEA monograph which Manmohan had acknowledged. And back in 1973, he had visited our then-home at 14 Rue Eugene Manuel in Paris to advise me about economics at my father’s request, and he and I had ended up in a fierce private debate for about forty minutes over the demerits (as I saw them) and merits (as he saw them) of the Soviet influence on Indian economic policy-making. But in 1993 we had both forgotten the 1973 meeting.
In May 2002, the Congress passed an official party resolution moved by Digvijay Singh in presence of PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh that the 1991 reforms had originated with Rajiv Gandhi and not with either Narasimha Rao or Manmohan; no one dissented. It was intended to flatter Sonia Gandhi as the Congress President, but there was truth in it too which all Congress MPs of the 13th Lok Sabha had come to know in a publication of mine they had received from me at IIT Kharagpur where since 1996 I had become Professor.
Manmohan Singh himself, to his credit, has not at any point, except once during his failed Lok Sabha bid, claimed the reforms as his own invention and has said always he had followed what his Prime Minister had told him. However, he has not been averse to being attributed with all the credit by his flatterers, by the media, by businessmen and many many others around the world, and certainly he did not respond to Ambassador Siddhartha Shankar Ray telling him and his key aides how the Congress-led reform had come about through my work except to tell me at the 1993 luncheon that when Arjun Singh criticised the reforms in Cabinet, he, Manmohan, would mention the manifesto.
On 28 December 2009, Rajiv’s widow in an official Congress Party statement finally declared her late husband
“left his personal imprint on the (Congress) party’s manifesto of 1991.″
How Sonia Gandhi, who has never had pretensions to knowledge of economics or political economy or political science or governance or history, came to place Manmohan Singh as her prime ministerial candidate and the font of economic and political wisdom along with Pranab Mukherjee, when both men hardly had been favourites of her late husband, would be a story in its own right. And how Amartya Sen’s European-origin naturalised Indian co-author Jean Drèze later came to have policy influence from a different direction upon Sonia Gandhi, also a naturalised Indian of European origin, may be yet another story in its own right, perhaps best told by themselves.
I would surmise the same elderly behind-the-scenes figure, now in his late 80s, had a hand in setting up both sets of influences — directly in the first case (from back in 1990-1991), and indirectly in the second case (starting in 2004) . This was a man who in a November 2007 newspaper article literally erased my name and inserted that of Manmohan Singh as part of the group that Rajiv created on 25 September following his 18 September meeting with me! Reluctantly, I had to call this very elderly man a liar; he has not denied it and knows he has not been libeled.
One should never forget the two traditional powers interested in the subcontinent, Russia and Britain, have been never far from influence in Delhi. In 1990-1991 what worried vested bureaucratic and business interests and foreign powers through their friends and agents was that they could see change was coming to India but they wanted to be able to control it themselves to their advantage, which they then broadly proceeded to do over the next two decades. The foreign weapons’ contracts had to be preserved, as did other big-ticket imports that India ends up buying needlessly on credit it hardly has in world markets. There are similarities to what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe where many apparatchiks and fellow-travellers became freedom-loving liberals overnight; in the Indian case more than one badly compromised pro-USSR senior bureaucrat promptly exported his children and savings to America and wrapped themselves in the American flag.
The stubborn unalterable fact remains that Manmohan Singh was not physically present in India and was still with the Nyerere project on 18 September 1990 when I met Rajiv for the first time and gave him the unpublished results of the UH-Manoa project. This simple straightforward fact is something the Congress Party, given its own myths and self-deception and disinformation, has not been able to cope with in its recently published history. For myself, I have remained loyal to my memory of my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, and my understanding of him. The Rajiv Gandhi I knew had been enthused by me in 1990-1991 carrying the UH-Manoa perestroika-for-India project that I had led since 1986, and he had loved my advice to him on 18 September 1990 that he needed to modernise the party by preparing a coherent agenda (as other successful reformers had done) while still in Opposition waiting for elections, and to base that agenda on commitments to improving the judiciary and rule of law, stopping the debauching of money, and focusing on the provision of public goods instead. Rajiv I am sure wanted a modern and modern-minded Congress — not one which depended on him let aside his family, but one which reduced that dependence and let him and his family alone.
As for Manmohan Singh being a liberal or liberalising economist, there is no evidence publicly available of that being so from his years before or during the Nyerere project, or after he returned and joined the Chandrashekhar PMO and the UGC until becoming, to his own surprise as he told Mark Tully, PV Narasimha Rao’s Finance Minister. Some of his actions qua Finance Minister were liberalising in nature but he did not originate any basic idea of a change in a liberal direction of economic policy, and he has, with utmost honesty honestly, not claimed otherwise. Innumerable flatterers and other self-interested parties have made out differently, creating what they have found to be a politically useful fiction; he has yet to deny them.
Siddhartha Shankar Ray and I met last in July 2009, when I gave him a copy of this 2005 volume I had created, which pleased him much.
I said to him Bengal’s public finances were in abysmal condition, calling for emergency measures financially, and that Mamata Banerjee seemed to me to be someone who knew how to and would dislodge the Communists from their entrenched misgovernance of decades but she did not seem quite aware that dislodging a bad government politically was not the same thing as knowing how to govern properly oneself. He, again of his own accord, said immediately,
“I will call her and her people to a meeting here so you can meet them and tell them that directly”.
It never transpired. In our last phone conversation I mentioned to him my plans of creating a Public Policy Institute — an idea he immediately and fully endorsed as being essential though adding “I can’t be part of it, I’m on my way out”.
“I’m on my way out”. That was Siddhartha Shankar Ray — always intelligent, always good-humoured, always public-spirited, always a great Indian, my only friend among politicians other than the late Rajiv Gandhi himself.
In March February 2010, my father and I called upon the new Bengal Governor, MK Narayanan and gave him a copy of the Thatcher volume for the Raj Bhavan Library; I told him the story about my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi thanks to Siddhartha Shankar Ray and its result; Narayanan within a few days made a visit to Ray’s hospital-bed, and when he emerged after several hours he made a statement, which in substance he repeated again when Ray died in November 2010:
“There are few people in post-Independence India who could equal his magnificent contribution to India’s growth and progress”.
To what facts did MK Narayanan, a former Intelligence Bureau chief, mean to refer with this extravagant praise of Ray? Was Narayanan referring to Ray’s politics for Indira Gandhi? To Ray’s Chief Ministership of Bengal? To Ray’s Governorship of Punjab? You will have to ask him but I doubt that was what he meant: I surmise Narayanan’s eulogy could only have resulted after he confirmed with Ray on his hospital-bed the story I had told him, and that he was referring to the economic and political results that followed for the country once Ray had introduced me in September 1990 to Rajiv Gandhi. But I say again, you will have to ask MK Narayanan himself what he and Ray talked about in hospital and what was the factual basis of Narayanan’s precise words of praise. To what facts exactly was MK Narayanan, former intelligence chief, meaning to refer when he stated Siddhartha Shankar Ray had made a “magnificent contribution to India’s growth and progress”?
3. Jagdish Bhagwati & Manmohan Singh? That just don’t fly!
Now returning to the apparent desire of Professor Panagariya, the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia, to attribute to Jagdish Bhagwati momentous change for the better in India as of 1991, even if Panagariya had not the scientific curiosity to look into our 1992 book titled Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s or into Milton Friedman’s own 1998 memoirs, we may have expected him to at least turn to his co-author and Columbia colleague, Jagdish Bhagwati himself, and ask, “Master, have you heard of this fellow Subroto Roy by any chance?”
Jagdish would have had to say yes, since not only had he received a copy of the proofs of my 1984 IEA work Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India, he was kind enough to write in a letter dated 15 May 1984 that I had
“done an excellent job of setting out the problems afflicting our economic policies, unfortunately government-made problems!”
Also Jagdish may or may not have remembered our only meeting, when he and I had had a long conversation on the sofas in the foyer of the IMF in Washington when I was a consultant there in 1993 and he had come to meet someone; he was surprisingly knowledgeable about my personal 1990 matter in the Supreme Court of India which astonished me until he told me his brother the Supreme Court judge had mentioned the case to him!
Now my 1984 work was amply scientific and scholarly in fully crediting a large number of works in the necessary bibliography, including Bhagwati’s important work with his co-authors. Specifically, Footnote 1 listed the literature saying:
“The early studies notably include: B. R. Shenoy, `A note of dissent’, Papers relating to the formulation of the Second Five-Year Plan, Government of India Planning Commission, Delhi, 1955; Indian Planning and Economic Development, Asia Publishing, Bombay, 1963, especially pp. 17-53; P. T. Bauer, Indian Economic Policy and Development, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1961; M. Friedman, unpublished memorandum to the Government of India, November 1955 (referred to in Bauer, op. cit., p. 59 ff.); and, some years later, Sudha Shenoy, India : Progress or Poverty?, Research Monograph 27, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1971. Some of the most relevant contemporary studies are: B. Balassa, `Reforming the system of incentives in World Development, 3 (1975), pp. 365-82; `Export incentives and export performance in developing countries: a comparative analysis’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 114 (1978), pp. 24-61; The process of industrial development and alternative development strategies, Essays in International Finance No. 141, Princeton University, 1980; J. N. Bhagwati & P. Desai, India: Planning for Industrialisation, OECD, Paris : Oxford University Press, 1970; `Socialism and Indian Economic Policy’, World Development, 3 (1975), pp. 213-21; J. N. Bhagwati & T. N. Srinivasan, Foreign-trade Regimes and Economic Development: India, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 1975; Anne O. Krueger, `Indian planning experience’, in T. Morgan et al. (eds.), Readings in Economic Development, Wadsworth, California, 1963, pp. 403-20; `The political economy of the rent-seeking society, American Economic Review, 64 (June 1974); The Benefits and Costs of Import-Substitution in India: a Microeconomic Study, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1975; Growth, distortions and patterns of trade among many countries, Studies in International Finance, Princeton University, 1977; Uma Lele, Food grain marketing in India : private performance and public policy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1971; T. W. Schultz (ed.), Distortions in agricultural incentives, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1978; V. Sukhatme, “The utilization of high-yielding rice and wheat varieties in India: an economic assessment”, University of Chicago PhD thesis, 1977….”
There were two specific references to Bhagwati’s work with Srinivasan:
“Jagdish Bhagwati and T. N. Srinivasan put it as follows : `The allocation of foreign exchange among alternative claimants and users in a direct control system . . .would presumably be with reference to a well-defined set of principles and criteria based on a system of priorities. In point of fact, however, there seem to have been few such criteria, if any, followed in practice.’”
and
“But as Bhagwati and Srinivasan report, `. . . the sheer weight of numbers made any meaningful listing of priorities extremely difficult. The problem was Orwellian: all industries had priority and how was each sponsoring authority to argue that some industries had more priority than others? It is not surprising, therefore, that the agencies involved in determining allocations by industry fell back on vague notions of “fairness”, implying pro rata allocations with reference to capacity installed or employment, or shares defined by past import allocations or similar rules of thumb’”
and one to Bhagwati and Desai:
“The best descriptions of Indian industrial policy are still to be found in Bhagwati and Desai (1970)…”
Professors Bhagwati and Panagriya have not apparently referred to anything beyond these joint works of Bhagwati’s dated 1970 with Padma Desai and 1975 with TN Srinivasan. They have not claimed Bhagwati did anything by way of either publication or political activity in relation to India’s economic policy between May 1984, when he read my soon-to-be-published-work and found I had
“done an excellent job of setting out the problems afflicting our economic policies, unfortunately government-made problems”,
and September 1990 when I gave Rajiv the University of Hawaii perestroika-for-India project results developed since 1986, which came to politically spark the 1991 reform in the Congress’s highest echelons from months before Rajiv’s assassination.
There may have been no such claim made by Bhagwati and Panagariya because there may be no such evidence. Between 1984 and 1990, Professor Bhagwati’s research interests were away from Indian economic policy while his work on India through 1970 and 1975 had been fully and reasonably accounted for as of 1984 by myself.
What is left remaining is Bhagwati’s statement :
“When finance minister Manmohan Singh was in New York in 1992, he had a lunch for many big CEOs whom he was trying to seduce to come to India. He also invited me and my wife, Padma Desai, to the lunch. As we came in, the FM introduced us to the invitees and said: ‘These friends of mine wrote almost a quarter century ago [India: Planning for Industrialisation was published in 1970 by Oxford] recommending all the reforms we are now undertaking. If we had accepted the advice then, we would not be having this lunch as you would already be in India’
Now this light self-deprecating reference by Manmohan at an investors’ lunch in New York “for many big CEOs” was an evident attempt at political humour written by his speech-writer. It was clearly, on its face, not serious history. If we test it as serious history, it falls flat so we may only hope Manmohan Singh, unlike Jagdish Bhagwati, has not himself come to believe his own reported joke as anything more than that.
The Bhagwati-Desai volume being referred to was developed from 1966-1970. India saw critical economic and political events in 1969, in 1970, in 1971, in 1972, in 1975, in 1977, etc.
Those were precisely years during which Manmohan Singh himself moved from being an academic to becoming a Government of India official, working first for MG Kaul, ICS, and then in 1971 coming to the attention of PN Haksar, Indira Gandhi’s most powerful bureaucrat between 1967 and 1974: Haksar himself was Manmohan Singh’s acknowledged mentor in the Government, as Manmohan told Mark Tully in an interview.
After Manmohan visited our Paris home in 1973 to talk to me about economics, my father — who had been himself sent to the Paris Embassy by Haksar in preparation for Indira Gandhi’s visit in November 1971 before the Bangladesh war —
had told me Manmohan was very highly regarded in government circles with economics degrees from both Cambridge and Oxford, and my father had added, to my surprise, what was probably a Haksarian governmental view that Manmohan was expected to be India’s Prime Minister some day. That was 1973.
PN Haksar had been the archetypal Nehruvian Delhi intellectual of a certain era, being both a fierce nationalist and a fierce pro-USSR leftist from long before Independence. I met him once on 23 March 1991, on the lawns of 10 Jan Path at the launch of General V Krishna Rao’s book on Indian defence which Rajiv was releasing, and Haksar gave a speech to introduce Rajiv (as if Rajiv needed introduction on the lawns of his own residence); Haksar was in poor health but he seemed completely delighted to be back in favour with Rajiv, after years of having been treated badly by Indira and her younger son.
Had Manmohan Singh in the early 1970s gone to Haksar — the architect of the nationalisation of India’s banking going on right then — and said “Sir, this OECD study by my friend Bhagwati and his wife says we should be liberalising foreign trade and domestic industry”, Haksar would have been astonished and sent him packing.
There was a war on, plus a massive problem of 10 million refugees, a new country to support called Bangladesh, a railway strike, a bad crop, repressed inflation, shortages, and heaven knows what more, besides Nixon having backed Yahya Khan, Tikka Khan et al.
Then after Bangladesh and the railway strike etc, came the rise of the politically odious younger son of Indira Gandhi and his friends (at least one of whom is today Sonia Gandhi’s gatekeeper) followed by the internal political Emergency, the grave foreign-fueled problem of Sikh separatism and its control, the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh bodyguards, and the Rajiv Gandhi years as Prime Minister.
Certainly it was Rajiv’s arrival in office and Benazir’s initial return to Pakistan, along with the rise of Michael Gorbachev in the changing USSR, that inspired me in far away Hawaii in 1986 to design with Ted James the perestroika-projects for India and Pakistan which led to our two volumes, and which, thanks to Siddhartha Shankar Ray, came to reach Rajiv Gandhi in Opposition in September 1990 as he sat somewhat forlornly at 10 Jan Path after losing office. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune….
My friend and collaborator Ted James died of cancer in Manila in May 2010; earlier that year he came to say publicly
“Seldom are significant reforms imposed successfully by international bureaucracies. Most often they are the result of indigenous actors motivated by domestic imperatives. I believe this was the case in India in 1991. It may have been fortuitous that Dr. Roy gained an audience with a receptive Rajiv Gandhi in 1990 but it was not luck that he was prepared with a well-thought out program; this arose from years of careful thought and debate on the matter.”
Changing the direction of a ship of state is very hard, knowing in which direction it should change and to what degree is even harder; it has rarely been something that can be done without random shocks arising let aside the power of vested interests. Had Rajiv Gandhi lived to form a new Government, I have little doubt I would have led the reform that I had chalked out for him and that he had approved of; Sonia Gandhi would have remained the housewife, mother and grandmother that she had preferred to be and not been made into the Queen of India by the Congress Party; Manmohan Singh had left India in 1987 for the Nyerere project and it had been rumoured at the time that had been slightly to do with him protesting, to the extent that he ever has protested anything, the anti-Sikh pogrom that some of Rajiv’s friends had apparently unleashed after Indira’s killing; he returned in November 1990, joined Chandrashekhar in December 1990, left Chandrashekhar in March 1991 when elections were announced and was biding his time as head of the UGC; had Rajiv Gandhi lived, Manmohan Singh would have had a governor’s career path, becoming the governor of one state after another; he would not have been brought into the economic reform process which he had had nothing to do with originating; and finally Pranab Mukherjee, who left the Congress Party and formed his own when Rajiv took over, would have been likely rehabilitated slowly but would not have come to control the working of the party as he did. I said in my Lok Sabha TV interview on 5 9 December 2012 that there have been many microeconomic improvements arising from technological progress in the last 22 years but the macroeconomic and monetary situation is grim, because at root the fiscal situation remains incoherent and confused. I do not see anyone in Manmohan Singh’s entourage among all his many acolytes and flatterers and apologists who is able to get to these root problems. We shall address these issues in Part II.
What Manmohan Singh said in self-deprecating humour at an investors’ lunch in New York in 1992 is hardly serious history as Jagdish Bhagwati has seemed to wish it to be. Besides, it would have been unlike Manmohan, being the devoted student of Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor as he told Mark Tully, to have taken such a liberalising initiative at all. Furthermore, the 1969 American Economic Review published asurvey of Indian economic policy authored by his Delhi University colleagues Jagdish Bhagwati and Sukhamoy Chakravarty which made little mention of his work, and it would have been unreasonable to expect him to have been won over greatly by theirs. Perhaps there is a generous review from the 1970s by Manmohan Singh of the Bhagwati-Desai volume hidden somewhere but if so we should be told where it is. A list of Manmohan Singh’s publications as an economist do not seem easily available anywhere.
Lastly and perhaps most decisively, the 1970 Bhagwati-Desai volume, excellent study that it was, was hardly the first of its genre by way of liberal criticism of modern Indian economic policy! Bhagwati declared in his 2010 speech to the Lok Sabha
“This policy framework had been questioned, and its total overhaul advocated, by me and Padma Desai in writings through the late 1960s…”
But why has Bhagwati been forever silent about the equally if not more forceful and fundamental criticism of “the policy framework”, and advocacy of its “total overhaul”, by scholars in the 1950s, a decade and more earlier than him, when he and Manmohan and Amartya were still students? Specifically, by BR Shenoy, Milton Friedman, and Peter Bauer? The relevant bibliography from the mid 1950s is given in Footnote 1 of my 1984 work.
Peter Tamas Bauer (1915-2002) played a vital role in all this as had he himself not brought the Friedman 1955 document to my attention I would not have known of it.
As undergraduates at the LSE, we had been petrified of him and I never spoke to him while there, having believed the propaganda that floated around about him; then while a Research Student at Cambridge, I happened to be a speaker with him at a conference at Oxford; he made me sit next to him at a meal and told me for the first time about Milton Friedman’s 1955 memorandum to the Government of India which had been suppressed. I am privileged to say Peter from then on became a friend, and wrote, at my request, what became I am sure the kiss of death for me at the World Bank of 1982:
Later he may have been responsible for the London Times writing its lead editorial of 29 May 1984 on my work.
Now Milton had sent me in 1984, besides the original of his November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India, a confidential 1956 document also which seemed to have been written for US Government consumption. I did not publish this in Hawaii in 1989 as I was having difficulty enough publishing the 1955 memorandum. I gave it to be published on the Internet some years ago, and after Milton’s passing, I had it published in The Statesman on the same day as my obituary of him.
It makes fascinating reading, especially about Mahalanobis and Shenoy, of how what Bhagwati wishes to call “the policy framework” that, he claims, he and Desai called for a “total overhaul” of, came to be what it was in the decade earlier when he and Amartya and Manmohan were still students.
Friedman’s 1956 document said
“I met PC Mahalanobis in 1946 and again at a meeting of the International Statistical Institute in September 1947, and I know him well by reputation. He was absent during most of my stay in New Delhi, but I met him at a meeting of the Indian Planning Commission, of which he is one of the strongest and most able members. Mahalanobis began as a mathematician and is a very able one. Able mathematicians are usually recognized for their ability at a relatively early age. Realizing their own ability as they do and working in a field of absolutes, tends, in my opinion, to make them dangerous when they apply themselves to economic planning. They produce specific and detailed plans in which they have confidence, without perhaps realizing that economic planning is not the absolute science that mathematics is. This general characteristic of mathematicians is true of Mahalanobis but in spite of the tendency he is willing to discuss a problem and listen to a different point of view. Once his decision is reached, however, he has great confidence in it. Mahalanobis was unquestionably extremely influential in drafting the Indian five-year plan. There were four key steps in the plan. The first was the so-called “Plan Frame” drafted by Mahalanobis himself. The second was a tentative plan based on the “Plan Frame”. The third step was a report by a committee of economists on the first two steps, and the fourth was a minority report by BR Shenoy on the economists’ report. The economists had no intention of drafting a definitive proposal but merely meant to comment on certain aspects of the first two steps. Shenoy’s minority report, however, had the effect of making the economists’ report official. The scheme of the Five Year Plan attributed to Mahalanobis faces two problems; one, that India needs heavy industry for economic development; and two, that development of heavy industry uses up large amounts of capital while providing only small employment. Based on these facts, Mahalanobis proposed to concentrate on heavy industry development on the one hand and to subsidize the hand production cottage industries on the other. The latter course would discriminate against the smaller manufacturers. In my opinion, the plan wastes both capital and labour and the Indians get only the worst of both efforts. If left to their own devices under a free enterprise system I believe the Indians would gravitate naturally towards the production of such items as bicycles, sewing machines, and radios. This trend is already apparent without any subsidy. The Indian cottage industry is already cloaked in the same popular sort of mist as is rural life in the US. There is an idea in both places that this life is typical and the backbone of their respective countries. Politically, the Indian cottage industry problem is akin to the American farm problem. Mohandas Gandhi was a proponent of strengthening the cottage industry as a weapon against the British. This reason is now gone but the emotions engendered by Gandhi remain. Any move to strengthen the cottage industry has great political appeal and thus, Mahalanobis’ plan and its pseudo-scientific support for the industry also has great political appeal. I found many supporters for the heavy industry phase of the Plan but almost no one (among the technical Civil Servants) who really believes in the cottage industry aspects, aside from their political appeal. In its initial form, the plan was very large and ambitious with optimistic estimates. My impression is that there is a substantial trend away from this approach, however, and an attempt to cut down. The development of heavy industry has slowed except for steel and iron. I believe that the proposed development of a synthetic petroleum plant has been dropped and probably wisely so. In addition, I believe that the proposed five year plan may be extended to six years. Other than his work on the plan, I am uncertain of Mahalanobis’ influence. The gossip is that he has Nehru’s ear and potentially he could be very influential, simply because of his intellectual ability and powers of persuasion. The question that occurs to me is how much difference Mahalanobis’ plan makes. The plan does not seem the important thing to me. I believe that the new drive and enthusiasm of the Indian nation will surmount any plan, good or bad. Then too, I feel a wide diversity in what is said and what is done. I believe that much of Nehru’s socialistic talk is simply that, just talk. Nehru has been trying to undermine the Socialist Party by this means and apparently the Congress Party’s adoption of a socialistic idea for industry has been successful in this respect. One gets the impression, depending on whom one talks with, either that the Government runs business, or that two or three large businesses run the government. All that appears publicly indicates that the first is true, but a case can also be made for the latter interpretation. Favour and harassment are counterparts in the Indian economic scheme. There is no significant impairment of the willingness of Indian capitalists to invest in their industries, except in the specific industries where nationalization has been announced, but they are not always willing to invest and take the risks inherent in the free enterprise system. They want the Government to support their investment and when it refuses they back out and cry “Socialism”..”
I look forward to seeing a fundamental classical liberal critique from India’s distinguished American friends at Columbia University, Professors Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai and Arvind Panagariya, if and when such a critique arises, of the “policy framework” in India as that evolved from the mid 1950s to become what exists across India in 2013 today. Specifically: Where is the criticism from Bhagwati of Mahalanobis and friends? And where is Bhagwati’s defence of Shenoy, leave aside of Milton Friedman or Peter Bauer? They seem not to exist. The most we get is a footnote again without the civility of any references, in the otherwise cogent 1975 Desai-Bhagwati paper “Socialism and Indian Economic Policy” alleging
” Of these three types of impact of the Soviet example, the Plan-formulation approach was to be enthusiastically received by most commentators and, indeed, to lead to demands on the part of aid agencies for similar efforts by other developing countries. However, the shift to heavy industry was seen as a definite mistake by economic opinion of the Chicago school variety, reflecting their basic unfamiliarity with the structural models of growth and development planning of the Feldman-Mahalanobis variety-an ignorance which probably still persists. The detailed regulation was not quite noticed at the time, except by conservative commentators whose position however was extreme and precluded governmental planning of industrial investments on any scale.”
Desai and Bhagwati naturally found no apparent desire to locate any possible scientific truth or reasonableness among
“conservative commentators”
nor among the unnamed and undescribed
“economic opinion of the Chicago school variety”.
Could Desai and Bhagwati have done anything different after all, even when talking about India to an American audience, without being at risk of losing their East Coast Limousine Liberal credentials? Bhagwati used to routinely declare his “socialist” credentials, and even the other day on Indian TV emphatically declared he was not a “conservative” and scornfully dismissed “Thatcher and Reagan” for their “trickle down economics”…
Jagdish Bhagwati has evidently wanted to have his cake and eat it too…
4. Amartya Sen’s Half-Baked Communism: “To each according to his need”?
If I have been candid or harsh in my assessments of Jagdish Bhagwati and Manmohan Singh as they relate to my personal experience with the change of direction in Indian economic policy originating in 1990-1991, I am afraid I must be equally so with Bhagwati’s current opponent in debate, Amartya Sen. Certainly I have found the current spat between Bhagwati and Sen over India’s political economy to be dismal, unscholarly, unscientific and misleading (or off-base) except for it having allowed a burst of domestic policy-discussion in circumstances when India needs it especially much.
None of this criticism is personal but based on objective experience and the record. My criticism of Professor Bhagwati and Dr Manmohan Singh does not diminish in the slightest my high personal regard for both of them.
Similarly, Amartya Sen and I go back, momentarily, to Hindustan Park in 1964 when there was a faint connection as family friends from World War II (as Naren Deb and Manindranath Roy were friends and neighbours, and we still have the signed copy of a book gifted by the former to the latter), and then he later knew me cursorily when I was an undergraduate at LSE and he was already a famous professor, and I greatly enjoyed his excellent lectures at the LSE on his fine book On Economic Inequality, and a few years later he wrote in tangential support of me at Cambridge for which he was thanked in the preface to my 1989 Philosophy of Economics — even though that book of mine also contained in its Chapter 10 the decisive criticism of his main contribution until that time to what used to be called “social choice theory”. Amartya Sen had also written some splendid handwritten letters, a few pages of which remain with me, which puzzled me at the time due to his expressing his aversion to what is normally called ‘price theory’, namely the Marshallian and/or Walrasian theory of value.
Professor Sen and I met briefly in 1978, and then again in 2006 when I was asked to talk to him in our philosophical conversation which came to be published nicely. In 2006 I told him of my experience with Rajiv Gandhi in initiating what became the 1991 reform on the basis of my giving Rajiv the results of the Hawaii project, and Amartya was kind enough to say that he knew I had been arguing all this “very early on”, referring presumably to the 1984 London Times editorial which he would have seen in his Oxford days before coming to Harvard.
This personal regard on my part or personal affection on his part aside, I have been appalled to find Professor Sen not taking moral and intellectual responsibility for and instead disclaiming paternity of the whole so-called “Food Security” policy which Sonia Gandhi has been prevailed upon over the years by him and his acolytes and friends and admirers to adopt, and she in her ignorance of all political economy and governance has now wished to impose upon the Congress Party and India as a whole:
“Questioner: You are being called the creator of the Food Security Bill.
Amartya Sen: Yes, I don’t know why. That is indeed a paternity suit I’m currently fighting. People are accusing me of being the father”.
Amartya Sen has repeatedly over the years gone on Indian prime-time television and declared things like
“If you don’t agree there’s hunger in the world, there’s something morally wrong with you”
besides over the decades publishing titles like Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Hunger and Public Action, The Political Economy of Hunger etc and ceaselessly using his immense power with the media, with book publishing houses, with US academic departments and the world development economics business, to promote his own and his acolytes’ opinions around the world, no matter how ill-considered or incoherent these may be. A passage from his latest book with Jean Drèze reportedly reads
“If development is about the expansion of freedom, it has to embrace the removal of poverty as well as paying attention to ecology as integral parts of a unified concern, aimed ultimately at the security and advancement of human freedom. Indeed, important components of human freedoms — and crucial ingredients of our quality of life — are thoroughly dependent on the integrity of the environment, involving the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the epidemiological surroundings in which we live….”
Had such a passage reached me in an undergraduate essay, I would have considered it incoherent waffle, and I am afraid I cannot see why merely because it is authored by an eminence at Harvard and his co-author, the evaluation should be any different. I am reminded of my encounter in 1976 with Joan Robinson, the great tutor in 1950s Cambridge of Amartya and Manmohan: “Joan Robinson cornered me once and took me into the office she shared with EAG… She came at me for an hour or so wishing to supervise me, I kept declining politely… saying I was with Frank Hahn and wished to work on money… “What does Frankie know about India?” she said… I said I did not know but he did know about monetary theory and that was what I needed for India; I also said I did not think much about the Indian Marxists she had supervised… and mentioned a prominent name… she said about him, “Yes most of what he does can go straight into the dustbin”…” The Indian Marxist whom I had referred to in this conversation with Joan was not Amartya but someone else much younger, yet her candid “can go straight into the dustbin” still applies to all incoherent waffle, whomsoever may produce it.
Indeed, Amartya Sen, if anyone, really should get down to writing his memoirs, and candidly so in order to explain his own thinking and deeds over the decades to himself and to the world in order that needless confusions do not arise.
Else it becomes impossible to explain how someone who was said to be proud to have been a Communist student on the run from the police in West Bengal, who was Joan Robinson’s star pupil at a time she was extolling Maoist China and who has seemingly nurtured a deep lifelong fascination and affection for Communist China despite all its misdeeds, who was feted by the Communist regime of West Bengal after winning the Bank of Sweden Prize (on the same day that same regime had tossed into jail one unfortunate young Mr Khemkha merely for having been rude to its leaders on the Internet), and who seemed to share some of those winnings on social causes like primary education at the behest of the Communist regime’s ministers, etc, how someone with that noble comradely leftist personal history as an economist allows a flattering interviewer with a Harvard connection to describe him in Business Standard of 25 July 2013 as having been all along really a
“neoclassical economist”
who also happens to be
“the greatest living scholar of the original philosopher of the free market, Adam Smith”!
Amartya Sen a neoclassical economist and a great scholar of Adam Smith? It is hilarious to suppose so. The question arises, Does Sen, having published about Adam Smith recently in a few newspapers and leftist periodicals, agree with such a description by his flattering admirer from Harvard at Business Standard? “Neoclassical” economics originated with men like Jevons, Menger, Walras, Pareto, Marshall, Wicksell, and was marked by the theory of value being explained by a demand-side too, and not, like classical economics, merely by the cost of production alone on the supply side. Indeed a striking thing about the list below published by the Scandinavian Journal of Economics of Amartya’s books following his 1998 Bank of Sweden Prize
is how consistently these works display his avoidance of all neoclassical economics, and the absence of all of what is normally called ‘price theory’, namely the Marshallian and/or Walrasian theory of value. No “neoclassical economics” anywhere here for sure!
It would be fair enough if Professor Sen says he is hardly responsible for an admirer’s ignorant misdescription of his work — except the question still arises why he has himself also evidently misdescribed his own work! For example, in his 13 July 2013 letter to The Economist in response to the criticism of Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, he says he had always been keenly interested in
“the importance of economic growth as a means— not an end”
and that this
“has been one of the themes even in my earliest writings (including “Choice of Techniques” in 1960 and “Growth Economics” in 1970)”.
This is a very peculiar opinion indeed to have been expressed by Professor Sen about his own work because the 1970 volume Growth Economics listed above among his books hardly can be said at all to be one of his own “earliest writings” as he now describes it to have been!
What had happened back then was that Sen, as someone considered a brilliant or promising young Indian economist at the time, had been asked by the editors of the famous Penguin Modern Economics Readings series to edit the specific issue devoted to growth-theory — a compendium of classic already-published essays including those of Roy Harrod, Evsey Domar, Robert Solow and many others, to which young Amartya was given a chance to write an editorial Introduction. Every economist familiar with that literature knows too that the growth-theory contained in that volume and others was considered highly abstract and notoriously divorced from actual historical processes of economic growth in different countries. Everyone also knew that the individual editors in that famous Penguin Modern Economics Series were of relative unimportance as they did not commission new papers but merely collected classics already published and wrote an introduction.
This is significant presently because neither Professor Sen nor Professor Bhagwati may be objectively considered on the evidence of his life’s work as an economist to have been a major scholar of economic growth, either in theory or in historical practice. As of December 1989, Amartya Sen himself described his own interests to the American Economic Association as
“social choice theory, welfare economics, economic development”
and Jagdish Bhagwati described his interests as
“theory of international trade and policy, economic development”.
Neither Sen nor Bhagwati mentioned growth economics or economic history or even general economic theory, microeconomics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, public finance, etc. Furthermore, Sen saying in his letter to The Economist that he has been always interested in economic growth seems to be baseless in light of the list of his books above, other than the Penguin compendium already discussed.
Incidentally in the same American Economic Association volume of 1989, Padma Desai had described her interests as
“Soviet economy and comparative economic systems”;
Arvind Panagariya had described his interests as
“economies of scale and trade; smuggling; parallel markets in planned economies”;
and one Suby Roy described his interests as
“foundations of monetary economics”.
Reflecting on Amartya Sen’s works over the 40 year period that I have known them
[and again, my personal copies of his books and those of Bhagwati and Desai, were all in my professorial office at IIT Kharagpur when I was attacked by a corrupt gang there in 2003; and IIT have been under a High Court order to return them but have not done so],
I wonder in fact if it might be fairly said that Sen has been on his own subjective journey over the decades around the world seeking to reinvent economics and political economy from scratch, and inventing his own terminology like “capabilities”, “functionings” and yes “entitlements” etc. to help him do so, while trying to assiduously avoid mention of canonical works of modern world economics like Marshall’s Principles, Hicks’s Value and Capital, Debreu’s Theory of Value, or Arrow and Hahn’s General Competitive Analysis, all defining the central neoclassical tradition of the modern theory of value.
But no contemporary science, economics and political economy included, is open to be re-invented from scratch, and what Amartya Sen has ended up doing instead is seeming to be continually trying to reinvent the wheel, possibly without having had the self-knowledge to realise this. Wittgenstein once made a paradoxical statement that one may know another’s mind better than one knows one’s own…
Here is a current example. Professor Sen says
“First, unlike the process of development in Japan, China, Korea and other countries, which pursued what Jean Drèze and I have called “Asian economic development” in our book, India has not had enough focus on public spending on school education and basic healthcare, which these other countries have had….”
Does Sen really believes believe he and Drèze have now in 2013 discovered and christened an economic phenomenon named “Asian economic development”? Everyone, from Japan and Bangkok and Manila, to Hawaii and Stanford to the World Bank’s East Asia department, including especially my Hawaii colleague Ted James, and many many others including especially Gerald M Meier at Stanford, were was publishing about all that every month — in the mid 1980s! In fact, our project on India and Pakistan arose in the 1980s from precisely such a Hawaiian wave! Everyone knows all that from back then or even earlier when the Japanese were talking about the “flying geese” model. (And, incidentally, Communist China did not at the time belong in the list.) Where was Amartya Sen in the mid 1980s when all that was happening? Jean Drèze was still a student perhaps. Is Professor Sen seeking to reinvent the wheel again with “Asian Economic Development” being claimed to be invented in 2013 by him and Drèze now? Oh please! That just won’t fly either!
A second example may be taken from the year before Professor Sen was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize when he gave a lecture on “human capital” theory which was published as a survey titled “Human Capital and Human Capability” in World Development 1997 Vol. 25, No. 12,
Can you see any reference in this 1997 survey to TW Schultz’s 1960 American Economic Association Presidential Address or to Schultz’s classic 1964 book Transforming Traditional Agriculture or to his 1979 Bank of Sweden Prize address? I could not. If one did not know better, one might have thought from Professor Sen’s 1997 survey that there was nothing done worth talking about on the subject of “human capital” from the time of Adam Smith and David Hume until Amartya Sen finally came to the subject himself.
Thirdly, one is told by Sen’s admirer and collaborator, Professor James Foster of George Washington University, that what Sen means by his notion of
“effective freedom”
is that this is something
“enhanced when a marginally nourished family now has the capability to be sufficiently nourished due to public action”…
Are Amartya and his acolytes claiming he has invented or reinvented welfare economics ab initio? That before Amartya Sen, we did not know the importance of the able-bodied members of a community assisting those who are not able-bodied?
Where have they been? Amartya needed merely to have read Marshall’s Principles evenslightly to find Marshall himself, the master of Maynard Keynes and all of Cambridge and modern world economics, declaring without any equivocation at the very start
“….the study of the causes of poverty is the study of the causes of the degradation of a large part of mankind…”
But Marshall was interested in study, serious study, of poverty and its causes and amelioration, which is not something as easy or trivial as pontification on modern television. My 1984 article “Considerations on Utility, Benevolence and Taxation” which also became a chapter of my 1989 Philosophy of Economics surveyed some of Marshall’s opinion.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was a utopian slogan around 1875 from Karl Marx, which generations of passionate undergraduates have found impressive. Amartya Sen deserves to tell us squarely about his engagement with Marx or Marxist thought from his earliest days until now. His commitment in recent decades to democracy and the open and free society is clear; but has he also at the same time all along been committed to a kind of half-baked communist utopia as represented by Marx’s 1875 slogan?
“To each according to his need” sounds to be the underlying premise that is seeing practical manifestation in the Sonia Congress’s imposition of a so-called “right to food”; “from each according to his ability” is its flip side in the so-called “rural employment guarantee”. Leave aside the limitless resource-allocation and incentive and public finance problems created by such naive ideas being made into government policy, there is a grave and fundamental issue that Amartya and other leftists have been too blinkered to see:
Do they suppose the organised business classes have been weakly cooperative and will just allow such massive redistribution to occur without getting the Indian political system to pay them off as well? And how do the organised business classes get paid off? By their getting to take the land of the inhabitants of rural India. And land in an environment of a debauching of money and other paper assets is as good as gold.
So the peasants will lose their land to the government’s businessman friends on the one hand while purportedly getting “guaranteed” employment and food from the government’s bureaucrats on the other! A landless, asset-less slave population, free to join the industrial proletariat! Is that what Amartya wants to see in India? It may become what results within a few decades from his and his acolytes’ words and deeds.
Rajiv Gandhi once gave me his private phone numbers at 10 Jan Path. I used them back in January 1991 during the Gulf war. But I cannot do so now as Rajiv is gone. Amartya can. Let him phone Sonia and prevail upon her to put the brakes on the wild food and employment schemes he and his friends have persuaded her about until he reads and reflects upon what I said in January 2007 in “On Land-Grabbing” and in my July 2007 open letter to him, reproduced below:
“At a business meet on 12 January 2005, Dr Manmohan Singh showered fulsome praise on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as “dynamic”, “the Nation’s Best Chief Minister”, whose “wit and wisdom”, “qualities of head and heart”, “courage of conviction and passionate commitment to the cause of the working people of India” he admired, saying “with Buddhadeb Babu at the helm of affairs it appears Bengal is once again forging ahead… If today there is a meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata, it is because the ideas that I and Buddhadebji represent have captured the minds of the people of India. This is the idea of growth with equity and social justice, the idea that economic liberalization and modernization have to be mindful of the needs of the poor and the marginalized.”…. Dr Singh returned to the “needs of the poor and the marginalized” at another business meet on 8 January 2007 promising to “unveil a new Rehabilitation Policy in three months to increase the pace of industrialisation” which would be “more progressive, humane and conducive to the long-term welfare of all stakeholders”, while his businessman host pointedly stated about Singur “land for industry must be made available to move the Indian manufacturing sector ahead”. The “meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata” seems to be that agriculture allegedly has become a relatively backward slow-growing sector deserving to yield in the purported larger national interest to industry and services: what the PM means by “long-term welfare of all stakeholders” is the same as the new CPI-M party-line that the sons of farmers should not remain farmers (but become automobile technicians or IT workers or restaurant waiters instead). It is a political viewpoint coinciding with interests of organised capital and industrial labour in India today, as represented by business lobbies like CII, FICCI and Assocham on one hand, and unions like CITU and INTUC on the other. Business Standard succinctly (and ominously) advocated this point of view in its lead editorial of 9 January as follows: “it has to be recognised that the world over capitalism has progressed only with the landed becoming landless and getting absorbed in the industrial/service sector labour force ~ indeed it is obvious that if people don’t get off the land, their incomes will rise only slowly”. Land is the first and ultimate means of production, and the attack of the powerful on land-holdings or land-rights of the unorganised or powerless has been a worldwide phenomenon ~ across both capitalism and communism. In the mid-19th Century, white North America decimated hundreds of thousands of natives in the most gargantuan land-grab of history. Defeated, Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux spoke in 1868 for the Apache, Navajo, Comanche, Cheyenne, Iroquois and hundreds of other tribes: “They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept any except one: they promised to take our land, and they took it.” Half a century later, while the collapse of grain prices contributed to the Great Depression and pauperisation of thousands of small farmers in capitalist America in the same lands that had been taken from the native tribes, Stalin’s Russia embarked on the most infamous state-sponsored land-grab in modern history: “The mass collectivisation of Soviet agriculture (was) probably the most warlike operation ever conducted by a state against its own citizens…. Hundreds of thousands and finally millions of peasants… were deported… desperate revolts in the villages were bloodily suppressed by the army and police, and the country sank into chaos, starvation and misery… The object of destroying the peasants’ independence…was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered… The destruction of the Soviet peasantry, who formed three quarters of the population, was not only an economic but a moral disaster for the entire country. Tens of millions were driven into semi-servitude, and millions more were employed as executants…” (Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism). Why did Stalin destroy the peasants? Lenin’s wishful “alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry” in reality could lead only to the peasants being pauperised into proletarians. At least five million peasants died and (Stalin told Churchill at Yalta) another ten million in the resultant famine of 1932-1933. “Certainly it involved a struggle ~ but chiefly one between urban Communists and villagers… it enabled the regime to obtain much of the capital desired for industrialization from the defeated village… it was the decisive step in the building of Soviet totalitarianism, for it imposed on the majority of the people a subjection which only force could maintain” (Treadgold, 20th Century Russia). Mr Bhattacharjee’s CPI-M is fond of extolling Chinese communism, and the current New Delhi establishment have made Beijing and Shanghai holiday destinations of choice. Dr Singh’s Government has been eager to create hundreds of “Special Economic Zones” run by organised capital and unionised labour, and economically privileged by the State. In fact, the Singur and Nandigram experiences of police sealing off villages where protests occur are modelled on creation of “Special Economic Zones” in China in recent years. For example, Chinese police on 6 December 2005 cracked down on farmers and fishermen in the seaside village of Dongzhou, 125 miles North East of Hong Kong. Thousands of Dongzhou villagers clashed with troops and armed police protesting confiscation of their lands and corruption among officials. The police immediately sealed off the village and arrested protesters. China’s Public Security Ministry admitted the number of riots over land had risen sharply, reaching more than seventy thousand across China in 2004; police usually suppressed peasant riots without resort to firing but in Dongzhou, police firing killed 20 protesters. Such is the reality of the “emergence” of China, a totalitarian police-state since the Communist takeover in 1949, from its period of mad tyranny until Mao’s death in 1976, followed by its ideological confusion ever since. Modern India’s political economy today remains in the tight grip of metropolitan “Big Business” and “Big Labour”. Ordinary anonymous individual citizens ~ whether housewife, consumer, student, peasant, non-union worker or small businessman ~ have no real voice or representation in Indian politics. We have no normal conservative, liberal or social democratic party in this country, as found in West European democracies where the era of land-grabbing has long-ceased. If our polity had been normal, it would have known that economic development does not require business or government to pauperise the peasantry but instead to define and secure individual property rights and the Rule of Law, and establish proper conditions for the market economy. The Congress and BJP in Delhi and CPI-M in Kolkata would not have been able to distract attention from their macroeconomic misdeeds over the decades ~ indicated, for example, by increasing interest-expenditure paid annually on Government debt as a fraction of tax revenues… This macroeconomic rot originated with the Indira Gandhi-PN Haksar capriciousness and mismanagement, which coincided with the start of Dr Singh’s career as India’s best known economic bureaucrat….”
“Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University, Dear Professor Sen, Everyone will be delighted that someone of your worldwide stature has joined the debate on Singur and Nandigram; The Telegraph deserves congratulations for having made it possible on July 23. I was sorry to find though that you may have missed the wood for the trees and also some of the trees themselves. Perhaps you have relied on Government statements for the facts. But the Government party in West Bengal represents official Indian communism and has been in power for 30 years at a stretch. It may be unwise to take at face-value what they say about their own deeds on this very grave issue! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there are many candid communists who privately recognise this dismal truth about themselves. To say this is not to be praising those whom you call the “Opposition” ~ after all, Bengal’s politics has seen emasculation of the Congress as an opposition because the Congress and communists are allies in Delhi. It is the Government party that must reform itself from within sua sponte for the good of everyone in the State. The comparisons and mentions of history you have made seem to me surprising. Bengal’s economy now or in the past has little or nothing similar to the economy of Northern England or the whole of England or Britain itself, and certainly Indian agriculture has little to do with agriculture in the new lands of Australia or North America. British economic history was marked by rapid technological innovations in manufacturing and rapid development of social and political institutions in context of being a major naval, maritime and mercantile power for centuries. Britain’s geography and history hardly ever permitted it to be an agricultural country of any importance whereas Bengal, to the contrary, has been among the most agriculturally fertile and hence densely populated regions of the world for millennia. Om Prakash’s brilliant pioneering book The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630-1720 (Princeton 1985) records all this clearly. He reports the French traveller François Bernier saying in the 1660s “Bengal abounds with every necessary of life”, and a century before him the Italian traveller Verthema saying Bengal “abounds more in grain, flesh of every kind, in great quantity of sugar, also of ginger, and of great abundance of cotton, than any country in the world”. Om Prakash says “The premier industry in the region was the textile industry comprising manufacture from cotton, silk and mixed yarns”. Bengal’s major exports were foodstuffs, textiles, raw silk, opium, sugar and saltpetre; imports notably included metals (as Montesquieu had said would always be the case). Bengal did, as you say, have industries at the time the Europeans came but you have failed to mention these were mostly “agro-based” and, if anything, a clear indicator of our agricultural fecundity and comparative advantage. If “deindustrialization” occurred in 19th Century India, that had nothing to do with the “deindustrialization” in West Bengal from the 1960s onwards due to the influence of official communism. You remind us Fa Hiaen left from Tamralipta which is modern day Tamluk, though he went not to China but to Ceylon. You suggest that because he did so Tamluk effectively “was greater Calcutta”. I cannot see how this can be said of the 5th Century AD when no notion of Calcutta existed. Besides, modern Tamluk at 22º18’N, 87º56’E is more than 50 miles inland from the ancient port due to land-making that has occurred at the mouth of the Hooghly. I am afraid the relevance of the mention of Fa Hiaen to today’s Singur and Nandigram has thus escaped me. You say “In countries like Australia, the US or Canada where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing”. Last January, a national daily published a similar view: “For India to become a developed country, the area under agriculture has to shrink, urban and industrial land development has to take place, and about 100 million workers have to move out from agriculture into industry and services. This is the only way forward for bringing prosperity to the rural population”. Rice is indeed grown in Arkansas or Texas as it is in Bengal but there is a world of difference between the technological and geographical situation here and that in the vast, sparsely populated New World areas with mechanized farming! Like shoe-making or a hundred other crafts, agriculture can be capital-intensive or labour-intensive ~ ours is relatively labour-intensive, theirs is relatively capital-intensive. Our economy is relatively labour-abundant and capital-scarce; their economies are relatively labour-scarce and capital-abundant (and also land-abundant). Indeed, if anything, the apt comparison is with China, and you doubtless know of the horror stories and civil war conditions erupting across China in recent years as the Communist Party and their businessman friends forcibly take over the land of peasants and agricultural workers, e.g. in Dongzhou. All plans of long-distance social engineering to “move out” 40 per cent of India’s population (at 4 persons per “worker”) from the rural hinterlands must also face FA Hayek’s fundamental question in The Road to Serfdom: “Who plans whom, who directs whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others?” Your late Harvard colleague, Robert Nozick, opened his brilliant 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia saying: “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)”. You have rightly deplored the violence seen at Singur and Nandigram. But you will agree it is a gross error to equate violence perpetrated by the Government which is supposed to be protecting all people regardless of political affiliation, and the self-defence of poor unorganised peasants seeking to protect their meagre lands and livelihoods from state-sponsored pogroms. Kitchen utensils, pitchforks or rural implements and flintlock guns can hardly match the organised firepower controlled by a modern Government. Fortunately, India is not China and the press, media and civil institutions are not totally in the hands of the ruling party alone. In China, no amount of hue and cry among the peasants could save them from the power of organised big business and the Communist Party. In India, a handful of brave women have managed to single-handedly organise mass movements of protest which the press and media have then broadcast that has shocked the whole nation to its senses. You rightly say the land pricing process has been faulty. Irrelevant historical prices have been averaged when the sum of discounted expected future values in an inflationary economy should have been used. Matters are even worse. “The fear of famine can itself cause famine. The people of Bengal are afraid of a famine. It was repeatedly charged that the famine (of 1943) was man-made.” That is what T. W. Schultz said in 1946 in the India Famine Emergency Committee led by Pearl Buck, concerned that the 1943 Bengal famine should not be repeated following dislocations after World War II. Of course since that time our agriculture has undergone a Green Revolution, at least in wheat if not in rice, and a White Revolution in milk and many other agricultural products. But catastrophic collapses in agricultural incentives may still occur as functioning farmland comes to be taken by government and industry from India’s peasantry using force, fraud or even means nominally sanctioned by law. If new famines come to be provoked because farmers’ incentives collapse, let future historians know where responsibility lay. West Bengal’s real economic problems have to do with its dismal macroeconomic and fiscal position which is what Government economists should be addressing candidly. As for land, the Government’s first task remains improving grossly inadequate systems of land-description and definition, as well as the implementation and recording of property rights. With my most respectful personal regards, I remain, Yours ever, Suby”
How does India, as a state, treat its weakest and most vulnerable citizens? Not very well at all. It is often only because families and society have not collapsed completely, as they have elsewhere, that the weakest survive. Can we solve in the 21st Century, in a practical manner appropriate to our times, the problem Buddha raised before he became the Buddha some twenty six centuries ago? Says Eliot,
“The legend represents him as carefully secluded from all disquieting sights and as learning the existence of old age, sickness and death only by chance encounters which left a profound impression”
It is to this list we add “the poor” too, especially if we want to include a slightly later and equally great reformer some miles west of the Terai in the Levant. I said some years ago “As we as infants and children need to be helped to find courage to face the start of life, we when very elderly can need to be helped to find courage to face life’s end”. Old age carries with it the fear of death, fear of the end of life and what that means, which raises the meaning of life itself, or at least of the individual life, because we can hardly grasp what the end of life is if we haven’t what it is supposed to be the end of in the first place. What the very elderly need, as do the dying and terminally ill, is to find courage within themselves to comprehend all this with as much equanimity as possible. Companionship and camaraderie — or perhaps let us call it love — go towards that courage coming to be found; something similar goes for the sick, whether a sick child missing school or the elderly infirm, courage that they are not alone and that they can and will recover and not have to face death quite yet, that life will indeed resume.
As for the poor, I said in 2009 about the bizarre Indian scheme of “interrogating, measuring, photographing and fingerprinting them against their will” that “the poor have their privacy and their dignity. They are going to refuse to waste their valuable time at the margins of survival volunteering for such gimmickry.”
“What New Delhi’s governing class fails to see is that the masses of India’s poor are not themselves a mass waiting for New Delhi’s handouts: they are individuals, free, rational, thinking individuals who know their own lives and resources and capacities and opportunities, and how to go about living their lives best. What they need is security, absence of state or other tyranny, roads, fresh water, electricity, functioning schools for their children, market opportunities for work, etc, not handouts from a monarch or aristocrats or businessmen….” Or, to put it differently in Kant’s terms, the poor need to be treated as ends in themselves, and not as the means towards the ends of others…
Part II India’s Right Road Forward Now: Some Thoughtful Analysis for Grown Ups
5. Transcending a Left-Right/Congress-BJP Divide in Indian Politics
6. Budgeting Military & Foreign Policy
7. Solving the Kashmir Problem & Relations with Pakistan
8. Dealing with Communist China
9. Towards Coherence in Public Accounting, Public Finance & Public Decision-Making
10. India’s Money: Towards Currency Integrity at Home & Abroad
My article “India’s Money” in the *Cayman Financial Review*, July 2012
July 21, 2012 — drsubrotoroyIndia’s money
India was recognised and received the comity of nations when it signed the Treaty of Versailles as a victor, later becoming a Dominion and successor-state of British India in 1947, and a sovereign republic in 1950. Pakistan emerged as a new state created out of British India in 1947, remaining a Dominion until 1956 when it became an Islamic republic.
India was an original member of the League of Nations, a signatory to the UN’s San Francisco Declaration, a participant at Bretton Woods, and an original member of the IMF.
Yet some 65 years later, sovereign India has failed to develop a currency universally acceptable as a freely convertible world money. Nor do trade, monetary, fiscal or political conditions appear such that the rupee can become a hard currency of the world economy easily or very soon.
JM Keynes in his first book, a century ago, gave a masterly survey of the immediate monetary history. The rupee had been on a silver standard until 1893 when an attempt at bimetallism failed; instead India stumbled into the 20th century on a modified gold standard that chanced to fulfil desiderata known since Ricardo, namely “the currency media used in the internal circulation are confined to notes and cheap token coins, which are made to act precisely as if they were bits of gold by being made convertible into gold for foreign payment purposes”.
Ie, the rupee was legal tender at home and convertible into sterling for international payments in London, the price being set at 1s 4d. Gold at £3.17s.10½d until August 1914 meant a rupee price of Rs 31 per troy oz.- long-forgotten now when gold retails at Rs 90,000 per troy oz, measuring an average annual rate of inflation in the gold price of about 8.5 per cent for the century.
Until 1947 the rupee remained subservient to British policy. Sterling payments included paying for merchandise imports, dividends and repayments on British business, as well as iniquitous “home charges” imposed by Britain to rule India as an unfree imperial dependency. Britain “returned to gold” in 1925, and did so notoriously at the same price as before though the rupee was revalued to 1s 6d.; Indian businessmen complained to no avail that this hurt exports and worsened the large deflation caused by the Depression. The same continued after sterling became a paper money again in September 1931, backed only by London’s position as a financial capital.
India remained a major trading nation during 1870-1914 with a share of world manufactured exports as high as 4 per cent. Keynes found Britain (the world’s largest exporter), exporting most to India; while Germany (the world’s fastest growing economy) received 5 per cent of its imports from India and sent 1½ per cent of its exports to India, making India the sixth largest exporter to Germany (after the USA, Russia, Britain, Austria-Hungary, France) and eighth largest importer from it (after Britain, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, the USA, Belgium, Italy).
As of 1917-1918, India’s macroeconomics appear idyllic: an export surplus of £61.42 million, official reserves of £66.53 million, total claims on the rest of the world of £127.5 million (32.85 million troy ozs of gold), and a 1916-17 budget surplus of £6,594,885. The rupee, though legal tender only on the subcontinent, became what we might call a “super convertible” currency in being widely accepted in markets and stock markets from the Middle East through South East Asia to Australia.
Even at mid-century, India (without Pakistan) was still a trading power with 2 per cent of world exports and a rank of 16 in the world economy after the USA, Britain, West Germany, France, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Italy, Australia, Sweden, Venezuela, Brazil, Malaya and Switzerland. But then a collapse occurred over several decades to near insignificance in world trade and payments, from which India has yet to recover.
Of world merchandise exports, the subcontinent’s share fell to less than 1 per cent, and of Asia’s to less than 6 per cent, India accounting for two thirds; Malaysia alone accounted for more. Among 11 major developing countries (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Israel, Yugoslavia), India’s share of manufactured exports fell from 65 per cent in 1953 to 51 percent in 1960 to 31 per cent in 1966 to 10 per cent by 1973. And this was before the entry of China.
Even India’s legendary textiles lost ground steadily. As of 1962-71, India held an average annual market-share of almost 20 per cent of manufactured textile imports into the USA; this fell to 10 per cent by 1972-81 and less than 5 per cent by 1982-91. India’s share of Britain’s imports of textile manufactures fell from 16 per cent in the early 1960s to less than 4 per cent in the 1990s. India may not be among the top thirty merchandise exporters of the world today, although there has been new growth seen in areas like pharmaceuticals and computer-services.
Causes of the collapse include Western protectionism as well as emergence of new technologies and new competitors willing to use these. But it was largely policy-induced. Between 1939 and 1945/46, Britain clamped draconian exchange-controls on what remained of the Sterling Area (which, besides Eqypt and Iraq, included the Empire and Commonwealth without Canada, Newfoundland and Hong Kong). The controls were relative to currencies outside the Sterling area, principally the US dollar.
The new India and new Pakistan, far from ending these war-time controls of their respective rupees (as Britain would itself do gradually with the pound) instead made them more draconian to include the Sterling area as well. Hence the Ricardo-Keynes dictum was breached – the rupee remained an inexpensive medium for internal circulation but was no longer convertible externally, indeed it had become open to being debauched the more easily.
Milton Friedman in November 1955 argued to the government of India that the new sovereign country should remove exchange controls completely and have a freely convertible rupee at a floating market-determined price on the pattern of the Canadian dollar, along with a steady predictable monetary climate. Far from debating such a proposal, the government ignored his advice, and his document was suppressed until I published it 34 years later in May 1989 at the University of Hawaii.
Intricate barriers, subsidies and licensing (based on war-time “essentiality” and “actual user” criteria) continued, now in name of import-substitution and “planning”. Major industries were nationalised, which became leading consumers of imports obtained by administrative rationing of foreign exchange earned by export sectors. Domestic business predictably diverted to the large protected markets that resulted. Import restrictions of consumer goods and gold expectedly led to smuggling and open corruption in Customs.
A vast parallel or “black” economy arose with its thriving “hawala” sector. The exchange-rate was seen as yet another administered price, not a reflection of demand for foreign relative to domestic moneys. Foreign currency earnings from exports were confiscated in exchange for rupees at the administered rate, then rationed first to meet foreign debt repayments and government expenditures abroad like maintenance of embassies, military imports, official foreign travel, etc; then for import of food, fertilisers, petroleum and inputs required by government firms; then for import demands of those private firms successful in obtaining import licenses; lastly, to satisfy demands of the public at large for purposes like travel or study abroad.
Not only was extension of war-time exchange-controls seen as axiomatic, the massive war-time deficit finance via money creation that the British had indulged in with India’s public finances, came to be permanently institutionalised in the name of socialist planning.
On 7 December 1952 the planners said: “The raison d’ être of a planned economy is the fullest mobilisation of available resources and their allocation so as to secure optimum results. There is no doubt that the Reserve Bank, which is a nationalised institution, will play its appropriate part in furthering economic development along agreed lines”’; and on 14 May 1956: “Insofar as government expenditure is financed by central bank credit, there is a direct increase in currency in circulation”.
The fate of India’s paper money was sealed. Just as the Bank of England could “theoretically lend the full amount” the UK government was authorised to spend by Parliament, and the US government had assurance the Federal Reserve “could and would see that the Treasury was supplied with all the money that it needed for war finance beyond those secured by taxation and by borrowing from non-bank sources”, so government of India expenditure over seven decades has been for all practical purposes assured of automatic limitless financing via money creation. Since more than two dozen state governments have no money-creating powers, their debts also effectively accrue to the government of India.
The next mention of money supply was 43 years later on April 5 1999 in the “Ninth Plan” when it was said a “viable monetary posture” was “to accept an average inflation rate in the region of 7 per cent per annum, which would justify a growth rate of money supply (base money) of 16 per cent per annum”. Recent money supply growth has been near 19-21 per cent per annum, and inflation properly measured has been well above 10 per cent. Hidden in thousands of pages of the “Tenth Plan” dated 21 December, 2002, a half century after “planning” started, is found it being said it is “financed almost entirely by borrowing… India’s public finance inherits the consequence of fiscal mismanagement in the past”.
Had the rupee been a hard currency, the vast amounts of government debt that have accumulated today could have been evaluated at world prices. As things stand, the value at world prices of the asset-sides of banks becomes an unknown, making profitability uncertain of the domestic securities’ market in general. This compounds myriad problems of the mostly nationalised banking system, candidly surveyed over years by James A. Hanson and summarised in his sentence: “The Ministry of Finance continues to run the public sector banks”. AC Harberger a decade ago called for “thorough understanding of the facts” and a “serious study of India’s fiscal deficits”.
“Where are they being parked? At what cost? And how much vacant parking space remains to be occupied before major problems emerge?” “… the authorities appear to have little sense of alarm about these deficits. Does this represent a myopic and irresponsible vision, aimed at surviving the moment while passing an ever greater burden to future governments and later generations? Or does it mean the authorities have studied the problem well, and that today’s deficits are being placed in convenient parking lots that still have plenty of unused capacity?”
As no such study has taken place, the possibility of “a myopic and irresponsible vision” takes credence. Besides, foreign lines of credit have become squeezed or closed by separate crises in the USA, Europe and Japan. India is far from being a creditor country able to help out with any world problems at present.
The last 20 years have seen liberalisation in consumer goods imports and travel and study abroad, and the rupee is no longer an administrative price for current account purposes. Indian firms have been permitted to do business abroad, Indian residents to send large cash gifts to relatives abroad, as well as relative liberalisation of gold imports. A natural technological revolution has been underway inducing real growth in India as in the rest of Asia, where populations are large and families stable: even small increases in capital-per-head, combined with modern communication technologies making travel or migration unnecessary, may explain rapid growth in productivity and output.
To move towards a currency of integrity today that befits the real growth requires comprehensive candid study of the structure of government liabilities and expenditures, systematic cleaning of government accounts at their roots, seeking to raise productivity of government investments and expenditures by better use of the audit function, as well as bringing coherence to fiscal and monetary policy through institutional changes in the processes of public decision-making, specifically, separating the banking and central banking functions from the Treasury function, while bringing the planning function to be one serving the Treasury function rather than pretending to be above it.
Waste or ostentation in public expenditure itself creates incentives for evasion of taxes; indeed, the untaxed economy may even have caused an underestimation of real growth being made. The road exists to be taken though it may be one that demands excessive political courage.
The author thanks Dr Warren Coats for constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.
Endnotes
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Friedman, Milton “A Memorandum to the Government of India 1955”, in Roy & James (1989).
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Friedman, Milton & Rose, Two Lucky People, 1998.
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Hanson, James A. “Indian Banking: Market Liberalization and the Pressures for Institutional and Market Framework Reform” in Krueger & Chinoy (2004).
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Harberger, Arnold C “Parking the Deficit – The Uncertain Link between Fiscal Deficits and Inflation-cum-Devaluation”, in Krueger & Chinoy (2004).
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Keynes, John Maynard, Indian Currency and Finance, 1913.
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Krueger, Anne O. & Sajjid Z. Chinoy (eds) Reforming India’s External, Financial and Fiscal Policies, 2004.
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Roy, Subroto, Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distrtions in India, 1984.
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Roy, Subroto & WE James (eds), Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, 1989, 1992
My article “India’s Money” in the *Cayman Financial Review*, July 2012, is linked here.
Of related interest:
Monetary Integrity and the Rupee
Towards Making the Indian Rupee a Hard Currency of the World Economy: An analysis from British times until the present day
Milton Friedman’s Nov 1955 Memorandum to the Govt of India which I published for the first time at UH-Manoa on 21 May 1989, and then later in the 1992 book: Now in pdf 2021
June 10, 2012 — drsubrotoroy
A Memorandum to the Government of India 1955 by Milton Friedman
(published by me for the first time some 34 years later on 21 May 1989 at UH-Manoa…that original document was in my professorial office at IIT Kharagpur — and is yet to be returned despite a High Court order!)
See also “Milton Friedman’s extempore comments at the 1989 Hawaii conference: on India, Israel, Palestine, the USA, Debt and its uses, Erhardt abolishing exchange controls, Etc”…
and ‘Milton Friedman on the Mahalanobis-Nehru “Second Plan”’ …
and Milton Friedman: A Man of Reason, 1912-2006…
and Did Jagdish Bhagwati “originate”, “pioneer”, “intellectually father” India’s 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India’s right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture! )
Memo to the PM
May 30, 2011 — drsubrotoroyFrom Facebook May 29 2011:
Subroto Roy hears Dr Manmohan Singh said yesterday (to journalists “on board Air India One” returning with him from Africa) “I think industrialisation is essential for the country to solve the problems of unemployment and poverty”. Nonsense Prime Minister! That is obsolescent or, at the very least, rather quaint Stalinist chatter. Try to provide public goods properly, which means getting the judiciary etc to work well. Try to get the public finances & public decision-making processes right, which means getting govt accounting & audit right and legislatures to work across the country. Try to drastically raise the productivity of public investments and expenditures. And try not to debauch India’s money any further than you have done. All that may make a good start. (And only when you have done all that do you really need to travel abroad again on “Air India One”; that thing the telephone really is a great invention…)
Subroto Roy is scolded by Ms Siddiqui: “Out of all the corrupt money grabbing racist ministers and governors and politicians you could find only Manmohan Singh to attack? Truly discerning arent you?”,
to which I have to say Hello Ms Siddiqi, Thank you for your comment. It is I am afraid ill-informed. There is nothing personal in my critical assessment of Dr Singh’s economics and politics. To the contrary, he has been in decades past a friend or at least a colleague of my father’s, and in the autumn of 1973 visited our then-home in Paris at the request of my father to advise me, then aged 18, before I embarked on my undergraduate studies at the London School of Economics. My assessments in recent years like “The Politics of Dr Singh” https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=177565501125“Assessing Manmohan”https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=177600651125, “The Dream Team: A Critique” https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=184178641125 “Mistaken Macroeconomics” https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=179676656125 etc need to be seen along with my “Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False”, “The Hypocrisy of the CPI-M”, “Against Quackery”, “Our Dismal Politics”, “Political Paralysis” etc.
Nothing personal is intended in any of these; the purpose at hand has been to contribute to a full and vigorous discussion of the public interest in India.
Silver Jubilee of “Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India”
May 29, 2011 — drsubrotoroyMay 29 2009:
It is a quarter century precisely today since my monograph Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India was first published in London by the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Its text is now available (in slightly rough form) at this site here.
Now in May 1984, Indira Gandhi ruled in Delhi, and the ghost of Brezhnev was still fresh in Moscow. The era of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America was at its height. Pricing, Planning & Politics emerged from my 1976-1982 doctoral thesis at Cambridge though it came to be written in Blacksburg and Ithaca in 1982-1983. It was the first critique after BR Shenoy of India’s Sovietesque economics since Jawaharlal Nehru’s time.
The Times, London’s most eminent paper at the time, wrote its lead editorial comment about it on the day it was published, May 29 1984.
It used to take several days for the library at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to receive its copy of The Times of London and other British newspapers. I had not been told of the date of publication and did not know of what had happened in London on May 29 until perhaps June 2 — when a friend, Vasant Dave of a children’s charity, who was on campus, phoned me and congratulated me for being featured in The Times which he had just read in the University Library. “You mean they’ve reviewed it?” I asked him, “No, it’s the lead editorial.” “What?” I exclaimed. There was worse. Vasant was very soft-spoken and said “Yes, it’s titled ‘India’s Bad Example'” — which I misheard on the phone as “India’s Mad Example” 😀
Drat! I thought (or words to that effect), they must have lambasted me, as I rushed down to the Library to take a look.
The Times had said
“When Mr. Dennis Healey in the Commons recently stated that Hongkong, with one per cent of the population of India has twice India’s trade, he was making an important point about Hongkong but an equally important point about India. If Hongkong with one per cent of its population and less than 0.03 per cert of India’s land area (without even water as a natural resource) can so outpace India, there must be something terribly wrong with the way Indian governments have managed their affairs, and there is. A paper by an Indian economist published today (Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India by Subroto Roy, IEA £1.80) shows how Asia’s largest democracy is gradually being stifled by the imposition of economic policies whose woeful effect and rhetorical unreality find their echo all over the Third World. As with many of Britain’s former imperial possessions, the rot set in long before independence. But as with most of the other former dependencies, the instrument of economic regulation and bureaucratic control set up by the British has been used decisively and expansively to consolidate a statist regime which inhibits free enterprise, minimizes economic success and consolidates the power of government in all spheres of the economy. We hear little of this side of things when India rattles the borrowing bowl or denigrates her creditors for want of further munificence. How could Indian officials explain their poor performance relative to Hongkong? Dr Roy has the answers for them. He lists the causes as a large and heavily subsidized public sector, labyrinthine control over private enterprise, forcibly depressed agricultural prices, massive import substitution, government monopoly of foreign exchange transactions, artificially overvalued currency and the extensive politicization of the labour market, not to mention the corruption which is an inevitable side effect of an economy which depends on the arbitrament of bureaucrats. The first Indian government under Nehru took its cue from Nehru’s admiration of the Soviet economy, which led him to believe that the only policy for India was socialism in which there would be “no private property except in a restricted sense and the replacement of the private profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service.” Consequently, the Indian government has now either a full monopoly or is one of a few oligipolists in banking, insurance, railways, airlines, cement, steel, chemicals, fertilizers, ship-building, breweries, telephones and wrist-watches. No businessman can expand his operation while there is any surplus capacity anywhere in that sector. He needs government approval to modernize, alter his price-structure, or change his labour shift. It is not surprising that a recent study of those developing countries which account for most manufactured exports from the Third World shows that India’s share fell from 65 percent in 1953 to 10 per cent in 1973; nor, with the numerous restrictions on inter-state movement of grains, that India has over the years suffered more from an inability to cope with famine than during the Raj when famine drill was centrally organized and skillfully executed without restriction. Nehru’s attraction for the Soviet model has been inherited by his daughter, Mrs. Gandhi. Her policies have clearly positioned India more towards the Soviet Union than the West. The consequences of this, as Dr Roy states, is that a bias can be seen in “the antipathy and pessimism towards market institutions found among the urban public, and sympathy and optimism to be found for collectivist or statist ones.” All that India has to show for it is the delivery of thousands of tanks in exchange for bartered goods, and the erection of steel mills and other heavy industry which help to perpetuate the unfortunate obsession with industrial performance at the expense of agricultural growth and the relief of rural poverty.”…..
I felt this may have been intended to be laudatory but it was also inaccurate and had to be corrected. I replied dated June 4 which The Times published in their edition of June 16 1984:
I was 29 when Pricing, Planning and Politics was published, I am 54 now. I do not agree with everything I said in it and find the tone a little puffed up as young men tend to be; it was also five years before my main “theoretical” work Philosophy of Economics would be published. My experience of life in the years since has also made me far less sanguine both about human nature and about America than I was then. But I am glad to find I am not embarrassed by what I said then, indeed I am pleased I said what I did in favour of classical liberalism and against statism and totalitarianism well before it became popular to do so after the Berlin Wall fell. (In India as elsewhere, former communist apparatchiks and fellow-travellers became pseudo-liberals overnight.)
The editorial itself may have been due to a conversation between Peter Bauer and William Rees-Mogg, so I later heard. The work sold 700 copies in its first month, a record for the publisher. The wife of one prominent Indian bureaucrat told me in Delhi in December 1988 it had affected her husband’s thinking drastically. A senior public finance economist told me he had been deputed at the Finance Ministry when the editorial appeared, and the Indian High Commission in London had urgently sent a copy of the editorial to the Ministry where it caused a stir. An IMF official told me years later that he saw the editorial on board a flight to India from the USA on the same day, and stopped in London to make a trip to the LSE’s bookshop to purchase a copy. Professor Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University had been a critic of aspects of Indian policy; he received a copy in draft just before it was published and was kind enough to write I had “done an excellent job of setting out the problems afflicting our economic policies, unfortunately government-made problems!”
Siddhartha Shankar Ray told me when we first met that he had been in London when the editorial appeared and had seen it there; it affected his decision to introduce me to Rajiv Gandhi as warmly as he came to do a half dozen years later.
Within a few months though, by the Fall of 1984, I was under attack by the “gang of inert game theorists” who had come to Blacksburg following the departure of James Buchanan. By mid 1985 I had moved to Provo, Utah, really rather wishing, as I recall, to have left my India-work behind me. But by late 1986, I was at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where the perestroika-for-India and Pakistan projects that I and WE James led, had come to be sponsored by the University and the East West Center.
The unpublished results of the India-project reached Rajiv Gandhi by my hand on September 18 1990 as has been told elsewhere. A week later, on September 25 1990, Rajiv appointed a small group that included myself, to advise him. It was that encounter with Rajiv Gandhi that sparked the origins of the 1991 economic reform. Yet in 2007 one member of the group, declaring himself close to Sonia Gandhi, brazenly lied in public saying it was Manmohan Singh and not I who had been part of the group — a group of which I had been in fact the first member! Manmohan Singh himself has never claimed to have been present and in fact was not even in India at the time it was formed.
I have explained elsewhere here why I believe this specific lie came to be told by this specific liar who shared membership with me in the group that Rajiv had formed: because I had also pleaded with many and especially within this group that Rajiv had seemed, to my layman’s eyes, very vulnerable to assassination, and none of them had lifted a finger to do anything about it! Such is how duplicity, envy and greed for power make people mendacious and venal in politics!
As for Pricing, Planning and Politics, Dr Manmohan Singh received a personal copy from my father whom he had long known through the Kaul brothers, Brahma and Madan, both of whom were dear friends of my father since the War and Independence. From a letter Dr Singh wrote to my father, he would have received his copy in late 1986 when he was heading the Planning Commission in his penultimate appointment before retirement from the bureaucracy.
Readers of Pricing, Planning and Politics today, 25 years after it was published, may judge for themselves what if any part of it may be still relevant to the new government that Dr Singh is now prime minister of. The work was mostly one of applied microeconomics or the theory of value; in recent years I have written much also of applied macroeconomics or the theory of money as it relates to India. My great professor at Cambridge, Frank Hahn, was kind enough to say in 1985 that he thought my “critique of Development Economics was powerful not only on methodological but also on economic theory grounds”; that to me has been a special source of delight.
Subroto Roy
Twenty Years Ago in New Delhi March 18-23 1991: Excerpt from “Rajiv Gandhi & the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform” (2011)
March 21, 2011 — drsubrotoroyTwenty Years Ago in New Delhi March 18-23 1991: Excerpt from https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/
“I returned to Delhi on Monday, March 18, 1991 as new elections had been announced. Rasgotra said I should be in touch with Krishna Rao, and the next day March 19 Krishna Rao met me for several hours. I told him what I thought were the roots and results of the Gulf war. He in turn generously told me what had happened while I had been away. He said the group had met Rajiv in December with the proposal that Rajiv better organize his time by having an “office manager” of larger political stature than George. The name of a UP Congressman of integrity had been put forward, but nothing had come of it. Rajiv had been advised to keep Chandrashekhar in power through the autumn of 1991, as Chandrashekhar was doing Rajiv’s work for him of sidelining V. P. Singh. The idea was to cooperate with Chandrashekhar until he could be pushed up to the Presidency when that fell vacant. Rajiv had been advised not to work in a Chandrashekhar cabinet, though in my opinion, had we been like the Scandinavians, it was not impossible for a former prime minister to enter another cabinet on the right terms in the national interest of providing stable government, which was imperative at the time. Things seem to have slipped out of control when Chandrashekhar resigned. At that point, Rajiv called the group together and instructed them to write a draft of the manifesto for the impending elections. I had advised readiness back in September but the lack of organization had prevented much tangible progress at the time. Our group was to now report to a political manifesto-committee of three senior party leaders who would report to Rajiv. They were Narasimha Rao, Pranab Mukherjee and Madhavsingh Solanki. Krishna Rao liased with Narasimha Rao, Krishnamurty with Mukherjee, Pitroda with Solanki. While Rajiv would obviously lead a new Congress Government, Mukherjee was the presumptive Finance Minister, while Narasimha Rao and Solanki would have major portfolios though Narasimha Rao was expected to retire before too long.
Krishna Rao said I should be in touch with Krishnamurty who was preparing the economic chapters of the draft of the manifesto. Krishnamurty told me he had brought in A. M. Khusro to the group, and there would be a 5 p.m. meeting at Khusro’s office at the Aga Khan Foundation. I arrived early and was delighted to meet Khusro, and he seemed pleased to meet me. Khusro seemed excited by my view that India and Pakistan were spending excessively on defence against each other, which resonated with his own ideas, and he remarked the fiscal disarray in India and Pakistan could start to be set right by mutually agreed cuts in military spending. (Khusro was eventually to accompany Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore in 1999).
Krishnamurty had prepared a draft dated March 18 of several pages of the economic aspects of the manifesto. After our discussions, Krishnamurty was hospitable enough to open the draft to improvement. That evening, the 19th, I worked through the night and the next morning to get by noon copies of a revised version with all the members of the group. At 4 p.m. on the 20th there was a meeting at Andhra Bhavan of the whole group except Pitroda, which went on until the night. The next day the 21st , Krishnamurty, Khusro and I met again at Andhra Bhavan for a few hours on the economic aspects of the draft. Then in mid-afternoon I went to Rasgotra’s home to work with him and Krishna Rao. They wanted me to produce the economic draft which they could then integrate as they wished into the material they were dictating to a typist. I offered instead to absorb their material directly on to my laptop computer where the economic draft was. Rasgotra was reluctant to let go control, and eventually I gave in and said I would get them a hard copy of the economic draft, which they then planned to re-draft via a stenographer on a typewriter. At this, Rasgotra gave in and agreed to my solution. So the work began and the three of us continued until late.
That night Krishna Rao dropped me at Tughlak Road where I used to stay with friends. In the car I told him, as he was a military man with heavy security cover for himself as a former Governor of J&K, that it seemed to me Rajiv’s security was being unprofessionally handled, that he was vulnerable to a professional assassin. Krishna Rao asked me if I had seen anything specific by way of vulnerability. With John Kennedy and De Gaulle in mind, I said I feared Rajiv was open to a long-distance sniper, especially when he was on his campaign trips around the country.
This was one of several attempts I made since October 1990 to convey my clear impression to whomever I thought might have an effect that Rajiv seemed to me extremely vulnerable. Rajiv had been on sadhbhavana journeys, back and forth into and out of Delhi. I had heard he was fed up with his security apparatus, and I was not surprised given it seemed at the time rather bureaucratized. It would not have been appropriate for me to tell him directly that he seemed to me to be vulnerable, since I was a newcomer and a complete amateur about security issues, and besides if he agreed he might seem to himself to be cowardly or have to get even closer to his security apparatus. Instead I pressed the subject relentlessly with whomever I could. I suggested specifically two things: (a) that the system in place at Rajiv’s residence and on his itineraries be tested, preferably by some internationally recognized specialists in counter-terrorism; (b) that Rajiv be encouraged to announce a shadow-cabinet. The first would increase the cost of terrorism, the second would reduce the potential political benefit expected by terrorists out to kill him. On the former, it was pleaded that security was a matter being run by the V. P. Singh and then Chandrashekhar Governments at the time. On the latter, it was said that appointing a shadow cabinet might give the appointees the wrong idea, and lead to a challenge to Rajiv’s leadership. This seemed to me wrong, as there was nothing to fear from healthy internal contests for power so long as they were conducted in a structured democratic framework. I pressed to know how public Rajiv’s itinerary was when he travelled. I was told it was known to everyone and that was the only way it could be since Rajiv wanted to be close to the people waiting to see him and had been criticized for being too aloof. This seemed to me totally wrong and I suggested that if Rajiv wanted to be seen as meeting the crowds waiting for him then that should be done by planning to make random stops on the road that his entourage would take. This would at least add some confusion to the planning of potential terrorists out to kill him. When I pressed relentlessly, it was said I should probably speak to “Madame”, i.e. to Mrs. Rajiv Gandhi. That seemed to me highly inappropriate, as I could not be said to be known to her and I should not want to unduly concern her in the event it was I who was completely wrong in my assessment of the danger. The response that it was not in Congress’s hands, that it was the responsibility of the V. P. Singh and later the Chandrashekhar Governments, seemed to me completely irrelevant since Congress in its own interests had a grave responsibility to protect Rajiv Gandhi irrespective of what the Government’s security people were doing or not doing. Rajiv was at the apex of the power structure of the party, and a key symbol of secularism and progress for the entire country. Losing him would be quite irreparable to the party and the country. It shocked me that the assumption was not being made that there were almost certainly professional killers actively out to kill Rajiv Gandhi — this loving family man and hapless pilot of India’s ship of state who did not seem to have wished to make enemies among India’s terrorists but whom the fates had conspired to make a target. The most bizarre and frustrating response I got from several respondents was that I should not mention the matter at all as otherwise the threat would become enlarged and the prospect made more likely! This I later realized was a primitive superstitious response of the same sort as wearing amulets and believing in Ptolemaic astrological charts that assume the Sun goes around the Earth — centuries after Kepler and Copernicus. Perhaps the entry of scientific causality and rationality is where we must begin in the reform of India’s governance and economy. What was especially repugnant after Rajiv’s assassination was to hear it said by his enemies that it marked an end to “dynastic” politics in India. This struck me as being devoid of all sense because the unanswerable reason for protecting Rajiv Gandhi was that we in India, if we are to have any pretensions at all to being a civilized and open democratic society, cannot tolerate terrorism and assassination as means of political change. Either we are constitutional democrats willing to fight for the privileges of a liberal social order, or ours is truly a primitive and savage anarchy concealed beneath a veneer of fake Westernization.
The next day, Friday March 22, I worked from dawn to get the penultimate draft to Krishna Rao before noon as planned the night before. Rasgotra arrived shortly, and the three of us worked until evening to finish the job. I left for an hour to print out copies for a meeting of the entire group, where the draft we were going to submit would come to be decided. When I got back I found Rasgotra had launched an extended and quite unexpected attack on what had been written on economic policy. Would someone like Manmohan Singh, Rasgotra wanted to know, agree with all this talk we were putting in about liberalization and industrial efficiency? I replied I did not know what Manmohan Singh’s response would be but I knew he had been in Africa heading something called the South-South Commission for Julius Nyrere of Tanzania. I said what was needed was a clear forceful statement designed to restore India’s credit-worthiness, and the confidence of international markets. I said that the sort of thing we should aim for was to make clear, e.g. to the IMF’s man in Delhi when that person read the manifesto, that the Congress Party at least knew its economics and was planning to make bold new steps in the direction of progress. I had argued the night before with Rasgotra that on foreign policy we should “go bilateral” with good strong ties with individual countries, and drop all the multilateral hogwash. But I did not wish to enter into a fight on foreign policy which he was writing, so long as the economic policy was left the way we said. Krishnamurty, Khusro and Pitroda came to my defence saying the draft we had done greatly improved on the March 18 draft. For a bare half hour or so with all of us present, the draft was agreed upon. Later that night at Andhra Bhavan, I gave Krishna Rao the final copy of the draft manifesto which he was going to give Narasimha Rao the next day, and sent a copy to Krishnamurty who was liaising with Pranab Mukherjee. Pitroda got a copy on a floppy disc the next day for Solanki.
In its constructive aspects, the March 22 1991 draft of the Congress manifesto went as follows with regard to economic policy: “CHAPTER V AGENDA FOR ECONOMIC ACTION 1. Control of Inflation …. The Congress believes the inflation and price-rise of essential commodities… is a grave macroeconomic problem facing the country today. It has hit worst the poorest and weakest sections of our people and those with fixed incomes like pensioners. The Congress will give highest priority to maintaining the prices of essential commodities, increasing their production and supply using all appropriate economic instruments. 2. Macroeconomic Policy Framework To control inflation of the general price-level, the Congress will provide a predictable long-term policy framework. The average Indian household and business will not have their lives and plans disrupted by sudden changes in economic policy. Coherent monetary policy measures will be defined as called for by the Report of Experts of the Reserve Bank of India in 1985. The Long-Term Fiscal Policy introduced by the Congress Government of 1984-1989 will be revived. Medium and long-term export-import policies will be defined. The basis for a strong India must be a strong economy. The Congress believes a high rate of real growth is essential for securing a strong national defence, social justice and equity, and a civilized standard of living for all. As the party of self-reliance, Congress believes resources for growth must be generated from within our own economy. This means all wasteful and unproductive Government spending has to be cut, and resources transferred from areas of low priority to areas of high national priority. Subsidies have to be rationalized and reduced, and productivity of investments already made has to be improved. The widening gap between revenue receipts and revenue expenditure must be corrected through fiscal discipline, and the growing national debt brought under control as a matter of high priority. These policies in a consistent framework will create the environment for the freeing of the rupee in due course, making it a hard currency of the world of which our nation can be proud. Public resources are not unlimited. These have to be allocated to high priority areas like essential public services, poverty-reduction, strategic sectors, and protection of the interests of the weaker sections of society. Government has to leave to the initiative and enterprise of the people what can be best done by themselves. Government can now progressively vacate some areas of activity to the private, cooperative and non-government sectors. Black money in the parallel economy has become the plague of our economic and political system. This endangers the social and moral fabric of our nation. Artificial price controls, excessive licensing, capacity restrictions, outmoded laws on rent control and urban ceiling, and many other outdated rules and regulations have contributed to pushing many honest citizens into dishonest practices. The Congress will tackle the problem of black money at its roots by attacking all outmoded and retrograde controls, and simplifying procedures in all economic spheres. At the same time, the tax-base of the economy must be increased via simplification and rationalization of tax-rates and coverage, user-fees for public goods, and reduction of taxes wherever possible to improve incentives and stimulate growth. 3. Panchayati Raj India’s farmers and khet mazdoors are the backbone of our economy. Economic development is meaningless until their villages provide them a wholesome rural life. The Congress will revitalize Panchayat Raj institutions to decentralize decision-making, so development can truly benefit local people most effectively. 4. Rural Development Basic economic infrastructure like roads, communications, fresh drinking water, and primary health and education for our children must reach all our villages. The Congress believes such a policy will also relieve pressures from migration on our towns and cities…… Through the Green Revolution which the Congress pioneered over 25 years, our farmers have prospered. Now our larger farmers must volunteer to contribute more to the national endeavour, and hence to greater equity and overall economic development. Equity demands land revenue should be mildly graduated so that small farmers holding less than one acre pay less land revenue per acre…. 9. Education and Health The long-run prosperity of our nation depends on the general state of education, health and well-being of our people. Small families give themselves more choice and control over their own lives. Improving female literacy, promoting the welfare of nursing mothers and reducing infant mortality will have a direct bearing on reducing the birth-rate and improving the health and quality of all our people. Primary and secondary education has high social returns and is the best way in the long-run for achievement of real equality. Efforts will be made to reduce the cost of education for the needy through concessional supply of books and other study materials, scholarships and assistance for transportation and residential facilities. The Congress Party pledges to dedicate itself to promoting education, especially in rural areas and especially for girls and the weaker sections of society. The next Congress Government will prepare and launch a 10-year programme for introduction of free and compulsory primary education for all children of school age. It will continue to emphasize vocational bias in education, integrating it closely with employment opportunities…. 11. Industrial Efficiency Our industrial base in the private and public sectors are the core of our economy. What we have achieved until today has been creditable, and we are self-reliant in many areas. Now the time has come for industry to provide more efficiency and better service and product-quality for the Indian consumer. The public sector has helped the Indian economy since Independence and many national goals have been achieved. Now it has become imperative that the management of public sector units is made effective, and their productivity increased. Major steps must be taken for greater accountability and market-orientation. Failure to do this will make our country lose more and more in the international economy. Budgetary support will be given only for public sector units in the core and infrastructure sectors. Emphasis will be on improving performance and productivity of existing investments, not on creating added organizations or over manning. Units not in the core sector will be privatised gradually. Even in core sectors like Telecommunications, Power, Steel and Coal, incremental needs can be taken care of by the private sector. The Government-Enterprise interface must be properly defined in a White Paper. The Congress believes privatisation must distribute the profits equitably among the people of India. In order to make our public enterprises truly public, it is essential that the shares of many such enterprises are widely held by the members of the general public and workers. Congress pledges to allot a proportion of such shares to the rural Panchayats and Nagarpalikas. This will enhance their asset-base and yield income for their development activities, as well as improve income-distribution. 12. Investment and Trade Indian industry, Government and professional managers are now experienced enough to deal with foreign companies on an equal footing, and channel direct foreign investment in desired directions. Foreign companies often bring access to advanced technological know-how, without which the nation cannot advance. The Congress Government will formulate a pragmatic policy channelling foreign investment into areas important to the national interest. Every effort must be made also to encourage Indians who are outside India to invest in the industry, trade and real estate of their homeland. Because of the protected and inflationary domestic market, Indian industry has become complacent and the incentive for industrial exports has been weakened. When all production is comfortably absorbed at home, Indian industry makes the effort to venture into exports only as a last resort. This must change. A Congress Government will liberalize and deregulate industry to make it competitive and export-oriented, keeping in mind always the interests of the Indian consumer in commercial policy. Export-oriented and predictable commercial policies will be encouraged. Existing procedural constraints and bottlenecks will be removed. Quotas and tariffs will be rationalized. Thrust areas for export-development will be identified and monitored. Efforts will be made to develop a South Asian Community. Trade and economic cooperation among South Asian countries must be increased and simplified.”
This March 22 1991 draft of the Congress’s intended economic policies got circulated and discussed, and from it rumours and opinions appeared that Congress was planning to launch a major economic reform in India. Economic Times said the manifesto “is especially notable for its economic agenda” and Business Standard said “if party manifestos decide election battles” Congress must be “considered home and dry”. A senior IMF official told me three years later the manifesto had indeed seemed a radical and bold move in the direction of progress, which had been exactly our intended effect.
When I met Manmohan Singh at the residence of S. S. Ray in September 1993 in Washington, Ray told him and his senior aides the Congress manifesto had been written on my computer. Manmohan Singh smiled and said that when Arjun Singh and other senior members of the Congress had challenged him in the cabinet, he had pointed to the manifesto. Yet, oddly enough, while the March 22 draft got discussed and circulated, and the Indian economic reform since July 1991 corresponded in fundamental ways to its contents as reproduced above, the actual published Congress manifesto in April 1991 was as tepid and rhetorical as usual, as if some party hack had before publication put in the usual nonsense about e.g. bringing down inflation via price-controls. Certainly the published manifesto was wholly undistinguished in its economic aspects, and had nothing in it to correspond to the bold change of attitude towards economic policy that actually came to be signalled by the 1991 Government.
On March 23, our group was to meet Rajiv at noon. There was to be an event in the inner lawns of Rajiv’s residence in the morning, where he would launch Krishna Rao’s book on India’s security. Krishna Rao had expressly asked me to come but I had to wait outside the building patiently, not knowing if it was a mistake or if it was deliberate. This was politics after all, and I had ruffled feathers during my short time there. While I waited, Rajiv was speaking to a farmers’ rally being held at grounds adjoining his residence, and there appeared to be thousands of country folk who had gathered to hear him. When it was over, Rajiv, smiling nervously and looking extremely uncomfortable, was hoisted atop people’s shoulders and carried back to the residence by his audience. As I watched, my spine ran cold at the thought that any killer could have assassinated him with ease in that boisterous crowd, right there in the middle of Delhi outside his own residence. It was as if plans for his security had been drawn up without any strategic thinking underlying them.
Krishna Rao arrived and graciously took me inside for his book launch. The event was attended by the Congress’s top brass, including Narasimha Rao whom I met for the first time, as well as foreign military attaches and officers of the Indian armed forces. The attaché of one great power went about shaking hands and handing out his business card to everyone. I stood aside and watched. Delhi felt to me that day like a sieve, as if little could be done without knowledge of the embassies. One side wanted to sell arms, aircraft or ships, while the other wanted trips abroad or jobs or green cards or whatever for their children. And I thought Islamabad would be worse — could India and Pakistan make peace in this fetid ether?
Proceedings began when Rajiv arrived. This elite audience mobbed him just as the farmers had mobbed him earlier. He saw me and beamed a smile in recognition, and I smiled back but made no attempt to draw near him in the crush. He gave a short very apt speech on the role the United Nations might have in the new post-Gulf War world. Then he launched the book, and left for an investiture at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
We waited for our meeting with him, which finally happened in the afternoon. Rajiv was plainly at the point of exhaustion and still hard-pressed for time. He seemed pleased to see me and apologized for not talking in the morning. Regarding the March 22 draft, he said he had not read it but that he would be doing so. He said he expected the central focus of the manifesto to be on economic reform, and an economic point of view in foreign policy, and in addition an emphasis on justice and the law courts. I remembered our September 18 conversation and had tried to put in justice and the courts into our draft but had been over-ruled by others. I now said the social returns of investment in the judiciary were high but was drowned out again. Rajiv was clearly agitated that day by the BJP and blurted out he did not really feel he understood what on earth they were on about. He said about his own family, “We’re not religious or anything like that, we don’t pray every day.” I felt again what I had felt before, that here was a tragic hero of India who had not really wished to be more than a happy family man until he reluctantly was made into a national leader against his will. We were with him for an hour or so. As we were leaving, he said quickly at the end of the meeting he wished to see me on my own and would be arranging a meeting. One of our group was staying back to ask him a favour. Just before we left, I managed to say to him what I felt was imperative: “The Iraq situation isn’t as it seems, it’s a lot deeper than it’s been made out to be.” He looked at me with a serious look and said “Yes I know, I know.” It was decided Pitroda would be in touch with each of us in the next 24 hours. During this time Narasimha Rao’s manifesto committee would read the draft and any questions they had would be sent to us. We were supposed to be on call for 24 hours. The call never came. Given the near total lack of system and organization I had seen over the months, I was not surprised. Krishna Rao and I waited another 48 hours, and then each of us left Delhi. Before going I dropped by to see Krishnamurty, and we talked at length. He talked especially about the lack of the idea of teamwork in India. Krishnamurty said he had read everything I had written for the group and learned a lot. I said that managing the economic reform would be a critical job and the difference between success and failure was thin.
I got the afternoon train to Calcutta and before long left for America to bring my son home for his summer holidays with me. In Singapore, the news suddenly said Rajiv Gandhi had been killed. All India wept. What killed him was not merely a singular act of criminal terrorism, but the system of humbug, incompetence and sycophancy that surrounds politics in India and elsewhere. I was numbed by rage and sorrow, and did not return to Delhi. Eleven years later, on 25 May 2002, press reports said “P. V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh lost their place in Congress history as architects of economic reforms as the Congress High command sponsored an amendment to a resolution that had laid credit at the duo’s door. The motion was moved by…. Digvijay Singh asserting that the reforms were a brainchild of the late Rajiv Gandhi and that the Rao-Singh combine had simply nudged the process forward.” Rajiv’s years in Government, like those of Indira Gandhi, were in fact marked by profligacy and the resource cost of poor macroeconomic policy since bank-nationalisation may be as high as Rs. 125 trillion measured in 1994 rupees. Certainly though it was Rajiv Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition in his last months who was the principal architect of the economic reform that came to begin after his passing.”
Rajiv Gandhi 20 August 1944- 21 May 1991
Rajiv-Gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/
. See also https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/also
https://independentindian.com/2011/05/21/twenty-years-ago-today-march-23-1991-an-excerpt/
“I’m on my way out”: Siddhartha Shankar Ray (1920-2010)…
November 7, 2010 — drsubrotoroy
November 7, 2010
I am grieved to hear of the death of Siddhartha Shankar Ray last night.
I was introduced to him by an uncle who had been his college-buddy, and he took up a grave personal matter of mine in the Supreme Court of India in 1990 with great kindness, charging me not a penny, being impressed by a little explicit “civil disobedience” I had had to show at the time towards Judge Evelyn Lance.
He also told me he and his wife had been in London on May 29 1984 and had seen *The Times*’s leader that day about my critique of Indian economic policy. He invited me to his Delhi home where I told him about the perestroika-for-India project I had led at the University of Hawaii since 1986, at which he, of his own accord, declared
“You must meet Rajiv Gandhi. I will arrange a meeting”.
That led to my meeting with Rajiv Gandhi, then Congress President & Leader of the Opposition, on September 18 1990, which contributed to the origins of India’s 1991 economic reform as has been told elsewhere. https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/
Rajiv’s assistant George told me Rajiv had said he had not heard more fulsome praise.
In Bengal, he took me as a guest to visit the Legislative Assembly in session when he was Leader of the Opposition; it was the legislature of which my great grandfather, Surendranath Roy, had been a founder, being the first Deputy President and acting President too; Surendranath had been friends with his maternal grandfather, CR Das, leader of the Congress Party before MK Gandhi, and he said to me in the car heading to the legislature about that relationship in Bengal’s politics some seven decades earlier “They were friends”.
He introduced me to all the main leaders of the Bengal Congress at the time (except Mamata Banerjee who could not come) and I was tasked by him to write the manifesto for the State elections that year, which I did (in English, translated into Bangla by Professor Manjula Bose); the Communists won handily again but one of their leaders (Sailen Dasgupta) declared there had never been a State Congress manifesto of the sort before, being as it was an Orwell-like critique of Bengal’s Stalinism.
In a later conversation, I said to him I wished he be appointed envoy to Britain, he instead came to be appointed envoy to the USA.
In Washington in September 1993, he said “You must meet Manmohan Singh”, and invited me to a luncheon at the Ambassador’s Residence where, to Manmohan Singh and all his aides, he declared pointing at me
“The Congress manifesto (of 1991) was written on his (laptop) computer”.
In later years I kept him informed of developments and gave him my publications. We last met in July last year where I gave him a copy, much to his delight, of *Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant*.
I said to him Bengal’s public finances were in abysmal condition, calling for emergency measures financially, and that Mamata Banerjee seemed to me to be someone who knew how to and would dislodge the Communists from their entrenched misgovernance of decades but not quite aware that dislodging a bad government politically was not the same thing as knowing how to govern properly oneself.
He, again of his own accord, said immediately,
“I will call her and her main people to a meeting here so you can meet them and tell them that directly”.
It never transpired.
He and I were supposed to meet a few months ago but could not due to his poor health; on the phone in our last conversation I mentioned to him my plans of creating a Public Policy Institute — an idea he immediately and fully endorsed as being essential though adding
“I can’t be part of it, I’m on my way out”.
“I’m on my way out”. 🙂
That was Siddhartha Shankar Ray — always intelligent, always good-humoured, always public-spirited, always a great Indian.
I shall miss a good friend, indeed my only friend among politicians other than the late Rajiv Gandhi himself.
On Applying Disraeli’s “Two Nations” of Victorian England to Modern India: Roy & James, Rajiv, Rahul & Manmohan
September 7, 2010 — drsubrotoroyFrom Subroto Roy & WE James’s Introduction 1989-1990 to Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by them, published by Sage 1992, received by Rajiv Gandhi on September 1990 in manuscript form.
“Finally, no discussion of the subcontinent’s political economy can ignore the fact of the monumental poverty of external goods on the part of a vast population, in contrast with a fairly large class of people with adequate livelihoods, in turn contrasting with small islands of indolence and conspicuous consumption. Benjamin Disraeli said of Victorian England that it consisted of two nations. The Indian subcontinent today consists in many respects of two nations living side by side, the real division being much less longitudinal on religious or communal lines (as intended by Muslim separatists at the time of Partition and Hindu imperialists today) as it is latitudinal on class lines between “bhadralok” and “janata”, middle class and working classes, bourgeoisie and masses, “nomenclatura” and proletariat. The sheer numbers can justify speaking of whole nations, the janata in India alone consisting of something like seven hundred million people, the bhadralok of one hundred and fifty million. The Indian bhadralok on their own constitute one of the largest nations on earth.
The bhadralok are not to be distinguished from the janata by any self-styled civility, nor is there any inevitable conflict which will lead to the victory of one and decimation of the other, nor is it that one derives its income from productive effort or enterprise and the other does not. A more effective criterion by which to distinguish the two nations of India may have to do not with work but with leisure, as well as with the kind of capital that comes to be inherited over time. The janata are the unleisured nation of India, people who mostly due to the meagreness of their initial resources come to possess little or no leisure in the course of their lifetimes. They are scattered and illiterate, without connections in high places, often too involved with the hardships of daily life to care for much else. They eat and sleep to maintain the minimum energy needed to survive, reproduce and send their children to school or work, travelling through life day by day and week by week. They may have some short time devoted to religion or entertainment, but life is too often too hard, not so much without happiness or culture as without much time for either. Expectations of what life has to offer may be unambitious and yet successful.
Inequality from an economic point of view may consist of the fact that the poor do not inherit any leisure from the past. They do not inherit the savings of their parents and ancestors because most did not have parents and ancestors who had any savings to leave behind. Capital and the income it generates, and the consumption which such income makes possible, are among the most subtle notions of political economy. As a rough approximation, if we distinguish between human capital, physical and financial capital, and social and political capital, it may be said that the inheritance of economic inequality in India may consist of the inheritance of economic inequality in India may consist of the inheritance by the janata of no form of capital except their own stock of human capital. There is little or no inheritance from parents of savings or any other form of capital. Hence the janata are also the “garib lok”, the masses are also the poor folk.
By contrast the bhadralok are also the leisured nation of the subcontinent, with the time and inclination to praise or decry the state of the culture or the economy or the prime minister, to visit or return from the outside world (“baahar”) to the subcontinent or vice versa, to take a walk in the morning or a nap in the afternoon, to express compassion for or embarrassment about the existence of the janata (especially in relation to the foreigner since the bhadralok have to explain both their privileged position relative to the janata and their often underprivileged position relative to the foreigner with whom they desire to consort), to study the janata or lead them in revolution or take measurements of them, and to read, write, edit or publish books such as this one. The bhadralok are the “respectable people” of the subcontinent, with names, family histories and reputations, literate and often highly educated, bilingual at least, with an inheritance of or illusions about acknowledged places in society. They inherit from their parents and save for their children physical and financial capital, invest in their human capital, and bestow to them as much social and political capital as they can. The mercantile and industrial bhadralok own and transfer to their children relatively more physical and financial capital, while the managerial, administrative and professional bhadralok may transfer relatively more social and political capital. At the apex of both groups is an elite amounting to a few million people, united perhaps by their membership or attempted membership of the post-British social clubs and centres of intellectualism, or foreign universities and the lower middle classes of Britain and North America.
What may be expected in the long run is mobility between the two nations and in both directions. Through indolence or bad luck, families can fall by a half or a third of a social class each generation, or move in the opposite direction through chance or cunning or enterprise and effort. It is an essential feature of mass economic development that there will be net mobility upwards in the long run, and an attendant breakdown of social barriers and the gradual assimilation of classes and castes into one another. Contrary to an assumption of the working classes being united in their despair and contempt for the middle class, and motivated in their desire to bloodily dispose of them, it may be more accurate to say that what unleisured people want most (after employment, food, shelter and clothing) is what they value most at the margin, namely, leisure. What the working classes desire most may be something like the kind of life as the bourgeoisie. Let aside there being a potential or open conflict arising from the janata against the bhadralok, the truth of the matter could be there is a desire of the janata to have at least some leisure like the bhadralok.
If this is an accurate assumption, the main source of conflict between the two nations of India or the subcontinent could be different from what is often supposed by many people. Instead of being revolutionary in nature and deriving from below, the source may be reactionary in nature and amount to resistance from the top. Like all cartels, the bhadralok may want to preserve their numbers and not look with favour at the prospect of large-scale mass economic development, entailing as this will greater competition on all fronts, the erosion of privilege, the breakdown of social barriers and the assimilation of classes into one another.
The Jacobin/Bolshevik/Maoist method of reducing inequalities was to expropriate physical and financial capital, and decimate social and political capital and all that stands in the way of such destruction. The upheaval and chaos of such blood-letting leaves a new order which is, or seems, for a moment, more egalitarian than the regime it replaces. But it also leaves a society without knowledge of its past, alternately enervated by its present and terrified of its future. Recovery from such a state of near social death has been long and hard and painful, where it has happened at all. Despite the wishes of a few, India does not seem likely to experience such social death on a national scale, although the temporary effects of terrorism and civil chaos in pockets of the country would seem to be similar.
A more far-sighted method would be by the creation of capital for the janata to increase their sources of income and consumption and thereby reduce the inequality of wealth and political power. It would mean investment in the only form of capital that the janata have: their own human capital. It would mean fundamentally a change of focus away from the theoretical and grandiose in the drawing-rooms and corridors of New Delhi (and Washington), and towards the simple and commonsensical: stopping the wastage of the tax-resources; making the currency sound at home and abroad; redirecting public investment towards public goods such as civil justice, roads, fresh water and sanitation; and fostering a civilized rural life, built around village schools with blackboards and chalk, with playgrounds and libraries and hot meals, with all-weather buildings and all-weather roads to their doors.
India today resembles a kind of gigantic closed city with high walls and few gates. Within the walls are concurrently represented many different ages in the history of man, from pre-historic and early Aryan, to medieval and Moghul, to Dickensian and American, the members of each age having some common and some individual sets of life-expectations, yet all being due to enter the next century together. Outside is the rest of human civilization, as well as the free circulation of gold and foreign exchange. Nearabouts the gates of the city, and with ability to travel in and out, are the few million of the elite. If the walls of the city are to be knocked down or at least if the gates opened and kept wide open, it will have to be the elite who do this or consent to have it done.
If it is done properly, after adequate preparation of the economic and political expectations of citizens, there may be many positive results, not only for the economy but also for the culture and civilization of the subcontinent as a whole. The free flow of ideas and opportunities across national borders; the freedom to travel in the world; the free movement of goods and capital; the freedom to save one’s tangible wealth, small as this may be, in whatever form or currency one considers best — these are fundamentally important freedoms which have been denied to most of the people of the subcontinent thus far and yet are taken for granted elsewhere in the world. There seems little reason to doubt that if such freedoms come to be gradually exercised by the janata there would be a permanent trend of increase in mass income and consumption.
Yet there are genuine questions of sovereignty which have to be anticipated as well. The consequences of a true opening are not fully or easily foreseeable. The prompt arrival of new East India Companies may be expected. Will there be enough competition between them? Or will the elite come to be further subverted, taking the first Indian Republic with it? After the long experience of foreign rule and nationalism and independent democracy, is the Indian polity mature enough to survive and gain from such an opening, or will it collapse once again as it did in the eighteenth century? The spectres of Plassey and Avadh must haunt every Indian nationalist, even as the hopes of a free economy and a progressive culture and an open civilization, beckon from the future. Is it a silent and implicit fear of this sort which constitutes the only possible rational barrier to greater freedom? Has the continued poverty been, in effect, the cost of nationalism? These are hard questions to which answers may not be found easily. It is hoped by the editors that the present volume may engage the citizens and friends of India to reflect upon them….”
From Facebook 7 Sep 2010:
Rajiv Gandhi received this book in manuscript form in hand from me on Sep 18 1990, and it contributed to the origins of India’s 1991 economic reform as has been described elsewhere. I am delighted to hear his son Rahul has in the last few days also been referring to India as “Two Nations”, rich and poor. Dr Manmohan Singh received the book itself in hand from me at the Indian Ambassador’s Residence in Washington in Sepember 1993; I am glad to see he too has yesterday mentioned the same “Two Nations” theory that I had applied from Disraeli’s book about Victorian England.
(Yet Another) Memo to Dr Kaushik Basu
May 17, 2010 — drsubrotoroyDear Kaushik,
Apropos your reported predictions, I have had to say at Facebook:
Subroto Roy is appalled the GoI’s Chief Economic Adviser has declared (as the PM and the PM’s Chief Acolyte had declared in earlier months) that prices are trending downwards stochastically but amused that at least a stochastic (“fluctuating”) trend got mentioned.
Governor Subbarao has been set a small challenge the other day to release asap for public scrutiny the comprehensive macroeconomic model he says he believes the RBI has — which may be hard if no such model may exist at the RBI. Nor does your Ministry or anyone else in New Delhi have such a model. So what is the Government’s precise scientific basis for predicting a slowing of inflation? Nothing at all?
The Government needs to begin to try to understand that inflation does not slow down in circumstances where real public debt per capita and money supply have been growing exponentially for decades — to the contrary, inflation tends to rise to dangerous heights! Debauching of fiat money would hardly have been allowed if the rupee was a hard currency because we would have seen an honest exchange-rate crashing through the floor with this kind of inflationary finance the Government has given us over the decades. There is, sad to say, zero chance of the rupee becoming a hard currency that all one billion Indians may feel confident about so long as such inflationary finance continues unabated.
Cordially yours
Suby
A Small Challenge to the RBI’s Governor Subbarao
April 21, 2010 — drsubrotoroyThe Hon’ble Gov of the Reserve Bank of India Shri D Subbarao
Dear Governor Subbarao,
You said yesterday, April 20 2010, that the Reserve Bank of India has a macroeconomic model which it uses but which you had personally not seen.
I have given two lectures at your august offices, one by invitation of Governor Jalan and Deputy Governor Reddy on April 29 2000 to address the Conference of State Finance Secretaries, the other on May 5 2005 to address the Chief Economist’s Monetary Economics Seminar. On both occasions, I had inquired of the RBI’s own models by which I could contrast my own but came to understand there were none.
If since then the RBI has now constructed a macroeconomic model of India’s economy, it is splendid news.
May I request the model be released publicly on the Internet at once, so its specifications of endogenous and exogenous variables, assumed coefficients, and sources of time-series data all may be seen by everyone in the country and abroad? Scientific scrutiny and replication of results would thus come to be permitted.
I would be especially interested to know the demand for money function that you have used. I well remember my meeting with the late great Sukhamoy Chakravarty on July 14 1987 at his Planning Commission offices, when he signed and gifted me his last personal copy of the famous Reserve Bank report by the committee he had chaired and of which he told me personally Dr Rangarajan had been the key author – that report may have contained the first official discussion of the demand for money function in India.
With cordial regards
Subroto Roy
Notes on Macroeconomics and India
February 28, 2010 — drsubrotoroyDr Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance
Hello Kaushik,
Long time no see. Happy Holi 2010.
I was glad to see the phrase “the relatively neglected subject of the micro-foundations of macroeconomic policy” mentioned in Chapter 2 of your document for the GoI a few days ago.
But I am unable to see what you could mean by it because your chapter seems devoid of any reference or allusion to the vast discussion over decades of the subject known as the “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics”. Namely, the attempt to integrate the theory of value (microeconomics) with the theory of money (macroeconomics); or alternatively, the attempt to comprehend aggregate variables like Consumption, Savings, Investment, the Demand for & Supply of Money etc in conceptual terms rooted in theories of constrained optimization by masses of individual people.
It is not an easy task. Keynes made no explicit attempt at it (recall Joan Robinson’s famous quip) and probably did not have time or patience to try. Hicks and Patinkin failed, though after valiant efforts. The modern period on this work began with Clower and Leijonhufvud, followed by the French (like Grandmont), and especially Frank Hahn. Hahn’s 1976 IMSSS paper “Keynesian Economics and General Equilibrium Theory” is the survey to read, viz., Equilibrium and Macroeconomics and Money, Stability and Growth as well as of course Arrow & Hahn’s General Competitive Analysis. You may agree that the general theory of value culminated in an important sense in the Arrow-Debreu model of the 1950s — yet that is something in which no money, and hence no macroeconomics, needs to or can really appear. The hard part is to develop macroeconomic models for policy-discussion which allow for money and public finance while still making some pretence of being rooted in a theory of constrained optimization by individuals, i.e., in microeconomic behaviour. (E Roy Weintraub wrote a textbook with “Microfoundations” in its title.)
In the Indian case, I tried to do a little in my Cambridge PhD thesis thirty years ago: “a full frontal assault from the point of view of microeconomic theory on the ‘development planning’ to which everyone routinely declared their fidelity, from New Delhi’s bureaucrats and Oxford’s ‘development’ school to McNamara’s World Bank with its Indian staffers”. Frank Hahn was very kind to say he thought my “critique of Development Economics was powerful not only on methodological but also on economic theory grounds”. Some of the results appeared in my December 1982 talk to the AEA’s NYC meetings “Economic Theory & Development Economics” (World Development 1983), and in my 1984 monograph with London’s IEA. Dr Manmohan Singh received a copy of the latter work in 1986, as well as, in 1993, a published copy of a work presented to Rajiv Gandhi in 1990, Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.
I am glad to see from your Chapter 2 that the GoI now seems to agree with what I had said in 1984 of the need for systems that “locally include direct subsidies to those (whether in rural or urban areas) who are unable to provide any income for themselves…” Your material on the “enabling State” would also find much support in what I said there about the functions of civil government and the need for better, not necessarily more, government. On the other hand, your reliance on the very expensive (Rs.19 billion this year!) Nandan Nilekani Numbering idea is odd as there seem to me to be insurmountable “incentive-compatibility” problems with that project no matter how much gets spent on it.
Returning to possible “microfoundations of macroeconomics” relevant to the Indian case, you may find of interest
“India’s Macroeconomics” (2007)
“Fiscal Instability” (2007)
“Fallacious Finance” (2007)
“Monetary Integrity and the Rupee” (2008)
“Growth and Government Delusion” (2008)
“India in World Trade & Payments” (2007)
“Our Policy Process” (2007)
“Indian Money and Credit” (2006)
“Indian Money and Banking” (2006)
“Indian Inflation” (2008)
“Growth of Real Income, Money & Prices in India 1869-2004” (2005)
“How to Budget” (2008)
“The Dream Team: A Critique” (2006)
“Against Quackery” (2007)
“Mistaken Macroeconomics” (2009)
These together outline an idea that the link between macroeconomic policy in India and individual microeconomic budgets of our one billion citizens arises via the “Government Budget Constraint”. More specifically, the continual deficit-finance indulged in by the GoI for decades has been paid for by invisible taxation of nominal assets, causing the general money-price of real goods and services to rise. I.e., the GoI’s wild deficit spending over the decades has been paid for by debauching money through inflation.
(The unrecorded untaxed “black economy” needs a separate chapter altogether, and it seems to me possible it provides enough real income and transactions to be absorbing some of the wilder money supply growth into its hoards.)
India cannot be a major economy of the world until and unless the Rupee some day becomes a hard currency — for the first time in many decades, indeed perhaps for the first time since the start of fiat money. It is going to take much more than the GoI inventing a trading symbol for the Rupee! The appalling state of our government accounting, public finance and monetary policy, caused by the GoI over decades, disallows this from happening any time soon as domestic bank assets (mostly GoI debt, and mostly held by government banks) would inevitably be re-evaluated at world prices foreshadowing a monetary crisis. Perhaps you will help slow the rot — I trust you will not add to it.
Cordially yours
Suby Roy
Postscript March 1 2010: I recalled it as Joan Robinson’s quip, had forgotten it was in fact her quoting Gerald Shove’s quip: “Keynes was not interested in the theory of relative prices. Gerald Shove used to say that Maynard had never spent the twenty minutes necessary to understand the theory of value.” (1963)
see also
My Recent Works, Interviews etc on India’s Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, etc (an incomplete list)
Thoughts on Indian Governance
December 3, 2009 — drsubrotoroySubroto Roy believes the great optimism about the Indian Republic that he had felt as a 7-year old boy upon meeting Jawaharlal Nehru at Colombo Airport on Oct 13 1962 (the first days of the surprise Communist Chinese attack on India), has now dissipated, and apart from Nehru’s immediate successor (Lal Bahadur Shastri) all Indian Prime Ministers since then have been gravely, perhaps catastrophically, disappointing.
Subroto Roy thinks President Obama’s informed lawyerly academic approach to the Afghanistan decision, whether or not it has its intended good consequences, has a positive demonstration effect for other capital cities, e.g. New Delhi, where public policy decisions are too often made to appease special interest groups inside a cloud of meaningless rhetoric.
Subroto Roy says of India and China in summary discussion at Edward Hugh’s Wall: “Well, both have massive and energetic populations, each with relatively little capital per head; raising the capital per head with new production and exchange processes leads to growth. (But the nominal economies are weak, public finances are absymal and paper money is out of control.)”
Subroto Roy recalls again Pericles of Athens: “Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well; even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics- this is a peculiarity of ours:we do not say that a man who takes no inter…est in politics is a man who minds his own business;we say that he has no business here at all.”
Wage inflation among agricultural workers in India
November 30, 2009 — drsubrotoroyFrom Facebook
Subroto Roy finds from Gopa’s data that wage inflation among unskilled agricultural workers in rural India has been at about 6.35% per annum over the last 7 years or so.
Finance Minister Mukherjee deserves a cheer for connecting with economics (though half a cheer gets subtracted)
November 15, 2009 — drsubrotoroyFrom Facebook today
Independent India’s Finance Ministers have never in 62 years referred to economic theory or the history of economic thought until Mr Mukherjee delivered the 4th Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture in Colombo yesterday, making the following academic claim:
“As students of economics would understand, economic theory is an evolutionary process and undergoes change with every major crisis. The classical theory gave way to Keynesian economics after the Great Depression of 1930s. Thereafter, there were post-Keynesian and monetarist approaches to economic problems during 1960s to 90s. The present crisis, which has also been called Great Recession, would be another watershed in the evolution of economics and is expected to bring about radical retooling of the theory. The crisis has, in the first place, conclusively established that the pursuit of individual goals do not necessarily lead to public good. Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ cannot guarantee allocation of resources efficiently.”
I might rather count this as intellectual progress to the extent that it at least allows the Government of India’s economists the possibility of moving away from politically-induced dissimulation and instead begin to connect with where I was 25 years ago in my May 1984 monograph published by London’s Institute of Economic Affairs (leave aside my 1976-82 doctoral thesis under Professor Frank Hahn at Cambridge “On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”). As for the Finance Minister saying “The Indian economy has shown remarkable resilience to the crisis because the financial system had no exposure to the toxic assets”, I am afraid he has left unsaid that this is because (a) the rupee is not a hard currency; and (b) India’s banks hold plenty of domestic assets that are “toxic”.
Subroto Roy
Thoughts, words, deeds: My work 1973-2020
August 3, 2009 — drsubrotoroyThis is an incomplete bibliography of my writings, public lectures etc 1973-2020 including citations, reviews, comments. I have been mostly an academic economist who by choice or circumstance over 47 years has had to venture also into science, philosophy, public policy, law, jurisprudence, practical politics, history, international relations, military strategy, financial theory, accounting, management, journalism, literary criticism, psychology, psychoanalysis, theology, aesthetics, biography, children’s fables, etc. If anything unites the seemingly diverse work recorded below it is that I have tried to acquire a grasp of the nature of human reason and then apply this comprehension in practical contexts as simply and clearly as possible. Hence I have ended up following the path of Aristotle, as described in modern times (via Wittgenstein and John Wisdom) by Renford Bambrough. The 2004 public lecture in England, “Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom”, also my 2017 “Is ‘Cambridge Philosophy’ dead, in Cambridge? Can it be resurrected, there? Case Study: Renford Bambrough (& Subroto Roy) preceded by decades Cheryl Misak’s thesis on Wittgenstein being linked with Peirce via Ramsey…”
may explain and illustrate all this best. A friend has been kind enough to call me an Academician, which I probably am, though one who really needs his own Academy because the incompetence, greed and mendacity encountered too often in the modern professoriat is dispiriting.
Besides writings and publications printed on paper, there are writings or items not printed on paper — as new media break space, cost and other constraints of traditional publishing. A little repetition and overlap has occurred too. Also in a few cases, e.g., Aldous Huxley’s essay on DH Lawrence, nothing has been done except discover and republish. Several databases have been created and released in the public interest, as have been some rare maps. There is also some biographical and autobiographical material. Several inconsequential errors remain in the text, which shall take time to be rectified as documents come to be rediscovered and collated.
1973
1. “Behavioural study of mus musculus”, Haileybury College, Supervised by J de C Ford-Robertson MA (Oxon). (Due to be published here 2010).
2. “Chemistry at Advanced & Special Level: Student Notes 1972-73” (Due to be published here 2010).
3. “Biology at Advanced & Special Level: Student Notes 1972-73”, (Due to be published here 2010).
4. “Physics at Advanced Level: Student Notes 1972-73”, (Due to be published here 2010).
5. “Revolution: theoria and praxis”, London, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
6. “Gandhi vs Marx”, London, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
1974
7. “Relevance of downward money-wage rigidity to the problem of maintaining full-employment in the classical and Keynesian models of income determination”, London School of Economics, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
8. “Testing aircraft fuels at Shell Finland”.
1975
9. “Oxford Street experiences: down and out in London town”.
10. “SE Region Bulk Distribution Survey”, Unilever, Basingstoke.
11. “Four London poems”, in JCM Paton (ed) New Writing (London, Great Portland Street: International Students House). (Due to be republished here 2010)
12. “On economic growth models and modellers”, London School of Economics, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
1976
13. “World money: system or anarchy?”, lecture to Professor ACL Day’s seminar, London School of Economics, Economics Department, April. (Due to be published here 2010).
14. “A beginner’s guide to some recent developments in monetary theory”, lecture to Professor FH Hahn’s seminar, Cambridge University Economics Department, November 17 (Due to be published here 2010). See also “Announcement of My “Hahn Seminar”, published here June 14 2008.
1977
15. “Inflation and unemployment: a survey”, mimeo, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. (Due to be published here 2010).
16. “On short run theories of dual economies”, Cambridge University Economics Department “substantial piece of work” required of first year Research Students. Examiner: DMG Newbery, FBA. (Due to be published here 2010).
1978
17. “Pure theory of developing economies 1 and 2”, Delhi School of Economics mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
18. “Introduction to some market outcomes under uncertainty”, Delhi School of Economics mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
19. “On money and development”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo, September. (Due to be published here 2010)
20. “Notes on the Newbery-Stiglitz model of sharecropping”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo November. (Due to be published here 2010).
1979
21. “A theory of rights and economic justice”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
22. “Monetary theory and economic development”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
23. “Foundations of the case against ‘development planning’”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, mimeo, November. (Due to be published here 2010).
1979-1989
24. Correspondence with Renford Bambrough (1926-1999), philosopher of St John’s College, Cambridge (Due to be published here 2010).
1980
25. “Models before the monetarist storm”, New Statesman letters
26. “Disciplining rulers and experts”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
1981
27. “On liberty & economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”, Cambridge University doctoral thesis, supervisor FH Hahn, FBA; examiners CJ Bliss, FBA; TW Hutchison, FBA (Due to be published here 2010). 27a Response of FA Hayek on a partial draft February 18 1981. 27b Response of Peter Bauer, 1982. 27c Response of Theodore W Schultz, 1983. 27d. Response of Frank Hahn 1985.
1982
28. “Knowledge and freedom in economic theory Parts 1 and 2”, Centre for Study of Public Choice, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Working Papers.
29. “Economic Theory and Development Economics”. Lecture to American Economic Association, New York, Dec 1982. Panel: RM Solow, HB Chenery, T Weisskopf, P Streeten, G Rosen, S Roy. Published in 29a.
1983
29a “Economic Theory and Development Economics: A Comment”. World Development, 1983. [Citation: Stavros Thefanides “Metamorphosis of Development Economics”, World Development 1988.]
30. “The Political Economy of Trade Policy (Comment on J. Michael Finger)”, Washington DC: Cato Journal, Winter 1983/84. See also 000 “Risk-aversion explains resistance to freer trade”, 2008.
1984
31. “Considerations on Utility, Benevolence and Taxation”, History of Political Economy, 1984. 31a Response of Professor Sir John Hicks May 1 1984.
[Citations: P. Hennipman, “A Tale of Two Schools”, De Economist 1987, “A New Look at the Ordinalist Revolution”, J. Econ. Lit. Mar 1988; P. Rappoport, “Reply to Professor Hennipman”, J. Econ. Lit. Mar 1988; Eugene Smolensky et al “An Application of A Dynamic Cost-of-Living Index to the Evaluation of Changes in Social Welfare”, J. Post-Keynesian Econ.IX.3. 1987.]
32. Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, London 1984.
[Citations: Lead editorial of The Times of London May 29 1984, “India’s economy”, Times letters June 16 1984. John Toye “Political Economy & Analysis of Indian Development”, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1, 1988; John Toye, Dilemmas of Development; D. Wilson, “Privatization of Asia”, The Banker Sep. 1984 etc]. See also 370 “Silver Jubilee of ‘Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India’” 2009.
33. Review of Utilitarianism and Beyond, Amartya Sen & Bernard Williams (eds) Public Choice.
34. Review of Limits of Utilitarianism, HB Miller & WH Williams (eds.), Public Choice.
35. Deendayal Upadhyaya lecture “On Government and the Individual in India” (one of four invited lecturers), Washington DC, October 1984.
1987
36. (with one other) “Does the Theory of Logical Types Inform the Theory of Communication?”, Journal of Genetic Psychology., 148 (4), Dec. 1987 [Citation:
37. “Irrelevance of Foreign Aid”, India International Centre Quarterly, Winter 1987.
38. Review of Development Planning by Sukhamoy Chakravarty for Economic Affairs, London 1987.
1988
39. (with Seiji Naya and Pearl Imada) “Introduction” to Lessons in Development: A Comparative Study of Asia and Latin America. San Francisco: Inst. of Economic Growth.
40. “A note on the welfare economics of regional cooperation”, lecture to Asia-Latin America conference, East West Center Honolulu, published 2009.
1989
41. Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry, London & New York: Routledge (International Library of Philosophy) 1989, paperback 1991. Internet edition 2007. [Reviews & Citations: Research in Economics, 1992; De Economist 1991 & 1992; Manch.Sch. Econ.Studs. 59, 1991; Ethics 101.88 Jul. 1991; Kyklos 43.4 1990; Soc. Science Q. 71.880. Dec.1990; Can. Phil. Rev. 1990; J. Econ. Hist. Sep. 1990; Econ. & Phil. Fall 1990; Econ. Affairs June-July 1990; TLS May 1990; Choice March 1990; J. App.Phil. 1994, M. Blaug: Methodology of Economics, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1992; Hist. Methods. 27.3, 1994; J. of Inst. & Theoretical Econ.,1994; Jahrbucker fur Nationaleconomie 1994, 573:574. Mark A Lutz in Economics for the Common Good, London: Routledge, 1999, et al]. See also 339 “Apropos Philosophy of Economics”, Comments of Sidney Hook, KJ Arrow, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, SS Alexander, Max Black, Renford Bambrough, John Gray et al.
42. Foreword to Essays on the Political Economy by James M. Buchanan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1989.
43. “Modern Political Economy of India”, edited by Subroto Roy & William E James, Hawaii mimeo May 21 1989. This published for the first time a November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India by Milton Friedman. See also 43a, 53.
43a. Preface to “Milton Friedman’s extempore comments at the 1989 Hawaii conference: on India, Israel, Palestine, the USA, Debt and its uses, Erhardt abolishing exchange controls, Etc”, May 22 1989, published here for the first time October 31 2008.
44. Milton Friedman’s defence of my work in 1989.
45. Theodore W. Schultz’s defence of Philosophy of Economics
1990
46. “Letter to Judge Evelyn Lance: On A Case Study in Private International Law” (Due to be published here in 2010).
47-49. Selections from advisory work on economic policy etc for Rajiv Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of India, published in 47a-49a.
1991
41b Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry, Paperback edition.
50. “Conversations and correspondence with Rajiv Gandhi during the Gulf war, January 1991” (Due to be published here 2010).
47a. A Memo to Rajiv I: Stronger Secular Middle”, The Statesman, Jul 31 1991.
48a “A Memo to Rajiv II: Saving India’s Prestige”, The Statesman, Aug 1 1991.
49a “A Memo to Rajiv III: Salvation in Penny Capitalism”, The Statesman, Aug 2 1991 47b-49b “Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-91”, 2007 republication here.
51. “Constitution for a Second Indian Republic”, The Saturday Statesman, April 20 1991. Republished here 2009.
52. “On the Art of Government: Experts, Party, Cabinet and Bureaucracy”, New Delhi mimeo March 25 1991, published here July 00 2009.
1992
53. Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s Edited and with an Introduction by Subroto Roy & William E. James New Delhi, London, Newbury Park: Sage: 1992. Citation: Milton and Rose Friedman Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998), pp. 268-269.
54. Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s Edited and with an Introduction by William E. James & Subroto Roy, Hawaii MS 1989, Sage: 1992, Karachi: Oxford 1993.
Reviews of 53 & 54 include: Bus. Today, Mar-Apr 1992; Political Studies March 1995; Econ Times 21 March 1993; Pakistan Development Review 1992. Hindustan Times 11 July 1992. Pacific Affairs 1993; Hindu 21 March 1993, 15 June 1993; Pakistan News International 12 June 1993. Book Reviews March 1993; Deccan Herald 2 May 1993; Pol.Econ.J. Ind. 1992. Fin Express 13 September 1992; Statesman 16 Jan. 1993. J. Royal Soc Asian Aff. 1994, J. Contemporary Asia, 1994 etc.
55. “Fundamental Problems of the Economies of India and Pakistan”, World Bank, Washington, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
56.“The Road to Stagflation: The Coming Dirigisme in America, or, America, beware thy economists!, or Zen and Clintonomics,” Washington DC, Broad Branch Terrace, mimeo, November 17.
1993
57. “Exchange-rates and manufactured exports of South Asia”, IMF Washington DC mimeo. Published in part in 2007-2008 as 58-62:
58. “Path of the Indian Rupee 1947-1993”, 2008.
59. “Path of the Pakistan Rupee 1947-1993”, 2008.
60. “Path of the Sri Lankan Rupee 1948-1993”, 2008.
61. “Path of the Bangladesh Taka 1972-1993”, 2008.
62. “India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Manufactured Exports, IMF Washington DC mimeo”, published 2007.
63. “Economic Assessment of US-India Merchandise Trade”, Arlington, Virginia, mimeo, published in slight part in Indo-US Trade & Economic Cooperation, ICRIER New Delhi, 1995, and in whole 2007.
64. “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir”, mimeo, Arlington, Virginia, circulated in Washington DC 1993-1995, cf 82, 111 infra. Comment of Selig Harrison.
1994
65. “Comment on Indonesia”, in The Political Economy of Policy Reform edited by John Williamson, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.
66a “Gold reserves & the gold price in anticipation of Central Bank behaviour”, Greenwich, Connecticut, mimeo. 67b. “Portfolio optimization and foreign currency exposure hedging” Greenwich, Connecticut mimeo.
1995
68. “On the logic and commonsense of debt and payments crises: How to avoid another Mexico in India and Pakistan”, Scarsdale, NY, mimeo, May 1.
69. “Policies for Young India”, Scarsdale, NY, pp. 350, manuscript.
1996
70. US Supreme Court documents, published in part in 2008 as “Become a US Supreme Court Justice!” 70a, 70b (Due to be published in full here in 2010 as Roy vs University of Hawaii, 1989- including the expert testimonies of Milton Friedman and Theodore W Schultz.).
71. “Key problems of macroeconomic management facing the new Indian Government”, May 17. Scarsdale, New York, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
72. “Preventing a collapse of the rupee”, IIT Kharagpur lecture July 16 1996.
73. “The Economist’s Representation of Technological Knowledge”, Vishvesvaraya lecture to the Institution of Engineers, September 15 1996, IIT Kharagpur.
1997
74. “Union and State Budgets in India”, lecture at the World Bank, Washington DC, May 00.
75. “State Budgets in India”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo, June 6.
1998
76. “Transparency and Economic Policy-Making: An address to the Asia-Pacific Public Relations Conference” (panel on Transparency chaired by CR Irani) Jan 30 1998, published here 2008.
77. Theodore W. Schultz 1902-1998, Feb 25.
78. “The Economic View of Human Resources”, address to a regional conference on human resources, IIT Kharagpur.
79. “Management accounting”, lecture at Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy, Mussourie,
80a “The Original Reformer”, Outlook letters, Jan 23 1998
81. “Recent Developments in Modern Finance”, IIM Bangalore Review, 10, 1 & 2, Jan.-Jun 1998. Reprinted as “From the Management Guru’s Classroom”: 81a “An introduction to derivatives”, Business Standard/Financial Times, Bombay 18 Apr 1999; 81b “Options in the future, Apr 25 1999; 81c “What is hedging?”, May 2 1999; 81d “Teaching computers to think”, May 9 1999.
82. “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir”, Jun 22 1998, lecture at Heritage Foundation, Washington DC. Cf 111 Dec 2005.
83. “Sixteen Currencies for India: A Reverse Euro Model for Monetary & Fiscal Efficacy”, Lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, June 29 1998. Due to be published here 2010.
84. “Fable of the Fox, the Farmer, and the Would-Be Tailors”, October (Published here July 27 2009).
85. “A Common Man’s Guide to Pricing Financial Derivatives”, Lecture to “National Seminar on Derivatives”, Xavier Labour Research Institute, Jamshedpur, Dec. 16 1998. See 98.
1999
86. “An Analysis of Pakistan’s War-Winning Strategy: Are We Ready for This?”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo, published in part as 86a.“Was a Pakistani Grand Strategy Discerned in Time by India?” New Delhi: Security & Political Risk Analysis Bulletin, July 1999, Kargil issue. See also 000
80b. “The Original Reformer”, Outlook letters, Sep 13 1999.
2000
87. “On Freedom & the Scientific Point of View”, SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Feb 17 2000. Cf 100 below.
88. “Liberalism and Indian economic policy”, lecture at IIM Calcutta, Indian Liberal Group Meetings Devlali, Hyderabad; also Keynote address to UGC Seminar Guntur, March 30 2002. (Due to be published here 2010).
89. “Towards a Highly Transparent Fiscal & Monetary Framework for India’s Union & State Governments”, Invited address to Conference of State Finance Secretaries, Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, April 29, 2000. Published 2008.
90. “On the Economics of Information Technology”, two lectures at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, Nov 10-11, 2000.
91. Review of A New World by Amit Chaudhuri in Literary Criterion, Mysore.
2001
92. Review of AD Shroff: Titan of Finance and Free Enterprise by Sucheta Dalal, Freedom First., January.
93. “Encounter with Rajiv Gandhi: On the Origins of the 1991 Economic Reform”, Freedom First, October. See also 93a in 2005 and 93b in 2007.
94. “A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11”, a keynote address to the Council for Asian Liberals & Democrats, Manila, Philippines, 16 Nov. 2001. Published as 91a.
95. “The Case for and against The Satanic Verses: Diatribe and Dialectic as Art”, Dec 22 republished in print 95a The Statesman Festival Volume, 2006.
2002
94a “A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11”, in September 11 & Political Freedom in Asia, eds. Johannen, Smith & Gomez, Singapore 2002.
2002-2010
96. “Recording vivid dreams: Freud’s advice in exploring the Unconscious Mind” (Due to be published here in 2010).
2003
97. “Key principles of government accounting and audit”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo.
98. “Derivative pricing & other topics in financial theory: a student’s complete lecture notes” (Due to be published here in 2010).
2004
99. TV Interview by BBC, Oxford, after May 2004 General Election in India.
100. “Collapse of the Global Conversation”, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands, Jul 2004.
101. “Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom”, a public lecture, University of Buckingham, UK, August 24 2004. Published here 2007.
2005
93a Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform (this was the full story; it appeared in print for the first time in The Statesman Festival Volume 2007).
102. “Can India become an economic superpower (or will there be a monetary meltdown)?” Cardiff University Institute of Applied Macroeconomics Monetary Economics Seminar, April 13, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, April 27, Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, Chief Economist’s Seminar on Monetary Economics, May 5.
103. Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant, Edited and with an Introduction by Subroto Roy & John Clarke, London & New York: Continuum, 2005; paperback 2006; French translation by Florian Bay, 2007.
104. “Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali in Pakistan’s Creation”, Dawn, Karachi, Sep 3.
105. “The Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 11 .
106. “After the Verdict”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 20.
107. “US Espionage Failures”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 26
108. “Waffle But No Models of Monetary Policy”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 30.
109. “On Hindus and Muslims”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Nov 6.
110. “Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Nov 13-14″.
111. “Fiction from the India Economic Summit”, The Statesman, Front Page, Nov 29.
112. “Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason”, The Statesman Editorial Page
I. “Give the Hurriyat et al Indian Green Cards”, Dec 1
II. “Choice of Nationality under Full Information”, Dec 2
III. “Of Flags and Consulates in Gilgit etc”, Dec 3.
2006
113. “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman Editorial Page
I : New Delhi’s Consensus (Manmohantekidambaromics), Jan 6
II: Money, Convertibility, Inflationary Deficit Financing, Jan 7
III: Rule of Law, Transparency, Government Accounting, Jan 8.
114. “Unaccountable Delhi: India’s Separation of Powers’ Doctrine”, The Statesman, Jan 13.
115. “Communists and Constitutions”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 22.
116. “Diplomatic Wisdom”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 31.
117. “Mendacity & the Government Budget Constraint”, The Statesman, Front Page Feb 3.
118. “Of Graven Images”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb5.
119. “Separation of Powers, Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Pages Feb 12-13.
120. “Public Debt, Government Fantasy”, The Statesman, Front Page Editorial Comment, Feb 22.
121. “War or Peace Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 23-24.
122. “Can You Handle This Brief, Mr Chidambaram?” The Statesman, Front Page Feb 26.
123. “A Downpayment On the Taj Mahal Anyone?”, The Statesman, Front Page Comment on the Budget 2006-2007, Mar 1.
124. “Atoms for Peace (or War)”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Mar 5.
125. “Imperialism Redux: Business, Energy, Weapons & Foreign Policy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Mar 14.
126. “Logic of Democracy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Mar 30.
127. “Towards an Energy Policy”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 2.
128. “Iran’s Nationalism”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 6.
129. “A Modern Military”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 16.
130. “On Money & Banking”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 23.
131. “Lessons for India from Nepal’s Revolution”, The Statesman, Front Page Apr 26.
132. “Revisionist Flattery (Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi: A Review Article)”, The Sunday Statesman, May 7.
133. “Modern World History”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, May 7.
134. “Argumentative Indians: A Conversation with Professor Amartya Sen on Philosophy, Identity and Islam,” The Sunday Statesman, May 14 2006. “A Philosophical Conversation between Professor Sen and Dr Roy”, 2008. Translated into Bengali by AA and published in 00.
135. “The Politics of Dr Singh”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, May 21.
136. “Corporate Governance & the Principal-Agent Problem”, lecture at a conference on corporate governance, Kolkata May 31. Published here 2008.
137. “Pakistan’s Allies Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jun 4-5.
138. “Law, Justice and J&K Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 2, The Statesman Editorial Page Jul 3.
139. “The Greatest Pashtun (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan)”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 16.
140. “Understanding Pakistan Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 30, The Statesman Editorial Page Jul 31.
141. “Indian Money and Credit”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 6.
142. “India’s Moon Mission”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 13.
143. “Jaswant’s Journeyings: A Review Article”, The Sunday Statesman Magazine, Aug 27.
144. “Our Energy Interests, Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 27, The Statesman Editorial Page Aug 28.
145. “Is Balochistan Doomed?”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Sep 3 2006.
146. “Racism New and Old”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Sep 8 2006
147. “Political Economy of India’s Energy Policy”, address to KAF-TERI conference, Goa Oct 7, published in 147a.
148. “New Foreign Policy? Seven phases of Indian foreign policy may be identifiable since Nehru”, Parts 1-2, The Sunday Statesman, Oct 8, The Statesman Oct 9.
149. “Justice & Afzal: There is a difference between law and equity (or natural justice). The power of pardon is an equitable power. Commuting a death-sentence is a partial pardon”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Oct 14
150. “Non-existent liberals (On a Liberal Party for India)”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Oct 22.
151. “History of Jammu & Kashmir Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Oct 29, The Statesman Oct 30, Editorial Page.
152. “American Democracy: Does America need a Prime Minister and a longer-lived Legislature?”, The Sunday Statesman Nov 5.
153. “Milton Friedman A Man of Reason 1912-2006”, The Statesman Perspective Page, Nov 22.
154. “Postscript to Milton Friedman Mahalanobis’s Plan (The Mahalanobis-Nehru “Second Plan”) The Statesman Front Page Nov 22.
155. “Mob Violence and Psychology”, Dec 10, The Statesman, Editorial Page.
156. “What To Tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions”, The Statesman Editorial Page Dec 15.
157. “Land, Liberty and Value: Government must act in good faith treating all citizens equally – not favouring organised business lobbies and organised labour over an unorganised peasantry”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Dec 31.
2007
158. “Hypocrisy of the CPI-M: Political Collapse In Bengal: A Mid-Term Election/Referendum Is Necessary”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 9.
159. “On Land-Grabbing: Dr Singh’s India, Buddhadeb’s Bengal, Modi’s Gujarat have notorious US, Soviet and Chinese examples to follow ~ distracting from the country’s real economic problems,” The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Jan 14.
160. “India’s Macroeconomics: Real growth has steadily occurred because India has shared the world’s technological progress. But bad fiscal, monetary policies over decades have led to monetary weakness and capital flight” The Statesman Editorial Page Jan 20.
161. “Fiscal Instability: Interest payments quickly suck dry every year’s Budget. And rolling over old public debt means that Government Borrowing in fact much exceeds the Fiscal Deficit”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 4.
162. “Our trade and payments Parts 1-2” (“India in World Trade and Payments”),The Sunday Statesman, Feb 11 2007, The Statesman, Feb 12 2007.
163. “Our Policy Process: Self-Styled “Planners” Have Controlled India’s Paper Money For Decades,” The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 20.
164. “Bengal’s Finances”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, Feb 25.
165. “Fallacious Finance: Congress, BJP, CPI-M may be leading India to Hyperinflation” The Statesman Editorial Page Mar 5.
166. “Uttar Pradesh Polity and Finance: A Responsible New Govt May Want To Declare A Financial Emergency” The Statesman Editorial Page, Mar 24
167. “A scam in the making” in The Sunday Statesman Front Page Apr 1 2007, published here in full as “Swindling India”.
168. “Maharashtra’s Money: Those Who Are Part Of The Problem Are Unlikely To Be A Part Of Its Solution”, The Statesman Editorial Page Apr 24.
147a. “Political Economy of Energy Policy” in India and Energy Security edited by Anant Sudarshan and Ligia Noronha, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, New Delhi 2007.
169. “Presidential Qualities: Simplicity, Genuine Achievement Are Desirable; Political Ambition Is Not”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, May 8.
170. “We & Our Neighbours: Pakistanis And Bangladeshis Would Do Well To Learn From Sheikh Abdullah”, The Statesman, Editorial Page May 15.
171. “On Indian Nationhood: From Tamils To Kashmiris And Assamese And Mizos To Sikhs And Goans”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, May 25.
172. A Current Example of the Working of the Unconscious Mind, May 26.
173. Where I would have gone if I was Osama Bin Laden, May 31.
174. “US election ’08:America’s Presidential Campaign Seems Destined To Be Focussed On Iraq”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 1.
175. “Home Team Advantage: On US-Iran talks and Sunni-Shia subtleties: Tehran must transcend its revolution and endorse the principle that the House of Islam has many mansions”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, June 3
176. “Unhealthy Delhi: When will normal political philosophy replace personality cults?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 11.
177. “American Turmoil: A Vice-Presidential Coup – And Now a Grassroots Counterrevolution?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 18
178. “Political Paralysis: India has yet to develop normal conservative, liberal and socialist parties. The Nice-Housing-Effect and a little game-theory may explain the current stagnation”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, June 24.
179. “Has America Lost? War Doctrines Of Kutusov vs Clausewitz May Help Explain Iraq War”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 3.
180. “Lal Masjid ≠ Golden Temple: Wide differences are revealed between contemporary Pakistan and India by these two superficially similar military assaults on armed religious civilians”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page July 15
181. “Political Stonewalling: Only Transparency Can Improve Institutions”, The Statesman, Editorial Page July 20.
182. “Gold standard etc: Fixed versus flexible exchange rates”, July 21.
183. “US Pakistan-India Policy: Delhi & Islamabad Still Look West In Defining Their Relationship”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 27.
184. “Works of DH Lawrence” July 30
185. “An Open Letter to Professor Amartya Sen about Singur etc”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 31.
186. “Martin Buber on Palestine and Israel (with Postscript)”, Aug 4.
187. “Auguste Rodin on Nature, Art, Beauty, Women and Love”, Aug 7.
188. “Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 13.
189. Letter to Forbes.com 16 Aug.
190. “Need for Clarity: A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 19.
191. “No Marxist MBAs? An amicus curiae brief for the Hon’ble High Court”, The Statesman, FrontPage, Aug 29.
192. On Lawrence, Sep 4.
193. Dalai Lama’s Return: In the tradition of Gandhi, King, Mandela, Sep 11.
194. Of JC Bose, Patrick Geddes & the Leaf-World, Sep 12.
195. “Against Quackery: Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms; the Communists have been appeased or bought; the BJP is incompetent Parts 1-2”, in The Sunday Statesman and The Statesman, Editorial Pages of Sep 23-24.
196. Karl Georg Zinn’s 1994 Review of Philosophy of Economics, Sep 26.
197. DH Lawrence’s Phoenix, Oct 3.
93b. “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”, Statesman Festival Volume.
198. “Iran, America, Iraq: Bush’s post-Saddam Saddamism — one flip-flop too many?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 16.
199. “Understanding China: The World Needs to Ask China to Find Her True Higher Self”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 22.
200. “India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 30.
201. “China’s India Aggression : German Historians Discover Logic Behind Communist Military Strategy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Nov 5.
202. Sonia’s Lying Courtier (with Postscript), Nov 25. See also 2014
203. “Surrender or Fight? War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must?” The Statesman, Dec 4, Editorial Page.
204. Hutton and Desai: United in Error Dec 14
205. “China’s Commonwealth: Freedom is the Road to Resolving Taiwan, Tibet, Sinkiang”, The Statesman, Dec 17.
2008
206. “Nixon & Mao vs India: How American foreign policy did a U-turn about Communist China’s India aggression. The Government of India should publish its official history of the 1962 war.” The Sunday Statesman, Jan 6, The Statesman Jan 7 Editorial Page.
207. “Lessons from the 1962 War: Beginnings of a solution to the long-standing border problem: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended”, The Sunday Statesman, January 13 2008.
208. “Our Dismal Politics: Will Independent India Survive Until 2047?”, The Statesman Editorial Page, Feb 1.
209. Median Voter Model of India’s Electorate Feb 7.
210. “Anarchy in Bengal: Intra-Left bandh marks the final unravelling of “Brand Buddha””, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 10.
211. Fifty years since my third birthday: on life and death.
212. “Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession: Sheikh Abdullah Relied In Politics On The French Constitution, Not Islam”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 16.
213. A Note on the Indian Policy Process Feb 21.
214. “Growth & Government Delusion: Progress Comes From Learning, Enterprise, Exchange, Not The Parasitic State”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 22.
215. “How to Budget: Thrift, Not Theft, Needs to Guide Our Public Finances”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 26.
216. “India’s Budget Process (in Theory)”, The Statesman, Front Page Feb 29.
217. “Irresponsible Governance: Congress, BJP, Communists, BSP, Sena Etc Reveal Equally Bad Traits”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 4.
218. “American Politics: Contest Between Obama And Clinton Affects The World”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 11.
219. “China’s India Example: Tibet, Xinjiang May Not Be Assimilated Like Inner Mongolia And Manchuria”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 25.
220. “Taxation of India’s Professional Cricket: A Proposal”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 1.
221. “Two cheers for Pakistan!”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 7.
222. “Indian Inflation: Upside Down Economics From The New Delhi Establishment Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 15-16.
223. “Assessing Manmohan: The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake”, The Statesman, Editorial Page Apr 25.
224. John Wisdom, Renford Bambrough: Main Philosophical Works, May 8.
225. “All India wept”: On the death of Rajiv Gandhi, May 21.
226. “China’s force and diplomacy: The need for realism in India” The Statesman, Editorial Page May 31.
227. Serendipity and the China-Tibet-India border problem June 6
228. “Leadership vacuum: Time & Tide Wait For No One In Politics: India Trails Pakistan & Nepal!”, The Statesman Editorial Page June 7.
229. My meeting Jawaharlal Nehru Oct13 1962
230. Manindranath Roy 1891-1958
231. Surendranath Roy 1860-1929
232. The Roys of Behala 1928.
233. Sarat Chandra visits Surendranath Roy 1927
234. Nuksaan-Faida Analysis = Cost-Benefit Analysis in Hindi/Urdu Jun 30
235. One of many reasons John R Hicks was a great economist July 3
236. My father, Indian diplomat, in the Shah’s Tehran 1954-57 July 8
237 Distribution of Govt of India Expenditure (Net of Operational Income) 1995 July 27
238. Growth of Real Income, Money & Prices in India 1869-2008, July 28.
239. Communism from Social Democracy? But not in India or China! July 29
240. Death of Solzhenitsyn, Aug. 3
240a. Tolstoy on Science and Art, Aug 4.
241. “Reddy’s reckoning: Where should India’s real interest rate be relative to the world?” Business Standard Aug 10
242. “Rangarajan Effect”, Business Standard Aug 24
243. My grandfather’s death in Ottawa 50 years ago today Sep 3
244. My books in the Library of Congress and British Library Sep 12
245. On Jimmy Carter & the “India-US Nuclear Deal”, Sep 12
246. My father after presenting his credentials to President Kekkonen of Finland Sep 14 1973.
247. “October 1929? Not!”, Business Standard, Sep 18.
248. “MK Gandhi, SN Roy, MA Jinnah in March 1919: Primary education legislation in a time of protest”
249. 122 sensible American economists Sept 26
250. Govt of India: Please call in the BBC and ask them a question Sep 27
251. “Monetary Integrity and the Rupee: Three British Raj relics have dominated our macroeconomic policy-making” Business Standard Sep 28.
252a. Rabindranath’s daughter writes to her friend my grandmother Oct 5
252b. A Literary Find: Modern Poetry in Bengal, Oct 6.
253. Sarat writes to Manindranath 1931, Oct 12
254. Origins of India’s Constitutional Politics 1913
255. Indira Gandhi in Paris, 1971
256. How the Liabilities/Assets Ratio of Indian Banks Changed from 84% in 1970 to 108% in 1998, October 20
257a. My Subjective Probabilities on India’s Moon Mission Oct 21
258. Complete History of Mankind’s Moon Missions: An Indian Citizen’s Letter to ISRO’s Chairman, Oct 22.
259. Would not a few million new immigrants solve America’s mortgage crisis? Oct 26
260. “America’s divided economists”, Business Standard Oct 26
261. One tiny prediction about the Obama Administration, Nov 5
262. Rai Bahadur Umbika Churn Rai, 1827-1902, Nov 7 2008
263. Jawaharlal Nehru invites my father to the Mountbatten Farewell Nov 7 2008
70a. “Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America) Preface” Nov 9
70b. “Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America)” Nov 9.
257b. Neglecting technological progress was the basis of my pessimism about Chandrayaan, Nov 9.
264. Of a new New Delhi myth and the success of the University of Hawaii 1986-1992 Pakistan project Nov 15
265. Pre-Partition Indian Secularism Case-Study: Fuzlul Huq and Manindranath Roy Nov 16
266. Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists suppose Maulana Azad, Dr Zakir Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah were Pakistanis (or that Sheikh Mujib wanted to remain one)? Nov 18
267. Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until this sad day, Nov 28.
268. In international law, Pakistan has been the perpetrator, India the victim of aggression in Mumbai, Nov 30.
269. The Indian Revolution, Dec 1.
270. Habeas Corpus: a captured terrorist mass-murderer tells a magistrate he has not been mistreated by Mumbai’s police Dec 3
271. India’s Muslim Voices (Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent), Dec 4
272. “Anger Management” needed? An Oxford DPhil recommends Pakistan launch a nuclear first strike against India within minutes of war, Dec 5.
273. A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough), Dec 6
274. Dr Rice finally gets it right (and maybe Mrs Clinton will too) Dec 7
275. Will the Government of India’s new macroeconomic policy dampen or worsen the business-cycle (if such a cycle exists at all)? No one knows! “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” Dec 7
276. Pump-priming for car-dealers: Keynes groans in his grave (If evidence was needed of the intellectual dishonesty of New Delhi’s new macroeconomic policy, here it is) Dec 9.
277. Congratulations to Mumbai’s Police: capturing a terrorist, affording him his Habeas Corpus rights, getting him to confess within the Rule of Law, sets a new world standard Dec 10
278. Two cheers — wait, let’s make that one cheer — for America’s Justice Department, Dec 10
279. Will Pakistan accept the bodies of nine dead terrorists who came from Pakistan to Mumbai? If so, let there be a hand-over at the Wagah border, Dec 11.
280. Kasab was a stupid, ignorant, misguided youth, manufactured by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds into becoming a mass-murdering robot: Mahatma Gandhi’s India should punish him, get him to repent if he wishes, then perhaps rehabilitate him as a potent weapon against Pakistani terrorism Dec 12.
281. Pakistan’s New Delhi Embassy should ask for “Consular Access” to nine dead terrorists in a Mumbai morgue before asking to meet Kasab, Dec 13
282. An Indian Reply to President Zardari: Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationships Dec 19
283. Is my prediction about Caroline Kennedy becoming US Ambassador to Britain going to be correct? Dec 27
284. Chandrayaan adds a little good cheer! Well done, ISRO!, Dec 28
285. How sad that “Slumdog millionaire” is SO disappointing! Dec 31
289. (with Claude Arpi) “Transparency & history: India’s archives must be opened to world standards” Business Standard New Delhi Dec 31, 2008, published here Jan 1 .
2009
290. A basis of India-Pakistan cooperation on the Mumbai massacres: the ten Pakistani terrorists started off as pirates and the Al-Huseini is a pirate ship Jan 1.
291. India’s “pork-barrel politics” needs a nice (vegetarian) Hindi name! “Teli/oily politics” perhaps? (And are we next going to see a Bill of Rights for Lobbyists?) Jan 3
292. My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, “Actionable Intelligence” in the Internet age: How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop) Jan 5
293. How Jammu & Kashmir’s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah can become a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: An Open Letter, Jan 7
294. Could the Satyam/PwC fraud be the visible part of an iceberg? Where are India’s “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles”? Isn’t governance rather poor all over corporate India? Bad public finance may be a root cause Jan 8
295. Satyam does not exist: it is bankrupt, broke, kaput. Which part of this does the new “management team” not get? The assets belong to Satyam’s creditors. Jan 8
296. Jews are massacred in Mumbai and now Jews commit a massacre in Gaza! Jan 9
297. And now for the Great Satyam Whitewash/Cover-Up/Public Subsidy! The wrong Minister appoints the wrong new Board who, probably, will choose the wrong policy Jan 12
298. Letter to Wei Jingsheng Jan 14
299. Memo to the Hon’ble Attorneys General of Pakistan & India: How to jointly prosecute the Mumbai massacre perpetrators most expeditiously Jan 16
300. Satyam and IT-firms in general may be good candidates to become “Labour-Managed” firms Jan 18
301. “Yes we might be able to do that. Perhaps we ought to. But again, perhaps we ought not to, let me think about it…. Most important is Cromwell’s advice: Think it possible we may be mistaken!” Jan 20.
302. RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks Jan 25
303. Didn’t Dr Obama (the new American President’s late father) once publish an article in Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics? (Or did he?) Jan 25.
304. “A Dialogue in Macroeconomics” 1989 etc: sundry thoughts on US economic policy discourse Jan 30
305. American Voices: A Brief Popular History of the United States in 20 You-Tube Music Videos Feb 5
306. Jaladhar Sen writes to Manindranath at Surendranath’s death, Feb 23
307. Pakistani expansionism: India and the world need to beware of “Non-Resident Pakistanis” ruled by Rahmat Ali’s ghost, Feb 9
308. My American years Part One 1980-90: battles for academic integrity & freedom Feb 11.
309. Thanks and well done Minister Rehman Malik and the Govt of Pakistan Feb 12
310. Can President Obama resist the financial zombies (let alone slay them)? His economists need to consult Dr Anna J Schwartz Feb 14
311. A Brief History of Gilgit, Feb 18
312. Memo to UCLA Geographers: Commonsense suggests Mr Bin Laden is far away from the subcontinent Feb 20
313. The BBC gets its history and geography deliberately wrong again Feb 21
314. Bengal Legislative Council 1921, Feb 28
315. Carmichael visits Surendranath, 1916, Mar 1
316. Memo to GoI CLB: India discovered the Zero, and 51% of Zero is still Zero Mar 10
317. An Academic Database of Doctoral & Other Postgraduate Research Done at UK Universities on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Other Asian Countries Over 100 Years, Mar 13
318. Pakistan’s progress, Mar 18
319. Risk-aversion explains resistance to free trade, Mar 19
320. India’s incredibly volatile inflation rate! Mar 20
321. Is “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” referring to an emasculation of (elite) American society?, Mar 21
322. Just how much intellectual fraud can Delhi produce? Mar 26
323. India is not a monarchy! We urgently need to universalize the French concept of “citoyen”! Mar 28
324. Could this be the real state of some of our higher education institutions? Mar 29
325. Progress! The BBC retracts its prevarication! Mar 30
326. Aldous Huxley’s Essay “DH Lawrence” Mar 31
327. Waffle not institutional reform is what (I predict) the “G-20 summit” will produce, April 1
328. Did a full cricket team of Indian bureaucrats follow our PM into 10 Downing Street? Count for yourself! April 3
329. Will someone please teach the BJP’s gerontocracy some Economics 101 on an emergency basis? April 5
330. The BBC needs to determine exactly where it thinks Pakistan is!, April 5
331. Alfred Lyall on Christians, Muslims, India, China, Etc, 1908, April 6
332. An eminent economist of India passes away April 9
333. Democracy Database for the Largest Electorate Ever Seen in World History, April 12
334. Memo to the Election Commission of India April 14 2009, 9 AM, April 14
335. Caveat emptor! Satyam is taken over, April 14
336. India’s 2009 General Elections: Candidates, Parties, Symbols for Polls on 16-30 April Phases 1,2,3, April 15
337. On the general theory of expertise in democracy: reflections on what emerges from the American “torture memos” today, April 18
338. India’s 2009 General Elections: 467 constituencies (out of 543) for which candidates have been announced as of 1700hrs April 21, April 21
339. Apropos Philosophy of Economics, Comments of Sidney Hook, KJ Arrow, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, SS Alexander, Max Black, Renford Bambrough, John Gray et al., April 22.
340. India’s 2009 General Elections: Names of all 543 Constituencies of the 15th Lok Sabha, April 22.
341. India’s 2009 General Elections: How 4125 State Assembly Constituencies comprise the 543 new Lok Sabha Constituencies, April 23.
342. Why has America’s “torture debate” yet to mention the obvious? Viz., sadism and racism, April 24
343. India’s 2009 General Elections: the advice of the late “George Eliot” (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880) to India’s voting public, April 24.
344. India’s 2009 General Elections: Delimitation and the Different Lists of 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies in 2009 and 2004, April 25
345. Is “Slumdog Millionaire” the single worst Best Picture ever?
346. India’s 2009 General Elections: Result of Delimitation — Old (2004) and New (2009) Lok Sabha and Assembly Constituencies, April 26
347. India’s 2009 General Elections: 7019 Candidates in 485 (out of 543) Constituencies announced as of April 26 noon April 26
348. What is Christine Fair referring to? Would the MEA kindly seek to address what she has claimed asap? April 27
349. Politics can be so entertaining 
Manmohan versus Sonia on the poor old CPI(M)!, April 28
350. A Dozen Grown-Up Questions for Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, LK Advani, Sharad Pawar, Km Mayawati and Anyone Else Dreaming of Becoming/Deciding India’s PM After the 2009 General Elections, April 28
351. India’s 2009 General Elections: How drastically will the vote-share of political parties change from 2004? May 2
352. India’s 2009 General Elections: And now finally, all 8,070 Candidates across all 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies, May 5
353. India’s 2009 General Elections: The Mapping of Votes into Assembly Segments Won into Parliamentary Seats Won in the 2004 Election, May 7
354. Will Messrs Advani, Rajnath Singh & Modi ride into the sunset if the BJP comes to be trounced? (Corrected), May 10
355. India’s 2009 General Elections: 543 Matrices to Help Ordinary Citizens Audit the Election Commission’s Vote-Tallies May 12
356. Well done Sonia-Rahul! Two hours before polls close today, I am willing to predict a big victory for you (but, please, try to get your economics right, and also, you must get Dr Singh a Lok Sabha seat if he is to be PM) May 13
357. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee must dissolve the West Bengal Assembly if he is an honest democrat: Please try to follow Gerard Schröder’s example even slightly! May 16
358. India’s 2009 General Elections: Provisional Results from the EC as of 1400 hours Indian Standard Time May 16
359. Memo to the Hon’ble President of India: It is Sonia Gandhi, not Manmohan Singh, who should be invited to our equivalent of the “Kissing Hands” Ceremony May 16
360. Time for heads to roll in the BJP/RSS and CPI(M)!, May 17.
361. Inviting a new Prime Minister of India to form a Government: Procedure Right and Wrong May 18
362. Starting with Procedural Error: Why has the “Cabinet” of the 14th Lok Sabha been meeting today AFTER the results of the Elections to the 15th Lok Sabha have been declared?! May 18
363. Why has the Sonia Congress done something that the Congress under Nehru-Indira-Rajiv would not have done, namely, exaggerate the power of the Rajya Sabha and diminish the power of the Lok Sabha? May 21
364. Shouldn’t Dr Singh’s Cabinet begin with a small apology to the President of India for discourtesy? May we have reviews and reforms of protocols and practices to be followed at Rashtrapati Bhavan and elsewhere? May 23
365. Parliament’s sovereignty has been diminished by the Executive: A record for future generations to know May 25
366. How tightly will organised Big Business be able to control economic policies this time? May 26
367. Why does India not have a Parliament ten days after the 15th Lok Sabha was elected? Nehru and Rajiv would both have been appalled May 27
368. Eleven days and counting after the 15th Lok Sabha was elected and still no Parliament of India! (But we do have 79 Ministers — might that be a world record?) May 28
369. Note to Posterity: 79 Ministers in office but no 15th Lok Sabha until June 1 2009! May 29
370. Silver Jubilee of Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India May 29
371. How to Design a Better Cabinet for the Government of India May 29
372. Parliament is supposed to control the Government, not be bullied or intimidated by it: Will Rahul Gandhi be able to lead the Backbenches in the 15th Lok Sabha? June 1
373. Mistaken Macroeconomics: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, June 12
374. Why did Manmohan Singh and LK Advani apologise to one another? Is Indian politics essentially collusive, not competitive, aiming only to preserve and promote the post-1947 Dilli Raj at the expense of the whole of India? We seem to have no Churchillian repartee (except perhaps from Bihar occasionally) June 18
375. Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer June 22
376. My March 25 1991 memo to Rajiv (which never reached him) is something the present Government seems to have followed: all for the best of course! July 12
377. Disquietude about France’s behaviour towards India on July 14 2009 July 14
378. Does the Govt. of India assume “foreign investors and analysts” are a key constituency for Indian economic policy-making? If so, why so? Have Govt. economists “learnt nothing, forgotten everything”? Some Bastille Day thoughts July 14
379. Letter to the GoI’s seniormost technical economist, May 21.July 19
380. Excuse me but young Kasab in fact confessed many months ago, immediately after he was captured – he deserves 20 or 30 years in an Indian prison, and a chance to become a model prisoner who will stand against the very terrorists who sent him on his vile mission July 20
381. Finally, three months late, the GoI responds to American and Pakistani allegations about Balochistan July 24
382. Thoughts, words, deeds: My work 1973-2010
2012
383. Life of my father 1915-2012
384. India’s Money” in the Cayman Financial Review, July 2012
385. Towards Making the Indian Rupee a Hard Currency of the World Economy: An analysis from British times until the present day, lecture at India International Centre, Delhi, 3 Dec 2012
386. here and here in two parts.
387. Interview by GDI Impuls banking quarterly of Zürich published on 6 Dec 2012 is here.
388. My interview by Ragini Bhuyan of Delhi’s Sunday Guardian published on 16 Dec 2012 is here.
2013
389. “I have a student called Suby Roy…”: Reflections on Frank Hahn (1925-2013), my master in economic theory
390. Cambridge Economics & the Disputation in India’s Economic Policy, Revised 15 July 2013
391. Critical assessment dated 19 August 2013 of Raghuram Rajan is here (Live Mint 19 Aug) and here
392. “Did Jagdish Bhagwati “originate”, “pioneer”, “intellectually father” India’s 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India’s right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture! 23 August 2013 here
393. My Recent Works, Interviews etc on India’s Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, Land, etc (an incomplete list) Nov 23, 2013
2014
394. 1) My 13 Sep 2019 Advice to PM Modi’s Adviser: Let PM address each State Legislature, get all India Govt Accounting & Public Decision Making to have integrity (2) 16 May 2014 Advice from Rajiv Gandhi’s Adviser to Narendra Modi: Do not populate the “Planning Commission” with worthies, scrap it, integrate its assets with the Treasury. And get the nationalised banks & RBI out of the Treasury. Tell them to read my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture with care. Clean Government Accounting & Audit is the Key to Clean Public Finances & a Proper Indian Currency for the First Time Ever May 16, 2014.
395. “On India’s Education Policy”, published as “Mrs Irani’s New Job”/”Task Cut Out For Smriti Irani” June 16, 2014 http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/Task-Cut-Out-for-Smriti-Irani/2014/06/16/article2282316.ece
396. Much as I might love Russia, England, France, America, I despise their spies & local agents affecting poor India’s policies: Memo to PM Modi, Mr Jaitley, Mr Doval & the new Govt. of India: Beware of Delhi’s sleeper agents, lobbyists & other dalals
397. “Haksar, Manmohan and Sonia” August 7, 2014 New Indian Express http://t.co/bRnQI1hrwy
2015
398. Free India’s Foreign Policy & Economy in One Chart: Weapons Imports 1950-2013 by Country of Origin
399. Delhi can never be improved — until the rest of India improves! February 13, 2015
400. Pakistan’s & India’s Illusions of Power (Psychosis vs Vanity) March 3, 2015
401. How the India-Bangladesh Enclaves Problem Was Jump-Started in 2007 Towards its 2015 Solution: A Case Study of Academic Impact on Policy June 8, 2015
402. On being reunited with Arrow Hahn after a dozen years July 3, 2015
403. Fixing Washington: On Improving Institutional Design in the United States November 24, 2016
404. Modi & Monetary Theory: Economic Consequences of the Prime Minister of India December 9, 2016.
405. Physics & Reasoning (An Ongoing Tract) by Subroto Roy DRAFT 01.12.2017 September 26, 2017
406. Is “Cambridge Philosophy” dead, in Cambridge? Can it be resurrected, there? Case Study: Renford Bambrough (& Subroto Roy) preceded by decades Cheryl Misak’s thesis on Wittgenstein being linked with Peirce via Ramsey… October 27, 2017
407. S N Roy hears from Lytton: A 1922 case of British imperial racism in Indian governance (with lessons for today) [Draft text 12 August 2018] February 8, 2018
408. Solving a Problem of State Tyranny: Director General Siddhanta Das: Have Forest Service Officers been threatening ordinary citizens, seizing their property, then threatening them with arrest if they complain? If so, how many cases of wrongful seizure and wrongful imprisonment have WCCB caused among India’s villagers and forest dwellers since 1994? There is immediate need for an Ombudsman to independently review all cases in each of your Five Zones! May 4,
409. Critique of Monetary Ideas of Manmohan & Modi: the Roy Model explaining to Bimal Jalan, Nirmala Sitharaman, RBI etc what it is they are doing (Drafts 4 August, 7 August 2019; 27 August, 28 August, 30 August, 31 August, 1 September 2019) August 4, 2019
410. 1 May 2020 Statement of Dr. Subroto Roy, Economist & Citizen, Proposing PM Narendra Modi & Home Minister Amit Shah Apologize to India’s People, Create Remedy, and Resign to Do Prayaschit/Atonement; 9 May: A New Cabinet for President Kovind May 1, 2020
See also:
My Recent Works, Interviews etc on India’s Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, etc (an incomplete list)
My Seventy-One Articles, Notes Etc on Kashmir, Pakistan, & of course, India (plus my undelivered Lahore lectures)
My Ten Articles on China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan in relation to India
M1. Map of Asia c. 1900
M2. Map of Chinese Empire c. 1900
M3. Map of Sinkiang, Tibet and Neighbours 1944
M4. China’s Secretly Built 1957 Road Through India’s Aksai Chin
M5. Map of Kashmir to Sinkiang 1944
M6. Map of India-Tibet-China-Mongolia 1959
M7. Map of India, Afghanistan, Russia, China, 1897
M8. Map of Xinjiang/Sinkiang/E Turkestan
M9. Map of Bombay/Mumbai 1909
M10-M13. Himalayan Expedition, West Sikkim 1970 – 1,2,3,4
Thoughts, words, deeds
My work 1973-2014
Subroto Roy
This is an incomplete bibliography of my writings, public lectures etc 1973-2014 including citations, reviews, comments. I have been mostly an academic economist who by choice or circumstance over 41 years has had to venture also into science, philosophy, public policy, law, jurisprudence, practical politics, history, international relations, military strategy, financial theory, accounting, management, journalism, literary criticism, psychology, psychoanalysis, theology, aesthetics, biography, children’s fables, etc. If anything unites the seemingly diverse work recorded below it is that I have tried to acquire a grasp of the nature of human reason and then apply this comprehension in practical contexts as simply and clearly as possible. Hence I have ended up following the path of Aristotle, as described in modern times (via Wittgenstein and John Wisdom) by Renford Bambrough. The 2004 public lecture in England, “Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom”, may explain and illustrate all this best. A friend has been kind enough to call me an Academician, which I probably am, though one who really needs his own Academy because the incompetence, greed and mendacity encountered too often in the modern professoriat is dispiriting.
Besides writings and publications printed on paper, there are writings or items not printed on paper — as new media break space, cost and other constraints of traditional publishing. A little repetition and overlap has occurred too. Also in a few cases, e.g., Aldous Huxley’s essay on DH Lawrence, nothing has been done except discover and republish. Several databases have been created and released in the public interest, as have been some rare maps. There is also some biographical and autobiographical material. Several inconsequential errors remain in the text, which shall take time to be rectified as documents come to be rediscovered and collated.
1973
1. “Behavioural study of mus musculus”, Haileybury College, Supervised by J de C Ford-Robertson MA (Oxon). (Due to be published here 2010).
2. “Chemistry at Advanced & Special Level: Student Notes 1972-73” (Due to be published here 2010).
3. “Biology at Advanced & Special Level: Student Notes 1972-73”, (Due to be published here 2010).
4. “Physics at Advanced Level: Student Notes 1972-73”, (Due to be published here 2010).
5. “Revolution: theoria and praxis”, London, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
6. “Gandhi vs Marx”, London, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
1974
7. “Relevance of downward money-wage rigidity to the problem of maintaining full-employment in the classical and Keynesian models of income determination”, London School of Economics, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
8. “Testing aircraft fuels at Shell Finland”.
1975
9. “Oxford Street experiences: down and out in London town”.
10. “SE Region Bulk Distribution Survey”, Unilever, Basingstoke.
11. “Four London poems”, in JCM Paton (ed) New Writing (London, Great Portland Street: International Students House). (Due to be republished here 2010)
12. “On economic growth models and modellers”, London School of Economics, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
1976
13. “World money: system or anarchy?”, lecture to Professor ACL Day’s seminar, London School of Economics, Economics Department, April. (Due to be published here 2010).
14. “A beginner’s guide to some recent developments in monetary theory”, lecture to Professor FH Hahn’s seminar, Cambridge University Economics Department, November 17 (Due to be published here 2010). See also “Announcement of My “Hahn Seminar”, published here June 14 2008.
1977
15. “Inflation and unemployment: a survey”, mimeo, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. (Due to be published here 2010).
16. “On short run theories of dual economies”, Cambridge University Economics Department “substantial piece of work” required of first year Research Students. Examiner: DMG Newbery, FBA. (Due to be published here 2010).
1978
17. “Pure theory of developing economies 1 and 2”, Delhi School of Economics mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
18. “Introduction to some market outcomes under uncertainty”, Delhi School of Economics mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
19. “On money and development”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo, September. (Due to be published here 2010)
20. “Notes on the Newbery-Stiglitz model of sharecropping”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo November. (Due to be published here 2010).
1979
21. “A theory of rights and economic justice”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
22. “Monetary theory and economic development”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
23. “Foundations of the case against ‘development planning’”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, mimeo, November. (Due to be published here 2010).
1979-1989
24. Correspondence with Renford Bambrough (1926-1999), philosopher of St John’s College, Cambridge (Due to be published here 2010).
1980
25. “Models before the monetarist storm”, New Statesman letters
26. “Disciplining rulers and experts”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
1981
27. “On liberty & economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”, Cambridge University doctoral thesis, supervisor FH Hahn, FBA; examiners CJ Bliss, FBA; TW Hutchison, FBA (Due to be published here 2010). 27a Response of FA Hayek on a partial draft February 18 1981. 27b Response of Peter Bauer, 1982. 27c Response of Theodore W Schultz, 1983. 27d. Response of Frank Hahn 1985.
1982
28. “Knowledge and freedom in economic theory Parts 1 and 2”, Centre for Study of Public Choice, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Working Papers.
29. “Economic Theory and Development Economics”. Lecture to American Economic Association, New York, Dec 1982. Panel: RM Solow, HB Chenery, T Weisskopf, P Streeten, G Rosen, S Roy. Published in 29a.
1983
29a “Economic Theory and Development Economics: A Comment”. World Development, 1983. [Citation: Stavros Thefanides “Metamorphosis of Development Economics”, World Development 1988.]
30. “The Political Economy of Trade Policy (Comment on J. Michael Finger)”, Washington DC: Cato Journal, Winter 1983/84. See also “Did Donald Trump & Bernie Sanders get their Trade Policy from my 1983 Cato talk?” 2009/2017.
1984
31. “Considerations on Utility, Benevolence and Taxation”, History of Political Economy, 1984. 31a Response of Professor Sir John Hicks May 1 1984.
[Citations: P. Hennipman, “A Tale of Two Schools”, De Economist 1987, “A New Look at the Ordinalist Revolution”, J. Econ. Lit. Mar 1988; P. Rappoport, “Reply to Professor Hennipman”, J. Econ. Lit. Mar 1988; Eugene Smolensky et al “An Application of A Dynamic Cost-of-Living Index to the Evaluation of Changes in Social Welfare”, J. Post-Keynesian Econ.IX.3. 1987.]
32. Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, London 1984.
[Citations: Lead editorial of The Times of London May 29 1984, “India’s economy”, Times letters June 16 1984. John Toye “Political Economy & Analysis of Indian Development”, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1, 1988; John Toye, Dilemmas of Development; D. Wilson, “Privatization of Asia”, The Banker Sep. 1984 etc]. See also 370 “Silver Jubilee of ‘Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India’” 2009.
33. Review of Utilitarianism and Beyond, Amartya Sen & Bernard Williams (eds) Public Choice.
34. Review of Limits of Utilitarianism, HB Miller & WH Williams (eds.), Public Choice.
35. Deendayal lecture (one of four invited lecturers), Washington DC, May October “On Government and the Individual in India”
1987
36. (with one other) “Does the Theory of Logical Types Inform the Theory of Communication?”, Journal of Genetic Psychology., 148 (4), Dec. 1987 [Citation:
37. “Irrelevance of Foreign Aid”, India International Centre Quarterly, Winter 1987.
38. Review of Development Planning by Sukhamoy Chakravarty for Economic Affairs, London 1987.
1988
39. (with Seiji Naya and Pearl Imada) “Introduction” to Lessons in Development: A Comparative Study of Asia and Latin America. San Francisco: Inst. of Economic Growth.
40. “A note on the welfare economics of regional cooperation”, lecture to Asia-Latin America conference, East West Center Honolulu, published 2009.
1989
41. Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry, London & New York: Routledge (International Library of Philosophy) 1989, paperback 1991. Internet edition 2007. [Reviews & Citations: Research in Economics, 1992; De Economist 1991 & 1992; Manch.Sch. Econ.Studs. 59, 1991; Ethics 101.88 Jul. 1991; Kyklos 43.4 1990; Soc. Science Q. 71.880. Dec.1990; Can. Phil. Rev. 1990; J. Econ. Hist. Sep. 1990; Econ. & Phil. Fall 1990; Econ. Affairs June-July 1990; TLS May 1990; Choice March 1990; J. App.Phil. 1994, M. Blaug: Methodology of Economics, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1992; Hist. Methods. 27.3, 1994; J. of Inst. & Theoretical Econ.,1994; Jahrbucker fur Nationaleconomie 1994, 573:574. Mark A Lutz in Economics for the Common Good, London: Routledge, 1999, et al]. See also 339 “Apropos Philosophy of Economics”, Comments of Sidney Hook, KJ Arrow, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, SS Alexander, Max Black, Renford Bambrough, John Gray et al.
42. Foreword to Essays on the Political Economy by James M. Buchanan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1989.
43. “Modern Political Economy of India”, edited by Subroto Roy & William E James, Hawaii mimeo May 21 1989. This published for the first time a November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India by Milton Friedman. See also 43a, 53.
43a. Preface to “Milton Friedman’s extempore comments at the 1989 Hawaii conference: on India, Israel, Palestine, the USA, Debt and its uses, Erhardt abolishing exchange controls, Etc”, May 22 1989, published here for the first time October 31 2008.
44. Milton Friedman’s defence of my work in 1989.
45. Theodore W. Schultz’s defence of Philosophy of Economics
1990
46. “Letter to Judge Evelyn Lance: On A Case Study in Private International Law” (Due to be published here in 2010).
47-49. Selections from advisory work on economic policy etc for Rajiv Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of India, published in 47a-49a.
1991
41b Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry, Paperback edition.
50. “Conversations and correspondence with Rajiv Gandhi during the Gulf war, January 1991” (Due to be published here 2010).
47a. A Memo to Rajiv I: Stronger Secular Middle”, The Statesman, Jul 31 1991.
48a “A Memo to Rajiv II: Saving India’s Prestige”, The Statesman, Aug 1 1991.
49a “A Memo to Rajiv III: Salvation in Penny Capitalism”, The Statesman, Aug 2 1991 47b-49b “Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-91”, 2007 republication here.
51. “Constitution for a Second Indian Republic”, The Saturday Statesman, April 20 1991. Republished here 2009.
52. “On the Art of Government: Experts, Party, Cabinet and Bureaucracy”, New Delhi mimeo March 25 1991, published here July 00 2009.
1992
53. Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s Edited and with an Introduction by Subroto Roy & William E. James New Delhi, London, Newbury Park: Sage: 1992. Citation: Milton and Rose Friedman Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998), pp. 268-269.
54. Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s Edited and with an Introduction by William E. James & Subroto Roy, Hawaii MS 1989, Sage: 1992, Karachi: Oxford 1993.
Reviews of 53 & 54 include: Bus. Today, Mar-Apr 1992; Political Studies March 1995; Econ Times 21 March 1993; Pakistan Development Review 1992. Hindustan Times 11 July 1992. Pacific Affairs 1993; Hindu 21 March 1993, 15 June 1993; Pakistan News International 12 June 1993. Book Reviews March 1993; Deccan Herald 2 May 1993; Pol.Econ.J. Ind. 1992. Fin Express 13 September 1992; Statesman 16 Jan. 1993. J. Royal Soc Asian Aff. 1994, J. Contemporary Asia, 1994 etc.
55. “Fundamental Problems of the Economies of India and Pakistan”, World Bank, Washington, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
56.“The Road to Stagflation: The Coming Dirigisme in America, or, America, beware thy economists!, or Zen and Clintonomics,” Washington DC, Broad Branch Terrace, mimeo, November 17.
1993
57. “Exchange-rates and manufactured exports of South Asia”, IMF Washington DC mimeo. Published in part in 2007-2008 as 58-62:
58. “Path of the Indian Rupee 1947-1993”, 2008.
59. “Path of the Pakistan Rupee 1947-1993”, 2008.
60. “Path of the Sri Lankan Rupee 1948-1993”, 2008.
61. “Path of the Bangladesh Taka 1972-1993”, 2008.
62. “India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Manufactured Exports, IMF Washington DC mimeo”, published 2007.
63. “Economic Assessment of US-India Merchandise Trade”, Arlington, Virginia, mimeo, published in slight part in Indo-US Trade & Economic Cooperation, ICRIER New Delhi, 1995, and in whole 2007.
64. “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir”, mimeo, Arlington, Virginia, circulated in Washington DC 1993-1995, cf 82, 111 infra. Comment of Selig Harrison.
1994
65. “Comment on Indonesia”, in The Political Economy of Policy Reform edited by John Williamson, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.
66a “Gold reserves & the gold price in anticipation of Central Bank behaviour”, Greenwich, Connecticut, mimeo. 67b. “Portfolio optimization and foreign currency exposure hedging” Greenwich, Connecticut mimeo.
1995
68. “On the logic and commonsense of debt and payments crises: How to avoid another Mexico in India and Pakistan”, Scarsdale, NY, mimeo, May 1.
69. “Policies for Young India”, Scarsdale, NY, pp. 350, manuscript.
1996
70. US Supreme Court documents, published in part in 2008 as “Become a US Supreme Court Justice!” 70a, 70b (Due to be published in full here in 2010 as Roy vs University of Hawaii, 1989- including the expert testimonies of Milton Friedman and Theodore W Schultz.).
71. “Key problems of macroeconomic management facing the new Indian Government”, May 17. Scarsdale, New York, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
72. “Preventing a collapse of the rupee”, IIT Kharagpur lecture July 16 1996.
73. “The Economist’s Representation of Technological Knowledge”, Vishvesvaraya lecture to the Institution of Engineers, September 15 1996, IIT Kharagpur.
1997
74. “Union and State Budgets in India”, lecture at the World Bank, Washington DC, May 00.
75. “State Budgets in India”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo, June 6.
1998
76. “Transparency and Economic Policy-Making: An address to the Asia-Pacific Public Relations Conference” (panel on Transparency chaired by CR Irani) Jan 30 1998, published here 2008.
77. Theodore W. Schultz 1902-1998, Feb 25.
78. “The Economic View of Human Resources”, address to a regional conference on human resources, IIT Kharagpur.
79. “Management accounting”, lecture at Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy, Mussourie,
80a “The Original Reformer”, Outlook letters, Jan 23 1998
81. “Recent Developments in Modern Finance”, IIM Bangalore Review, 10, 1 & 2, Jan.-Jun 1998. Reprinted as “From the Management Guru’s Classroom”: 81a “An introduction to derivatives”, Business Standard/Financial Times, Bombay 18 Apr 1999; 81b “Options in the future, Apr 25 1999; 81c “What is hedging?”, May 2 1999; 81d “Teaching computers to think”, May 9 1999.
82. “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir”, Jun 22 1998, lecture at Heritage Foundation, Washington DC. Cf 111 Dec 2005.
83. “Sixteen Currencies for India: A Reverse Euro Model for Monetary & Fiscal Efficacy”, Lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, June 29 1998. Due to be published here 2010.
84. “Fable of the Fox, the Farmer, and the Would-Be Tailors”, October (Published here July 27 2009).
85. “A Common Man’s Guide to Pricing Financial Derivatives”, Lecture to “National Seminar on Derivatives”, Xavier Labour Research Institute, Jamshedpur, Dec. 16 1998. See 98.
1999
86. “An Analysis of Pakistan’s War-Winning Strategy: Are We Ready for This?”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo, published in part as 86a.“Was a Pakistani Grand Strategy Discerned in Time by India?” New Delhi: Security & Political Risk Analysis Bulletin, July 1999, Kargil issue. See also 000
80b. “The Original Reformer”, Outlook letters, Sep 13 1999.
2000
87. “On Freedom & the Scientific Point of View”, SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Feb 17 2000. Cf 100 below.
88. “Liberalism and Indian economic policy”, lecture at IIM Calcutta, Indian Liberal Group Meetings Devlali, Hyderabad; also Keynote address to UGC Seminar Guntur, March 30 2002. (Due to be published here 2010).
89. “Towards a Highly Transparent Fiscal & Monetary Framework for India’s Union & State Governments”, Invited address to Conference of State Finance Secretaries, Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, April 29, 2000. Published 2008.
90. “On the Economics of Information Technology”, two lectures at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, Nov 10-11, 2000.
91. Review of A New World by Amit Chaudhuri in Literary Criterion, Mysore.
2001
92. Review of AD Shroff: Titan of Finance and Free Enterprise by Sucheta Dalal, Freedom First., January.
93. “Encounter with Rajiv Gandhi: On the Origins of the 1991 Economic Reform”, Freedom First, October. See also 93a in 2005 and 93b in 2007.
94. “A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11”, a keynote address to the Council for Asian Liberals & Democrats, Manila, Philippines, 16 Nov. 2001. Published as 91a.
95. “The Case for and against The Satanic Verses: Diatribe and Dialectic as Art”, Dec 22 republished in print 95a The Statesman Festival Volume, 2006.
2002
94a “A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11”, in September 11 & Political Freedom in Asia, eds. Johannen, Smith & Gomez, Singapore 2002.
2002-2010
96. “Recording vivid dreams: Freud’s advice in exploring the Unconscious Mind” (Due to be published here in 2010).
2003
97. “Key principles of government accounting and audit”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo.
98. “Derivative pricing & other topics in financial theory: a student’s complete lecture notes” (Due to be published here in 2010).
2004
99. TV Interview by BBC, Oxford, after May 2004 General Election in India.
100. “Collapse of the Global Conversation”, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands, Jul 2004.
101. “Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom”, a public lecture, University of Buckingham, UK, August 24 2004. Published here 2007.
2005
93a Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform (this was the full story; it appeared in print for the first time in The Statesman Festival Volume 2007).
102. “Can India become an economic superpower (or will there be a monetary meltdown)?” Cardiff University Institute of Applied Macroeconomics Monetary Economics Seminar, April 13, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, April 27, Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, Chief Economist’s Seminar on Monetary Economics, May 5.
103. Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant, Edited and with an Introduction by Subroto Roy & John Clarke, London & New York: Continuum, 2005; paperback 2006; French translation by Florian Bay, 2007.
104. “Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali in Pakistan’s Creation”, Dawn, Karachi, Sep 3.
105. “The Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 11 .
106. “After the Verdict”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 20.
107. “US Espionage Failures”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 26
108. “Waffle But No Models of Monetary Policy”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 30.
109. “On Hindus and Muslims”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Nov 6.
110. “Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Nov 13-14″.
111. “Fiction from the India Economic Summit”, The Statesman, Front Page, Nov 29.
112. “Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason”, The Statesman Editorial Page
I. “Give the Hurriyat et al Indian Green Cards”, Dec 1
II. “Choice of Nationality under Full Information”, Dec 2
III. “Of Flags and Consulates in Gilgit etc”, Dec 3.
2006
113. “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman Editorial Page
I : New Delhi’s Consensus (Manmohantekidambaromics), Jan 6
II: Money, Convertibility, Inflationary Deficit Financing, Jan 7
III: Rule of Law, Transparency, Government Accounting, Jan 8.
114. “Unaccountable Delhi: India’s Separation of Powers’ Doctrine”, The Statesman, Jan 13.
115. “Communists and Constitutions”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 22.
116. “Diplomatic Wisdom”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 31.
117. “Mendacity & the Government Budget Constraint”, The Statesman, Front Page Feb 3.
118. “Of Graven Images”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb5.
119. “Separation of Powers, Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Pages Feb 12-13.
120. “Public Debt, Government Fantasy”, The Statesman, Front Page Editorial Comment, Feb 22.
121. “War or Peace Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 23-24.
122. “Can You Handle This Brief, Mr Chidambaram?” The Statesman, Front Page Feb 26.
123. “A Downpayment On the Taj Mahal Anyone?”, The Statesman, Front Page Comment on the Budget 2006-2007, Mar 1.
124. “Atoms for Peace (or War)”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Mar 5.
125. “Imperialism Redux: Business, Energy, Weapons & Foreign Policy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Mar 14.
126. “Logic of Democracy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Mar 30.
127. “Towards an Energy Policy”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 2.
128. “Iran’s Nationalism”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 6.
129. “A Modern Military”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 16.
130. “On Money & Banking”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 23.
131. “Lessons for India from Nepal’s Revolution”, The Statesman, Front Page Apr 26.
132. “Revisionist Flattery (Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi: A Review Article)”, The Sunday Statesman, May 7.
133. “Modern World History”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, May 7.
134. “Argumentative Indians: A Conversation with Professor Amartya Sen on Philosophy, Identity and Islam,” The Sunday Statesman, May 14 2006. “A Philosophical Conversation between Professor Sen and Dr Roy”, 2008. Translated into Bengali by AA and published in 00.
135. “The Politics of Dr Singh”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, May 21.
136. “Corporate Governance & the Principal-Agent Problem”, lecture at a conference on corporate governance, Kolkata May 31. Published here 2008.
137. “Pakistan’s Allies Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jun 4-5.
138. “Law, Justice and J&K Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 2, The Statesman Editorial Page Jul 3.
139. “The Greatest Pashtun (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan)”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 16.
140. “Understanding Pakistan Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 30, The Statesman Editorial Page Jul 31.
141. “Indian Money and Credit”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 6.
142. “India’s Moon Mission”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 13.
143. “Jaswant’s Journeyings: A Review Article”, The Sunday Statesman Magazine, Aug 27.
144. “Our Energy Interests, Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 27, The Statesman Editorial Page Aug 28.
145. “Is Balochistan Doomed?”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Sep 3 2006.
146. “Racism New and Old”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Sep 8 2006
147. “Political Economy of India’s Energy Policy”, address to KAF-TERI conference, Goa Oct 7, published in 147a.
148. “New Foreign Policy? Seven phases of Indian foreign policy may be identifiable since Nehru”, Parts 1-2, The Sunday Statesman, Oct 8, The Statesman Oct 9.
149. “Justice & Afzal: There is a difference between law and equity (or natural justice). The power of pardon is an equitable power. Commuting a death-sentence is a partial pardon”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Oct 14
150. “Non-existent liberals (On a Liberal Party for India)”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Oct 22.
151. “History of Jammu & Kashmir Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Oct 29, The Statesman Oct 30, Editorial Page.
152. “American Democracy: Does America need a Prime Minister and a longer-lived Legislature?”, The Sunday Statesman Nov 5.
153. “Milton Friedman A Man of Reason 1912-2006”, The Statesman Perspective Page, Nov 22.
154. “Postscript to Milton Friedman Mahalanobis’s Plan (The Mahalanobis-Nehru “Second Plan”) The Statesman Front Page Nov 22.
155. “Mob Violence and Psychology”, Dec 10, The Statesman, Editorial Page.
156. “What To Tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions”, The Statesman Editorial Page Dec 15.
157. “Land, Liberty and Value: Government must act in good faith treating all citizens equally – not favouring organised business lobbies and organised labour over an unorganised peasantry”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Dec 31.
2007
158. “Hypocrisy of the CPI-M: Political Collapse In Bengal: A Mid-Term Election/Referendum Is Necessary”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 9.
159. “On Land-Grabbing: Dr Singh’s India, Buddhadeb’s Bengal, Modi’s Gujarat have notorious US, Soviet and Chinese examples to follow ~ distracting from the country’s real economic problems,” The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Jan 14.
160. “India’s Macroeconomics: Real growth has steadily occurred because India has shared the world’s technological progress. But bad fiscal, monetary policies over decades have led to monetary weakness and capital flight” The Statesman Editorial Page Jan 20.
161. “Fiscal Instability: Interest payments quickly suck dry every year’s Budget. And rolling over old public debt means that Government Borrowing in fact much exceeds the Fiscal Deficit”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 4.
162. “Our trade and payments Parts 1-2” (“India in World Trade and Payments”),The Sunday Statesman, Feb 11 2007, The Statesman, Feb 12 2007.
163. “Our Policy Process: Self-Styled “Planners” Have Controlled India’s Paper Money For Decades,” The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 20.
164. “Bengal’s Finances”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, Feb 25.
165. “Fallacious Finance: Congress, BJP, CPI-M may be leading India to Hyperinflation” The Statesman Editorial Page Mar 5.
166. “Uttar Pradesh Polity and Finance: A Responsible New Govt May Want To Declare A Financial Emergency” The Statesman Editorial Page, Mar 24
167. “A scam in the making” in The Sunday Statesman Front Page Apr 1 2007, published here in full as “Swindling India”.
168. “Maharashtra’s Money: Those Who Are Part Of The Problem Are Unlikely To Be A Part Of Its Solution”, The Statesman Editorial Page Apr 24.
147a. “Political Economy of Energy Policy” in India and Energy Security edited by Anant Sudarshan and Ligia Noronha, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, New Delhi 2007.
169. “Presidential Qualities: Simplicity, Genuine Achievement Are Desirable; Political Ambition Is Not”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, May 8.
170. “We & Our Neighbours: Pakistanis And Bangladeshis Would Do Well To Learn From Sheikh Abdullah”, The Statesman, Editorial Page May 15.
171. “On Indian Nationhood: From Tamils To Kashmiris And Assamese And Mizos To Sikhs And Goans”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, May 25.
172. A Current Example of the Working of the Unconscious Mind, May 26.
173. Where I would have gone if I was Osama Bin Laden, May 31.
174. “US election ’08:America’s Presidential Campaign Seems Destined To Be Focussed On Iraq”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 1.
175. “Home Team Advantage: On US-Iran talks and Sunni-Shia subtleties: Tehran must transcend its revolution and endorse the principle that the House of Islam has many mansions”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, June 3
176. “Unhealthy Delhi: When will normal political philosophy replace personality cults?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 11.
177. “American Turmoil: A Vice-Presidential Coup – And Now a Grassroots Counterrevolution?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 18
178. “Political Paralysis: India has yet to develop normal conservative, liberal and socialist parties. The Nice-Housing-Effect and a little game-theory may explain the current stagnation”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, June 24.
179. “Has America Lost? War Doctrines Of Kutusov vs Clausewitz May Help Explain Iraq War”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 3.
180. “Lal Masjid ≠ Golden Temple: Wide differences are revealed between contemporary Pakistan and India by these two superficially similar military assaults on armed religious civilians”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page July 15
181. “Political Stonewalling: Only Transparency Can Improve Institutions”, The Statesman, Editorial Page July 20.
182. “Gold standard etc: Fixed versus flexible exchange rates”, July 21.
183. “US Pakistan-India Policy: Delhi & Islamabad Still Look West In Defining Their Relationship”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 27.
184. “Works of DH Lawrence” July 30
185. “An Open Letter to Professor Amartya Sen about Singur etc”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 31.
186. “Martin Buber on Palestine and Israel (with Postscript)”, Aug 4.
187. “Auguste Rodin on Nature, Art, Beauty, Women and Love”, Aug 7.
188. “Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 13.
189. Letter to Forbes.com 16 Aug.
190. “Need for Clarity: A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 19.
191. “No Marxist MBAs? An amicus curiae brief for the Hon’ble High Court”, The Statesman, FrontPage, Aug 29.
192. On Lawrence, Sep 4.
193. Dalai Lama’s Return: In the tradition of Gandhi, King, Mandela, Sep 11.
194. Of JC Bose, Patrick Geddes & the Leaf-World, Sep 12.
195. “Against Quackery: Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms; the Communists have been appeased or bought; the BJP is incompetent Parts 1-2”, in The Sunday Statesman and The Statesman, Editorial Pages of Sep 23-24.
196. Karl Georg Zinn’s 1994 Review of Philosophy of Economics, Sep 26.
197. DH Lawrence’s Phoenix, Oct 3.
93b. “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”, Statesman Festival Volume.
198. “Iran, America, Iraq: Bush’s post-Saddam Saddamism — one flip-flop too many?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 16.
199. “Understanding China: The World Needs to Ask China to Find Her True Higher Self”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 22.
200. “India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 30.
201. “China’s India Aggression : German Historians Discover Logic Behind Communist Military Strategy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Nov 5.
202. Sonia’s Lying Courtier (with Postscript), Nov 25. See also 2014
203. “Surrender or Fight? War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must?” The Statesman, Dec 4, Editorial Page.
204. Hutton and Desai: United in Error Dec 14
205. “China’s Commonwealth: Freedom is the Road to Resolving Taiwan, Tibet, Sinkiang”, The Statesman, Dec 17.
2008
206. “Nixon & Mao vs India: How American foreign policy did a U-turn about Communist China’s India aggression. The Government of India should publish its official history of the 1962 war.” The Sunday Statesman, Jan 6, The Statesman Jan 7 Editorial Page.
207. “Lessons from the 1962 War: Beginnings of a solution to the long-standing border problem: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended”, The Sunday Statesman, January 13 2008.
208. “Our Dismal Politics: Will Independent India Survive Until 2047?”, The Statesman Editorial Page, Feb 1.
209. Median Voter Model of India’s Electorate Feb 7.
210. “Anarchy in Bengal: Intra-Left bandh marks the final unravelling of “Brand Buddha””, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 10.
211. Fifty years since my third birthday: on life and death.
212. “Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession: Sheikh Abdullah Relied In Politics On The French Constitution, Not Islam”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 16.
213. A Note on the Indian Policy Process Feb 21.
214. “Growth & Government Delusion: Progress Comes From Learning, Enterprise, Exchange, Not The Parasitic State”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 22.
215. “How to Budget: Thrift, Not Theft, Needs to Guide Our Public Finances”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 26.
216. “India’s Budget Process (in Theory)”, The Statesman, Front Page Feb 29.
217. “Irresponsible Governance: Congress, BJP, Communists, BSP, Sena Etc Reveal Equally Bad Traits”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 4.
218. “American Politics: Contest Between Obama And Clinton Affects The World”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 11.
219. “China’s India Example: Tibet, Xinjiang May Not Be Assimilated Like Inner Mongolia And Manchuria”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 25.
220. “Taxation of India’s Professional Cricket: A Proposal”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 1.
221. “Two cheers for Pakistan!”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 7.
222. “Indian Inflation: Upside Down Economics From The New Delhi Establishment Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 15-16.
223. “Assessing Manmohan: The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake”, The Statesman, Editorial Page Apr 25.
224. John Wisdom, Renford Bambrough: Main Philosophical Works, May 8.
225. “All India wept”: On the death of Rajiv Gandhi, May 21.
226. “China’s force and diplomacy: The need for realism in India” The Statesman, Editorial Page May 31.
227. Serendipity and the China-Tibet-India border problem June 6
228. “Leadership vacuum: Time & Tide Wait For No One In Politics: India Trails Pakistan & Nepal!”, The Statesman Editorial Page June 7.
229. My meeting Jawaharlal Nehru Oct13 1962
230. Manindranath Roy 1891-1958
231. Surendranath Roy 1860-1929
232. The Roys of Behala 1928.
233. Sarat Chandra visits Surendranath Roy 1927
234. Nuksaan-Faida Analysis = Cost-Benefit Analysis in Hindi/Urdu Jun 30
235. One of many reasons John R Hicks was a great economist July 3
236. My father, Indian diplomat, in the Shah’s Tehran 1954-57 July 8
237 Distribution of Govt of India Expenditure (Net of Operational Income) 1995 July 27
238. Growth of Real Income, Money & Prices in India 1869-2008, July 28.
239. Communism from Social Democracy? But not in India or China! July 29
240. Death of Solzhenitsyn, Aug. 3
240a. Tolstoy on Science and Art, Aug 4.
241. “Reddy’s reckoning: Where should India’s real interest rate be relative to the world?” Business Standard Aug 10
242. “Rangarajan Effect”, Business Standard Aug 24
243. My grandfather’s death in Ottawa 50 years ago today Sep 3
244. My books in the Library of Congress and British Library Sep 12
245. On Jimmy Carter & the “India-US Nuclear Deal”, Sep 12
246. My father after presenting his credentials to President Kekkonen of Finland Sep 14 1973.
247. “October 1929? Not!”, Business Standard, Sep 18.
248. “MK Gandhi, SN Roy, MA Jinnah in March 1919: Primary education legislation in a time of protest”
249. 122 sensible American economists Sept 26
250. Govt of India: Please call in the BBC and ask them a question Sep 27
251. “Monetary Integrity and the Rupee: Three British Raj relics have dominated our macroeconomic policy-making” Business Standard Sep 28.
252a. Rabindranath’s daughter writes to her friend my grandmother Oct 5
252b. A Literary Find: Modern Poetry in Bengal, Oct 6.
253. Sarat writes to Manindranath 1931, Oct 12
254. Origins of India’s Constitutional Politics 1913
255. Indira Gandhi in Paris, 1971
256. How the Liabilities/Assets Ratio of Indian Banks Changed from 84% in 1970 to 108% in 1998, October 20
257a. My Subjective Probabilities on India’s Moon Mission Oct 21
258. Complete History of Mankind’s Moon Missions: An Indian Citizen’s Letter to ISRO’s Chairman, Oct 22.
259. Would not a few million new immigrants solve America’s mortgage crisis? Oct 26
260. “America’s divided economists”, Business Standard Oct 26
261. One tiny prediction about the Obama Administration, Nov 5
262. Rai Bahadur Umbika Churn Rai, 1827-1902, Nov 7 2008
263. Jawaharlal Nehru invites my father to the Mountbatten Farewell Nov 7 2008
70a. “Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America) Preface” Nov 9
70b. “Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America)” Nov 9.
257b. Neglecting technological progress was the basis of my pessimism about Chandrayaan, Nov 9.
264. Of a new New Delhi myth and the success of the University of Hawaii 1986-1992 Pakistan project Nov 15
265. Pre-Partition Indian Secularism Case-Study: Fuzlul Huq and Manindranath Roy Nov 16
266. Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists suppose Maulana Azad, Dr Zakir Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah were Pakistanis (or that Sheikh Mujib wanted to remain one)? Nov 18
267. Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until this sad day, Nov 28.
268. In international law, Pakistan has been the perpetrator, India the victim of aggression in Mumbai, Nov 30.
269. The Indian Revolution, Dec 1.
270. Habeas Corpus: a captured terrorist mass-murderer tells a magistrate he has not been mistreated by Mumbai’s police Dec 3
271. India’s Muslim Voices (Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent), Dec 4
272. “Anger Management” needed? An Oxford DPhil recommends Pakistan launch a nuclear first strike against India within minutes of war, Dec 5.
273. A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough), Dec 6
274. Dr Rice finally gets it right (and maybe Mrs Clinton will too) Dec 7
275. Will the Government of India’s new macroeconomic policy dampen or worsen the business-cycle (if such a cycle exists at all)? No one knows! “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” Dec 7
276. Pump-priming for car-dealers: Keynes groans in his grave (If evidence was needed of the intellectual dishonesty of New Delhi’s new macroeconomic policy, here it is) Dec 9.
277. Congratulations to Mumbai’s Police: capturing a terrorist, affording him his Habeas Corpus rights, getting him to confess within the Rule of Law, sets a new world standard Dec 10
278. Two cheers — wait, let’s make that one cheer — for America’s Justice Department, Dec 10
279. Will Pakistan accept the bodies of nine dead terrorists who came from Pakistan to Mumbai? If so, let there be a hand-over at the Wagah border, Dec 11.
280. Kasab was a stupid, ignorant, misguided youth, manufactured by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds into becoming a mass-murdering robot: Mahatma Gandhi’s India should punish him, get him to repent if he wishes, then perhaps rehabilitate him as a potent weapon against Pakistani terrorism Dec 12.
281. Pakistan’s New Delhi Embassy should ask for “Consular Access” to nine dead terrorists in a Mumbai morgue before asking to meet Kasab, Dec 13
282. An Indian Reply to President Zardari: Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationships Dec 19
283. Is my prediction about Caroline Kennedy becoming US Ambassador to Britain going to be correct? Dec 27
284. Chandrayaan adds a little good cheer! Well done, ISRO!, Dec 28
285. How sad that “Slumdog millionaire” is SO disappointing! Dec 31
289. (with Claude Arpi) “Transparency & history: India’s archives must be opened to world standards” Business Standard New Delhi Dec 31, 2008, published here Jan 1 .
2009
290. A basis of India-Pakistan cooperation on the Mumbai massacres: the ten Pakistani terrorists started off as pirates and the Al-Huseini is a pirate ship Jan 1.
291. India’s “pork-barrel politics” needs a nice (vegetarian) Hindi name! “Teli/oily politics” perhaps? (And are we next going to see a Bill of Rights for Lobbyists?) Jan 3
292. My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, “Actionable Intelligence” in the Internet age: How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop) Jan 5
293. How Jammu & Kashmir’s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah can become a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: An Open Letter, Jan 7
294. Could the Satyam/PwC fraud be the visible part of an iceberg? Where are India’s “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles”? Isn’t governance rather poor all over corporate India? Bad public finance may be a root cause Jan 8
295. Satyam does not exist: it is bankrupt, broke, kaput. Which part of this does the new “management team” not get? The assets belong to Satyam’s creditors. Jan 8
296. Jews are massacred in Mumbai and now Jews commit a massacre in Gaza! Jan 9
297. And now for the Great Satyam Whitewash/Cover-Up/Public Subsidy! The wrong Minister appoints the wrong new Board who, probably, will choose the wrong policy Jan 12
298. Letter to Wei Jingsheng Jan 14
299. Memo to the Hon’ble Attorneys General of Pakistan & India: How to jointly prosecute the Mumbai massacre perpetrators most expeditiously Jan 16
300. Satyam and IT-firms in general may be good candidates to become “Labour-Managed” firms Jan 18
301. “Yes we might be able to do that. Perhaps we ought to. But again, perhaps we ought not to, let me think about it…. Most important is Cromwell’s advice: Think it possible we may be mistaken!” Jan 20.
302. RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks Jan 25
303. Didn’t Dr Obama (the new American President’s late father) once publish an article in Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics? (Or did he?) Jan 25.
304. “A Dialogue in Macroeconomics” 1989 etc: sundry thoughts on US economic policy discourse Jan 30
305. American Voices: A Brief Popular History of the United States in 20 You-Tube Music Videos Feb 5
306. Jaladhar Sen writes to Manindranath at Surendranath’s death, Feb 23
307. Pakistani expansionism: India and the world need to beware of “Non-Resident Pakistanis” ruled by Rahmat Ali’s ghost, Feb 9
308. My American years Part One 1980-90: battles for academic integrity & freedom Feb 11.
309. Thanks and well done Minister Rehman Malik and the Govt of Pakistan Feb 12
310. Can President Obama resist the financial zombies (let alone slay them)? His economists need to consult Dr Anna J Schwartz Feb 14
311. A Brief History of Gilgit, Feb 18
312. Memo to UCLA Geographers: Commonsense suggests Mr Bin Laden is far away from the subcontinent Feb 20
313. The BBC gets its history and geography deliberately wrong again Feb 21
314. Bengal Legislative Council 1921, Feb 28
315. Carmichael visits Surendranath, 1916, Mar 1
316. Memo to GoI CLB: India discovered the Zero, and 51% of Zero is still Zero Mar 10
317. An Academic Database of Doctoral & Other Postgraduate Research Done at UK Universities on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Other Asian Countries Over 100 Years, Mar 13
318. Pakistan’s progress, Mar 18
319. Risk-aversion explains resistance to free trade, Mar 19
320. India’s incredibly volatile inflation rate! Mar 20
321. Is “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” referring to an emasculation of (elite) American society?, Mar 21
322. Just how much intellectual fraud can Delhi produce? Mar 26
323. India is not a monarchy! We urgently need to universalize the French concept of “citoyen”! Mar 28
324. Could this be the real state of some of our higher education institutions? Mar 29
325. Progress! The BBC retracts its prevarication! Mar 30
326. Aldous Huxley’s Essay “DH Lawrence” Mar 31
327. Waffle not institutional reform is what (I predict) the “G-20 summit” will produce, April 1
328. Did a full cricket team of Indian bureaucrats follow our PM into 10 Downing Street? Count for yourself! April 3
329. Will someone please teach the BJP’s gerontocracy some Economics 101 on an emergency basis? April 5
330. The BBC needs to determine exactly where it thinks Pakistan is!, April 5
331. Alfred Lyall on Christians, Muslims, India, China, Etc, 1908, April 6
332. An eminent economist of India passes away April 9
333. Democracy Database for the Largest Electorate Ever Seen in World History, April 12
334. Memo to the Election Commission of India April 14 2009, 9 AM, April 14
335. Caveat emptor! Satyam is taken over, April 14
336. India’s 2009 General Elections: Candidates, Parties, Symbols for Polls on 16-30 April Phases 1,2,3, April 15
337. On the general theory of expertise in democracy: reflections on what emerges from the American “torture memos” today, April 18
338. India’s 2009 General Elections: 467 constituencies (out of 543) for which candidates have been announced as of 1700hrs April 21, April 21
339. Apropos Philosophy of Economics, Comments of Sidney Hook, KJ Arrow, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, SS Alexander, Max Black, Renford Bambrough, John Gray et al., April 22.
340. India’s 2009 General Elections: Names of all 543 Constituencies of the 15th Lok Sabha, April 22.
341. India’s 2009 General Elections: How 4125 State Assembly Constituencies comprise the 543 new Lok Sabha Constituencies, April 23.
342. Why has America’s “torture debate” yet to mention the obvious? Viz., sadism and racism, April 24
343. India’s 2009 General Elections: the advice of the late “George Eliot” (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880) to India’s voting public, April 24.
344. India’s 2009 General Elections: Delimitation and the Different Lists of 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies in 2009 and 2004, April 25
345. Is “Slumdog Millionaire” the single worst Best Picture ever?
346. India’s 2009 General Elections: Result of Delimitation — Old (2004) and New (2009) Lok Sabha and Assembly Constituencies, April 26
347. India’s 2009 General Elections: 7019 Candidates in 485 (out of 543) Constituencies announced as of April 26 noon April 26
348. What is Christine Fair referring to? Would the MEA kindly seek to address what she has claimed asap? April 27
349. Politics can be so entertaining 🙂 Manmohan versus Sonia on the poor old CPI(M)!, April 28
350. A Dozen Grown-Up Questions for Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, LK Advani, Sharad Pawar, Km Mayawati and Anyone Else Dreaming of Becoming/Deciding India’s PM After the 2009 General Elections, April 28
351. India’s 2009 General Elections: How drastically will the vote-share of political parties change from 2004? May 2
352. India’s 2009 General Elections: And now finally, all 8,070 Candidates across all 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies, May 5
353. India’s 2009 General Elections: The Mapping of Votes into Assembly Segments Won into Parliamentary Seats Won in the 2004 Election, May 7
354. Will Messrs Advani, Rajnath Singh & Modi ride into the sunset if the BJP comes to be trounced? (Corrected), May 10
355. India’s 2009 General Elections: 543 Matrices to Help Ordinary Citizens Audit the Election Commission’s Vote-Tallies May 12
356. Well done Sonia-Rahul! Two hours before polls close today, I am willing to predict a big victory for you (but, please, try to get your economics right, and also, you must get Dr Singh a Lok Sabha seat if he is to be PM) May 13
357. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee must dissolve the West Bengal Assembly if he is an honest democrat: Please try to follow Gerard Schröder’s example even slightly! May 16
358. India’s 2009 General Elections: Provisional Results from the EC as of 1400 hours Indian Standard Time May 16
359. Memo to the Hon’ble President of India: It is Sonia Gandhi, not Manmohan Singh, who should be invited to our equivalent of the “Kissing Hands” Ceremony May 16
360. Time for heads to roll in the BJP/RSS and CPI(M)!, May 17.
361. Inviting a new Prime Minister of India to form a Government: Procedure Right and Wrong May 18
362. Starting with Procedural Error: Why has the “Cabinet” of the 14th Lok Sabha been meeting today AFTER the results of the Elections to the 15th Lok Sabha have been declared?! May 18
363. Why has the Sonia Congress done something that the Congress under Nehru-Indira-Rajiv would not have done, namely, exaggerate the power of the Rajya Sabha and diminish the power of the Lok Sabha? May 21
364. Shouldn’t Dr Singh’s Cabinet begin with a small apology to the President of India for discourtesy? May we have reviews and reforms of protocols and practices to be followed at Rashtrapati Bhavan and elsewhere? May 23
365. Parliament’s sovereignty has been diminished by the Executive: A record for future generations to know May 25
366. How tightly will organised Big Business be able to control economic policies this time? May 26
367. Why does India not have a Parliament ten days after the 15th Lok Sabha was elected? Nehru and Rajiv would both have been appalled May 27
368. Eleven days and counting after the 15th Lok Sabha was elected and still no Parliament of India! (But we do have 79 Ministers — might that be a world record?) May 28
369. Note to Posterity: 79 Ministers in office but no 15th Lok Sabha until June 1 2009! May 29
370. Silver Jubilee of Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India May 29
371. How to Design a Better Cabinet for the Government of India May 29
372. Parliament is supposed to control the Government, not be bullied or intimidated by it: Will Rahul Gandhi be able to lead the Backbenches in the 15th Lok Sabha? June 1
373. Mistaken Macroeconomics: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, June 12
374. Why did Manmohan Singh and LK Advani apologise to one another? Is Indian politics essentially collusive, not competitive, aiming only to preserve and promote the post-1947 Dilli Raj at the expense of the whole of India? We seem to have no Churchillian repartee (except perhaps from Bihar occasionally) June 18
375. Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer June 22
376. My March 25 1991 memo to Rajiv (which never reached him) is something the present Government seems to have followed: all for the best of course! July 12
377. Disquietude about France’s behaviour towards India on July 14 2009 July 14
378. Does the Govt. of India assume “foreign investors and analysts” are a key constituency for Indian economic policy-making? If so, why so? Have Govt. economists “learnt nothing, forgotten everything”? Some Bastille Day thoughts July 14
379. Letter to the GoI’s seniormost technical economist, May 21.July 19
380. Excuse me but young Kasab in fact confessed many months ago, immediately after he was captured – he deserves 20 or 30 years in an Indian prison, and a chance to become a model prisoner who will stand against the very terrorists who sent him on his vile mission July 20
381. Finally, three months late, the GoI responds to American and Pakistani allegations about Balochistan July 24
382. Thoughts, words, deeds: My work 1973-2010
2012
383. Life of my father 1915-2012
384. India’s Money” in the Cayman Financial Review, July 2012
385. Towards Making the Indian Rupee a Hard Currency of the World Economy: An analysis from British times until the present day, lecture at India International Centre, Delhi, 3 Dec 2012
386. 5 December 2012 interview by Mr Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, on Lok Sabha TV, the channel of India’s Lower House of Parliament, broadcast for the first time on 9 December 2012 on Lok Sabha TV, is here and here in two parts.
387. Interview by GDI Impuls banking quarterly of Zürich published on 6 Dec 2012 is here.
388. My interview by Ragini Bhuyan of Delhi’s Sunday Guardian published on 16 Dec 2012 is here.
2013
389. “I have a student called Suby Roy…”: Reflections on Frank Hahn (1925-2013), my master in economic theory
390. Cambridge Economics & the Disputation in India’s Economic Policy, Revised 15 July 2013
391. Critical assessment dated 19 August 2013 of Raghuram Rajan is here (Live Mint 19 Aug) and here
392. 23 August 2013 of Professors Jagdish Bhagwati & Amartya Sen and Dr Manmohan Singh is here…
2014
393. “Mrs Irani’s New Job”/”Task Cut Out For Smriti Irani” June 16, 2014http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/Task-Cut-Out-for-Smriti-Irani/2014/06/16/article2282316.ece
394. Much as I might love Russia, England, France, America, I despise their spies & local agents affecting poor India’s policies: Memo to PM Modi, Mr Jaitley, Mr Doval & the new Govt. of India: Beware of Delhi’s sleeper agents, lobbyists & other dalals
395. “Haksar, Manmohan and Sonia” August 7, 2014 New Indian Express http://t.co/bRnQI1hrwy
396. Free India’s Foreign Policy & Economy in One Chart: Weapons Imports 1950-2013 by Country of Origin
See also:
My Recent Works, Interviews etc on India’s Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, etc (an incomplete list)
My Seventy-One Articles, Notes Etc on Kashmir, Pakistan, & of course, India (plus my undelivered Lahore lectures)
My Ten Articles on China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan in relation to India
M1. Map of Asia c. 1900
M2. Map of Chinese Empire c. 1900
M3. Map of Sinkiang, Tibet and Neighbours 1944
M4. China’s Secretly Built 1957 Road Through India’s Aksai Chin
M5. Map of Kashmir to Sinkiang 1944
M6. Map of India-Tibet-China-Mongolia 1959
M7. Map of India, Afghanistan, Russia, China, 1897
M8. Map of Xinjiang/Sinkiang/E Turkestan
M9. Map of Bombay/Mumbai 1909
M10-M13. Himalayan Expedition, West Sikkim 1970 – 1,2,3,4
2010 version:
This an incomplete bibliography of my writings, public lectures etc 1973-2010 including citations, reviews, comments. I have been mostly an academic economist who by choice or circumstance over 36 years has had to venture also into science, philosophy, public policy, law, jurisprudence, practical politics, history, international relations, military strategy, financial theory, accounting, management, journalism, literary criticism, psychology, psychoanalysis, theology, aesthetics, biography, children’s fables, etc. If anything unites the seemingly diverse work recorded below it is that I have tried to acquire a grasp of the nature of human reason and then apply this comprehension in practical contexts as simply and clearly as possible. Hence I have ended up following the path of Aristotle, as described in modern times (via Wittgenstein and John Wisdom) by Renford Bambrough. The 2004 public lecture in England, “Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom”, may explain and illustrate all this best. A friend has been kind enough to call me an Academician, which I probably am, though one who really needs his own Academy because the incompetence, greed and mendacity encountered too often in the modern professoriat is dispiriting.
1-289 refer mostly to writings and publications printed on paper; 290-382 refer to writings or items not printed on paper — as new media break space, cost and other constraints of traditional publishing, a little repetition and overlap has occurred too. Also in a few cases, e.g., Aldous Huxley’s essay on DH Lawrence, nothing has been done except discover and republish. Several databases have been created and released in the public interest, as have been some rare maps. There is also some biographical and autobiographical material. Several inconsequential errors remain in the text, which shall take time to be rectified as documents come to be rediscovered and collated.
1973
1. “Behavioural study of mus musculus”, Haileybury College, Supervised by J de C Ford-Robertson MA (Oxon). (Due to be published here 2010).
2. “Chemistry at Advanced & Special Level: Student Notes 1972-73” (Due to be published here 2010).
3. “Biology at Advanced & Special Level: Student Notes 1972-73”, (Due to be published here 2010).
4. “Physics at Advanced Level: Student Notes 1972-73”, (Due to be published here 2010).
5. “Revolution: theoria and praxis”, London, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
6. “Gandhi vs Marx”, London, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
1974
7. “Relevance of downward money-wage rigidity to the problem of maintaining full-employment in the classical and Keynesian models of income determination”, London School of Economics, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
8. “Testing aircraft fuels at Shell Finland”.
1975
9. “Oxford Street experiences: down and out in London town”.
10. “SE Region Bulk Distribution Survey”, Unilever, Basingstoke.
11. “Four London poems”, in JCM Paton (ed) New Writing (London, Great Portland Street: International Students House). (Due to be republished here 2010)
12. “On economic growth models and modellers”, London School of Economics, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
1976
13. “World money: system or anarchy?”, lecture to Professor ACL Day’s seminar, London School of Economics, Economics Department, April. (Due to be published here 2010).
14. “A beginner’s guide to some recent developments in monetary theory”, lecture to Professor FH Hahn’s seminar, Cambridge University Economics Department, November 17 (Due to be published here 2010). See also “Announcement of My “Hahn Seminar”, published here June 14 2008.
1977
15. “Inflation and unemployment: a survey”, mimeo, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. (Due to be published here 2010).
16. “On short run theories of dual economies”, Cambridge University Economics Department “substantial piece of work” required of first year Research Students. Examiner: DMG Newbery, FBA. (Due to be published here 2010).
1978
17. “Pure theory of developing economies 1 and 2”, Delhi School of Economics mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
18. “Introduction to some market outcomes under uncertainty”, Delhi School of Economics mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
19. “On money and development”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo, September. (Due to be published here 2010)
20. “Notes on the Newbery-Stiglitz model of sharecropping”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo November. (Due to be published here 2010).
1979
21. “A theory of rights and economic justice”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
22. “Monetary theory and economic development”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
23. “Foundations of the case against ‘development planning’”, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, mimeo, November. (Due to be published here 2010).
1979-1989
24. Correspondence with Renford Bambrough (1926-1999), philosopher of St John’s College, Cambridge (Due to be published here 2010).
1980
25. “Models before the monetarist storm”, New Statesman letters
26. “Disciplining rulers and experts”, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
1981
27. “On liberty & economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”, Cambridge University doctoral thesis, supervisor FH Hahn, FBA; examiners CJ Bliss, FBA; TW Hutchison, FBA (Due to be published here 2010). 27a Response of FA Hayek on a partial draft February 18 1981. 27b Response of Peter Bauer, 1982. 27c Response of Theodore W Schultz, 1983. 27d. Response of Frank Hahn 1985.
1982
28. “Knowledge and freedom in economic theory Parts 1 and 2”, Centre for Study of Public Choice, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Working Papers.
29. “Economic Theory and Development Economics”. Lecture to American Economic Association, New York, Dec 1982. Panel: RM Solow, HB Chenery, T Weisskopf, P Streeten, G Rosen, S Roy. Published in 29a.
1983
29a “Economic Theory and Development Economics: A Comment”. World Development, 1983. [Citation: Stavros Thefanides “Metamorphosis of Development Economics”, World Development 1988.]
30. “The Political Economy of Trade Policy (Comment on J. Michael Finger)”, Washington DC: Cato Journal, Winter 1983/84. See also 000 “Risk-aversion explains resistance to freer trade”, 2008.
1984
31. “Considerations on Utility, Benevolence and Taxation”, History of Political Economy, 1984. 31a Response of Professor Sir John Hicks May 1 1984.
[Citations: P. Hennipman, “A Tale of Two Schools”, De Economist 1987, “A New Look at the Ordinalist Revolution”, J. Econ. Lit. Mar 1988; P. Rappoport, “Reply to Professor Hennipman”, J. Econ. Lit. Mar 1988; Eugene Smolensky et al “An Application of A Dynamic Cost-of-Living Index to the Evaluation of Changes in Social Welfare”, J. Post-Keynesian Econ.IX.3. 1987.]
32. Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, London 1984.
[Citations: Lead editorial of The Times of London May 29 1984, “India’s economy”, Times letters June 16 1984. John Toye “Political Economy & Analysis of Indian Development”, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1, 1988; John Toye, Dilemmas of Development; D. Wilson, “Privatization of Asia”, The Banker Sep. 1984 etc]. See also 370 “Silver Jubilee of ‘Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India’” 2009.
33. Review of Utilitarianism and Beyond, Amartya Sen & Bernard Williams (eds) Public Choice.
34. Review of Limits of Utilitarianism, HB Miller & WH Williams (eds.), Public Choice.
35. Deendayal lecture (one of four invited lecturers), Washington DC, May.
1987
36. (with one other) “Does the Theory of Logical Types Inform the Theory of Communication?”, Journal of Genetic Psychology., 148 (4), Dec. 1987 [Citation:
37. “Irrelevance of Foreign Aid”, India International Centre Quarterly, Winter 1987.
38. Review of Development Planning by Sukhamoy Chakravarty for Economic Affairs, London 1987.
1988
39. (with two others) “Introduction” to Lessons in Development: A Comparative Study of Asia and Latin America. San Francisco: Inst. of Economic Growth.
40. “A note on the welfare economics of regional cooperation”, lecture to Asia-Latin America conference, East West Center Honolulu, published 2009.
1989
41. Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry, London & New York: Routledge (International Library of Philosophy) 1989, paperback 1991. Internet edition 2007. [Reviews & Citations: Research in Economics, 1992; De Economist 1991 & 1992; Manch.Sch. Econ.Studs. 59, 1991; Ethics 101.88 Jul. 1991; Kyklos 43.4 1990; Soc. Science Q. 71.880. Dec.1990; Can. Phil. Rev. 1990; J. Econ. Hist. Sep. 1990; Econ. & Phil. Fall 1990; Econ. Affairs June-July 1990; TLS May 1990; Choice March 1990; J. App.Phil. 1994, M. Blaug: Methodology of Economics, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1992; Hist. Methods. 27.3, 1994; J. of Inst. & Theoretical Econ.,1994; Jahrbucker fur Nationaleconomie 1994, 573:574. Mark A Lutz in Economics for the Common Good, London: Routledge, 1999, et al]. See also 339 “Apropos Philosophy of Economics”, Comments of Sidney Hook, KJ Arrow, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, SS Alexander, Max Black, Renford Bambrough, John Gray et al.
42. Foreword to Essays on the Political Economy by James M. Buchanan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1989.
43. “Modern Political Economy of India”, edited by Subroto Roy & William E James, Hawaii mimeo May 21 1989. This published for the first time a November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India by Milton Friedman. See also 43a, 53.
43a. Preface to “Milton Friedman’s extempore comments at the 1989 Hawaii conference: on India, Israel, Palestine, the USA, Debt and its uses, Erhardt abolishing exchange controls, Etc”, May 22 1989, published here for the first time October 31 2008.
44. Milton Friedman’s defence of my work in 1989.
45. Theodore W. Schultz’s defence of Philosophy of Economics
1990
46. “Letter to Judge Evelyn Lance: On A Case Study in Private International Law” (Due to be published here in 2010).
47-49. Selections from advisory work on economic policy etc for Rajiv Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of India, published in 47a-49a.
1991
41b Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry, Paperback edition.
50. “Conversations and correspondence with Rajiv Gandhi during the Gulf war, January 1991” (Due to be published here 2010).
47a. A Memo to Rajiv I: Stronger Secular Middle”, The Statesman, Jul 31 1991.
48a “A Memo to Rajiv II: Saving India’s Prestige”, The Statesman, Aug 1 1991.
49a “A Memo to Rajiv III: Salvation in Penny Capitalism”, The Statesman, Aug 2 1991 47b-49b “Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-91”, 2007 republication here.
51. “Constitution for a Second Indian Republic”, The Saturday Statesman, April 20 1991. Republished here 2009.
52. “On the Art of Government: Experts, Party, Cabinet and Bureaucracy”, New Delhi mimeo March 25 1991, published here July 00 2009.
1992
53. Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s Edited and with an Introduction by Subroto Roy & William E. James New Delhi, London, Newbury Park: Sage: 1992. Citation: Milton and Rose Friedman Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998), pp. 268-269.
54. Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s Edited and with an Introduction by William E. James & Subroto Roy, Hawaii MS 1989, Sage: 1992, Karachi: Oxford 1993.
Reviews of 53 & 54 include: Bus. Today, Mar-Apr 1992; Political Studies March 1995; Econ Times 21 March 1993; Pakistan Development Review 1992. Hindustan Times 11 July 1992. Pacific Affairs 1993; Hindu 21 March 1993, 15 June 1993; Pakistan News International 12 June 1993. Book Reviews March 1993; Deccan Herald 2 May 1993; Pol.Econ.J. Ind. 1992. Fin Express 13 September 1992; Statesman 16 Jan. 1993. J. Royal Soc Asian Aff. 1994, J. Contemporary Asia, 1994 etc.
55. “Fundamental Problems of the Economies of India and Pakistan”, World Bank, Washington, mimeo (Due to be published here 2010).
56.“The Road to Stagflation: The Coming Dirigisme in America, or, America, beware thy economists!, or Zen and Clintonomics,” Washington DC, Broad Branch Terrace, mimeo, November 17.
1993
57. “Exchange-rates and manufactured exports of South Asia”, IMF Washington DC mimeo. Published in part in 2007-2008 as 58-62:
58. “Path of the Indian Rupee 1947-1993”, 2008.
59. “Path of the Pakistan Rupee 1947-1993”, 2008.
60. “Path of the Sri Lankan Rupee 1948-1993”, 2008.
61. “Path of the Bangladesh Taka 1972-1993”, 2008.
62. “India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Manufactured Exports, IMF Washington DC mimeo”, published 2007.
63. “Economic Assessment of US-India Merchandise Trade”, Arlington, Virginia, mimeo, published in slight part in Indo-US Trade & Economic Cooperation, ICRIER New Delhi, 1995, and in whole 2007.
64. “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir”, mimeo, Arlington, Virginia, circulated in Washington DC 1993-1995, cf 82, 111 infra. Comment of Selig Harrison.
1994
65. “Comment on Indonesia”, in The Political Economy of Policy Reform edited by John Williamson, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.
66a “Gold reserves & the gold price in anticipation of Central Bank behaviour”, Greenwich, Connecticut, mimeo. 67b. “Portfolio optimization and foreign currency exposure hedging” Greenwich, Connecticut mimeo.
1995
68. “On the logic and commonsense of debt and payments crises: How to avoid another Mexico in India and Pakistan”, Scarsdale, NY, mimeo, May 1.
69. “Policies for Young India”, Scarsdale, NY, pp. 350, manuscript.
1996
70. US Supreme Court documents, published in part in 2008 as “Become a US Supreme Court Justice!” 70a, 70b (Due to be published in full here in 2010 as Roy vs University of Hawaii, 1989- including the expert testimonies of Milton Friedman and Theodore W Schultz.).
71. “Key problems of macroeconomic management facing the new Indian Government”, May 17. Scarsdale, New York, mimeo. (Due to be published here 2010).
72. “Preventing a collapse of the rupee”, IIT Kharagpur lecture July 16 1996.
73. “The Economist’s Representation of Technological Knowledge”, Vishleshlaya lecture to the Institution of Engineers, September 15 1996, IIT Kharagpur.
1997
74. “Union and State Budgets in India”, lecture at the World Bank, Washington DC, May 00.
75. “State Budgets in India”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo, June 6.
1998
76. “Transparency and Economic Policy-Making: An address to the Asia-Pacific Public Relations Conference” (panel on Transparency chaired by CR Irani) Jan 30 1998, published here 2008.
77. Theodore W. Schultz 1902-1998, Feb 25.
78. “The Economic View of Human Resources”, address to a regional conference on human resources, IIT Kharagpur.
79. “Management accounting”, lecture at Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy, Mussourie,
80a “The Original Reformer”, Outlook letters, Jan 23 1998
81. “Recent Developments in Modern Finance”, IIM Bangalore Review, 10, 1 & 2, Jan.-Jun 1998. Reprinted as “From the Management Guru’s Classroom”: 81a “An introduction to derivatives”, Business Standard/Financial Times, Bombay 18 Apr 1999; 81b “Options in the future, Apr 25 1999; 81c “What is hedging?”, May 2 1999; 81d “Teaching computers to think”, May 9 1999.
82. “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir”, Jun 22 1998, lecture at Heritage Foundation, Washington DC. Cf 111 Dec 2005.
83. “Sixteen Currencies for India: A Reverse Euro Model for Monetary & Fiscal Efficacy”, Lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, June 29 1998. Due to be published here 2010.
84. “Fable of the Fox, the Farmer, and the Would-Be Tailors”, October (Published here July 27 2009).
85. “A Common Man’s Guide to Pricing Financial Derivatives”, Lecture to “National Seminar on Derivatives”, Xavier Labour Research Institute, Jamshedpur, Dec. 16 1998. See 98.
1999
86. “An Analysis of Pakistan’s War-Winning Strategy: Are We Ready for This?”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo, published in part as 86a.“Was a Pakistani Grand Strategy Discerned in Time by India?” New Delhi: Security & Political Risk Analysis Bulletin, July 1999, Kargil issue. See also 000
80b. “The Original Reformer”, Outlook letters, Sep 13 1999.
2000
87. “On Freedom & the Scientific Point of View”, SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Feb 17 2000. Cf 100 below.
88. “Liberalism and Indian economic policy”, lecture at IIM Calcutta, Indian Liberal Group Meetings Devlali, Hyderabad; also Keynote address to UGC Seminar Guntur, March 30 2002. (Due to be published here 2010).
89. “Towards a Highly Transparent Fiscal & Monetary Framework for India’s Union & State Governments”, Invited address to Conference of State Finance Secretaries, Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, April 29, 2000. Published 2008.
90. “On the Economics of Information Technology”, two lectures at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, Nov 10-11, 2000.
91. Review of A New World by Amit Chaudhuri in Literary Criterion, Mysore.
2001
92. Review of AD Shroff: Titan of Finance and Free Enterprise by Sucheta Dalal, Freedom First., January.
93. “Encounter with Rajiv Gandhi: On the Origins of the 1991 Economic Reform”, Freedom First, October. See also 93a in 2005 and 93b in 2007.
94. “A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11”, a keynote address to the Council for Asian Liberals & Democrats, Manila, Philippines, 16 Nov. 2001. Published as 91a.
95. “The Case for and against The Satanic Verses: Diatribe and Dialectic as Art”, Dec 22 republished in print 95a The Statesman Festival Volume, 2006.
2002
94a “A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11”, in September 11 & Political Freedom in Asia, eds. Johannen, Smith & Gomez, Singapore 2002.
2002-2010
96. “Recording vivid dreams: Freud’s advice in exploring the Unconscious Mind” (Due to be published here in 2010).
2003
97. “Key principles of government accounting and audit”, IIT Kharagpur mimeo.
98. “Derivative pricing & other topics in financial theory: a student’s complete lecture notes” (Due to be published here in 2010).
2004
99. “Collapse of the Global Conversation”, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands, Jul 2004.
100. “Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom”, a public lecture, University of Buckingham, UK, August 24 2004. Published here 2007.
2005
93a Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform (this was the full story; it appeared in print for the first time in The Statesman Festival Volume 2007).
101. “Can India become an economic superpower (or will there be a monetary meltdown)?” Cardiff University Institute of Applied Macroeconomics Monetary Economics Seminar, April 13, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, April 27, Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, Chief Economist’s Seminar on Monetary Economics, May 5.
102. Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant, Edited and with an Introduction by Subroto Roy & John Clarke, London & New York: Continuum, 2005; paperback 2006; French translation by Florian Bay, 2007.
103. “Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali in Pakistan’s Creation”, Dawn, Karachi, Sep 3.
104. “The Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 11 .
105. “After the Verdict”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 20.
106. “US Espionage Failures”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 26
107. “Waffle But No Models of Monetary Policy”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Oct 30.
108. “On Hindus and Muslims”, The Statesman, Perspective Page, Nov 6.
109. “Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Nov 13-14″.
110. “Fiction from the India Economic Summit”, The Statesman, Front Page, Nov 29.
111. “Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason”, The Statesman Editorial Page
I. “Give the Hurriyat et al Indian Green Cards”, Dec 1
II. “Choice of Nationality under Full Information”, Dec 2
III. “Of Flags and Consulates in Gilgit etc”, Dec 3.
2006
112. “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman Editorial Page
I : New Delhi’s Consensus (Manmohantekidambaromics), Jan 6
II: Money, Convertibility, Inflationary Deficit Financing, Jan 7
III: Rule of Law, Transparency, Government Accounting, Jan 8.
113. “Unaccountable Delhi: India’s Separation of Powers’ Doctrine”, The Statesman, Jan 13.
114. “Communists and Constitutions”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 22.
115. “Diplomatic Wisdom”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 31.
116. “Mendacity & the Government Budget Constraint”, The Statesman, Front Page Feb 3.
117. “Of Graven Images”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb5.
118. “Separation of Powers, Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Pages Feb 12-13.
119. “Public Debt, Government Fantasy”, The Statesman, Front Page Editorial Comment, Feb 22.
120. “War or Peace Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 23-24.
121. “Can You Handle This Brief, Mr Chidambaram?” The Statesman, Front Page Feb 26.
122. “A Downpayment On the Taj Mahal Anyone?”, The Statesman, Front Page Comment on the Budget 2006-2007, Mar 1.
123. “Atoms for Peace (or War)”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Mar 5.
124. “Imperialism Redux: Business, Energy, Weapons & Foreign Policy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Mar 14.
125. “Logic of Democracy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Mar 30.
126. “Towards an Energy Policy”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 2.
127. “Iran’s Nationalism”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 6.
128. “A Modern Military”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 16.
129. “On Money & Banking”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Apr 23.
130. “Lessons for India from Nepal’s Revolution”, The Statesman, Front Page Apr 26.
131. “Revisionist Flattery (Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi: A Review Article)”, The Sunday Statesman, May 7.
132. “Modern World History”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, May 7.
133. “Argumentative Indians: A Conversation with Professor Amartya Sen on Philosophy, Identity and Islam,” The Sunday Statesman, May 14 2006. “A Philosophical Conversation between Professor Sen and Dr Roy”, 2008. Translated into Bengali by AA and published in 00.
134. “The Politics of Dr Singh”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, May 21.
135. “Corporate Governance & the Principal-Agent Problem”, lecture at a conference on corporate governance, Kolkata May 31. Published here 2008.
136. “Pakistan’s Allies Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jun 4-5.
137. “Law, Justice and J&K Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 2, The Statesman Editorial Page Jul 3.
138. “The Greatest Pashtun (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan)”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 16.
139. “Understanding Pakistan Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Jul 30, The Statesman Editorial Page Jul 31.
140. “Indian Money and Credit”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 6.
141. “India’s Moon Mission”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 13.
142. “Jaswant’s Journeyings: A Review Article”, The Sunday Statesman Magazine, Aug 27.
143. “Our Energy Interests, Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 27, The Statesman Editorial Page Aug 28.
144. “Is Balochistan Doomed?”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Sep 3 2006.
145. “Racism New and Old”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Sep 8 2006
146. “Political Economy of India’s Energy Policy”, address to KAF-TERI conference, Goa Oct 7, published in 146a.
147. “New Foreign Policy? Seven phases of Indian foreign policy may be identifiable since Nehru”, Parts 1-2, The Sunday Statesman, Oct 8, The Statesman Oct 9.
148. “Justice & Afzal: There is a difference between law and equity (or natural justice). The power of pardon is an equitable power. Commuting a death-sentence is a partial pardon”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Oct 14
149. “Non-existent liberals (On a Liberal Party for India)”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Oct 22.
150. “History of Jammu & Kashmir Parts 1-2”, The Sunday Statesman, Oct 29, The Statesman Oct 30, Editorial Page.
151. “American Democracy: Does America need a Prime Minister and a longer-lived Legislature?”, The Sunday Statesman Nov 5.
152. “Milton Friedman A Man of Reason 1912-2006”, The Statesman Perspective Page, Nov 22.
153. “Postscript to Milton Friedman Mahalanobis’s Plan (The Mahalanobis-Nehru “Second Plan”) The Statesman Front Page Nov 22.
154. “Mob Violence and Psychology”, Dec 10, The Statesman, Editorial Page.
155. “What To Tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions”, The Statesman Editorial Page Dec 15.
156. “Land, Liberty and Value: Government must act in good faith treating all citizens equally – not favouring organised business lobbies and organised labour over an unorganised peasantry”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Dec 31.
2007
157. “Hypocrisy of the CPI-M: Political Collapse In Bengal: A Mid-Term Election/Referendum Is Necessary”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Jan 9.
158. “On Land-Grabbing: Dr Singh’s India, Buddhadeb’s Bengal, Modi’s Gujarat have notorious US, Soviet and Chinese examples to follow ~ distracting from the country’s real economic problems,” The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Jan 14.
159. “India’s Macroeconomics: Real growth has steadily occurred because India has shared the world’s technological progress. But bad fiscal, monetary policies over decades have led to monetary weakness and capital flight” The Statesman Editorial Page Jan 20.
160. “Fiscal Instability: Interest payments quickly suck dry every year’s Budget. And rolling over old public debt means that Government Borrowing in fact much exceeds the Fiscal Deficit”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 4.
161. “Our trade and payments Parts 1-2” (“India in World Trade and Payments”),The Sunday Statesman, Feb 11 2007, The Statesman, Feb 12 2007.
162. “Our Policy Process: Self-Styled “Planners” Have Controlled India’s Paper Money For Decades,” The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 20.
163. “Bengal’s Finances”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, Feb 25.
164. “Fallacious Finance: Congress, BJP, CPI-M may be leading India to Hyperinflation” The Statesman Editorial Page Mar 5.
165. “Uttar Pradesh Polity and Finance: A Responsible New Govt May Want To Declare A Financial Emergency” The Statesman Editorial Page, Mar 24
166. “A scam in the making” in The Sunday Statesman Front Page Apr 1 2007, published here in full as “Swindling India”.
167. “Maharashtra’s Money: Those Who Are Part Of The Problem Are Unlikely To Be A Part Of Its Solution”, The Statesman Editorial Page Apr 24.
146a. “Political Economy of Energy Policy” in India and Energy Security edited by Anant Sudarshan and Ligia Noronha, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, New Delhi 2007.
168. “Presidential Qualities: Simplicity, Genuine Achievement Are Desirable; Political Ambition Is Not”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, May 8.
169. “We & Our Neighbours: Pakistanis And Bangladeshis Would Do Well To Learn From Sheikh Abdullah”, The Statesman, Editorial Page May 15.
170. “On Indian Nationhood: From Tamils To Kashmiris And Assamese And Mizos To Sikhs And Goans”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, May 25.
171. A Current Example of the Working of the Unconscious Mind, May 26.
172. Where I would have gone if I was Osama Bin Laden, May 31.
173. “US election ’08:America’s Presidential Campaign Seems Destined To Be Focussed On Iraq”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 1.
174. “Home Team Advantage: On US-Iran talks and Sunni-Shia subtleties: Tehran must transcend its revolution and endorse the principle that the House of Islam has many mansions”, The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, June 3
175. “Unhealthy Delhi: When will normal political philosophy replace personality cults?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 11.
176. “American Turmoil: A Vice-Presidential Coup – And Now a Grassroots Counterrevolution?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, June 18
177. “Political Paralysis: India has yet to develop normal conservative, liberal and socialist parties. The Nice-Housing-Effect and a little game-theory may explain the current stagnation”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, June 24.
177. “Has America Lost? War Doctrines Of Kutusov vs Clausewitz May Help Explain Iraq War”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 3.
178. “Lal Masjid ≠ Golden Temple: Wide differences are revealed between contemporary Pakistan and India by these two superficially similar military assaults on armed religious civilians”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page July 15
179 “Political Stonewalling: Only Transparency Can Improve Institutions”, The Statesman, Editorial Page July 20.
180. “Gold standard etc: Fixed versus flexible exchange rates”, July 21.
181. “US Pakistan-India Policy: Delhi & Islamabad Still Look West In Defining Their Relationship”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 27.
182. “Works of DH Lawrence” July 30
183. “An Open Letter to Professor Amartya Sen about Singur etc”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, July 31.
184. “Martin Buber on Palestine and Israel (with Postscript)”, Aug 4.
185. “Auguste Rodin on Nature, Art, Beauty, Women and Love”, Aug 7.
186. “Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 13.
187. Letter to Forbes.com 16 Aug.
188. “Need for Clarity: A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding”, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Aug 19.
189. “No Marxist MBAs? An amicus curiae brief for the Hon’ble High Court”, The Statesman, FrontPage, Aug 29.
190. On Lawrence, Sep 4.
191. Dalai Lama’s Return: In the tradition of Gandhi, King, Mandela, Sep 11.
192. Of JC Bose, Patrick Geddes & the Leaf-World, Sep 12.
193. “Against Quackery: Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms; the Communists have been appeased or bought; the BJP is incompetent Parts 1-2”, in The Sunday Statesman and The Statesman, Editorial Pages of Sep 23-24.
194. Karl Georg Zinn’s 1994 Review of Philosophy of Economics, Sep 26.
195. DH Lawrence’s Phoenix, Oct 3.
93b. “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”, Statesman Festival Volume.
196. “Iran, America, Iraq: Bush’s post-Saddam Saddamism — one flip-flop too many?”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 16.
197. “Understanding China: The World Needs to Ask China to Find Her True Higher Self”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 22.
198. “India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Oct 30.
199. “China’s India Aggression : German Historians Discover Logic Behind Communist Military Strategy”, The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Nov 5.
200. Sonia’s Lying Courtier (with Postscript), Nov 25.
201. “Surrender or Fight? War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must?” The Statesman, Dec 4, Editorial Page.
202. Hutton and Desai: United in Error Dec 14
203. “China’s Commonwealth: Freedom is the Road to Resolving Taiwan, Tibet, Sinkiang”, The Statesman, Dec 17.
2008
204. “Nixon & Mao vs India: How American foreign policy did a U-turn about Communist China’s India aggression. The Government of India should publish its official history of the 1962 war.” The Sunday Statesman, Jan 6, The Statesman Jan 7 Editorial Page.
205. “Lessons from the 1962 War: Beginnings of a solution to the long-standing border problem: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended”, The Sunday Statesman, January 13 2008.
206. “Our Dismal Politics: Will Independent India Survive Until 2047?”, The Statesman Editorial Page, Feb 1.
207. Median Voter Model of India’s Electorate Feb 7.
208. “Anarchy in Bengal: Intra-Left bandh marks the final unravelling of “Brand Buddha””, The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 10.
209. Fifty years since my third birthday: on life and death.
210. “Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession: Sheikh Abdullah Relied In Politics On The French Constitution, Not Islam”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 16.
211. A Note on the Indian Policy Process Feb 21.
212. “Growth & Government Delusion: Progress Comes From Learning, Enterprise, Exchange, Not The Parasitic State”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 22.
213. “How to Budget: Thrift, Not Theft, Needs to Guide Our Public Finances”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, Feb 26.
214. “India’s Budget Process (in Theory)”, The Statesman, Front Page Feb 29.
215. “Irresponsible Governance: Congress, BJP, Communists, BSP, Sena Etc Reveal Equally Bad Traits”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 4.
216. “American Politics: Contest Between Obama And Clinton Affects The World”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 11.
217. “China’s India Example: Tibet, Xinjiang May Not Be Assimilated Like Inner Mongolia And Manchuria”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, March 25.
218. “Taxation of India’s Professional Cricket: A Proposal”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 1.
219. “Two cheers for Pakistan!”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 7.
220. “Indian Inflation: Upside Down Economics From The New Delhi Establishment Parts 1-2”, The Statesman, Editorial Page, April 15-16.
221. “Assessing Manmohan: The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake”, The Statesman, Editorial Page Apr 25.
222. John Wisdom, Renford Bambrough: Main Philosophical Works, May 8.
223. “All India wept”: On the death of Rajiv Gandhi, May 21.
224. “China’s force and diplomacy: The need for realism in India” The Statesman, Editorial Page May 31.
226. Serendipity and the China-Tibet-India border problem June 6
227. “Leadership vacuum: Time & Tide Wait For No One In Politics: India Trails Pakistan & Nepal!”, The Statesman Editorial Page June 7.
228. My meeting Jawaharlal Nehru Oct13 1962
229. Manindranath Roy 1891-1958
230. Surendranath Roy 1860-1929
231. The Roys of Behala 1928.
232. Sarat Chandra visits Surendranath Roy 1927
233. Nuksaan-Faida Analysis = Cost-Benefit Analysis in Hindi/Urdu Jun 30
234. One of many reasons John R Hicks was a great economist July 3
236. My father, Indian diplomat, in the Shah’s Tehran 1954-57 July 8
237 Distribution of Govt of India Expenditure (Net of Operational Income) 1995 July 27
238. Growth of Real Income, Money & Prices in India 1869-2008, July 28.
239. Communism from Social Democracy? But not in India or China! July 29
240. Death of Solzhenitsyn, Aug. 3
240a. Tolstoy on Science and Art, Aug 4.
241. “Reddy`s reckoning: Where should India’s real interest rate be relative to the world?” Business Standard Aug 10
242. “Rangarajan Effect”, Business Standard Aug 24
243. My grandfather’s death in Ottawa 50 years ago today Sep 3
244. My books in the Library of Congress and British Library Sep 12
245. On Jimmy Carter & the “India-US Nuclear Deal”, Sep 12
246. My father after presenting his credentials to President Kekkonen of Finland Sep 14 1973.
247. “October 1929? Not!”, Business Standard, Sep 18.
248. “MK Gandhi, SN Roy, MA Jinnah in March 1919: Primary education legislation in a time of protest”
249. 122 sensible American economists Sept 26
250. Govt of India: Please call in the BBC and ask them a question Sep 27
251. “Monetary Integrity and the Rupee: Three British Raj relics have dominated our macroeconomic policy-making” Business Standard Sep 28.
252a. Rabindranath’s daughter writes to her friend my grandmother Oct 5
252b. A Literary Find: Modern Poetry in Bengal, Oct 6.
253. Sarat writes to Manindranath 1931, Oct 12
254. Origins of India’s Constitutional Politics 1913
255. Indira Gandhi in Paris, 1971
256. How the Liabilities/Assets Ratio of Indian Banks Changed from 84% in 1970 to 108% in 1998, October 20
257a. My Subjective Probabilities on India’s Moon Mission Oct 21
258. Complete History of Mankind’s Moon Missions: An Indian Citizen’s Letter to ISRO’s Chairman, Oct 22.
259. Would not a few million new immigrants solve America’s mortgage crisis? Oct 26
260. “America’s divided economists”, Business Standard Oct 26
261. One tiny prediction about the Obama Administration, Nov 5
262. Rai Bahadur Umbika Churn Rai, 1827-1902, Nov 7 2008
263. Jawaharlal Nehru invites my father to the Mountbatten Farewell Nov 7 2008
70a. “Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America) Preface” Nov 9
70b. “Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America) Password protected.” Nov 9.
257b. Neglecting technological progress was the basis of my pessimism about Chandrayaan, Nov 9.
264. Of a new New Delhi myth and the success of the University of Hawaii 1986-1992 Pakistan project Nov 15
265. Pre-Partition Indian Secularism Case-Study: Fuzlul Huq and Manindranath Roy Nov 16
266. Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists suppose Maulana Azad, Dr Zakir Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah were Pakistanis (or that Sheikh Mujib wanted to remain one)? Nov 18
267. Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until this sad day, Nov 28.
268. In international law, Pakistan has been the perpetrator, India the victim of aggression in Mumbai, Nov 30.
269. The Indian Revolution, Dec 1.
270. Habeas Corpus: a captured terrorist mass-murderer tells a magistrate he has not been mistreated by Mumbai’s police Dec 3
271. India’s Muslim Voices (Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent), Dec 4
272. “Anger Management” needed? An Oxford DPhil recommends Pakistan launch a nuclear first strike against India within minutes of war, Dec 5.
273. A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough), Dec 6
274. Dr Rice finally gets it right (and maybe Mrs Clinton will too) Dec 7
275. Will the Government of India’s new macroeconomic policy dampen or worsen the business-cycle (if such a cycle exists at all)? No one knows! “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” Dec 7
276. Pump-priming for car-dealers: Keynes groans in his grave (If evidence was needed of the intellectual dishonesty of New Delhi’s new macroeconomic policy, here it is) Dec 9.
277. Congratulations to Mumbai’s Police: capturing a terrorist, affording him his Habeas Corpus rights, getting him to confess within the Rule of Law, sets a new world standard Dec 10
278. Two cheers — wait, let’s make that one cheer — for America’s Justice Department, Dec 10
279. Will Pakistan accept the bodies of nine dead terrorists who came from Pakistan to Mumbai? If so, let there be a hand-over at the Wagah border, Dec 11.
280. Kasab was a stupid, ignorant, misguided youth, manufactured by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds into becoming a mass-murdering robot: Mahatma Gandhi’s India should punish him, get him to repent if he wishes, then perhaps rehabilitate him as a potent weapon against Pakistani terrorism Dec 12.
281. Pakistan’s New Delhi Embassy should ask for “Consular Access” to nine dead terrorists in a Mumbai morgue before asking to meet Kasab, Dec 13
282. An Indian Reply to President Zardari: Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationships Dec 19
283. Is my prediction about Caroline Kennedy becoming US Ambassador to Britain going to be correct? Dec 27
284. Chandrayaan adds a little good cheer! Well done, ISRO!, Dec 28
285. How sad that “Slumdog millionaire” is SO disappointing! Dec 31
289. (with Claude Arpi) “Transparency & history: India’s archives must be opened to world standards” Business Standard New Delhi Dec 31, 2008, published here Jan 1 .
2009
290. A basis of India-Pakistan cooperation on the Mumbai massacres: the ten Pakistani terrorists started off as pirates and the Al-Huseini is a pirate ship Jan 1.
291. India’s “pork-barrel politics” needs a nice (vegetarian) Hindi name! “Teli/oily politics” perhaps? (And are we next going to see a Bill of Rights for Lobbyists?) Jan 3
292. My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, “Actionable Intelligence” in the Internet age: How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop) Jan 5
293. How Jammu & Kashmir’s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah can become a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: An Open Letter, Jan 7
294. Could the Satyam/PwC fraud be the visible part of an iceberg? Where are India’s “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles”? Isn’t governance rather poor all over corporate India? Bad public finance may be a root cause Jan 8
295. Satyam does not exist: it is bankrupt, broke, kaput. Which part of this does the new “management team” not get? The assets belong to Satyam’s creditors. Jan 8
296. Jews are massacred in Mumbai and now Jews commit a massacre in Gaza! Jan 9
297. And now for the Great Satyam Whitewash/Cover-Up/Public Subsidy! The wrong Minister appoints the wrong new Board who, probably, will choose the wrong policy Jan 12
298. Letter to Wei Jingsheng Jan 14
299. Memo to the Hon’ble Attorneys General of Pakistan & India: How to jointly prosecute the Mumbai massacre perpetrators most expeditiously Jan 16
300. Satyam and IT-firms in general may be good candidates to become “Labour-Managed” firms Jan 18
301. “Yes we might be able to do that. Perhaps we ought to. But again, perhaps we ought not to, let me think about it…. Most important is Cromwell’s advice: Think it possible we may be mistaken!” Jan 20.
302. RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks Jan 25
303. Didn’t Dr Obama (the new American President’s late father) once publish an article in Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics? (Or did he?) Jan 25.
304. “A Dialogue in Macroeconomics” 1989 etc: sundry thoughts on US economic policy discourse Jan 30
305. American Voices: A Brief Popular History of the United States in 20 You-Tube Music Videos Feb 5
306. Jaladhar Sen writes to Manindranath at Surendranath’s death, Feb 23
307. Pakistani expansionism: India and the world need to beware of “Non-Resident Pakistanis” ruled by Rahmat Ali’s ghost, Feb 9
308. My American years Part One 1980-90: battles for academic integrity & freedom Feb 11.
309. Thanks and well done Minister Rehman Malik and the Govt of Pakistan Feb 12
310. Can President Obama resist the financial zombies (let alone slay them)? His economists need to consult Dr Anna J Schwartz Feb 14
311. A Brief History of Gilgit, Feb 18
312. Memo to UCLA Geographers: Commonsense suggests Mr Bin Laden is far away from the subcontinent Feb 20
313. The BBC gets its history and geography deliberately wrong again Feb 21
314. Bengal Legislative Council 1921, Feb 28
315. Carmichael visits Surendranath, 1916, Mar 1
316. Memo to GoI CLB: India discovered the Zero, and 51% of Zero is still Zero Mar 10
317. An Academic Database of Doctoral & Other Postgraduate Research Done at UK Universities on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Other Asian Countries Over 100 Years, Mar 13
318. Pakistan’s progress, Mar 18
319. Risk-aversion explains resistance to free trade, Mar 19
320. India’s incredibly volatile inflation rate! Mar 20
321. Is “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” referring to an emasculation of (elite) American society?, Mar 21
322. Just how much intellectual fraud can Delhi produce? Mar 26
323. India is not a monarchy! We urgently need to universalize the French concept of “citoyen”! Mar 28
324. Could this be the real state of some of our higher education institutions? Mar 29
325. Progress! The BBC retracts its prevarication! Mar 30
326. Aldous Huxley’s Essay “DH Lawrence” Mar 31
327. Waffle not institutional reform is what (I predict) the “G-20 summit” will produce, April 1
328. Did a full cricket team of Indian bureaucrats follow our PM into 10 Downing Street? Count for yourself! April 3
329. Will someone please teach the BJP’s gerontocracy some Economics 101 on an emergency basis? April 5
330. The BBC needs to determine exactly where it thinks Pakistan is!, April 5
331. Alfred Lyall on Christians, Muslims, India, China, Etc, 1908, April 6
332. An eminent economist of India passes away April 9
333. Democracy Database for the Largest Electorate Ever Seen in World History, April 12
334. Memo to the Election Commission of India April 14 2009, 9 AM, April 14
335. Caveat emptor! Satyam is taken over, April 14
336. India’s 2009 General Elections: Candidates, Parties, Symbols for Polls on 16-30 April Phases 1,2,3, April 15
337. On the general theory of expertise in democracy: reflections on what emerges from the American “torture memos” today, April 18
338. India’s 2009 General Elections: 467 constituencies (out of 543) for which candidates have been announced as of 1700hrs April 21, April 21
339. Apropos Philosophy of Economics, Comments of Sidney Hook, KJ Arrow, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, SS Alexander, Max Black, Renford Bambrough, John Gray et al., April 22.
340. India’s 2009 General Elections: Names of all 543 Constituencies of the 15th Lok Sabha, April 22.
341. India’s 2009 General Elections: How 4125 State Assembly Constituencies comprise the 543 new Lok Sabha Constituencies, April 23.
342. Why has America’s “torture debate” yet to mention the obvious? Viz., sadism and racism, April 24
343. India’s 2009 General Elections: the advice of the late “George Eliot” (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880) to India’s voting public, April 24.
344. India’s 2009 General Elections: Delimitation and the Different Lists of 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies in 2009 and 2004, April 25
345. Is “Slumdog Millionaire” the single worst Best Picture ever?
346. India’s 2009 General Elections: Result of Delimitation — Old (2004) and New (2009) Lok Sabha and Assembly Constituencies, April 26
347. India’s 2009 General Elections: 7019 Candidates in 485 (out of 543) Constituencies announced as of April 26 noon April 26
348. What is Christine Fair referring to? Would the MEA kindly seek to address what she has claimed asap? April 27
349. Politics can be so entertaining 🙂 Manmohan versus Sonia on the poor old CPI(M)!, April 28
350. A Dozen Grown-Up Questions for Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, LK Advani, Sharad Pawar, Km Mayawati and Anyone Else Dreaming of Becoming/Deciding India’s PM After the 2009 General Elections, April 28
351. India’s 2009 General Elections: How drastically will the vote-share of political parties change from 2004? May 2
352. India’s 2009 General Elections: And now finally, all 8,070 Candidates across all 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies, May 5
353. India’s 2009 General Elections: The Mapping of Votes into Assembly Segments Won into Parliamentary Seats Won in the 2004 Election, May 7
354. Will Messrs Advani, Rajnath Singh & Modi ride into the sunset if the BJP comes to be trounced? (Corrected), May 10
355. India’s 2009 General Elections: 543 Matrices to Help Ordinary Citizens Audit the Election Commission’s Vote-Tallies May 12
356. Well done Sonia-Rahul! Two hours before polls close today, I am willing to predict a big victory for you (but, please, try to get your economics right, and also, you must get Dr Singh a Lok Sabha seat if he is to be PM) May 13
357. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee must dissolve the West Bengal Assembly if he is an honest democrat: Please try to follow Gerard Schröder’s example even slightly! May 16
358. India’s 2009 General Elections: Provisional Results from the EC as of 1400 hours Indian Standard Time May 16
359. Memo to the Hon’ble President of India: It is Sonia Gandhi, not Manmohan Singh, who should be invited to our equivalent of the “Kissing Hands” Ceremony May 16
360. Time for heads to roll in the BJP/RSS and CPI(M)!, May 17.
361. Inviting a new Prime Minister of India to form a Government: Procedure Right and Wrong May 18
362. Starting with Procedural Error: Why has the “Cabinet” of the 14th Lok Sabha been meeting today AFTER the results of the Elections to the 15th Lok Sabha have been declared?! May 18
363. Why has the Sonia Congress done something that the Congress under Nehru-Indira-Rajiv would not have done, namely, exaggerate the power of the Rajya Sabha and diminish the power of the Lok Sabha? May 21
364. Shouldn’t Dr Singh’s Cabinet begin with a small apology to the President of India for discourtesy? May we have reviews and reforms of protocols and practices to be followed at Rashtrapati Bhavan and elsewhere? May 23
365. Parliament’s sovereignty has been diminished by the Executive: A record for future generations to know May 25
366. How tightly will organised Big Business be able to control economic policies this time? May 26
367. Why does India not have a Parliament ten days after the 15th Lok Sabha was elected? Nehru and Rajiv would both have been appalled May 27
368. Eleven days and counting after the 15th Lok Sabha was elected and still no Parliament of India! (But we do have 79 Ministers — might that be a world record?) May 28
369. Note to Posterity: 79 Ministers in office but no 15th Lok Sabha until June 1 2009! May 29
370. Silver Jubilee of Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India May 29
371. How to Design a Better Cabinet for the Government of India May 29
372. Parliament is supposed to control the Government, not be bullied or intimidated by it: Will Rahul Gandhi be able to lead the Backbenches in the 15th Lok Sabha? June 1
373. Mistaken Macroeconomics: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, June 12
374. Why did Manmohan Singh and LK Advani apologise to one another? Is Indian politics essentially collusive, not competitive, aiming only to preserve and promote the post-1947 Dilli Raj at the expense of the whole of India? We seem to have no Churchillian repartee (except perhaps from Bihar occasionally) June 18
375. Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer June 22
376. My March 25 1991 memo to Rajiv (which never reached him) is something the present Government seems to have followed: all for the best of course! July 12
377. Disquietude about France’s behaviour towards India on July 14 2009 July 14
378. Does the Govt. of India assume “foreign investors and analysts” are a key constituency for Indian economic policy-making? If so, why so? Have Govt. economists “learnt nothing, forgotten everything”? Some Bastille Day thoughts July 14
379. Letter to the GoI’s seniormost technical economist, May 21.July 19
380. Excuse me but young Kasab in fact confessed many months ago, immediately after he was captured – he deserves 20 or 30 years in an Indian prison, and a chance to become a model prisoner who will stand against the very terrorists who sent him on his vile mission July 20
381. Finally, three months late, the GoI responds to American and Pakistani allegations about Balochistan July 24
382. Thoughts, words, deeds: My work 1973-2010
M1. Map of Asia c. 1900
M2. Map of Chinese Empire c. 1900
M3. Map of Sinkiang, Tibet and Neighbours 1944
M4. China’s Secretly Built 1957 Road Through India’s Aksai Chin
M5. Map of Kashmir to Sinkiang 1944
M6. Map of India-Tibet-China-Mongolia 1959
M7. Map of India, Afghanistan, Russia, China, 1897
M8. Map of Xinjiang/Sinkiang/E Turkestan
M9. Map of Bombay/Mumbai 1909
M10-M13. Himalayan Expedition, West Sikkim 1970 – 1,2,3,4
Mistaken Macroeconomics: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh 12 June 2009
June 12, 2009 — drsubrotoroy12 June 2009
The Hon’ble Dr Manmohan Singh, MP, Rajya Sabha
Prime Minister of India
Respected Pradhan Mantriji:
In September 1993 at the residence of the Indian Ambassador to Washington, I had the privilege of being introduced to you by our Ambassador the Hon’ble Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Bar-at-Law. Ambassador Ray was kind enough to introduce me saying the 1991 “Congress manifesto had been written on (my laptop) computer” – a reference to my work as adviser on economic and other policy to the late Rajiv Gandhi in his last months. I presented you a book Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s created and edited by myself and WE James at the University of Hawaii since 1986 — the unpublished manuscript of that book had reached Rajivji by my hand when he and I first met on September 18 1990. Tragically, my pleadings in subsequent months to those around him that he seemed to my layman’s eyes vulnerable to the assassin went unheeded.
When you and I met in 1993, we had both forgotten another meeting twenty years earlier in Paris. My father had been a long-time friend of the late Brahma Kaul, ICS, and the late MG Kaul, ICS, who knew you in your early days in the Government of India. In the late summer of 1973, you had acceded to my father’s request to advise me about economics before I embarked for the London School of Economics as a freshman undergraduate. You visited our then-home in Paris for about 40 minutes despite your busy schedule as part of an Indian delegation to the Aid-India Consortium. We ended up having a tense debate about the merits (as you saw them) and demerits (as I saw them) of the Soviet influence on Indian economic “planning”. You had not expected such controversy from a lad of 18 but you were kindly disposed and offered when departing to write a letter of introduction to Amartya Sen, then teaching at the LSE, which you later sent me and which I was delighted to carry to Professor Sen.
I may add my father, back in 1973 in Paris, had predicted to me that you would become Prime Minister of India one day, and he, now in his 90s, is joined by myself in sending our warm congratulations at the start of your second term in that high office.
The controversy though that you and I had entered that Paris day in 1973 about scientific economics as applied to India, must be renewed afresh!
This is because of your categorical statement on June 9 2009 to the new 15th Lok Sabha:
“I am convinced, since our savings rate is as high as 35%, given the collective will, if all of us work together, we can achieve a growth-rate of 8%-9%, even if the world economy does not do well.” (Statement of Dr Manmohan Singh to the Lok Sabha, June 9 2009)
I am afraid there may be multiple reasons why such a statement is gravely and incorrigibly in error within scientific economics. From your high office as Prime Minister in a second term, faced perhaps with no significant opposition from either within or without your party, it is possible the effects of such an error may spell macroeconomic catastrophe for India.
As it happens, the British Labour Party politician Dr Meghnad Desai made an analogous statement to yours about India when he claimed in 2006 that China
“now has 10.4% growth on a 44 % savings rate… ”
Indeed the idea that China and India have had extremely high economic growth-rates based on purportedly astronomical savings rates has become a commonplace in recent years, repeated endlessly in international and domestic policy circles though perhaps without adequate basis.
1. Germany & Japan
What, at the outset, is supposed to be measured when we speak of “growth”? Indian businessmen and their media friends seem to think “growth” refers to something like nominal earnings before tax for the organised corporate sector, or any unspecified number that can be sold to visiting foreigners to induce them to park their funds in India: “You will get a 10% return if you invest in India” to which the visitor says “Oh that must mean India has 10% growth going on”. Of such nonsense are expensive international conferences in Davos and Delhi often made.
You will doubtless agree the economist at least must define economic growth properly and with care — what is referred to must be annual growth of per capita inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product. (Per capita National Income or Net National Product would be even better if available).
West Germany and Japan had the highest annual per capita real GDP growth-rates in the world economy starting from devastated post-World War II initial conditions. What were their measured rates?
West Germany: 6.6% in 1950-1960, falling to 3.5% by 1960-1970 falling to 2.4% by 1970-1978.
Japan: 6.8 % in 1952-1960 rising to 9.4% in 1960-1970 falling to 3.8 % in 1970-1978.
Thus in recent decadesonly Japan measured a spike in the 1960s of more than 9% annual growth of real per capita GDP. Now India and China are said to be achieving 8%-10 % and more year after year routinely!
Perhaps we are observing an incredible phenomenon of world economic history. Or perhaps it is just something incredible, something false and misleading, like a mirage in the desert.
You may agree that processes of measurement of real income in India both at federal and provincial levels, still remain well short of the world standards described by the UN’s System of National Accounts 1993. The actuality of our real GDP growth may be better than what is being measured or it may be worse than what is being measured – from the point of view of public decision-making we at present simply do not know which it is, and to overly rely on such numbers in national decisions may be unwise. In any event, India’s population is growing at near 2% so even if your Government’s measured number of 8% or 9% is taken at face-value, we have to subtract 2% population growth to get per capita figures.
2. Growth of the aam admi’s consumption-basket
The late Professor Milton Friedman had been an invited adviser in 1955 to the Government of India during the Second Five Year Plan’s formulation. The Government of India suppressed what he had to say and I had to publish it 34 years later in May 1989 during the 1986-1992 perestroika-for-India project that I led at the University of Hawaii in the United States. His November 1955 Memorandum to the Government of India is a chapter in the book Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s that I and WE James created.
At the 1989 project-conference itself, Professor Friedman made the following astute observation about all GNP, GDP etc growth-numbers that speaks for itself:
“I don’t believe the term GNP ought to be used unless it is supplemented by a different statistic: the rate of growth of the average consumption basket consumed by the ordinary individual in the country. I think GNP rates of growth can give very misleading information. For example, you have rapid rates of growth of GNP in the Soviet Union with a declining standard of life for the people. Because GNP includes monuments and includes also other things. I’m not saying that that is the case with India; I’m just saying I would like to see the two figures together.”
You may perhaps agree upon reflection that not only may our national income growth measurements be less robust than we want, it may be better to be measuring something else instead, or as well, as a measure of the economic welfare of India’s people, namely, “the rate of growth of the average consumption basket consumed by the ordinary individual in the country”, i.e., the rate of growth of the average consumption basket consumed by the aam admi.
It would be excellent indeed if you were to instruct your Government’s economists and other spokesmen to do so this as it may be something more reliable as an indicator of our economic realities than all the waffle generated by crude aggregate growth-rates.
3. Logic of your model
Thirdly, the logic needs to be spelled out of the economic model that underlies such statements as yours or Meghnad Desai’s that seek to operationally relate savings rates to aggregate growth rates in India or China. This seems not to have been done publicly in living memory by the Planning Commission or other Government economists. I have had to refer, therefore, to pages 251-253 of my own Cambridge doctoral thesis under Professor Frank Hahn thirty years ago, titled “On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”, where the logic of such models as yours was spelled out briefly as follows:
Let
Kt be capital stock
Yt be national output
It be the level of real investment
St be the level of real savings
By definition
It = K t+1 – Kt
By assumption
Kt = k Yt 0 < k < 1
St = sYt 0 < s <1
In equilibrium ex ante investment equals ex ante savings
It = St
Hence in equilibrium
sYt = K t+1 – Kt
Or
s/k = g
where g is defined to be the rate of growth (Y t+1-Yt)/Yt .
The left hand side then defines the “warranted rate of growth” which must maintain the famous “knife-edge” with the right hand side “natural rate of growth”.
Your June 9 2009 Lok Sabha statement that a 35% rate of savings in India may lead to an 8%-9% rate of economic growth in India, or Meghnad Desai’s statement that a 44% rate of savings in China led to a 10.4% growth there, can only be made meaningful in the context of a logical economic model like the one I have given above.
[In the open-economy version of the model, let Mt be imports, Et be exports, Ft net capital inflows.
Assume
Mt = aIt + bYt 0 < a, b < 1
Et = E for all t
Balance of payments is
Bt = Mt – Et – Ft
In equilibrium It = St + Bt
Or
Ft = (s+b) Yt – (1-a) It – E is a kind of “warranted” level of net capital inflow.]
You may perhaps agree upon reflection that building the entire macroeconomic policy of the Government of India merely upon a piece of economic logic as simplistic as the
s/k = g
equation above, may spell an unacceptable risk to the future economic well-being of our vast population. An alternative procedural direction for macroeconomic policy, with more obviously positive and profound consequences, may have been that which I sought to persuade Rajiv Gandhi about with some success in 1990-1991. Namely, to systematically seek to improve towards normalcy the budgets, financial positions and decision-making capacities of the Union and all state and local governments as well as all public institutions, organisations, entities, and projects in general, with the aim of making our domestic money a genuine hard currency of the world again after seven decades, so that any ordinary resident of India may hold and trade precious metals and foreign exchange at his/her local bank just like all those glamorous privileged NRIs have been permitted to do. Such an alternative path has been described in “The Indian Revolution”, “Against Quackery”, “The Dream Team: A Critique”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Indian Inflation”, etc.
4. Gross exaggeration of real savings rate by misreading deposit multiplication
Specifically, I am afraid you may have been misled into thinking India’s real savings rate, s, is as high as 35% just as Meghnad Desai may have misled himself into thinking China’s real savings rate is as high as 44%.
Neither of you may have wanted to make such a claim if you had referred to the fact that over the last 25 years, the average savings rate across all OECD countries has been less than 10%. Economic theory always finds claims of discontinuous behaviour to be questionable. If the average OECD citizen has been trying to save 10% of disposable income at best, it appears prima facie odd that India’s PM claims a savings rate as high as 35% for India or a British politician has claimed a savings rate as high as 44% for China. Something may be wrong in the measurement of the allegedly astronomical savings rates of India and China. The late Professor Nicholas Kaldor himself, after all, suggested it was rich people who saved and poor people who did not for the simple reason the former had something left over to save which the latter did not!
And indeed something is wrong in the measurements. What has happened, I believe, is that there has been a misreading of the vast nominal expansion of bank deposits via deposit-multiplication in the Indian banking system, an expansion that has been caused by explosive deficit finance over the last four or five decades. That vast nominal expansion of bank-deposits has been misread as indicating growth of real savings behaviour instead. I have written and spoken about and shown this quite extensively in the last half dozen years since I first discovered it in the case of India. E.g., in a lecture titled “Can India become an economic superpower or will there be a monetary meltdown?” at Cardiff University’s Institute of Applied Macroeconomics and at London’s Institute of Economic Affairs in April 2005, as well as in May 2005 at a monetary economics seminar invited at the RBI by Dr Narendra Jadav. The same may be true of China though I have looked at it much less.
How I described this phenomenon in a 2007 article in The Statesman is this:
“Savings is indeed normally measured by adding financial and non-financial savings. Financial savings include bank-deposits. But India is not a normal country in this. Nor is China. Both have seen massive exponential growth of bank-deposits in the last few decades. Does this mean Indians and Chinese are saving phenomenally high fractions of their incomes by assiduously putting money away into their shaky nationalized banks? Sadly, it does not. What has happened is government deficit-financing has grown explosively in both countries over decades. In a “fractional reserve” banking system (i.e. a system where your bank does not keep the money you deposited there but lends out almost all of it immediately), government expenditure causes bank-lending, and bank-lending causes bank-deposits to expand. Yes there has been massive expansion of bank-deposits in India but it is a nominal paper phenomenon and does not signify superhuman savings behaviour. Indians keep their assets mostly in metals, land, property, cattle, etc., and as cash, not as bank deposits.”
An article of mine in 2008 in Business Standard put it like this:
“India has followed in peacetime over six decades what the US and Britain followed during war. Our vast growth of bank deposits in recent decades has been mostly a paper (or nominal) phenomenon caused by unlimited deficit finance in a fractional reserve banking system. Policy makers have widely misinterpreted it as indicating a real phenomenon of incredibly high savings behaviour. In an inflationary environment, people save their wealth less as paper deposits than as real assets like land, cattle, buildings, machinery, food stocks, jewellery etc.”
If you asked me “What then is India’s real savings rate?” I have little answer to give except to say I know what it is not – it is not what the Government of India says it is. It is certainly unlikely to be anywhere near the 35% you stated it to be in your June 9 2009 Lok Sabha statement. If the OECD’s real savings rate has been something like 10% out of disposable income, I might accept India’s is, say, 15% at a maximum when properly measured – far from the 35% being claimed. What I believe may have been mismeasured by you and Meghnad Desai and many others as indicating high real savings is actually the nominal or paper expansion of bank-deposits in a fractional reserve banking system induced by runaway government deficit-spending in both India and China over the last several decades.
5. Technological progress and the mainsprings of real economic growth
So much for the g and s variables in the s/k = g equation in your economic model. But the assumed constant k is a big problem too!
During the 1989 perestroika-for-India project-conference, Professor Friedman referred to his 1955 experience in India and said this about the assumption of a constant k:
“I think there was an enormously important point… That was the almost universal acceptance at that time of the view that there was a sort of technologically fixed capital output ratio. That if you wanted to develop, you just had to figure out how much capital you needed, used as a statistical technological capital output ratio, and by God the next day you could immediately tell what output you were going to achieve. That was a large part of the motivation behind some of the measures that were taken then.”
The crucial problem of the sort of growth-model from which your formulation relating savings to growth arises is that, with a constant k, you have necessarily neglected the real source of economic growth, which is technological progress!
I said in the 2007 article referred to above:
“Economic growth in India as elsewhere arises not because of what politicians and bureaucrats do in capital cities, but because of spontaneous technological progress, improved productivity and learning-by-doing on part of the general population. Technological progress is a very general notion, and applies to any and every production activity or commercial transaction that now can be accomplished more easily or using fewer inputs than before.”
In “Growth and Government Delusion” published in The Statesman last year, I described the growth process more fully like this:
“The mainsprings of real growth in the wealth of the individual, and so of the nation, are greater practical learning, increases in capital resources and improvements in technology. Deeper skills and improved dexterity cause output produced with fewer inputs than before, i.e. greater productivity. Adam Smith said there is “invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many”. Consider a real life example. A fresh engineering graduate knows dynamometers are needed in testing and performance-certification of diesel engines. He strips open a meter, finds out how it works, asks engine manufacturers what design improvements they want to see, whether they will buy from him if he can make the improvement. He finds out prices and properties of machine tools needed and wages paid currently to skilled labour, calculates expected revenues and costs, and finally tries to persuade a bank of his production plans, promising to repay loans from his returns. Overcoming restrictions of religion or caste, the secular agent is spurred by expectation of future gains to approach various others with offers of contract, and so organize their efforts into one. If all his offers ~ to creditors, labour, suppliers ~ are accepted he is, for the moment, in business. He may not be for long ~ but if he succeeds his actions will have caused an improvement in design of dynamometers and a reduction in the cost of diesel engines, as well as an increase in the economy’s produced means of production (its capital stock) and in the value of contracts made. His creditors are more confident of his ability to repay, his buyers of his product quality, he himself knows more of his workers’ skills, etc. If these people enter a second and then a third and fourth set of contracts, the increase in mutual trust in coming to agreement will quickly decline in relation to the increased output of capital goods. The first source of increasing returns to scale in production, and hence the mainspring of real economic growth, arises from the successful completion of exchange. Transforming inputs into outputs necessarily takes time, and it is for that time the innovator or entrepreneur or “capitalist” or “adventurer” must persuade his creditors to trust him, whether bankers who have lent him capital or workers who have lent him labour. The essence of the enterprise (or “firm”) he tries to get underway consists of no more than the set of contracts he has entered into with the various others, his position being unique because he is the only one to know who all the others happen to be at the same time. In terms introduced by Professor Frank Hahn, the entrepreneur transforms himself from being “anonymous” to being “named” in the eyes of others, while also finding out qualities attaching to the names of those encountered in commerce. Profits earned are partly a measure of the entrepreneur’s success in this simultaneous process of discovery and advertisement. Another potential entrepreneur, fresh from engineering college, may soon pursue the pioneer’s success and start displacing his product in the market ~ eventually chasers become pioneers and then get chased themselves, and a process of dynamic competition would be underway. As it unfolds, anonymous and obscure graduates from engineering colleges become by dint of their efforts and a little luck, named and reputable firms and perhaps founders of industrial families. Multiply this simple story many times, with a few million different entrepreneurs and hundreds of thousands of different goods and services, and we shall be witnessing India’s actual Industrial Revolution, not the fake promise of it from self-seeking politicians and bureaucrats.”
Technological progress in a myriad of ways and discovery of new resources are important factors contributing to India’s growth today. But while India’s “real” economy does well, the “nominal” paper-money economy controlled by Government does not. Continuous deficit financing for half a century has led to exponential growth of public debt and broad money, and, as noted, the vast growth of nominal bank-deposits has been misinterpreted as indicating unusually high real savings behaviour when it in fact may just signal vast amounts of government debt being held by our nationalised banks. These bank assets may be liquid domestically but are illiquid internationally since our government debt is not held by domestic households as voluntary savings nor has it been a liquid asset held worldwide in foreign portfolios.
What politicians of all parties, especially your own and the BJP and CPI-M since they are the three largest, have been presiding over is exponential growth of our paper money supply, which has even reached 22% per annum. Parliament and the Government should be taking honest responsibility for this because it may certainly portend double-digit inflation (i.e., decline in the value of paper-money) perhaps as high as 14%-15% per annum, something that is certain to affect the aam admi’s economic welfare adversely.
6. Selling Government assets to Big Business is a bad idea in a potentially hyperinflationary economy
Respected PradhanMantriji, the record would show that I, and really I alone, 25 years ago, may have been the first among Indian economists to advocate the privatisation of the public sector. (Viz, “Silver Jubilee of Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India”.) In spite of this, I have to say clearly now that in present circumstances of a potentially hyperinflationary economy created by your Government and its predecessors, I believe your Government’s present plans to sell Government assets may be an exceptionally unwise and imprudent idea. The reasoning is very simple from within monetary economics.
Government every year has produced paper rupees and bank deposits in practically unlimited amounts to pay for its practically unlimited deficit financing, and it has behaved thus over decades. Such has been the nature of the macroeconomic process that all Indian political parties have been part of, whether they are aware of it or not.
Indian Big Business has an acute sense of this long-term nominal/paper expansion of India’s economy, and acts towards converting wherever possible its own hoards of paper rupees and rupee-denominated assets into more valuable portfolios for itself of real or durable assets, most conspicuously including hard-currency denominated assets, farm-land and urban real-estate, and, now, the physical assets of the Indian public sector. Such a path of trying to transform local domestic paper assets – produced unlimitedly by Government monetary and fiscal policy and naturally destined to depreciate — into real durable assets, is a privately rational course of action to follow in an inflationary economy. It is not rocket-science to realise the long-term path of rupee-denominated assets is downwards in comparison to the hard-currencies of the world – just compare our money supply growth and inflation rates with those of the rest of the world.
The Statesman of November 16 2006 had a lead editorial titled Government’s land-fraud: Cheating peasants in a hyperinflation-prone economy which said:
“There is something fundamentally dishonourable about the way the Centre, the state of West Bengal and other state governments are treating the issue of expropriating peasants, farm-workers, petty shop-keepers etc of their small plots of land in the interests of promoters, industrialists and other businessmen. Singur may be but one example of a phenomenon being seen all over the country: Hyderabad, Karnataka, Kerala, Haryana, everywhere. So-called “Special Economic Zones” will merely exacerbate the problem many times over. India and its governments do not belong only to business and industrial lobbies, and what is good for private industrialists may or may not be good for India’s people as a whole. Economic development does not necessarily come to be defined by a few factories or high-rise housing complexes being built here or there on land that has been taken over by the Government, paying paper-money compensation to existing stakeholders, and then resold to promoters or industrialists backed by powerful political interest-groups on a promise that a few thousand new jobs will be created. One fundamental problem has to do with inadequate systems of land-description and definition, implementation and recording of property rights. An equally fundamental problem has to do with fair valuation of land owned by peasants etc. in terms of an inconvertible paper-money. Every serious economist knows that “land” is defined as that specific factor of production and real asset whose supply is fixed and does not increase in response to its price. Every serious economist also knows that paper-money is that nominal asset whose price can be made to catastrophically decline by a massive increase in its supply, i.e. by Government printing more of the paper it holds a monopoly to print. For Government to compensate people with paper-money it prints itself by valuing their land on the basis of an average of the price of the last few years, is for Government to cheat them of the fair present-value of the land. That present-value of land must be calculated in the way the present-value of any asset comes to be calculated, namely, by summing the likely discounted cash-flows of future values. And those future values should account for the likelihood of a massive future inflation causing decline in the value of paper-money in view of the fact we in India have a domestic public debt of some Rs. 30 trillion (Rs. 30 lakh crore) and counting, and money supply growth rates averaging 16-17% per annum. In fact, a responsible Government would, given the inconvertible nature of the rupee, have used foreign exchange or gold as the unit of account in calculating future-values of the land. India’s peasants are probably being cheated by their Government of real assets whose value is expected to rise, receiving nominal paper assets in compensation whose value is expected to fall.”
Shortly afterwards the Hon’ble MP for Kolkata Dakshin, Km Mamata Banerjee, started her protest fast, riveting the nation’s attention in the winter of 2006-2007. What goes for government buying land on behalf of its businessman friends also goes, mutatis mutandis, for the public sector’s real assets being bought up by the private sector using domestic paper money in a potentially hyperinflationary economy. If your new Government wishes to see real assets of the public sector being sold for paper money, let it seek to value these assets not in inconvertible rupees that Government itself has been producing in unlimited quantities but perhaps in forex or gold-units instead!
In the 2004-2005 volume Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant, edited by myself and Professor John Clarke, there is a chapter by Professor Patrick Minford on Margaret Thatcher’s fiscal and monetary policy (macroeconomics) that was placed ahead of the chapter by Professor Martin Ricketts on Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation (microeconomics). India’s fiscal and monetary or macroeconomic problems are far worse today than Britain’s were when Margaret Thatcher came to power. We need to get our macroeconomic problems sorted before we attempt the microeconomic privatisation of public assets.
It is wonderful that your young party colleague, the Hon’ble MP from Amethi, Shri Rahul Gandhi, has declined to join the present Government and instead wishes to reflect further on the “common man” and “common woman” about whom I had described his late father talking to me on September 18 1990. Certainly the aam admi is not someone to be found among India’s lobbyists of organised Big Business or organised Big Labour who have tended to control government agendas from the big cities.
With my warmest personal regards and respect, I remain,
Cordially yours
Subroto Roy, PhD (Cantab.), BScEcon (London)
see also https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-e/
An eminent economist of India passes away
April 9, 2009 — drsubrotoroyDr Raja Chelliah (1922-2009) may have been India’s only serious public finance economist in living memory. He first and more clearly than anyone warned of the out-of-control fiscal situation and the grave burden of the public debt.
Unfortunately he has left no professional successors. The institute he founded appears to consist mostly of a name and some buildings and a lot of wasteful bureaucratic public expenditure as is typical of the new Dilli Raj of recent decades. I recall a heated discussion with two of his successors there in the late 1990s in which they somehow attempted to say they were beyond Government of India control and could do as they pleased (which they had in fact proceeded to do). Neither could be said to have been familiar with Indian public finance data at the degree of precision necessary to grasp the fiscal problems Dr Chelliah had warned against. Like the Planning Commission and similar sets of public buildings, it is all mostly a waste; Delhi’s “think tanks” have been largely incapable of any real thought.
Raja Chelliah very kindly met me in the summer of 1987 or the winter of 1988 at his Planning Commission offices when I was putting together the University of Hawaii perestroika-for-India project that led in due course to sparking the 1991 reform thanks to Rajiv Gandhi in his last months. I wish very much I could have had Dr Chelliah join the project but he was over-committed.
His passing means there is no one left in the Indian economic-policy establishment who has (or wishes to have ) the faintest clue about the gravity of the fiscal situation. It may be a sign of the times that the business press is reporting on the same day that the current head of the RBI bureaucracy has been saying that monetising Indian fiscal deficits seems to him “benign”, pointing abroad and saying something like “Look aren’t they doing it too?”! (Contemporary Delhi and Bombay are self-deluded and so enamoured with five-star hotel rooms that they may be unable to cope with economic reality outside such an environment.)
Dr Chelliah was professionally serious, committed to truth-telling, personally modest and truly eminent in his contribution to modern Indian economic thought.
Subroto Roy, Kolkata
An Academic Database of Doctoral & Other Postgraduate Research Done at UK Universities on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Other Asian Countries Over 100 Years
March 13, 2009 — drsubrotoroyBritish universities have in the last one hundred years produced a vast and unsurpassable body of doctoral and other postgraduate research relating to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Afghanistan, Malaysia and other Asian countries.
The first table below contains almost 3,300 entries, each beginning with the date of award and the degree, followed by the University (and College), followed by the title of the thesis, followed by the AUTHOR in capital letters, followed by the name of the thesis supervisor where provided.
NB: There is a second table that follows containing a further 78 77 entries — these latter are, however, incomplete in that either the year or the degree appears not to be available.
If you are an author or thesis-supervisor or other academic representative and you are able to correct any inadvertent error or omission, please feel free to write to me promptly by email and I shall seek to account for it. For omissions, please also identify yourself clearly and send a comment to the post along with the necessary data that you believe should be accounted for. Numerous typos existed in the original transcription, several of which have been corrected though many might remain. In several cases, it is not impossible the original transcription has mis-spelt a name but authentication could require the original thesis to be checked.
This database has been created from public data and is published below with the aim of encouraging further research and reflection. It may be of special interest to notice the choice and quality of subjects in the context of particular times.
Subroto Roy
Postscript: More than one grateful reader has called this document someone’s “labour of love”. I agree though I have to say it was not mine — my contribution has been merely to transform a confused spreadsheet into HTML, editing it very slightly, removing some but not all typos yet, and publishing it. The spreadsheet was one of a million files on my computer, which must mean I downloaded it from some public source at some time though I am afraid I have no record where, most probably in British academia.
Degree University & College Title AUTHOR Supervisor
1909 MA Liverpool The interaction of England and India during the early years of George III Dorothy DUDLEY
1917 BLitt Oxford The history of the occupation and rural administration of Bengal by the English Company from the time of Clive to the permanent settlement under Cornwallis W K FIRMINGER
1917 MA Liverpool The constitutional relations of the Marquess Wellesley with the home authorities Beatrice L FRAZER
1917 BLitt Oxford Agricultural cooperation in British India J MATTHAI
1921 BA Cambridge Relations between the Bombay government and the Marathi powers up to the year 1774 W S DESI
1921 MA Manchester The movement of opinion in England as regards Indian affairs, 1757-1773 E EMMETT Prof Muir
1921 MA Manchester The relations of the Mahrattas with the British power I Kathleen WALKER Prof Muir
1922 BLitt Oxford The history of Burma to 1824 G E HARVEY
1922 PhD London Commercial relations between India and England, 1600-1757 B KRISHNA
1922 MSc London Agricultural problems and conditions in the Bombay Presidency, 1870-1914 M A TATA
1922 BLitt Oxford The Indian calico trade and its influence on English history P J THOMAS
1922 MSc London The cotton industry in India to 1757 J N VARMA Prof Sargeant
1922 PhD Manchester The administration of Bengal under Warren Hastings Sophia WEITZMAN Prof Muir
1923 MA Manchester The administrative and judicial reforms of Lord Cornwallis in Bengal (excluding the permanent settlement) A ASPINALL Mr Higham
1923 MA Manchester The Residency of Oudh during the administration of Warren Hastings C C BRACEWELL Prof Davis
1923 MLitt Cambridge Industrial evolution of India in recent times D R GADGIL
1923 PhD London The Punjab as a sovereign state, 1799-1839 GULSHAM LALL Prof Dodwell
1924 BLitt Oxford Development of the cotton industry in Indian from the early 19th century S DESOUANDE
1925 MA Liverpool Henry Dundas and the government of India, 1784-1800 Dorothy THORNTON Prof Veitch
1926 PhD Cambridge The North West Frontier of India, 1890-1909, with a survey of policy since 1849 C C DAVIES
1927 PhD Leeds A study of the development of agriculture in the Punjab and its economic effects K S BAJWA
1927 BLitt Oxford The military system of the Mahrattas: its origin and development from the time of the Shivaji to the fall of the Mahratta empire S SEN
1928 MA Birmingham The East India Company crisis, 1770-1773 R BEARD
1928 PhD Edinburgh A comparative study of the woollen industry in Scotland and the Punjab J W SIRAJUDDIN Dr Rankin
1929 PhD London The relations of the Governor-General and council with the Governor and council of Madras under the Regulating Act of 1773 A Das GUPTA Prof Dodwell
1929 PhD London, LSE The evolution of Indian income tax, 1860-1922: a historical, critical and comparative study J P NIYOGI
1929 PhD London Development of Indian ralways, 1842-1928 N SANYAL Prof Foxwell; Dr Slater
1930 PhD London Financial history of Mysore, 1799-1831 M H GOPAL Dr Slater; Prof Dodwell
1930 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Soc The development of political institutions in the state of Travancore, 1885-1924 V M ITTYERAH
1930 BLitt Oxford Sir Charles Crosthwaite and the consolidation of Burma Mys J MAY-OUNG
1930 PhD London, SOAS Revenue administration of the Sirkars under the East India Company down to 1802 Lanka SUNDERAM
1930 PhD London, LSE Hastings’ experiments in the judicial administration N J M YUSUF
1931 PhD London State policy and economic development in Mysore State since 1881 UDAYAM ABHAYAMBAL Miss Anstey
1931 PhD London The origin and early history of public debt in India P DATTA Prof Coatman
1931 MA London Lord Macaulay and the Indian Legislative Council C D DHARKAR Prof Dodwell
1931 MA London The bilingual problem in Ceylon T D JAYASURIYA
1931 PhD London; LSE Study of agricultural cooperation in India based upon foreign experience H L PASRICHA Prof Gregory
1931 PhD London, UC The administration of Mysore under Sir Mark Cubbon. 1834-1861 K N V SASTRI Prof Dodwell
1931 PhD London, SOAS Administrative beginnings in British Burma, 1826-1843 Barbara J STEWART
1931/32 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s English social life in India in the 18th century T G P SPEAR
1932 PhD London The growth and development of the Indian tea industry and trade S M AKHTAR Dr Anstey
1932 PhD London Anglo-Sikh relations, 1839-1849 K C KHANNA Prof Dodwell
1932 PhD London, LSE Indian commodity market speculation L N MISRA Prof Coatman
1932 PhD London, LSE Indian foreign trade, 1870-1930 Parimal RAY Prof Sargent
1932 PhD London, King’s Ceylon under the British occupation: its political and economic development, 1795-1833 C R de SILVA Prof Newton
1932 PhD London Post-war labour legislation in India – a comparison with Japan Sasadhar SINHA Dr Anstey
1932 PhD London Local finance in India G C VARMA Prof Coatman
1933 PhD Leeds Historical survey of the financial policy of the government of India from 1857 to 1900 and of its economic and other consequences H S BHAI
1933 PhD London The relations between the Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India and the Court of Directors, 1784-1816 P CHANDRA Prof Coatman
1934 PhD London The influence of the home government on land revenue and judicial administration in the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal from 1807-1822 B S BALIGA Prof Dodwell
1934 MSc Leeds A survey of the resources of tanning materials and the leather industry of Bhopal State, India G W DOUGLAS
1934 PhD Edinburgh Human geography of Bengal Arthur GEDDES
1934 BLitt Oxford, Somerville A study of the legal and administrative records of Dacca as illustrating the policy of Warren Hastings in East Bengal F M SACHSE
1934 BLitt Oxford Biography of Maharaja DalipSingh K S THAPER
1935 DPhil Oxford The development of the Indian administrative and financial system, 1858-1905, with special reference to the relations F J THOMAS
1936 MSc London British Indian administration: a historical study K R Ramaswami AIYANGAR
1936 MA London Lord Ellenborough’s ideas on Indian policy Kathleen I GARRETT Dr Morrell
1936 MA London British public opinion regarding Indian policy at the time of the mutiny Jessie HOLMES Dr Morrell
1936 PhD London, SOAS The rise and fall of the Rohilla power in Hindustan, 1707-1774 AD A F M K RAHMAN
1936/37 PhD Edinburgh Indian foreign trade, 1900-1931, and its economic background: a study W B RAGHAVIAH
1937 PhD Cambridge, Gonville The national income of British India, 1931-1932 V K R V RAO
1937 PhD London, LSE Culture change in South-Western India A AIYAPPAN
1937 PhD London, UC Banks and industrial finance in India R BAGCHI
1937 PhD London Development of social and political ideas in Bengal, 1858-1884 B C BHATTACHARYA Prof Dodwell
1937 MSc Leeds An interpretation of the distribution of the population within the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh Nora Y BOYDELL
1937 PhD London, LSE Rise and growth of Indian liberalism M A BUCH
1937 PhD London, LSE Industrial finance and management in India N DAS
1937 MSc London, LSE The effect of the breakdown of the international gold standard on India R DORAISWAMY
1937 PhD London, LSE The problem of rural indebtedness in Indian economic life B G GHATE
1937 MSc London, LSE Indian coal trade J GUHATHAKURTA
1937 PhD London SOAS Reorganisation of the Punjab government (1847-1857) R C LAI
1937 PhD London, External An economic and regional geography of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh S M T RIZVI
1937 PhD Wales Purposes and methods of recording and accounting as applied to agriculture, with special reference to provision and use of economic data relating to agriculture in India Arjan SINGH
1938 PhD London, SOAS The relations between Oudh and the East India Company from 1785-1801 P BASU
1938 PhD London, SOAS East India Company’s relations with Assam, 1771-1826 S K BHUYAN
1938 PhD London, LSE Discretionary powers in the Indian Government with special reference to district administration B CHAND
1938 MA London, SOAS The British conquest of Sind K A CHISHTI
1938 PhD Cambridge, Christ’s The working of the Bengal legislative council under the Government of India Act, 1919 J G DRUMMOND
1938 MA London British relations with the Sikhs and Afghans, July 1823 to March 1840 E R KAPADIA
1938 PhD London, SOAS The East India interest and the British government, 1784-1833 C H PHILIPS
1938 PhD London, LSE The position of the Viceroy and Governor General of India A RUDRA
1938 MA London British relations with the Sikhs and Afghans, July 1823 to March 1840 Charles WADE
1938/39 PhD Edinburgh Agricultural geography of the United Provinces B N MUKERJI
1939 PhD London, LSE Industrial development of Mysore R BALAKRISHNA
1939 MA London, LSE A general geographical account of the North West Frontier Province of India M A K DURRANI
1939 PhD Wales The international production and exchange of rice with special reference to the production, market demand and consumption of rice in India and Burma Ahmas KHAN
1939 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Soc The Governor-Generalship of Sir John Shore, 1793-1798 A W MAHMOOD
1939 PhD London, LSE Indian provincial finance (1919-1937) with special reference to the United Provinces B R MISRA
1940 PhD London, LSE Recent economic depression in India with reference to agriculture and rural life R K BHAN
1940 PhD Wales The future of agricultural cooperation in the United Provinces (with an examination of the cooperative experience)with special reference to the problems of agricultural cooperation in the United Provinces, India H R CHATURVEDI
1940 PhD London, LSE An administrative study of the development of the civil service in India during the Company’s regime A K GHOSAL
1940 PhD Wales The production, marketing and consumption of the chief oilseeds in India and the supply and use of oilseeds in the United Kingdom A S KHAN
1940 PhD Wales Principles of agricultural planning with reference to relationships of natural resources, populations and dietaries in India and with further reference to rural development in certain provinces of India Jaswant SINGH
1941 PhD London, LSE Financing of local authorities in British India A N BANERJI
1941 PhD London The political and cultural history of the Punjab including the North West Frontier Province in its earliest period L CHANDRA Prof Barnett
1941 PhD London, LSE Capital development of India, 1860-1913 A KRISHNASAWMI
1941 PhD London, LSE Influence of European political doctrines upon the evolution of the Indian governmental institutions and practice, 1858-1938 G PRASAD
1942 MLitt Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Economic and political relations of India with Iran and Afghanistan since 1900 T BASU
1942 PhD Edinburgh A study of missionary policy and methods in Bengal from 1793 to 1905 W B S DAVIS Prof Watt; Prof Buleigh
1943 PhD London, LSE Development of large scale industries in India and their localisation N S SASTRI
1944 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Communal representation and Indian self-government I J BAHADOORSINGH
1944 MA London, External The physiographic evolution of Ceylon K KULARATNAM
1946 MA London, SOAS The origins and development to 1892 of the Indian National Congress Iris M JONES
1947 PhD London, LSE The agricultural geography of Bihar P DAYAL
1947 PhD Cambridge, King’s Consumer expenditure in India, 1931/32 to 1940/41 R L DESAI
1947 MA London, LSE Power resources and utilisation in the United Provinces P K DUTT
1947 PhD London, LSE Cultural change with special reference to the hill tribes of Burma and Assam Edmund Ronald LEACH
1947 PhD London, SOAS The judicial administration of the East India Company in Bengal, 1765-1982 B B MISRA
1947 PhD London, LSE The monetary policy of the Reserve Bank of India with special reference to the structural and institutional factors in the economy K N RAJ
1948 PhD Wales The principles and practice of health insurance as applied to India J AGRAWALA
1948 MSc London, LSE International monetary policy since 1919 with special reference to India D C GHOSE
1948 DPhil Oxford, Balliol British policy on the North East Frontier of India, 1826-1886 S GUPTA
1948 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s Local self-government in the Madras Presidency, 1850-1919 K K PILLAY
1948 PhD London, LSE The problem of the standards of the Indian currency A SADEQUE
1948 DPhil Oxford, Exeter The social function of religion in a south India community Mysore Narasimhashar SRINIVAS
1948 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Society Some aspects of agricultural marketing in India with reference to developments in western marketing systems R S SRIVASTAVA
1948 PhD London,. SOAS Muslims in India: a political analysis (from 1885-906) Rafiq ZAKARIA
1949 PhD London, LSE Settlements in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh E AHMAD
1949 PhD London, SOAS The growth of self-government in Assam, 1984-1919 A K BARKAKOTY
1949 PhD London, SOAS British administration in Assam (1825-1845)with special reference to the hill tribes on the frontier H BARPUJARI
1949 MA London An enquiry into the development of training of teachers in the Punjab during the British period Aquila B BERLAS
1949 PhD London, LSE The problem of federation in India with special reference to economic relations J N BHAN
1949 PhD London, LSE A study of methods of national income measurements with special reference to the problems of India V K CHOPRA
1949 PhD London, LSE An analysis of the Indian price structure from 1861 A K GHOSH
1949 DPhil Oxford, Keble The achievement of Christian missionaries in India, 1794-1833 Kenneth INGHAM
1949 PhD Wales The organization and methods of agricultural cooperation in the British Isles and the possibility of their application in the Central Province of India N Y KHER
1949 PhD London, LSE Industrial geography of Bihar S A MAJID
1949 PhD London, LSE Development of Indian public finance during the war, April 1939-March 1946 S MISRA
1949 PhD London, LSE A study of the methods of state regulation of wages with special reference to their possible applications in India S B L NIGAM
1949 PhD London, SOAS The development of marriage in ancient India B C PAUL
1949 PhD St Andrews The social and administrative reforms of Lord William Bentinck G SEED
1950 PhD London, LSE Jails and borstals with special reference to West Bengal B BHATTACHARYYA Dr Mannheim
1950 PhD London The growth of local self-government in Assam, 1874-1919 A K BORKAKOTY Prof C R Philips; Prof Hall
1950 DPhil Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall The problem of the Indian immigrant in British colonial policy after 1834 I Mary CUMPSTON
1950 PhD London, LSE Underemployment and industrialisation: a study of the basic problems with special reference to India B DATTA
1950 PhD London, UC The agriculture of Mysore G K GHORI
1950 PhD London, SOAS The influence of western, particularly English, political ideas on Indian political thought, with special reference to the political ideas of the Indian National Congress, 1885-1919 Sailesh C GHOSH
1950 PhD London, LSE Principles of unemployment insurance and assistance with special reference to their application to India D GUPTA
1950 PhD Newcastle Anglo-Afghan relations, 1798-1878, with particular reference to British policy in Central Asia and on the North West Frontier of India M KHAN
1950 PhD London, LSE The social consequences of imperialism with special reference to Ceylon P R PIERIS
1950 PhD London, LSE An experiment in the estimation of national income and the in the construction of social accounts of India, 1945-1946 D N SAXENA Mr Booker
1950 PhD London, SOAS The relations between the home and Indian governments, 1858-1870 Zahinuddin Husain ZOBERI
1951 PhD London, External Memoir of the geology and mineral resources of the neighbourhood of Bentong, Pahang and adjoining portions of Selangor and Negri Sembilan, incorporating an account of the prospecting and mining activities of the Bentong District J B ALEXANDER
1951 BLitt Oxford, Exeter The political organization of the plains Indians Frederick George BAILEY
1951 BLitt Oxford, Corpus Southern India under Wellesley, 1798-1805 A S BENNELL Mr C C Davies
1951 PhD London, LSE Problems of the Indian foreign exchanges since 1927 D GHOSH
1951 DPhil Oxford, Balliol The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, 1880-1884 S GOPAL Mr R C Davies
1951 MA Wales The problem of the Straits, 1896-1936 E W GRIFFITHS
1951 PhD London, LSE Sources of Indian official statistics relating to production O P GUPTA Dr Rhodes
1951 MA Manchester The administration and financial control of municipalities and district boards in the UP N K KATHIA
1951 PhD Glasgow The legal and constitutional implications of the evolution of Indian independence R KEMAL
1951 PhD Cambridge, Jesus An analysis of the Hindu caste system in its interactions with the total social structure in certain parts of the Malabar coast E J MILLER Prof Hutton
1951 PhD Cambridge, Girton Changes in matrilineal kinship on th Malabar coast E K MILLER Prof Hutton
1951 PhD Bristol Agriculture and horticulture in India – sundry papers K C NAIK
1951 MA Manchester An economic survey of West Pakistan A SHARIF
1951 PhD Cambridge The interpretation of legislative powers under the Government of India Act, 1935 S D SHARMA
1951 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Society Religion and society among some of the tribes of Chota Nagpur H N C STEVENSON
1951 London, SOAS The political development of Burma during the period 1918-1935 OHN TIN
1951 PhD London, LSE The working of the Donoughmore constitution of Ceylon, 1931-1947: a study of a colonial central government by executive committees Irripitwebadalge don Samaradasa WEERAWARDANA Mr W H Morris-Jones
1952 PhD London SOAS The career of Mir Jafar Khan, 1757-1765 AD Raya ATULA-CHANDRA Prof C H Philips
1952 PhD London, LSE The development of Calcutta: a study in urban geography M GUHA Prof L D Stamp; Prof O H K Spate
1952 PhD London, LSE The East India Company’s land policy and management in Bengal from 1698 to 1784 Mazharul HUQ Dr Anstey
1952 MA Leeds The social accounts relating to Ceylon E L P JAYTILAKA
1952 MSc London, LSE Rural industries in India: a study in rural economic development with special reference to Madras C K KAUSUKUTTY Dr Anstey
1952 MSc London, LSE India’s balance of international payments with special reference to her food and agricultural conditions G B KULKARNI Dr Anstey; Dr Raeburn
1952 PhD Cambridge Utilitarian influence and the formation of Indian policy, 1820-1840 E T STOKES
1952 PhD London, SOAS Local government in India and Burma, 1908-1937: a comparative study of the evolution and working of local authorities in Bombay, the United Provinces and Burma Hugh R TINKER Prof Hall
1953 PhD London, LSE Economic geography of East Pakistan N AHMAD Prof Stamp
1953 MSc London, UC the changing pattern of India’s foreign trade, with special reference to the impact of large scale industrial development since 1919 A ALAGAPPAN
1953 PhD London, SOAS The East India Company and the economy of Bengal from 1704 to 1740 Sukumar BHATTACHARYYA Prof C H Philips
1953 MA Wales National income of Pakistan for the year 1948-49 Z ul H CHAUDRI
1953 MLitt Cambridge, Fitzwilliam The influence of Western thought on social, educational, political and cultural development of India, 1818-1840 V DATTA Dr T G P Spear
1953 MSc Belfast The growth of trade unions in India S DAYAL
1953 PhD London The establishment of Dutch power in Ceylon, 1638-1658 K W GOONEWARDENA Prof Hall
1953 PhD London, LSE The submontane region of North West Pakistan: a geographical study of its economic development Maryam KARAM-ELAHI Prof Buchanan; Prof Stamp
1953 PhD London, LSE A study of rhe measurement of national product and its distribution, with special reference to Pakistan A H KHANDKER
1953 PhD Edinburgh A regional study of survival, mortality and disease in British India in relation to the geographic factors, 1921-1940 A T A LEARMONTH
1953 PhD London, SOAS Development of the Muslims of Bengal and Bihar, 1819-1856, with special reference to their education A R MAALICK Prof Philips
1953 DPhil Oxford, Jesus The study of the economy of self-subsisting rural communities: the methods of investigation, economic conditions and economic relations, with specific reference to India P K MUKHOPADHYAY
1953 PhD London, LSE The relationship of land tenure to the economic modernization of Uttar Pradesh W C NEALE
1953 PhD London, Bedford Social status of women during the past fifty years (1900=1950) T N PATEL Mrs B Wootton
1953 PhD London, LSE The state in relation to trade unions and trade disputes in India Anand PRAKASH Mr W H Morris-Jones; Mr Roberts
1953 MA London, SOAS The tribal village in Bihar SACHCHIDANANDA Prof C Haimendorf
1953 PhD London, UC Delegated legislation in India V N SHULKA Prof Keeton
1953 PhD London, SOAS The internal policy of the Indian government, 1885-1898 H L SINGH Prof C H Philips
1953 PhD London, SOAS The internal policy of Lord Auckland in British India, 1836-1842, with special reference to education D P SINHA Prof C H Philips
1953/54 MA Leeds Demand for certain exports of Ceylon K THARMARATNAM
1954 MA London The administration of Sir Henry Ward,Governor of Ceylon, 1855-1860 S V BALASINGHAM Prof Graham
1954 PhD London, SOAS Social policy and social change in Western India, 1817-1830 Kenneth A BALLHATCHET Prof C H Philips
1954 Dphil Oxford, St Hilda’s Lord William Bentinck in Bengal, 1828-1835 C E BARRETT Dr C C Davies
1954 MA London A historical survey of the training of teachers in Bengal in the 19th and 20th centuries S BHATTACHARYA
1954 MA London, SOAS Evolution of representative government in India, 1884-1909 Sasadhar CHAKRAVARTY Prof C H Philips
1954 PhD London, LSE Consumption levels in India T P CHAUDHURI
1954 PhD London, LSE The forests of Assam: a study in economic geography H DAS
1954 MSc Leeds A study of price fixing for agricultural products with special reference to milk in Great Britain and Bombay N K DESAI
1954 BLitt St Andrews Eldred Pottinger and the North West Frontier, 1838-1842 D W F GOURLAY Sir C Ogilvie
1954 PhD London, LSE The Korean crisis and the Indian Union K GUPTA
1954 MA Manchester Some aspects of the development of Pakistan’s financial structure M HOSSAIN
1954 MSc London, LSE Financing economic development in Ceylon A T JAYAKODDY Prof Paish; Dr Anstey
1954 PhD London, LSE Measurement of profits: a study of methods with special reference to India R K NIGAM
1954 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s A study of communal representation in constitutional systems of the British Commonwealth with specific reference to Ceylon, Kenya and Fiji Carl Gustav ROSBERG Mr K E Robinson
1954 PhD London, LSE Land utilization in Eastern Uttar Pradesh (comprising the districts of Jaunpur, Banares, Guezipur, Azamgarh and Baldea) M SHAFI Prof Stamp; Mr R R Rawson
1954 PhD London, LSE Representation and representative government in the Indian Republic Irene C TINKER Mr W H Morris-Jones
1954 PhD London, SOAS Trade and finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793-1833 Amales TRIPATHY Prof C H Phillips
1954 PhD London, LSE Some aspects of the history of the coffee industry in Ceylon with specific reference to 1823-1885 I H VAN DEN DRIESEN Mr Fisher
1954 PhD London, LSE The Manning constitution of Ceylon, 1924-1931 Alfred Jeyaretnam WILSON Mr R Bassett; Mr W H Morris-Jones
1955 MSC London, LSE Some aspects of the history of British investments in the private sector of the Indian economy, 1876-1914 N Z AHMED Dr Ashworth; F J Fisher
1955 PhD Manchester The social organisation of a village on the Hindu frontier of Orissa Frederick George BAILEY
1955 LLM London, LSE Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgements in India: a comparative study B N BANERJEE
1955 PhD London The administration of criminal justice in Bengal from 1773 to 1861 T K BANERJEE S A de Smith; Prof A Gledhill
1955 MA London The East India Company in Madras, 1707-1744 R N BANERJI
1955 PhD London The factory of the English East India Company at bantam, 1602-1682 D K BASSETT Prof D G E Hall
1955 PhD London, LSSE Pressure of population on land in India: a regional approach B S BHIR
1955 MA London, SOAS The economic policy of the Government of India, 1898-1905 Edna BONNER Prof C R Philips
1955 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The educational policy of the East India Company, 1781-1854 J G BOWEN Mr C C Davies
1955 BLitt Oxford, Magdalen Indian labour migration to Malaya, 1867-1910 D A CALMAN Dr A F Madden
1955 PhD London, LSE Consumption levels in India T P CHOUDHURY
1955 PhD London, LSE The Malay family in Singapore J DJAMOUR
1955 PhD Edinburgh The abolition of the East India Company’s monopoly, 1833 D EYLES Prof Pares
1955 MLitt Cambridge. Fitzwilliam House The mongoloids and their contributions to the growth of Assamese culture M C GOSWAMI Dr J E Lindgren
1955 PhD London, SOAS The administration of the Delhi Territory, 1803-1832 Jessie HOLMES Prof C H Philips
1955 MSc (Econ) London, LSE Taxation and saving in India D JHA
1955 MSc London, LSE A comparison of the federal aspects of the Government of India Act, 1935, and the constitution of 1950 S KHAN
1955 MA London, SOAS Some aspects of the social history of Bengal with special reference to the Muslims, 1854-1884 L KHATOON Prof Philips
1955 PhD Aberdeen Ports of the Indian ocean: an historical geography W KIRK A C O’Dell
1955 PhD Cambridge, Peterhouse British investment in Indian guaranteed railways, 1845-1875 W J MACPHERSON Mr K E Berrill
1955 PhD London, UC Fundamental freedoms, with particular reference to the Indian constitution J C MEHDI Prof G W Keeton
1955 PhD Birmingham The educational ideas of Mahatma Gandhi N P PILLAI
1955 MA Manchester Cottage industries in Bihar S B SAXENA
1955 PhD London, LSE The Indian jute industry: a study of agricultural geography P SENGUPTA
1955 PhD London, LSE The political philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi in relation to the English liberal tradition Bishan Sarup SHARMA
1955 LLM London, SOAS Distribution of legislative power under the India constitution R P SHARMA
1955 PhD London , SOAS The Council of India, 1858-1919 S SINGH Prof C H Philips
1955 PhD London LSE The origin and development of left wing movements and ideas in India, 1919-1947 Lalan Prasad SINHA R Mikband; W H Morris-Jones
1955 PhD London; SOAS British interest in trans-Burma trade routes to China, 1826-1876 Ma THAUNG
1955 MA London The training of teachers in the Bombay Presidency during the British period: a historical survey N L VAIDYA
1955 PhD Edinburgh Save there, eat here: a cultural study of labour migration from a Pakhtun village Francis Philip WATKINS
1955 PhD London, LSE The southeast quadrant of Ceylon: a study of the geographical aspects of land use W A R WIKKRAMATILEKE
1956 PhD London, SOAS The Dutch power in Ceylon, 1658-1687 S ARASARATNAM Prof D Hall
1956 PhD London, LSE Land use and soil erosion problems of Bist Jullundur Doab, Punjab, India O P BHARDWAJA
1956 PhD London, SOAS British rule in Assam, 1845-1858 B CHAUDHURI Prof C R Philips
1956 PhD London, SOAS Sir Josiah Child and the East India Company at the end of the 17th century A L CROWE Prof C Philips
1956 MSc London, LSE Scope and method of agricultural economic surveys in India N Y Z FARUQI Dr Raeburn
1956 PhD London, LSE A study of capital taxation and its scope in India I S GULATI
1956 PhD London, LSE An analysis of the monetary experience of Ceylon H A de S GUNASEKERA Prof Sayers; Mr Wilson
1956 PhD London, LSE Federal finance and economic development with special reference to Pakistan M HOSSAIN
1956 PhD London, LSE The demand for Indian exports and imports: an econometric study of selected commodities A K MUKERJI Prof Allen; Dr Norton
1956 PhD London, LSE Capital development in India with special reference to recent trends in investments Dinanath Kashinath RANGNEKAR Prof Paish; Dr Anstey
1956 PhD Cambridge, St John’s A study of India’s balance of payments, 1901-1913 and 1924-1936 B S RAO Prof E A G Robinson
1956 MA London, SOAS The relations between the Indian central and provincial governments with special reference to the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay, 1858-1882 D N SINGH Prof C H Philips
1957 MA Birmingham An examination in disposal and treatment of juvenile delinquents in Bombay State in relation to practice in England A D ATTAR
1957 MA London The development and reconstruction of university education in Pakistan since 1854 S M A AZIZ
1957 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Social organisation of the Jaffna Tamils of North Ceylon with special reference to kinship, marriage and inheritance M Y BANKS Mr E R Leach
1957 PhD London, LSE West Midnapore: a study of land use S C CHAKRABORTI
1957 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s The place of agricultural development in India’s first two Five-Year Plans A CORREIA-AFONSO
1957 PhD London, SOAS Studies in the economic and social development of Inida, 1848-1856 M N DAS Prof C Philips
1957 MA London, LSE The population of Chota Nagpur H P DEVI Prof L D Stamp
1957 MSc London, LSE Small scale and cottage industries as a means of providing better opportunities for labour in India Q H FAROOQUEE Prof A Plant; Mr Foldes
1957 PhD London, LSE Fiscal policy and inflation in post-war India, 1945-1954 K V G GOWDA
1957 DPhil Oxford Anglo Sikh relations, 1799-1849 B J HASRAT C C Davies
1957 MLitt Cambridge, Girton Indian constitutional development, 1927-1935 M B HASSEN Dr T G P Spear
1957 PhD London, LSE The commitee system in British and Indian local authorities C JHA Prof W A Robbins
1957 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s The development of money and banking in Ceylon J B KELEGAMA
1957 PhD London, LSE The civil service in independent India: the All India and Union Civil Services B S KHANNA Prof W A Robson
1957 PhD London, LSE Urbanization in West Pakistan K KURESHY
1957 PhD London, LSE Hinduism and economic growth: a study of the nature of the impact of Hinduism on India’s economic growth with special emphasis on theperiod since the mid 18th century B B MISHRA Dr Anstey
1957 PhD London, External Large scale sampling surveys in agriculture in the Punjab (Pakistan) D M QURESHI
1957 PhD London, SOAS British land policy in Oudh j RAJ Prof C H Philips
1957 DPhil Oxford The Dutch in Coromandel, 1605-1690 Tapan RAYCHAUDHURI
1957 PhD London, LSE Geomorphological evolution of the highaland of Chota Nagpur and the adjoining districts of Bihar R P SINGH
1957 PhD London, LSE Credit problems of small farmers in Ceylon Wijetunga Mudianselagadera TILAKARATNA Mr A D Knox
1957 PhD London The urban geography of Agra A R TIWARI Prof A E Smailes
1957/58 PhD London, SOAS The life and career of Jonathan Duncan, 1756-1795 V NARAIN
1957/58 PhD Manchester A comparative study of informal relationships in a Chinese village in Malaya and north India W H NEWELL
1957/58 PhD Manchester The history of the Arghuns and Tarkhans of Sind M H SIDDIQI
1957/58 PhD Manchester An analysis of the demand for, and the supply of, food in India R P SINHA
1958 MA London, Inst Ed The missionary activities of the CMS and CZEMS in Kashmir during the second half of the 19th century S Z AHMED SAH Prof J A Lauwerys
1958 PhD Cambridge, King’s The political organisation of the Swat Pathans T F W BARTH Mr E R Leach
1958 MA London, Inst Ed A historical survey of the languages problem in Bengal from the Muslim period to the end of the British period K BHATTACHARYYA
1958 MSc Cambridge, Fitzwilliam The financing of planned economic development in India S R DATTA GUPTA Dr A R Prest
1958 MA London, LSE Sociology of marriage rituals in India: a study of Sanskritisation and de-Sanskritisation B DATTAGUPTA
1958 MSc Londond, LSE Some aspects of Indo-British trade during the 20th century with special reference to capital goods V P DHITAL
1958 MA London, SOAS The political system of the Rajputs Sylvia J DUTRA Dr Bauley; Prof C von Furer-Haimendorf
1958 MSc London, LSE The economics of the tea industry in Ceylon J M F G FERNANDO Dr V Anstey
1958 PhD London The development of the Indian National Congress, 1892-1909 Pansy C GHOSH Dr K Balhatchet
1958 PhD London, LSE Inflation in India, 1939-1952: a study of inflation in an underdeveloped economy S K GHOSH Dr Anstey; Mr Day
1958 PhD London,SOAS The internal administration of Lord Lytton, with special reference to social and economic policy, 1876-1880 L M GUJRAL
1958 MLitt Cambridge, King’s Sir Richard Jenkins and the Residency at Nagpur, 1807-1818 F A HAGAR Dr T G P Spear
1958 PhD London, LSE Agrarian problems in Bihar based, primarily, on surveys in five villages F Tomasson JANNUZI Dr V Anstey
1958 BLitt Oxford, Campion Hall An economic and historical study of food grain controls in India during the second world war and after S C JOSEPH
1958 MSc London, LSE Union-state administrative cooperation in India (1937-1952) M KAMAL Prof W A Robson
1958 MSc London, LSE Problems of the agricultural labourers in India R P KAMAT
1958 MSc Cambridge, Newnham The employment problem in Ceylon I KANNANGARA Mrs J V Robinson
1958 PhD Cambridge, Trinity The commercial and diplomatic relations between India and Tibet in the nineteenth century H A LAMB Dr V W W S Purcell
1958 PhD Cambridge, St Catharine’s The Dutch East India Company and Mysore, 1762-1790 J van LOHUIZEN Dr T G P Spear
1958 MA London, LSE Social and economic geography of the Mathura District (western Uttar Pradash) S D MISRA Mr R R Rawson
1958 PhD London, LSE Economics of nutritional problems in India R N MITRA Dr Raeburn
1958 PhD Cambridge, Peterhouse The analysis of Kandyan marriage: landlords, labourers and aristocrats OSMAN YALMAN NUR
1958 PhD London, SOAS Sir Elijah Impey in India, 1774-1783 Bishwa Nath PANDEY Prof C H Philips
1958 MA London, LSE A geography of the Peshawar region M Z SAHIBZADA
1958 PhD London, LSE Indian monetary policy and debt management since 1939 J C D SETHI Dr V Anstey; Mr R Turvey
1958 PhD London, LSE Strategic aspects of India’s foreign policy V B L SHARMA
1958 BLitt Oxford, St Antony’s The rise and growth of the Praja Socialist Party of India (1934-1935) H K SINGH Mr F G Carnell
1958 PhD London, LSE Allahabad: a study in urban geography Ujaqir SINGH Prof D L Stamp
1958 PhD London, SOAS Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas Romila THAPAR Prof A.L.Basham [viz., note from Prof Thapar dated 4 March 2016]
1958 MA London, SOAS History of the development of Rangoon TUN THET Prof Hall
1958 PhD London, LSE India’s membership of the sterling area Jai Dev VARMA
1958 PhD Cambridge The present situation and the probably future of cotton in West Pakistan’s economy S B WHITEHILL
1958 PhD Edinburgh The economic geography of Madhya Pradesh (formerly Central Provinces and Behar) R H ZAIDI
1959 MSc(Econ) London, LSE The industrial worker in East Pakistan: a study in the adaptation of an industrial labour force A K AHMADULLAH Prof Phelps
1959 MA Manchester The recruitment of Indians into the covenanted civil service, 1853-1892 M R ANWAR
1959 PhD Manchester Britain and Muslim India: a study of British public opinion vis-a-vis the development of Muslim nationalism in India, 1905-1947 K K AZIZ
1959 MSc London, LSE Problems in corporation taxation with special reference to India M P BHATT Mr Turvey
1959 PhD London, LSE Applications of linear programming to the development plans of India B BHATTACHARYYA
1959 MA London Trincocmalee and the East Indies Squadron, 1746-1844 H A COLGATE Prof Graham
1959 PhD London, LSE Economic development of Assam with special reference to the 20th century P GOSWAMI Dr Anstey
1959 PhD London The nationalist movement in Ceylon betweem 1910 and 1931, with special reference to communal and elective problems D K GREENSTREET Dr Miliband
1959 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Land tenure in the Kandyan provinces of Ceylon U A GUNASEKERA Dr D F Pocock
1959 BLitt Oxford, St Anne’s The analysis of external trade and economic structure of Ceylon, 1900-1955 O E B GUNEWARDENA Miss P H Ady
1959 PhD London, LSE Some problems of the organisation and administration of public enterprise with special reference to India L N GUPTA Prof Robson; Dr Anstey
1959 PhD Edinburgh The collection of agricultural statistics and the use of data in the United Kingdom and Pakistan: an objective study to explore possibilities of improvement in Pakistan Muhammed Altaf HUSSAIN
1959 MA London, SOAS Social and administrative policy of the Government of Bengal, 1877-1890 Rokeya KABEER Prof Basham
1959 PhD London, External Industrial relations in India C B KUMAR
1959 PhD London, LSE Some aspects of the problem of implementing agricultural planning in India Gouri NAG Mr Knox; Mr Lancaster
1959 PhD Edinburgh Early English travellers in India. A study in the travel literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods with particular reference to India R C PRASAD Prof W L Renwick; Mr G A Shepperson
1959 PhD London, LSE Judicial review in India: a study in constitutional theory and judicial practice V R RAVIKANTI Mr S de Smith
1959 MA London, LSE The position of women in Hinayana Buddhist countries (Burma, Ceylon, Thailand) S SEIN Mr F Freedman
1959 PhD London , LSE British opinion and Indian neutralism: an analysis of India’s foreign policy in the light of British public reactions, 1947-1957 Shri Ram SHARMA Prof Manning
1959/60 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam The cottage industries of India: an enquiry into their economics with special reference to developmental planning Kedarnath PRASAD
1959/60 PhD Cambridge, Queen’s The role of transport and foreign trade in the economic development of Burma under British rule, 1885-1914 Maung SHEIN
1959/60 PhD London, External North east Baluchistan, Quetta Division: a critical evaluation of the land and its resources A H SIDDIQI
1959/60 MA Manchester An analysis of the principal factors affecting India’s policy toward her Himalayan border J TOOMRE
1960 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of the history of the Muslim community in Bengal, 1884-1912 Sufia AHMED Prof C H Philips
1960 MA London Aspects of the economic development of the Assam valley, 1858-1884 A C BARUA Dr K Ballhatchet
1960 PhD Cambridge Thomas Munro and the development of administrative policy in Madras, 1791-1818: the origins of “the Munro system” T H BEAGLEHOLE Dr K Ballhatchet
1960 PhD London, LSE Measurements of production and productivity in Indian industry with special reference to methodological aspects G C BERI
1960 PhD London, SOAS The state and the cooperative movement in the Bombay Presidency, 1880-1930 I J CATANACH Dr K Ballhatchet
1960 PhD London, LSE The centrally recruited services in Pakistan M A CHAUDHURI Prof P Robson
1960 DPhil Oxford, Lincoln Portuguese society in India in the sixteenth and seveteenth centuries K J CROWTHER
1960 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s Cottage industries of Ceylon H D DIAS Mr B H Farmer
1960 MSc (Econ) London Someproblems of agriculture in the Vale of Peshawar (West Pakistan) Lloyd Suttor EDMONDS
1960 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Malabar in Asian trade, 1740-1800 Asin Ranjan Das GUPTA
1960 MA Wales, Swansea Indian international transactions 1948 to 1958 C GURUPRASAD
1960 PhD London, SOAS British policy on the North West Frontier Province of India, 1889-1901 L HARRIS Prof K Ballhatchet
1960 PhD London, External Agricultural geography of East Pakistan B L C JOHNSON
1960 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The Indian National Congress, 1918-1923 G KKRISHNA Dr G F Hudson
1960 PhD London The growth of the idea of Commonwealth in India. 1900-1929 S R MEHROTRA Prof Philips
1960 PhD London The Burma-China boundary since 1886 Khin Maung NYUNT
1960 PhD London, Birkbeck Colombo: a study in urban geography D B L PANDITARATNA Prof A L Basham
1960 PhD London, LSE The law and the banker in Ceylon M J L RAJANAYAGAM Prof Gower
1960 PhD London, LSE Land reforms and some allied agrarian problems in Madras State since independence Arungiri RAMASWAMI
1960 PhD London LSE Economic aspects of the sugar industry in India Saraswathi RAU Dr Raeburn
1960 PhD London, LSE Industrial injuries schemes in India and Britain: a comparative study B RAYCHAUDHURI
1960 MSc London, LSE Wage boards in British and the application of their proceedings in India C J N SAXENA Prof Phelps Brown
1960 PhD London, LSE Recent changes in land use in the Upper Damodar Basin, India A SHARAN Mr Rawson
1960 PhD London, SOAS English relations with Haidar Ali, 1760-1782 B SHEIK ALI
1960 MA London, Inst Ed A comparative study of the language problem at the university level in India R K YADAVA
1960 PhD London, SOAS Anglo-Chinese diplomacy regarding Burma, 1885-1897 Nancy Iu YAN-KIT
1960/61 PhD Cambridge, King’s Surplus manpower in agriculture and economic development with special reference to India P S SANGHVI Dr M R Fisher
1960/61 PhD Cambridge, Newnham A critique of surplus labour doctrine as applied to the Pakistan in 1947-1957 Rehana TANWIR
1961 PhD London Constitutional and political aspects of the public corporation in Britain and India R S ARORA
1961 BLitt Oxford, Exeter Some aspects of change in the structure of the Muslim family in the Punjab under British rule T ASAD Dr D F Pocock
1961 PhD London, SOAS The structure and organisatioin of the Bengal Native Infantry with special reference to the problems of discipline (1796-1852) Amiya BARAT Dr K Ballhatchet
1961 PhD London, LSE Howrah: an urban study A CHATTOPADHYAY Dr E Jones
1961 PhD Leeds India, Britain and Russia: a study of British opinion V K CHAVDA Prof Briggs
1961 DPhil Oxford, Magdalen Muslim politics in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, 1858-1916 M CHUGHTAI Dr C C Davies
1961 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Henry Dundas and the government of India, 1773-1801 B DE Mr Davies
1961 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of the development of social policy in Ceylon, 1840-1955 with special reference to the influence of missionary organisations K M DE SILVA Dr K Ballhatchet
1961 MSc London The economics, organisation and administration of the Indian paper industry B N DHAR
1961 PhD London The administration of Guntur District with special reference to local influences on revenue policy, 1837-1848 Robert Eric FRYKENBERG Dr K Ballhatchet
1961 PhD Cambridge Sir Richard Temple and the government of India 1868-1880: some trends in Indian administrative policy G R G HAMBLY
1961 PhD London, SOAS Tribal unrest on the south-west frontier of the Bengal Presidency, 1831-1833 J C JHA
1961 MA London, SOAS Changing values in the Naga Hills and Manipur State M KALABOVA Prof C Von Furer Haimerdorf
1961 PhD London, External Financial administration in Ceylon since independence V KANESALINGHAM
1961 MSc London, LSE Government of India policy towards Portuguese possessions in India from 1947 to 1957 R A KHAN
1961 PhD London, SOAS The development of nationalist ideas and tactics and the policies of the government of India J R McLANE
1961 PhD London, SOAS The Kurumas of Malabar Richard Lionel ROOKSBY
1961 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Hall The Ceylon economy, 1920-1938: a national accounts study M R P SALGADO Dr B B Das Gupta
1961 MA London, SOAS The social and political organisation of the Kandyan Kingdom (Ceylon) S B W WICKREMASEKERA
1961/62 PhD Cambridge, Newnham The growth of agricultural labour in the Madras Presidency in the nineteenth century Dharma KUMAR Mr J Gallagher
1962 MA London, LSE Population changes in West Bengal, 1872-1951 A BHATTACHARYYA Prof Jones
1962 MA London, Inst Ed Policies regarding higher education in Ceylon during the 19th and 20th centuries with special reference to the establishment of the University of Ceylon P CHANDRASEGARAM Mr B Holmes
1962 PhD London The development of the English East India Company with special reference to its trade and organization, 1600-1640 K N CHAUDHURI
1962 PhD Edinburgh The control of public expenditure in less-developed countries with special reference to India usha DAR
1962 PhD London, LSE Investment and economic growth in Ceylon S B D DE SILVA Prof Paish
1962 PhD Londond, Birkbeck The North West frontier of West Pakistan: a study in regional geography D DICHTER Prof East
1962 PhD London Social institutions in Ceylon 5th century BC to 4th century AD H ELLAWALLA Prof Basham; Dr de Casparia
1962 MLitt Durham The political ideas of Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall P HASSAN Prof W H Morris Jones
1962 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Some aspects of the social and political thought of Mahatma Gandhi Raghavan Narasimhan IYER Mr J P Plamenatz
1962 PhD London, SOAS Murshid Quli Khan and his times Abdul KARIM Mr Harrison
1962 PhD London Indo-Ceylon relations since independence Shelton Upatissa KODIKARA
1962 PhD London The fiscal policy of the central government of India since independence and its economic effects J MADHAB
1962 DPhil Oxford, Wadham The impeachment of Warren Hastings Peter James MARSHALL Principal of Lady Margeret Hall
1962 PhD London, External Social geography of Himachal Pradesh S D MISRA
1962 PhD London, LSE Public administration aspects of community development in India (with special reference to Rajasthan) D C POTTER
1962 PhD London, LSE The development of the Indian capital market with special reference to the managing agent system B PRASAD Dr Paish; Dr Anstey
1962 PhD London, LSE A study of productivity problems in the cotton textile industries of the UK (Lancashire) and India (Bombay and Ahmedabad) since the Second World War S P S PRUTHI Mr Roberts
1962 PhD London The political and constitutional evolution of Burma from 1923-1936 Asha RAM
1962 PhD London, Inst Ed Education in colonial Ceylon, being a research study on the history of education in Ceylon for the period 1796 to 1834 T R A RUBERU
1962 PhD Edinburgh Scottish experience in the impact of farm mechanisation on the employment and use of man labour with observatioins on possible Indian problems in this field Kalyan Kumar SARKAR
1962 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Hall The emergence of Indian nationalism, 1885-1915 A SEAL Mr J Gallagher
1962 PhD Manchester A comparative study of the central administrative organisation in India and in some other Commonwealth countries S C SETH
1962 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield India’s export performance, 1951-1960, export prospects and policy implications M V SINGH Dr I M D Little
1962 PhD Manchester Some aspects of the administration of community projects in India T N SRIVASTAVA
1962 PhD London, QMC Aspects of the urban geography of new Delhi M P THAKORE Prof Smailes
1962 PhD London Family planning in India: a field study of attitudes and behaviour in a population of Delhi compared with results of existing research in India and elsewhere S THAPER
1962 PhD London, SOAS Lord Minto and the Indian nationalist movement with special reference to the political activities of the Indian Muslims, 1905-1910 S R WASTI
1962 DPhil Oxford, New The formation of policy in the India Office, 1858-1866, with special reference to the Political, Judicial, Revenue and Public Works Departments D WILLIAMS Mr C C Davies
1962/63 MA London, Inst Ed Education in the Roman Catholic missions in Ceylon in the second half of the 19th century (1842-1905) C N V FERNANDO Dr Weitzman
1962/63 PhD London, External Sterling tea and rubber companies in Ceylon, 1889-1958 N RAMACHANDRAN
1963 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s Land systems in the Punjab (including North West Frontier Province)as affected by British rule between 1849 and 1901 R AHMAD Mrs U K Hicks
1963 PhD London, SOAS The Bengali reaction to Christian missionary activities, 1833-1957 M M ALI
1963 PhD Manchester Economic ideas and Indian economic policies in the nineteenth century S AMBIRAJAN
1963 PhD London, UC The development of the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir A S ANAND Mr Holland
1963 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Private investment and partial planning in India Amiya Kumar BAGCHI
1963 PhD London The law of parliamentary elections in India and the United Kingdom R K BAHL
1963 PhD London, SOAS British policy towards the Panjab, 1844-1849 S S BAL Dr K Ballhatchet
1963 PhD London Estimates of the current and capital accounts of the balance of payments of India, 1921/22 to 1938/39, incorporating also the estimates of the government of India A K BANERJI
1963 MS London The governorship of Sir William Gregory in Ceylon B E St J BASTIAMPILLAI Prof G S Graham
1963 PhD Manchester The industrial growth and technological pluralism in India with special reference to the cotton textile industry AS BHALLA
1963 PhD London, LSE Financial administration of nationalised industries in UK and India G S BHALLA
1963 MA London, Inst Ed A cross-cultural study of interests and attitudes of British and Indian university students J K BHATNAGAR
1963 MSc London, LSE American attitudes towards foreign aid with special reference to the Indian sub continent E I BRODKIN Mr Chambers
1963 PhD London, SOAS Lord Curzon and the Indian states. 1899-1905 I A BUTT Dr K A Ballhatchet
1963 MsC London, UC A comparative study of the nature and effectiveness of selective credit controls in the UK, India and Australia since 1951 J G CHAPATWALA Dr Cramp
1963 PhD London, SOAS Slavery in the Bengal Presidency under East India Company rule, 1772-1843 A K CHATTOPADHYAY Major Harrison
1963 PhD London, SOAS The rice industry of Burma, 1852-1940 Siok-hwa CHENG Prof C D Cowan
1963 MA London, Inst Ed The effects of diarchy upon educational developments in Bengal, 1919-1953 S K DUTTA GUPTA
1963 PhD London, LSE Colonisation of the dry zone of Ceylon H N C FONSECA
1963 PhD London British relations with Kashmir, 1885-1893 D K GHOSE Dr K Ballhatchet
1963 PhD Sheffield The Marquis of Dalhousie and education in India, 1848-1956 Kamala GHOSH
1963 PhD Manchester The British Conservative Party and Indian problems. 1927-1935 S C GHOSH
1963 PhD London, SOAS British historical writing from Alexander Dow to Mountstuart Elphinstone on Muslim India J S GREWAL Dr Hardy
1963 PhD London, SOAS Indian politics and the British right, 1914-1922 M R HASSAN Dr K Ballhatchet
1963 PhD London, LSE Ritual pollution and social structure in Hindu Assam T T S HAYLEY
1963 MSc London, LSE English, German, Spanish relations in the Sulu question, 1987-1877 S C HUNTER
1963 PhD London, LSE Rainfall, rice fields and irrigation needs in West Bengal P HUR Mr Rawson
1963 MSc London, LSE Ideological influences in the foreign policy of Pakistan A HUSSAIN Dr Manning
1963 MA Sheffield The industrial geography of Madras State Iyer Balasubramanyan HYMA
1963 PhD Cambridge, King’s The supply of Sinhalese labour to Ceylon plantations, 1830-1930: a study of imperial policy in a peasant society L R U JAYAWARDENA Mr K E Berrill
1963 PhD London, External Caste and class in pre-Muslim Bengal: studies in social history of Bengal N KUNDU
1963 DPhil Oxford, Jesus The role and limits of state authority in northern India in the early historical period: an empirical examination of the administration of government Ian W MABBETT Prof T Borrow
1963 DPhil Oxford, Lady Margaret Lord Minto’s administration in India (1807-1813)with special reference to his foreign policy Amita MAJUMDAR Mr C C Davies
1963 DPhil Oxford, St Hugh’s Imperial policy in India, 1905-1910 V MAZUMDAR Dr C C Davies
1963 PhD London, LSE The origin, development and problems of village (“community”) projects in India Vindhyeshwari Prasad PANDE
1963 PhD London, LSE Constitutional protection of property in India: a critical and comparative study P P PANDIT
1963 DPhil Oxford, Regent’s Park British Baptist missions and missionaries in India, 1793-1837 E D POTTS Mr C C Davis
1963 DPhil Oxford, Somerville Land revenue administration in the ceded and conquered provinces and its economic background, 1819-1833 Asiya SIDDIQI Mr C C Davis
1963 MA London, SOAS British administration in Upper Burma, 1885-1897 Jagjit Singh SIDHU
1963 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s The Jats: an ethnographic survey Gunter TIEMANN Dr D F Pocock
1963 DPhil Oxford, Balliol The development and significance of transport in India (1834-1882) K E VERGHESE Mr C C Davies
1963 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of Indian society as depicted in the Pali Canon N K WAGLE
1963 MA London, LSE Magic in Malaya W D WILDER
1963 PhD London, UC Basic democracies in Pakistan M S K YOUSUFZAI Prof Holland
1964 LlM London, UC The origin and nature of presidential powers in Pakistan M ARIF Mr Holland
1964 PhD London, SOAS The ideological differences between moderates and extremists in the Indian national movement with special reference to Surendranath Banerjea and Lajpat Rai, 1882-1919 D ATGOV Prof H Tinker
1964 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The Indian Constituent Assembly and the framing of the Indian constitution G S AUSTIN Mr F G Carnell
1964 PhD London, SOAS The role of Shaikh Ahmad of Sarhind in Islam in India M Q BAIG Prof Basham
1964 PhD London, SOAS David Scott on the North East Frontier of India and in Assam N K BAROOAH Mr Harrison
1964 BLitt Oxford, Somerville An examination of marriage ritual among selected groups in South India B E F BECK
1964 PhD London, LSE The mobilisation of savings and the role of financial institutions with special reference to India M Q M S DALVI Dr Anstey
1964 PhD London, LSE Producers’ rationality and technical changes in agriculture with special reference to India S DASGUPTA Dr Anstey; Mr Joy
1964 PhD London, SOAS British policy towards the Pathans and Pindaris in central India, 1805-1818 B GHOSH Dr K Ballhatchet
1964 PhD Cambridge. Newnham Service centres in Southern Ceylon K A GUNAWARDENA Mr B H Farmer
1964 PhD London, UCL, A Comparative Study of Pakistani Bilingual and Monoglot School Children’s Performance in Verbal and Non Verbal Tests Rafia HASAN Dr Charlotte Banks (added thanks to information of Naveed Hasan Henderson, PhD London 1995, in a comment below, and confirmed by the University of London Library)
1964 PhD London, External An appraisal of public investment policy in India, 1951-1961 J M HEALEY
1964 PhD London The formation of British land revenue policy in the ceded and conquered provinces of northern India. 1801-1833 M I HUSAIN Dr K A Ballhatchet
1964 PhD London, LSE Soviet Russia’s policy towards India and its effect on Anglo-Soviet relations, 1917-1928 Z IMAM Mr Schapiro
1964 PhD London, Wye Efficiency in agricultural production; its meaning, measurement and improvement in peasant agriculture with special reference to Pakistan M S ISLAM
1964 PhD London, LSE The urban labour movement in Ceylon with reference to political factors, 1893-1947 V K JAYAWARDENA Prof Roberts
1964 PhD London, External A study of the current trends in the industrial development of Ceylon V KANAPATHY
1964 PhD London, LSE The modern Muslim political elite in Bengal Abdul Khair Nazmul KARIM
1964 PhD London, LSE Iron and steel prices in India since independence S S MENSINKAI
1964 PhD London, SOAS Sir Charles Wood’s Indian policy, 1953-1866 R J MOORE Prof Basham
1964 PhD London, SOAS Lord Northwood’s Indian administration, 1872-1876 E C MOULTON Dr K Ballhatchet
1964 PhD London, LSE Some aspects of agrarian reorganizationin India with special reference to size of holding B MUKHERJEE D Anstey
1964 PhD Cambridge, Newnham British commercial interests and the expansion of the Bombay Presidency, 1784-1806 P NIGHTINGALE Dr T G P Spear
1964 PhD London, SOAS The rise of the Muslim middle class as a political factor in India and Pakistan A H M NOORUZZAMAN Prof H Tinker
1964 PhD London, SOAS The rev. James Long and Protestant missionary policy in Bengal, 1840-1872 G A ODDIE Prof K Ballhatchet
1964 PhD London, Inst Ed Some issues between the church and state in Ceylon in the education of the people from 1870 to 1901 A RAJAINDRAN Dr Holmes
1964 PhD London, LSE Rural development in India with special reference to agriculture, education and administration K RAJARATNAM Dr Anstey
1964 PhD Durham The central legislature in British India, 1921-1947 Md RASHIDUZZAMAN Prof W H Morris-Jones
1964 PhD London, LSE Land tenure as related to agricultural efficiency and rural welfare in India Paramahansa RAY Dr Anstey; Mr Joy
1964 PhD London The revenue administration of Chittagong from 1761 to1784 Alamgir Muhammad SERAJUDDIN Mr Harrison
1964 BLitt Oxford, St Hilda’s A study of representation in multi-lateral communities with special reference to Ceylon and Trinidad from 1946-1961 A SPACKMAN Dr A F Madden
1964 MSc London, LSE Trends in the pattern of distribution of consumer goods in India B K VADEHRA
1964 PhD London, SOAS British administration in the maritime provinces of Ceylon, 1796-1802 U C WICKREMERATNE Prof K A Ballhatchet
1964 MA Nottingham British policy and the defence of Asia, 1903-1905: with special reference to China and India B WILLCOCK Dr J A S Grenville
1964/65 PhD Manchester Revolution and counter-revolution: a study of British colonial policy as a factor in the growth and disintegration of national liberation movements in Burma and Malaya F NEMENZO
1964/65 PhD Nottingham Impact of the size of the organization on the personnel management function: a comparative study of personnel departments in some British and Indian industrial firms B P SINGH
1965 DPhil Oxford, New College Life and conditions of the people of Bengal (1765-1785) Z AHMA Mr C C Davies
1965 PhD London, External The commercial progress and administrative development of the East India company on the Coromandel coast during the first half of the 18th century R N BANERJI
1965 PhD London, SOAS The minorities of Southern Asia and public policy with special reference to India (mainly since 1919) J H BEAGLEHOLE Prof H Tinker
1965 PhD Manchester Urban unemployment in India RC BHARDWAJ
1965 DPhl Oxford, Balliol The governor-generalship of the Marquess of Hastings, 1813-1823, with special reference to the Supreme Council and Secretariat…Palmer Company Richard J BINGLE Mr C C Davies
1965 MSc London, SOAS Ministerial government under the dyarchical reforms with special reference to Bengal and Madras K A CHOWDHURY
1965 PhD London, SOAS The idea of freedom in the political thought of Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi and Tagore D G DALTON
1965 MA London, LSE Irrigation and winter crops in East Pakistan O HUQ Mr Rawson
1965 PhD London, SOAS Conditions of employment and industrial disputes in Pakistan A HUSAIN Prof A Gledhill
1965 PhD London, LSE Democratic decentralization and planning in rural India A C S ILCHMAN Dr Anstey; Prof Self
1965 MSc London, King’s A social geography of Chitral State ISRAR-UD-DIN Prof Jones
1965 MSc (Econ) London, LSE Economic problems and organisation of public enterprise in Ceylon, 1931-1963 A S JAYAWARDENE Mr Foldes
1965 PhD London, SOAS The rights and liabilities of the Bengal raiyats under tenancy legislation from 1885 to 1947 L KABIR
1965 MA Manchester The failure of parliamentary system of government in Pakistan M A KHAN
1965 PhD London, SOAS Curzon, Kitchener and the problem of India army administration, 1899-1909 J E LYDGATE Prof Robinson
1965 PhD London, SOAS A study of urban centres and industries in the central provinces of the Mughal Empire between 1556 and 1803 H K NAQVI Mr Harrison
1965 PhD London, SOAS Sir Charles Metcalfe’s administration and administrative ideas in India, 1806-1835 D N PANIGRAHI Prof C H Philips
1965 PhD Birmingham Peasant farming past and present in the wet zone of Ceylon P D A PERERA Prof H Thorpe; Dr W B Morgan
1965 DPhil Oxford, Merton Some aspects of British economic and social policy in Ceylon, 1840-1871 M W ROBERTS Prof J A Gallagher
1965 PhD London The rise of business corporations in India and their development during 1851-1900 R S RUNGTA Prof Paish; Dr V Ansty
1965 PhF London, SOAS The Sultanate of Jaunpur Mian Muhhammad SAEED Prof Basham
1965 BLitt Oxford, Lady Margaret Agricultural policy and economic development in India K N V SASTRI Mr G R Allen
1965 PhD London, SOAS A comparative study of the traditional political organisation of Kerala and Punjab S J SHAHANI Dr Mayer
1965 PhD London, SOAS The joint Hindiu family: its evolution as a legal institution Gunther-Dietz SONTHEIMER Dr Derrett
1965 PhD London, SOAS Nullity of marriage in modern Hindu law S K TEWARI Dr J D M Derrett
1965 MA London, Inst Ed The social and political significance of Anglo-Indian schools in India Rosalind TIWARI Dr King
1965 MA Manchester Federalism in south-East Asia with special reference to Burma Margaret YIYI
1965 PhD London, SOAS The partition of Bengal and its annulment: a survey of the schemes of territorial redistribution of Bengal, 1902-1911 S Z H ZAIDI Prof Basham
1965/66 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Economic geography of rubber production in Ceylon G H PEIRIS Mr B H Farmer
1965/66 PhD Leeds Impact of money supply on the Indian economy, 1950/51 – 1963/64 K PRASAD
1965/66 PhD Cambridge, Newnham The structure and working of the commercial banking system in Ceylon, 1945-1963 A J A N SILVA Miss P M Deane
1965/66 PhD Durham Aspects of hte administration of the Punjab, judicial, revenue and political, 1849-1858 S K SONI
1965/66 PhD Cambridge, Trinity House The public finances of Ceylon, 1948-1961 G USWATTE-ARATCHI Dr A R Prest
1966 PhD Manchester University Ramgopal AGARWALA An econometric model of India, 1948-49 to 1960-61 Mr R.J. Ball
1966 PhD London, LSE Expenditure classification and investment planning with special reference to Pakistan K U AHMAD Dr Anstey
1966 PhD London, LSE The methodology of studying fertility differentials with reference to East Pakistan M AHMAD Prof Glass; Mr Carrier
1966 PhD Bristol The role of a higher civil service in Pakistan A AHMED
1966 PhD London, SOAS Conditions of employment and industrial disputed in Pakistan H AHMED
1966 MScEcon London, SOAS Political parties and the Labour Movement in India in the 1920s N BEGAM
1966 MLitt Edinburgh Patronage and education in the East India Company civil service, 1800-1857 J T BEYER
1966 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Regional cooperation for development in South Asia with special reference to India and Pakistan S R BOSE Mr W B Reddaway
1966 PhD London The constitutional history of Malaya with special reference toe Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahong, 1874-1914 P L BURNS Prof C D Cowan
1966 PhD Cambridge, Girton The impact of planning upon federalism in India, 1951-1964 A CHATTERJI Prof Sir Ivor Jennings
1966 PhD London, UC Industrial conciliation and arbitration in India R L CHAUDHARY
1966 PhD London, UC Lahore: a geographical study M M CHAUDHURY
1966 PhD Manchester The approach to planning in Pakistan M K CHOWDHURY
1966 PhD London, LSE Jamshedpur – the growth of the city and its region M DUTT Prof Jones
1966 DPhil Oxford, Campion Hall The Tana Bhagats:a study in social change P EKKA Mr K O L Burridge
1966 PhD London, LSE The scope for wage policy as an instrument of planning in early stages of national economic development: a comparative study of the USSR, India and the UAR M A ELLEISI Prof Phelps Brown; Dr Ozga
1966 PhD London, SOAS The social condition of the British community in Bengal, 1757-1800 S C GHOSH Prof A L Basham
1966 PhD Cambridge, Girton The transfer of power to Pakistan and its consequences (1946-1951) M HASAN Prof N Mansergh
1966 PhD London, UC The Indian Supreme Court and the constitution M IMAM Dr D C Holland
1966 PhD London, LSE Cotton futures markets in India: some economic studies T ISLAM Prof Yamey
1966 PhD London, LSE The extensions of the franchise in Ceylon with some consideration of the their political and social consequences K H JAYASINGHE Mr Pickles
1966 MA London, External The control of education in Ceylon: the last fifty years of British rule and after (1900-1962) C S V JAYAWAWEERA
1966 PhD London, External A comparative study of British and American colonial educational policy in Ceylon and the Philippines from 1900 to 1948] S JAYAWEERA
1966 PhD Manchester Import substitution in relations to industrial growth and balance of payments iof Pakistan, 1965-1970 A H KADRI
1966 PhD London, SOAS Origins of Indian foreign policy: a study of Indian nationalist attitudes to foreign affairs, 1927-1939 T A KEENLEYSIDE Prof H Tinker
1966 PhD London, SOAS The transition in Bengal, 1756-1775: a study of Muhammad Reza Khan Abdul Majed KHAN Mr Harrison
1966 PhD London, SOAS The British administration of Sind between 1843 and 1865: a study in social and economic development Hamida KHUHRO Mr Harrison
1966 PhD London, SOAS The internal administration of Lord Elgin in India, 1984-1898 P L MALHOTRA Mr Harrison
1966 PhD London, SOAS A study of Murshidabad Distrrict, 1765-1793 K M MOHSIN Mr Harrison
1966 PhD London, SOAS The new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1905-1911 M K U MOLLA Dr Hardy; Dr Pandey
1966 PhD London, SOAS The early history of the East Indian Railways, 1845-1879 Hena MUKHERJEE Dr Chaudhuri
1966 PhD London, King’s British military policy and the defence of India: a study of British military policy, plans and preparations during the Russian crisis, 1876-1880 A W PRESTON Prof M E Howard
1966 PhD London, LSE Changes in caste in rural Kumaon R D SANWAL Dr Freedman
1966 PhD London, SOAS The Christian missionaries in Bengal. 1793-1833 K SENGUPTA Prof Basham
1966 PhD London, LSE Central control and supervision of capital expenditure in the public sector in the UK and India Ram Parkash SETH Prof Greaves; Prof Self
1966 PhD London, King’s Surveying and charting the Indian Ocean W A SPRAY Prof G S Graham
1966 PhD London, SOAS Politics and change in the Madras Presidency, 1884-1894: a regional study of Indian nationalism R SUNTHARALINGAM Prof H R Tinker
1966 PhD London, External The law relating to directors and managing agents of companies limited by shares in Pakistan Muhammad ZAHIR Prof Gledhill
1966/67 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Planning and regional development: the application of a multi-sectoral programming model to inter-regional planning in Pakistan A R KHAN Dr J A Mirrlees
1966/67 MPhil London, Inst Ed The impact of the creation of Pakistan on Muslim education in Pakistan G NABI
1966/67 PhD Manchester A study of fiscal policy in Pakistan, 1950-51, with special reference to its contribution to economic development M NAYIMUDDIN
1966/67 PhD Edinburgh The fisheries of Pakistan: their present position and potentialities R NIAZI
1966/67 PhD Leeds An evaluation of the human impact on the nature and distribution of wild plant communities in the Ceylon Highlands N P PERERA
1966/67 PhD Reading Intra-party relationships and federalism: a comparative study of the Indian Congress Party and the Australian political parties Y A RAFEEK
1966/67 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s The share of labour in value added during the inflation in the modern sector in under-developed economies: a comparative study of the experience of India, Peru and Turkey between 1939 and 1958 W M WARREN Mr J A C Bowen
1967 LLM Queen’s, Belfast A comparative study of the provisions for emergency powers in the constitutions of the Indian, Australian, Nigerian and Malaysian federations with special emphasis on the Malaysian constitution A ABIDIN
1967 PhD Edinburgh The peasant family and social status in East Pakistan Nizam Uddin AHMED
1967 BLitt Glasgow Foreign trade policy of India N M AMIN
1967 PhD London, SOAS English educated Ceylonese in the official life of Ceylon from 1865 to 1883 W M D D ANDRADI Mr J B Harrison
1967 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of the relationship of political and constitutional theories to the constitutional evolution of India and Pakistan with special reference to the period 1919-1956 B P BARUA Prof H Tinker
1967 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Indian education and politics,1898-1920 A BASU Prof J A Gallagher
1967 MA Sussex Choice of technique: an activity analysis approach with special reference to the Indian cotton textiles industry C L BELL
1967 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Anglo-Afghan relations, 1870-1880 S CHAKRAVARTY Dr T G Spear
1967 PhD Cambridge, Clare The relations of the Court of Directors, the India Board, the India Office and the Government of India, 1853-1865 P K CHATTARJI Dr T G Spear
1967 MA Sussex The regulation of communal disturbances in West Bengal and East Pakistan in 1950 M CHAUDHURY
1967 MSc London, SOAS Political parties in the Bombay Presidency, 1920-1929 D S CHAVDA Prof H Tinker
1967 PhD London, SOAS Oil prices and the Indian market, 1886-1964 Biplab Kumar DASGUPTA Prof Penrose
1967 MPhil London, LSE Some aspects of stratificatioin in Indian rural communities K S DASGUPTA Prof Glass
1967 DPhil Oxford, Lady Margaret The growth of urban leadership n Western India with special reference to Bombay City, 1845-1885 C E DOBBIN Prof J A Gallagher
1967 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Judicial control of administrative action in India and Pakistan A FAZAL Prof H W R Wade
1967 DPhil Oxford, Linacre House Patterns of investment, political stability and rates of growth: an analysis of central government expenditure of Ceylon, 1930-1963 S T G FERNANDO Lady Hicks
1967 MA Sussex Development administration and Calcutta metropolitan government R FOGEL
1967 PhD London, QMC Peasant production of tea in Sri Lanka R S GUNAWARDENA Dr Hodder; Prof Smailes
1967 PhD London, SOAS The policy of Sir James Fergusson as Governor of Bombay Presidency, 1880-1885 A GUPTA Prof K Ballhatchet
1967 PhD Cambridge, Sidney The effect of a change in the terms of trade on the economic growth of Pakistan: a study of the third five year plan I U HAQUE Mr W B Reddaway
1967 PhD London, LSE Agricultural taxation in a newly developing country: the case of Pakistan A HASHEM Prof Peston
1967 PhD London, SOAS A price stabilisation model for Pakistan: jute A K M S HUQ Prof Penrose
1967 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The failure of parliamenary politics in Pakistan, 1953-1958 I HUSAIN Prof M Beloff
1967 PhD Cambridge, Trinity The development of Indian politics, 1888-1909 G JOHNSON Dr A Seal
1967 MA Sussex Language as an issue in Indian politics J KABANGO
1967 MA London, LSE The changing distribution of cash crops in East Pakistan, 1945-1962 A K M KALIMULLAH Dr Board
1967 PhD Aberdeen The development of transport in East Pakistan Abul Fazal Muhammed KAMALUDDIN
1967 MPhil London, SOAS The advent of the British in Ceylon, 1762-1803 V L B MENDIS Dr Bastin
1967 MPhil Leeds The linguistic world of Anglo-India K MUSA
1967 MPhil London, SOAS Some aspects of the Hindu-Muslim relationship in India, 1876-1892 Shamsun NAHAR Dr B N Pandey
1967 PhD Edinburgh The contribution of Scottish missions to the rise and growth of responsible churches in India James McMichael ORR Dr H Watt; Prof A C Cheyne
1967 PhD London, LSE The impact of industrialisation on urban growth: a case study of Chotanagpur P PANDEYA Prof Jones
1967 DPhil Oxford, Jesus British relations with Pakistan, 1947-1962: a study of British policy towards Pakistan M A QURESHI Mr G Wint
1967 PhD London The evolution for civil procedure in Bengal from 1772 to 1806 Z RAHMAN
1967 PhD London, SOAS Local government services in India: a case study of Punjab, 1860-1960 D R SACHDEVA Prof H Tinker
1967 PhD London, UC Judicial interpretation of the Government of India Act, 1935 H SAHARAY
1967 MA London, SOAS Political conflict in selected villages of India, Pakistan and Ceylon M J SHEPPERSDSON Prof Mayer
1967 PhD Leicester Some early tertiary ostracods from West Pakistan Qadeer Ahmad SIDDIQUI
1967 PhD London, SOAS Evolution of the structure of civil judiciary in Bengal, 1800-1831 C SINHA Dr Pandey
1967 PhD London, External The social structure of an Indian-Jewish community S STRIZOWER
1967 MPhil London, Inst Ed Education and international understanding between the East and the West with special reference to the UK and Pakistan Q J SURI Prof Lauwery; Mr Goodings
1967 MPhil London, Inst Ed Education in Kerala and the missionary contribtion to it during the first half of the nineteenth century Joseph THAIKOODAN
1967 PhD London, SOAS Customs and institutions connected with the domestic life of the Sinhalese in the Kandyan period: Miniwan P TILLAKARATNE
1967 PhD London, SOAS Trends in and prospectsof Pakistan’s exports to the UK and the European Economic Community, 1951-1970 Z A VAINCE Prof Penrose
1967 DPhil Oxford, Merton The policies of the government of Ceylon concerning education and religion, 1865-1885 L A WICKREMERATNE Mr K A Ballhatchet
1967 BLitt Oxford, Somerville The sociological implications of educational policies in Ceylon since 1947 C K WICKREMESINGHE Dr D F Pocock
1967 BLitt Oxford, St Hilda’s Henry Russell’s activities in Hyderabad, 1811-1820 Z YAZDANI Mr K A Ballhatchet
1967/68 PhD Cambridge, Corpus The causes and consequence of trade fluctuations in Ceylon, 1948-1960 M A FERNANDO Mr H H Leisner
1967/68 PhD London, External British relations with Tanjore (1748-1799) C S RAMANUJAM
1967/68 PhD Edinburgh The agricultural geography of Hissar District Jasbur SINGH
1967-68 PhD Cambridge, Christ’s Anglo-Mughal relations in western India and the development of Bombay, 1662-1690 G Z REFAI
1968 MA Durham The influence of religion on politics in Pakistan, 1947-1956 S R AHMAD
1968 PhD London, SOAS The administration of the North West Frontier,1901-1919 L BAHA Dr Hardy
1968 MSc Cambridge, Christ’s Industrial expansion and regional cooperation in South Asia: a study of selected industries Peter Douglas BALACS
1968 MLitt Cambridge, Trinity Hall The working of the supreme government of India and its constitutional relations with the home authorities, 1833-1853 A G BANERJEE Dr T G P Spear
1968 PhD Cambridge, Newnham On price relationships in Indian agriculture K BARDHAN P M Deane
1968 DPhil Oxford, Somerville Social and conceptual order in Kongu: a region of South India B E F BECK Dr R K Jain
1968 PhD London The urban geography of Lyallpur M H BOKHARI Prof A E Smailes
1968 PhD Cambridge Rohilkhand from conquest to revolt, 1774-1858: a study in the origins of the Indian Mutiny uprising E I BRODKIN Dr E T Stokes
1968 PhD Cam,bridge, Girton Gandhi in India, 1915-1920: his emergence as a leader and the transformation of politics J M BROWN Dr A Seal
1968 MPhil London The development of education in India under Lord Curzon, 1899-1905 Hamida I BUTT
1968 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Bengali political unrest (1905-1918)with special reference to terrorism H CHAKRABARTI Prof K Ballhatchet
1968 MPhil London, King’s The development of mountain warfare in India in the 19th century S CHANDRA Prof M E Howard
1968 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s American policy towards India, 1941-1947, with emphasis on the Phillips mission to India, 1943 F L CHASE Prof J A Gallagher
1968 DPHil Oxford, Linacre The agrarian economy and agrarian relations in Bengal, 1859-1885 B B CHAUDHURI Dr K A Ballhatchet
1968 BLitt Oxford, Linacre Some aspects of English Protestant missionary activities in Bengal, 1857-1885 T CHAUDHURI Dr S Gopal
1968 DPhil Oxford, University British government and society in the residency of Bengal, 1858-1880: an examination of certain aspects of British policy in relation to the changing nature of society J M COMPTON Mr K A Ballhatchet
1968 DPhil Oxford, Magdalen British reform policy and Indian politics on the eve of the rise of Gandhi R J DANZIG Dr S Gopal
1968 PhD Cambridge, Magdalen Optimum investment decisions with special reference to the Indian fertilizer industry A K DAS GUPTA Dr J A Mirrlees
1968 DPhil Oxford, Somerville Public opinion and Indian policy, 1872-1880 U DAS GUPTA Dr S Gopal
1968 MPhil London, Inst Ed The contribution of the Wesleyan missionaries to southern India P W DE SILVA
1968 PhD York The verbal piece in spoken Hindi: a morpho-syntactic study Hans DUA
1968 MPhil London, Inst Ed An enquiry into the purpose and development of Catholic education in Madras. 1850-1950 M A DUNNE Prof Lauwerys
1968 PhD London, LSE Some political aspects of foreign aid in India, 1947-1966 P J ELDRIDGE Prof Goodwin
1968 DPhil Oxford, Linacre House The development of a new elite in Ceylon with special reference to educational and occupational background, 1910-1931 P T M FERNANDO Dr A H Halsey
1968 BLitt Oxford, Exeter An historical survey and assessment of the ecclesiastical and missionary policy of the East India Company I J GASH Mr C C Davies
1968 MLitt Bristol The civil servant and contemporary government in India B GIRI
1968 PhD Birmingham Consumption patterns in India: a regional analysis D B GUPTA
1968 DPhil Oxford, St Edmund Hall The debts of the Nawab of Arcot, 1763-1776 J D GURNEY Dame L Sutherland
1968 PhD London, LSE Econometrics of import planning in India (1947-1965): a case study of selected commodities M L HANDA Prof Sargan; De Desai
1968 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Moral and religious changes in an urban village of Bangalore, South India M N HOLSTROM Dr D P Pocock
1968 MPhil London SOAS Lord Mayo’s Viceroyalty (1869-1872) with special reference to problems of external security and internal stability M A HOSSAIN Dr Zaidi
1968 PhD London, LSE British policy towards Persia and the defence of British India, 1798-1807 R INGRAM ELLIS Miss H Lee
1968 PhD London, LSE Karachi: a pre-industrial city in transition M Z KHAN Prof Jones
1968 PhD London, SOAS The Dutch in Ceylon, 1743-1766 D A KOTELAWEL Dr Bastin
1968 PhD London, SOAS The contribution of Christian missionaries to education in Bengal, 1793-1837 M A LAIRD Prof K Ballhatchet
1968 PhD London, LSE Socio-economic determinants of infant and child mortality in Sri Lanka: an analysis of post-war experience S A MEEGAMA Prof Glass
1968 MPhil London, UC Higher judiciary in Pakistan M Y MIRZA Mr Holland
1968 BLitt Oxford, St Cath’s Funeral ritual in South India M M MOFFATT Dr R K Jain
1968 MPhil London, LSE Land use and nutrition in Lucknow District I MOHIUDDIN Mr R Rawson
1968 PhD London, SOAS Political relations between India and Nepal, 1877-1923 K MOJUMDAR Prof K Ballhatchet
1968 MPhil London, Bedford The cities of Hyderabad-Secunderabad with special reference to their industrial development K B MUSTAFA Mr Mountjoy
1968 MPhil London, LSE Concepts of purity and pollution in Indian religion Judith Ann OSTROW
1968 PhD Lancaster The evolution and history of the Buddhist monastic order with special reference to the Sangha in Ceylon Gunaratne PANABOKKE
1968 PhD London, SOAS The invasion of Nepal: John Company at war, 1814-1816 J C PEMBLE Dr Moore
1968 PhD London, SOAS The All-India Muslim League in Indian politics, 1906-1912 M RAHMAN Dr Moore
1968 MPhil London, SOAS The reform of local self-government in India under Lord Ripon, 1880-1884: a study in the formation of policy Q RAHMAN
1968 PhD Wales, Bangor An economic appraisal of agricultural marketing in Pakistan Abdur RASHID
1968 PhD Edinburgh A geographical analysis of the historical development of towns in Ceylon L K RATNAYAKE Prof J W Watson; Dr R Jones
1968 MA Sussex Constitutional change and the depressed classes: the representations from the depressed classes in the United Provinces to the Indian Statutory Commission, 1928, and their outcome L SEN-GUPTA
1968 PhD London, External The role of railway transport in Ceylon: present problems and future prospects K SUNDERALINGAM
1968 PhD London, Inst Ed A critical study of the history and development of university education in modern India, with special reference to problems and patterns of growth since 1847 C TICKOO
1968 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s Kinship and marriage among the Jat of Haryana in northern India Gunter TIEMANN Dr R K Jain
1968 PhD Edinburgh The strategy of Christian missions to the Muslims: Anglican and reformed contributions in India and the Near East from Henry Martyn to Samuel Zwemmer, 1800-1938 Lyle L VANDER WERFF Prof M Watt; Prof AC Cheyne
1968 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Indian historical writing in English, 1870-1920, with special reference to the influence of nationalism Johannes H VOIGT Mr K A Ballhatchet
1968 MPhil London, LSE The hierarchy of towns in Vidarbha, India, and its significance for regional planning Sudhir Vyankatesh WANMALI. Prof MJ Wise
1968 MA Manchester The relevance of land reform to economic progress in Pakistan M A ZAMAN
1968/69 PhD Glasgow Planning for economic development: a comparative case study of Indian and Egyptian experience, 1946-1966, with special reference to planning strategy and effectiveness A El- H H EL-GHAZALI
1968/69 PhD Cambridge, Girton Muslim politics and government policy: studies in the development of Muslim organisation and its social background in North India and Bengal, 1885-1917 Janetr Mary RIZVI
1969 PhD Durham The working of district administration in Pakistan, 1947-1964 N ABEDIN Prof W H Morris-Jones
1969 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam The formation of the Government of India Act, 1935 W AHMAD Dr T G P Sper
1969 MPhil London, SOAS Ideological factors in selected fields of policy making in India Zoe F ALLEN
1969 PhD London, SOAS British famine and agricultural policies in India with special reference to the administration of Lord George Hamilton S K BANDYOPADHYAY Dr R J Moore
1969 PhD London, SOAS The political and economic conditions of Indians in Burma, 1900-1941 N R CHAKRAVARTI
1969 PhD London, SOAS The amending process in the Indian constitution H CHAND
1969 PhD London Trade and commercial organisation in Bengal with special reference to the English East India Company, 1650-1720 S CHAUDHURY Dr K N Chaudhuri
1969 DPhil Oxford, Balliol The Bombay political service, 1863-1924 I F S COPLAND Prof J A Gallagher
1969 PhD London, Birkbeck The Colonial Office and political problems in Ceylon and Mauritius, 1907-1921 L B L CROOK Dr I M Cumpston
1969 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield British defence policy in the Indian Ocean region between the Indian Independence Act, 1947, and the British defence review, 1966 P G C DARBY Prof N H Gibbs
1969 DPhil Oxford An evaluation of the Eastern bloc assistance to India (1956-57 to 1965-66) DATARHA
1969 PhD London, LSE The effect of international labour migration on trade and real income: a case study of Ceylon, 1920 to 1938 A DUTTA Prof Johnson
1969 PhD London, Bedford The development of the sugar industry in Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh A H FAROOQI
1969 PhD London Lord William Bentinck in Madras, 1803-1807 M GUPTA Dr B M Pandey
1969 PhD London, External A study of the planning techniques in India: India’s five year plans S GUPTA
1969 PhD Manchester A typical support structure of leadership in Punjab – the faction J J M HAUDHRI
1969 PhD Manchester A structural study of Pakistan’s monetary sector K A IMAN
1969 PhD London, LSE Regional development in Pakistan with special reference to the effects of import licensing and exchange control A I A ISLAM
1969 PhD London Social aspects of the historical geography of East Pakistan, 1608-1857 Bilquis JAHAN Miss E M J Campbell
1969 PhD London, External The sources and development of the customary laws of the Sinhalese up to 1835 M L S JAYASEKERA
1969 MSocSc Birmingham Industrial development and organization in Ceylon – a case study of the Ceylon cement industry G W JAYSURIYA
1969 PhD London Dutch rule in maritime Ceylon, 1766-1796 V KAMAPATHYPILLAI Dr J S Bastin
1969 PhD London, LSE Domestic instability as a factor in Pakistan’s foreign policy, 1952-1958 M KAMLIN Dr Lyon
1969 PhD London, LSE A study of import control, with special reference to India H KUSARI
1969 PhD London, LSE Britain and the termination of the India-China opium trade, 1905-1913 Margaret J B-C LIM Prof Medlicott; Mr Dilks
1969 BLitt Oxford, Linacre Financing agricultural development with special reference to the place of agricultural credit in West Pakistan after 1947 A M MALIK Mr R G Opie
1969 PhD London, SOAS Election laws in Pakistan M D MALIK
1969 PhD London, SOAS The development of the jurisdiction and powers of the superior courts in Pakistan M A MANNAN Prof Gledhill
1969 MA Sussex Th Krishak Praja Party and the Bengal provincial elections, 1937 H MOMEN
1969 BPhil St Andrews Muslim politics in India, 1858-1918 S NAZ D G Seed
1969 PhD London, SOAS Jury and police reform during the Indian Vice-Royalty of Lord Lansdowne, 1888-1894 R RAHMAN Dr P Hardy
1969 PhD London, LSE Frontier problems in Pakistan’s foreign policy S M M RAZVI Dr P H Lyon
1969 DPhil Oxford, Merton The Commission of Eastern Inquiry in Ceylon, 1829-1837: a study of a Royal Commission of Colonial Inquiry V K SAMARAWEERA Dr A F Madden
1969 PhD London, SOAS Hinduism in a Kangra village U M SHARMA Pror Mayer
1969 PhD London, SOAS The reorganization of the Indian armies, 1858-1879 A H SHIBLEY Dr Moore
1969 PhD London, SOAS Land resumption in Bengal, 1819-1846 A M WAHEEDUZZAMA Dr Zaidi
1969 PhD London, External Methodism in north Ceylon: its history and influences, 1814-1890 D K WILSON
1969/70 PhD Bristol On the construction and implementation of a planning model for Ceylon S NARAPALASINGAM
1969/70 PhD Durham Some aspects of central banking in Pakistan, 1948-1966 A K NIAZI
1969/70 PhD Edinburgh Settlement geography of the Indian desert (Rajasthan area) Ram C SHARMA
1969/70 PhD Bristol The relations between central and provincial governments in Pakistan M A TAYYEB Prof Bromhead
1969/70 PhD London, SOAS Some legal aspects of agrarian reform in India Namgi Lal UPADHYAYA
1970 MPhil London, LSE Production and trade in the raw cotton and cotton textile industries of Pakistan,1948-1966 Q K AHMAD Prof H Myint
1970 PhD Edinburgh Regionalism and political integration in Pakistan: a case study in political geography Masood ALI
1970 MPhil London, SOAS The urban geography of Kanpur S A ALI
1970 MPhil London, LSE Peasant agriculture in Ceylon, 1933-1893 A C L AMEER ALI Prof F J Fisher
1970 PhD Edinburgh Possible developments in building technology in relations to low cost housing in Pakistan Mohammed M BAJWA
1970 DPhil Oxford, St Anthony’s The growth of political organization inthe Allahabad locality, 1880-1925 C A BAYLY Prof J A Gallgher
1970 PhD Cambridge, Gonville Spatial organizationof some villages in Northern India P M BLAIKIE Mr B H Farmer
1970 PhD Cambridge British impact on the Indian cotton textile industry, 1757-1865 J G BORPUJARI Dr W J Macpherson
1970 MPhil London, UC Some problems of physical planning in Ceylon S W P BULANKULAME
1970 PhD London, LSE The behaviour of prices in India, 1952-1966: an empirical study S K CHAKRABARTI Prof Walters
1970 MSc Bristol The long-term outlook for the consumption of tea in India – a quantitative analysis B M CHAMBERS
1970 MA Manchester Social change in Indian towns M K CHATERJEE
1970 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall: a study of the Anglo-Indian official mind E C T CHEW Dr E T Stokes
1970 PhD London, SOAS British policy on the North East frontier of India, 1865-1914 D P CHOUDHURY Prof K Ballhatchet
1970 MA Kent Recent trends in Indian federalism S DAS
1970 MPhil London, Inst Ed Development of adult education in India since independence with special reference to rural reconstruction B DUTTA
1970 BLitt Oxford, Keble Identity amongst Muslims in West Bengal, India, and its relationship with political, social and economic change P J K EADE Dr R K Jain
1970 BLitt Oxford, St Edmund Hall Aspects of history of the Indian National Congress with special reference to the Swarajya Party, 1919-1927 R A GORDON Prof J A Gallagher
1970 PhD Wales, Swansea A study of the social and economic geography of the coastal fishing industry of Ceylon Suniti Danissari GUNASEKERA
1970 PhD London, SOAS British policy and Baluchistan, 1854-1876 T A HEATHCOTE Dr M E Yapp
1970 MPhil London, King’s Selected aspects of agricultural development in West Pakistan J HUSSAIN
1970 PhD London, SOAS Social and political change in Ceylon, 1900-1919 with special reference to the disturbances of 1915 p v i JAYASEKERA Prof K A Ballhatchet
1970 MSc Edinburgh Language and politics in modern India P KARAT
1970 PhD London, SOAS Protection of minority interests under the Indian constitution G T LUIS Prof Derrett
1970 DPhil Oxford, Wadham Sociological aspects of revival and change in Buddhism in nineteenth century Ceylon Kitsiri MALALGODA Mr B R Wilson
1970 PhD London, SOAS The administration of British Burma, 1852-1885 J A MILLS Prof C D Cowan
1970 DPhil Oxford, St John’s Renewable natural resources planning for regional development with special reference to Kashmir Maharaj K MUTHOO Mr J J Macgregor
1970 DPhil Sussex Labour organisation in the Bombay textile industry, 1918-1929 R NEWMAN Dr Reeves
1970 PhD London, QMC Land development in the Sinharaja foothill of Ceylon M P PERERA Mr B W Hodder
1970 PhD London, SOAS Shareholders’ control of public companies in Pakistan A K RANJHA
1970 PhD Cambridge, Trinity The politics of U.P. Muslims Francis Christopher Rowland ROBINSON Dr Seal
1970 MPhil London, Inst Ed Urbanisation – its educational implications in India P SAJNANI
1970 PhD York Predicate complement constructions in Hindi and English Anil SINHA
1970 PhD London, LSE Water supply and irrigation in the dry zone of Ceylon K U SIRINANDA Mr P Rawson; Dr Chandler
1970 PhD Cambridge, Jesus Ceylon’s export trends and prospects M P S SURIAARACHCHI Mr H Leisner
1970 MA London, Inst Ed The t rainingof teachers in Bombay Province (including Gujerat) since 1947 M N UPADHYAYA
1970 MSc Wales Britain’s forgotten war: the British role in the confrontation of Malaysia by Indonesia Michael R WAGSTAFF
1970 MPhil London, SOAS A structural analysis of myths from the North east frontier of India James Mackie WILSON
1970 PhD Leeds The role of the Ceylon civil service before and after independence Watareke Aratchchige WISWA WARNAPALA
1970/71 PhD St Andrews The theory, practice and administration of Waqf with special reference to the Malayan state of Kadah M Z B H OTHMAN Dr J Burton
1970/71 PhD Cambridge, Trinity The politics of U P muslims M A ROWLANDS
1970/71 PhD London, LSHTM Dynamics of malaria in Ceylon C SIVAGNANASUNDRAM
1971 MPhil London, SOAS A comparative study of social heirarchies in selected areas of India and Pakistan Makhdum Tasadduq AHMAD Dr Mayer
1971 PhD Lancaster Technical change and economic development of agriculture: the case of Bangladesh M ALAMGIR
1971 MPhil London, UC A select bibliography of periodical literature published in English, German, French, Sanskrit, Hindi, Pali and Bengali during 1951-1966 on some aspects of Indian culture (philosophy, religion, linguistics, literature)from the post-Vedic to the pre-Kalidasa era P BISWAS
1971 MPhil London, SOAS Symbolic and material aspects of institutions in political process: analysis of two North Indian villages Bengt-Erik Per Gustaf BORGSTROM
1971 MLitt Cambridge, Firtzwilliam Metropolitan dominance in South India R W BRADNOCK Mr B H Farmer
1971 PhD London, SOAS Social change of marriage patterns in the North Western Himalayas (Churah, Pangi and Ladakh) Bharpur Singh BRAR
1971 PhD Cambridge, King’s Political alliances in rural Western Maharashtra Anthony Thomas CARTER
1971 PhD London, External Culture conflicts and education in Ceylon after independence Ida W DESILVA
1971 PhD London, SOAS The internal politics of the Kandyan kingdom, 1707-1760 Lorna S DEWARAJA
1971 PhD Durham Patterns of population structure and growth in East Pakistan K Maudood ELAHI
1971 PhD London, LSE An econometric growth model for Pakistan A FAROOQUI Mr J M Desai
1971 DPhil Sussex Municipal politics in Calcutta: elite groups and the Calcutta corporation, 1875-1900 C P M FUREDY Prof A Low
1971 BLitt Oxford, St John’s Statutory provisions for the settlement of collective industrial disputes in England and Australia and India S T GOH
1971 MA Exeter A study of the authority structure of an industrial organisation in a transitional setting: case study of a Ceylon industrial plant S GOONATILAKE
1971 MSc Hull The impact of foreign aid on India’s international trade, 1951-1965 C P HALLWOOD
1971 PhD Nottingham Pakistan’s external relations A K M A HAQUE Prof Pear
1971 PhD Durham The working of parliamentary government in Pakistan, 1947-1958 S C HARUN
1971 MLitt Glasgow Government expenditure: a study with reference to economic development in Pakistan M HUQ
1971 PhD London, King’s Freedom of interstate trade in India C K M JARIWALA
1971 DPhil Oxford, St Hilda’s Government policy and economic and social change in western India,1850-1875 J F M JHIRAD Prof K A Ballhatchet
1971 MSc Strathclyde Administrative aspects of social security programmes for factory labourers in East Pakistan M KABIR
1971 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Nationalism n Bengal, 1903-1911: a study of Bengali reactions to the partition of the province with special reference to the social groups involved A P KANNANGARA Prof K A Ballhatchet
1971 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of society and politics in Bengal, 1927 to 1936 B R KHAN Mr J B Harrison
1971 MPhil London, SOAS The tripartite countries [Iran, Pakistan and Turkey]of the regional cooperation for development: a geographical study of a regional grouping Durray S KURESHI
1971 DPhil Sussex Administrative structures, economic change and problems of rural development in Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India Bismarck U MWANSASU
1971 PhD London, King’s A comparative study of the executive in Australia and India J D OJO
1971 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of the Indian Viceroyalty of Lord Elgin, 1862-1863 J A RAHMAN Dr Harrison
1971 PhD London, SOAS Legal aspects of the “doctrine of pleasure” in relation to public servants in India U R RAI
1971 MPhil London, LSE A comparative study of manpower in selected industries with similar technologies in India and the UK S F RICHARDS Prof Wise
1971 MPhil Leeds The military in politics in India and Pakistan since 1947 A H RIZVI Prof Hanson; Dr O A Hartley
1971 PhD London, SOAS The government of India under Lord Chelmsford, 1916-1921, with special reference to the policies adopted towards constitutional change and political agitation in British India P G ROBB Prof K A Ballhatchet
1971 PhD York A generative semantic treatment of some aspects of English and Hindigrammar Prajapati SAH
1971 PhD London, LSE The problem of economic holdings in the peasant agriculture of the dry zone of Ceylon Somasundaram SELVANAYAGAM
1971 PhD London, SOAS Status, power and resources: the study of a Sinhalese village S P F SENATATNE
1971 MPhil London. LSE British opinion and Indian independence: a study of some British pressure groups which advanced the cause of Indian independence Kumar Indra VIJAY
1971 MLitt Edinburgh David Livingstone and India rOSINA g VISRAM Prof G A Shepperson
1971 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Employment incomes in Ceylon: an inquiry into the structure and determination of wage and salary earnings in Ceylon, 1949-1969 Pabawathie C WICKREMASINGHE
1971 MPhil London, Inst Ed A critical analysis of the problems of higher education in Pakistan since independence (1947) with special reference to student unrest U S ZAMAN
1971/72 PhD Liverpool British opinion and Indian reform, 1858-1876 Nilima SAHA Mr P J N Tuck
1972 DPhil Oxford, Christ Church Economic aspects of some peasant colonizations in Ceylon G M ABAYARATNA Miss M R Haswell
1972 PhD Leeds Economic, political and administrative aspects of planning for development in a divided country: a study of relationships between East Bengal and West Pakistan, 1947-1971 Shaikh Magsood ALI
1972 MSc Bristol Capital finance in a developing economy – Ceylon Bernard V ANTHONISZ
1972 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Communal conflict in Ceylon politics and the advance towards self-government Rupasinghe A ARIYARATNE
1972 MPhil London, Inst Ed A comparative study of language policies and problems in Ceylon and India since independence V ARUMUGAM
1972 MPhil London, SOAS Judicial control of the machinery of government in Pakistan Chaudhary M Y ASIM
1972 PhD Cambridge, Queens Politics in South India. 1917-1947 Christopher J BAKER
1972 PhD Durham The hierarchy of central places in Northern Ceylon P BALASUNDARAMPILLAI
1972 PhD London, LSE Some aspects of the strains and stresses in Indo-British relations, 1947-1965: an analysis of the causes and course of gradual decline in Britain’s importance to India A R BANERJI Mr J B L Mayall
1972 PhD London, QMC Fiscal policy in India (with reference to taxation)over three five year plans S BHADURI Prof M H Peston
1972 DPhil Sussex Political change in Rohilkhand, 1932-1952: a study of the rleationships between provincial and district level politicans L BRENNAN
1972 PhD London, SOAS An examination of the development and structure of the legal profession at Allahabad, 1866-1935 Gilliam F BUCKEE
1972 MPhil Sussex Educational administration in Bombay Presidency, 1913-1937 J L BUTLER
1972 PhD London, SOAS Extra-constitutional actions in Pakistan Z I CHOUDHURY
1972 PhD London, SOAS The politics and functioning of the East Bengal legislature, 1947-1958 Najma CHOWDHURY
1972 MEd Manchester The social and educational changes brought about in some South Indian villages by the Saruodaya movement A G CLARK
1972 DPhil Oxford Decentralisation and political change in the United Provinces, 1880-1921 W F CRAWLEY
1972 PhD Aberdeen The development and influence of British missionary movements toward India, 1786-1830 Allan K DAVIDSON Mr A F Walls
1972 PhD Cambridge, Emmanuel The official mind and the problem of agrarian indebtedness in India, 1870-1910 Clive J DEWEY
1972 PhD London, SOAS Juristic techniques in the Supreme Court of India (195-1971)in some selected areas of public and personal law Rajeev DHAVAN
1972 MA Hull Resource allocation in the public sector in Malaysia with special reference to the Muda River irrigation scheme CHEW CHAI DOAN
1972 PhD Hull Some aspects of private foreign enterprise in Ceylon L E N FERNANDO
1972 PhD London, SOAS Rural money markets in India Subrata GHATAK
1972 MA Manchester Traditional India and the meaning of caste Beth GOLDBLATT
1972 DPhil Sussex Optimum location of paddy improvement schemes in Ceylon J M GUNADESA
1972 MA Exeter Industrialization and protective tariffs in Pakistan A M A HAKIM
1972 PhD Cambridge,St John’s The place of India in the strategic and political consideration of the Axis powers, 1939-1942 Milan HAUNER Prof F H Hinsley
1972 MA Exeter Foreign capital and economic development: the case of Pakistan M E HOSSAIN
1972 PhD London, LSE Rural society and leadership in Malaya with special reference to three selected communities Syed HUSIN ALI
1972 BLitt Oxford, Lady Margaret Some aspects of religion and culture in Bengal H K ION
1972 PhD London, SOAS Agricultural development of Bengal: a quantitative study, 1920-1946 M M ISLAM Dr Chaudhuri
1972 PhD London, SOAS Bengali Moslem public opinion as reflected in the vernacular press between 1901 and 1930 Mustafa N ISLAM
1972 PhD London, SOAS The permanent settlement and the landed interests in Bengal from 1793 to 1819 M S ISLAM Mr G B Harrison
1972 BLitt Oxford, Somerville A social anthropological study of Jainism in Northern India S JAIN Dr R G Leinhardt
1972 DPhil Sussex Techno-economic survey of industrial potential in Sri Lanka N D KARUNARATNE
1972 PhD London, SOAS Constitutional protection of the freedom of association in Pakistan Hamiduddin KHAN
1972 PhD London, UC Kowloon: a factorial study of urban land use and retail structure Chi-sen LIANG Prof P Wood
1972 PhD London, SOAS The rajas and nawabs of Bengal, 1911-1919 Pronoy Chand MEHTAB
1972 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Income distribution and savings in Pakistan: an appraisal of development strategy T E NULTY Prof W B Reddaway
1972 DPhil Oxford The organisational basis of Indian agriculture with special reference to the development of capitalistic farming (ie based on wage-labour and following economic criteria for investment) in selected regions in recent years U PATNAIK
1972 PhD York A systematic treatment of certain aspects of Telugu phonology Vennelakanti PRAKASAM
1972 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Regional disparities in the growth of incomes and population in India, 1951-1965 Siripurapu Kesava RAO Dr A K Bagchi
1972 PhD Exeter The impact of devaluation on prices and production in Pakistan M M SHAIKH
1972 PhD London, SOAS The study of inflation in Pakistan, 1955-1968 Qamarul H SIDDIQI Prof E Penrose
1972 PhD London, UC Functions of international conflict: a case study of Pakistan K SIDDIQUI Dr J W Burton
1972 PhD London The home government of India, 1834-1853 Robert F S TATE Mr Harrison
1972 PhD London, SOAS Indian politics and the elections of 1937 D D TAYLOR Prof H Tinker
1972 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Economic integration and development with special reference to four Asian countries [India, Ceylon, Burma and Malaysia] Ransit Corneille WANIGATUNGA Prof G L Rees
1972 PhD Cambridge, Newnham The development and function of the transport system in Ceylon: a network analysis Poonanulkarange C H WEERASURIYA Dr B T Robson
1972 MPhil London, SOAS Tribal identity among the Santals, 1770-1857 Michael Piers YORKE
1972/73 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Social conflict and political unrest in Bengal, 1875-1908 Rajat K RAY
1972/73 PhD Reading The applicability of linear programming to resource allocation in an irrigated agriculture with special reference to the Punjab of Pakistan T U REHMAN
1973 BLitt Oxford, Balliol A study of Bengal peasants, 1765-1812 S U AHMED Dr C C Davies
1973 PhD London The role of the Zamindars in Bengal, 1707-1772 Shirin AKHTAR J B Harrison
1973 DPhil Sussex Political structure and economic development in rural West Pakistan H ALAVI
1973 MPhil London, Inst Ed The impact of British educational thought onthe concept of university education in Sri Lanka Chandra Lilian AMARASEKERA
1973 PhD London, Wye A study of economic resource use and production possibilities on settlement schemes in Sri Lanka (with special reference to the Minipe Colonisation Scheme) Nihal St Michael Aloysius AMERASINGHE
1973 DPhil Sussex Nationalism and the regional politics: Tamiland, India, 1920-1937 D J ARNOLD Prof D A Low
1973 PhD London, QMC Functions and status of urban settlement in West Bengal Mira DAS
1973 DPhil Sussex Peasant movements in India,c.1920-1950 D N DHANAGARE
1973 PhD London, LSE The development of the port of Colombo, 1860-1939 K DHARMASENA Prof F J Fisher
1973 MPhil York Male nurses in Ceylon: a study of the career problems of male nurses in the Ceylon health service, 1972 Malsiri K DIAS
1973 BLitt Oxford, Campion Hall Some aspects of agricultural policy in Ceylon since independence with special reference to youth resettlement schemes B W DISSANAYAKE Miss M R Haswell
1973 PhD Exeter Orgnisational forms in post traditional society with special reference to South Asia P D S GOONATILAKE
1973 PhD London, SOAS A study of the revenue administration of Sylhet District in Bengal, 1765-1792 Kusha HARAKSINGH Prof K A Ballhatchet
1973 DPhil Sussex Revolutionary networks in Northern Indian politics, 1907-1935: a case study of the terrorist movement in Delhi, the Punjab, the United Provinces and adjacent princely states M HARCOURT
1973 PhD London, LSE Indian population policy and the family planning programme Edward C HARRIMAN
1973 BLitt Oxford, Jesus The role of law in the politics of Pakistan from 1947 to 1956 S F A HASSAN Prof H W R Wade
1973 DPhil Oxford, St Catharine’s Foreign aid in the economic development of Ceylon W HETTIARACHI Miss P H Ady
1973 MSc Lancaster Monetary management, commercial bank credit expansion and economic development in Pakistan Rafiqul ISLAM
1973 PhD London, External Economic development in Ceylon Halwalage N S KARUNATILAKE
1973 MSocSc Birmingham Distribution of rate of suicide according to age and sex on the basis on caste in Gujerat State H KAZI
1973 PhD Hull Some economic aspects of the oil palm industry of West Malaysia Hacharan Singh KHERA
1973 DPhil Oxford Terms of trade, public policy and economic development of Ceylon, 1948-1958 W D LAKSHMAN
1973 PhD Wales An economic analysis of recent developments in the production and marketing of jute with particular reference to their implications for the economy of Pakistan Saidur R LASKER
1973 PhD London, LSE Local government and administration in Ceylon Genevieve R LEITAN
1973 PhD York Some aspects of Bhartrhari’s linguistic theory as represented in the Vakyapadiya Kaluwachchimule MAHANAMA
1973 PhD London, SOAS The changing position and functions of the Rajahs and Nawabs of Bengal, 1911-1919 P C MAHTAB Prof K Ballhatchet
1973 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Private corporate industrial investment in India, 1947/1967: factors affecting its size, fluctuations and sectoral distribution P PATNAIK Mr P P Streeten
1973 PhD London, King’s The legal framework for the settlement of industrial disputes in Ceylon Stanislaus Edward PULLE Mr A Hughes
1973 London, SOAS The minorities of Ceylon,, 1926-1931 with special reference to the Donoughmore Commission G QUINTUS
1973 PhD London, SOAS The covenanted civil servant and the government of India, 1858-1883: a study of his part in the decision-making and decision implementing process in India Muhammad A RAHIM Mr J B Harrison
1973 MPhil London, QMC The markets of Calcutta: an analysis of the evolution of indigenous marketing systems and shopping facilities Mondira Sinha RAY
1973 DPhil Sussex Poverty and policy: the impact of rural public works in the Kosi area of Bihar, India Gerry RODGERS L Joy
1973 PhD Cambridge, Lucy Polarization on Colombo in the economic geography of Ceylon Liyanage Kundali Vidyamali SAMARASINGHE Mr B H Farmer
1973 PhD Birmingham A quantitative analysis of the patterns of export: a case study of India M L SETH
1973 MA Sussex A multisectoral model of production for Sri Lanka Paran SIRISENA
1973 MSc Cambridge, Girton Underutilized industrial capacity in India Nancy SLOCUM
1973 MPhil London, QMC External aspects of Pakistan’s political geography A H SYED
1973 PhD London, SOAS Extradition in the light of the Indian constitution Madan M TEWARI
1973 DPhil Oxford, Balliol The Vice-royalty of Lord Irwin in 1926/31 with special reference to political and constitutional developments James Frederick Caleb WATTS Dr A F Madden
1973 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Some aspects of prodcution and market surplus in the rice sector of Ceylon Piyasiri WICKRAMASEKARA
1973 PhD Exeter A theory of multiple exchange rates and exchange rate management in Ceylon G W P WICKRAMASINGHE
1973/74 PhD London, Wye The marketing of tea with special reference to India’s share of thew world market N C NANDA
1973/74 PhD East Anglia Constraints on optimum resource use in an irrigated land settlement scheme in Ceylon D H R J PERERA
1973/74 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Locational analysis and government sponsored large-scale industries in Ceylon Y RASANAYAGAM
1973/74 DPhil Sussex A multisectoral model of production for Sri Lanka N L SIRISENA
1973/74 PhD Cambridge, King’s The kinship and social organization of a Roman Catholic fishing village in Ceylon Roderick Lennox STIRRAT
1974 PhD Brunel Defence expenditure and economic growth with reference to India V AGARWAL
1974 MSc London, LSHTM Current patterns of food administration in the West and their application to Pakistan A AHMED
1974 DTPH London, LSHTM Some problems in family planning in rural Sri Lanka E R AMARASEKERA
1974 PhD London, Inst Comm Trotskyism in Ceylon: a study of the development, ideology and political role of Lanka Sama Samaja Party, 1935-1964 Y R AMARASINGHE Prof W H Morris-Jones
1974 PhD London, SOAS Changes in patterns and practices of wheat farming since the introduction of the new high yielding varieties. A study of six villages in the Bulandshahr District, Uttar Pradesh, Northern India Kathleen May BAKER
1974 PhD London Urban society in Bengal, 1850-1872,with special reference to Calcutta Ranu BASU Prof K Ballhatchet
1974 MPhil London, Wye Some economic aspects of rubber production in Sri Lanka Gamlath Rallage CHADRASIRI
1974 PhD Cambridge, Pembroke Agrarian society and British administration in Western India, 1847-1920 Neil Rex Foster CHARLESWORTH
1974 DPhil Sussex Innovation, inequality and rural planning: the economics of Tubewell irrigation in the Kosi region, Bihar, India Edward J CLAY
1974 PhD Kent Money and monetary policy in a lerss developed economy: the case of Ceylon (Sri Lanka)1950-1970 E CONTOGIANNIS
1974 DPhil Sussex A study of wages of the coal miners in India (with special reference ot the Raniganj and Jharia coalfields) A DASGUPTA
1974 MSc Wales, Aberystwyth The factor shares of Indian international trade, 1947-1948 to 1967-1968 Mazumdar D DATT
1974 MPhil Nottingham A Marxist analysis of the economic development of India Brian DAVEY Prof Parkinson
1974 PhD London The intrigues of the German government and the Ghadr Party against British rule in India, 1914-1918 T G FRASER Mr D N Dilks
1974 DTPH London, LSHTM Some public health problems of the labour force in Sri Lanka A N HANIFFA
1974 MPhil London, SOAS The role of “reasonable restrictions” under the Indian constitution Tirukattupali Kalyana Krishnamurthy IYER
1974 PhD London Buddhist-Christian relationships in British Ceylon, 1797-1948 C W KARUNARATNA E G S Parrinder
1974 MSc London, LSHTM Growth study of the preschool children of Pakistan M M R KHAN
1974 MPhil Edinburgh Implementation of development plans in Pakistan S J KHAWAJA
1974 DPhil Oxford, St Hugh’s The movement towards constitutional reform in Ceylon, 1880-1910 N N LABROOY
1974 DPhil Oxford Social and political attitudes of British expatriates in India, 1880-1920 Margaret O MACMILLAN Prof Gallagher
1974 PhD Queen’s, Belfast Allahabad: a study in social structure and urban morphology L MALVIYA
1974 DPhil Oxford The Donoughmore Commission in Ceylon, 1927-1931 Tilaka Piyaseeli METHTHANANDA
1974 DPhil Oxford, Balliol India’s exports and export policies in the sixties D NAYYAR Mr P P Streeten
1974 DPhil Oxford Prelude to partition: all-India moslem politics, 1920-1932 D J H PAGE
1974 PhD London, King’s The social background, motivation and training of missionaries to India, 1789-1858 Frederic S PIGGIN
1974 PhD York Some aspects of the Vanni dialect of Sinhalese as contrasted with the dialect of the western region of Sri Lanka Pushpakumara PREMARATNE
1974 PhD Manchester The commercial pressure on the British government policy towards Indian nationalist movement, 1919-1935 M R PREST
1974 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Change in Bengal agrarian society c.1760-1850: a study of selected districts Ratnalekha RAY Prof E G Stokes
1974 PhD London, SOAS Education and society in the Bombay Presidency, 1840-1858 A J ROBERTS Prof K S Ballhatchet
1974 PhD Bradford Pakistani villages in a British city: the world of the Mirpuri villager in Bradford and in his village of origin Verity J SAIFULLAH-KHAN
1974 DPhil Oxford Labour and industrial organization in the Indian coal-mining industry, 1900-1939 Colin P SIMMONS Prof P Mathias
1974 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Nationalism and Indian politics: the Indian National Congress, 1934-1942 B R TOMLINSON Dr A Seal
1974 PhD Hull The European plantation rubber industry in South East Asia, 1876-1921 Phin Keong VOON
1974 PhD London, SOAS British scholarship and Muslim rule in India: the work of William Erskine, Sir Henry Elliot, John Dowson, Edwards Thomas, J Talboys Wheeler and Henry J Keene Tripta WAHI Dr P Hardy
1974 PhD Cambridge, Tinity The society and politics of the Madras Presidency, 1880-1920 D A WASHBROOK Dr A Seal
1974 PhD Hull The Saribas Malays of Sarawak: their social and economic organisation and system of values BIN kLING ZAINAL
1974/75 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Landlords, planters and colonial rule: a study of tensions in Bengal rural society, c. 1830-1860 Chittabrata PALIT Prof E T Stokes
1974/75 PhD London, SOAS The Khilafat movement in India, 1919-1924 M Naeem QURESHI SDr Moore
1974/75 PhD Birmingham A multisectoral model for manpower and educational planning in Sri Lanka T W Y RANAWEERA
1974/75 MSc Cambridge Trinity The extraction and use of surplus in India and China, 1950-1960 Chiranjivi Shumshere THAPA
1975 MSc Strathclyde Foreign indebtedness and debt servicing capacity of Pakistan, 1955-1970 M K ACHIGZAI
1975 MSc London, LSHTM Mortality and fertility trends in Orissa, 1951-1972 V AHMAD
1975 PhD Edinburgh Industrialisation and the problems of access to finance of small and medium sized forms in Ceylon C A BALASURIYA
1975 MA Ulster Bangladesh: a divided Pakistan N J BEST
1975 PhD Manchester Science and politics in India: accountability of scientific research policy structures, 1952-1970 B BHANEJA
1975 MSc Salford Factionalism and party building in India with special reference to the State of Rajasthan R BHARGAVA
1975 MSc Wales, Swansea Population planning in Bangladesh A R BHUIYAN Mr J Whetton
1975 PhD Lancaster As assessment of the economic effects of a customs union among the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka M A R BHUYAN
1975 PhD London The East India Company and its army, 1600-1778 G J BRYANT Dr P J Marshall
1975 DPhil sussex The effects of external assistance on economic development: the case of Sri Lanka A CHANDRA-RANDENI
1975 PhD Leeds The marketing of cotton in Pakistan I U CHAUDHRY
1975 MSc Wales, Swansea Social welfare services in Pakistan: the integration of state and welfare activity A CHOUDRY Jim Whetton
1975 PhD Londond, Wye Factors influencing India’s exports since 1950 Kashmir Singh DHINDSA
1975 DPhil Oxford The journals and memoirs of British travellers and residents in India in the late 18th century and the 19th century prior to the Mutiny Ketaki K DYSON Dr C M Ing
1975 PhD London, SOAS The structure of politics in South India, 1918-1939: conflict and adjustment in Madras City J A ELLIS
1975 MA Sussex The Vidhan Sabha election, Uttar Pradash, India, of February 1974 J GOODMAN
1975 MPhil London, UC Problems of port development in Sri Lanka, with special reference to Colombo Daya Somalatha GUNATILLAKE
1975 DPhil Sussex Peasant agitations in Kheder District, Gujerat, 1917-1934 D R HARDIMAN Mr P K Chaudhuri
1975 MSc Wales, Swansea Organisation and staffing needs in four state social services departments in Malaysia Kamariah Mohd ISMAIL Mr C Gore
1975 MScEcon Wales Economic development and the problem of unemployment with special reference to Bangladesh Halim JAHANGIR
1975 PhD Edinburgh Public sector investment in the direct development of urban housing in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) M E JOACHIM
1975 DPhil Sussex The relation between land settlement and party politics in Uttar Pradesh, India, 1950-69, with special reference to the formulation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal M H JOHNSON
1975 PhD London, SOAS Business, labour and opposition movements in the politics of Ahmedabad City, 1960-1972 Bharti KANSARA Prof W H Morris-Jones
1975 MLitt Aberdeen South Asian international relations since rthe emergence of Bangladesh A KHAN
1975 MA Sussex The Congress split of 1969: a study in factional and ideological conflicts H KINASE-LEGGETT
1975 PhD London Legal aspects of stage carriage licensing in India P LEELAKRISHNAN
1975 PhD London, SOAS Economics of higher yielding varieties of rice with special reference to a south Indian district…West Godavari (Andhra Pradesh) S MADHAVAN Mr T J Byres
1975 DPhil Sussex Political change in an Indian state: Mysore, 1910-1952 James G MANOR Prof A Low; Dr Reeves
1975 PhD Leeds Financial institutions and private investment in Pakistan, 1955/56 to 1969/70 A M M MASIH Finance
1975 MPhil London, UC Self-help in Hyderabad’s urban development Catherine Anne MEDE
1975 PhD London, LSE An analysis of the economy and social organisation of the the Malapantara – a south Indian hunting and gathering people Brian MORRIS
1975 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The Indian National Congress and political mobilization in the United Provinces, 1926-1934 G PANDEY
Mr D K Fieldhouse
1975 PhD Edinburgh A prototype system for the control of land use and settlements in the planned development of Bangladesh A M A QUAZI
1975 PhD London, Inst Comm The emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign state Mizanur RAHMAN
1975 DPhil Oxfird, Linacre House Some aspects of the Indian government’s policy of state railways, 1869-1884 V SHANMUGASUNDARAM Prof K Ballhatchet
1975 PhD Edinburgh Changing patterns of cropland use in Bist Doab, Punjab, 1951-1968 Gurjeet SINGH
1975 PhD London, LSE A demographic analysis of the sterilization programme in the Indian states, 1957-1973 Veena SONI Prof D Glass
1975 MLitt St Andrews Tax revenue forecasting in a developing economy with special reference to India D K SRIVASTAVA
1975 DPhil Sussex The British in Malabar, 1792-1806 B S W SWAI Prof D A Low; Dr P Reeves
1975 PhD London, SOAS The cotton trade and the commercial development of Bombay, 1855-1875 Antonia M VICZIANY Dr K N Chaudhuri
1975 PhD London, SOAS The Moplah rebellion of 1921-1922 and its genesis Conrad WOOD
1975/76 PhD Birmingham Significance of size in Indian public limited companies N P NAYAR
1975/76 DPhil Oxford, Trinity British policy and the political impasse in India during the viceroyalty of Lord Linlithgow Gowher RIZVI
1976 MPhil London, UC Development of printing in Urdu, 1743-1857 Nazir AHMAD Mr R Staveley
1976 PhD London, SOAS The beginnings of British rule in Upper Burma: the study of British policy and Burmese reaction, 1885-1890 Muhammad S ALI Prof C D Cowan
1976 MLitt Glasgow Jute in the agrarian history of Bengal, 1870-1914: a study in primary production M W ALI Prof S Checkland; Mr J F Munro
1976 PhD Cambridge, Queen’s Private industrial investment in Pakistan Rashid AMJAD Mr M A King
1976 PhD London, SOAS The Tamil renaissance and Dravidian nationalism, 1905-1944, with special reference to the works of Maraimalai Atikal K Nambi AROORAN Prof K Ballhatchet
1976 PhD Lancaster Regional dualism: a case study of Pakistan, 1947/48 to 1969/70 M AZHAR-UD-DIN
1976 PhD London, SOAS Patterns of rural development in Tamil Nadu Robert Wilfred BRADNOCK
1976 DPhil Sussex Patterns of tractorization in the major rice growing areas of Sri Lanka M N CARR
1976 DPhil Oxford, St John’s Aspects of the registration and legal control of trade unions in India with some comparative observations B K CHANDRASHEKAR
1976 MSc Heriot-Watt The development of tourism in Sri Lanka(Ceylon)with special reference to Nuwara Elyia E G DHARMASIRIWARANDE
1976 MPhil Edinburgh Some guidelines for a spatial framework for regional planning in Sri Lnaka N D DICKSON
1976 PhD London, UC Some problems relating to constitutional amendments in India Bhubaneswar DUTTA
1976 MA Sheffield An examination of the letters and papers of a Wesleyan missionary (the Rev. James John Ellis of India, 1883-1962 J ELLIS Prof J Atkinson; Dr J C G Binfield
1976 DPhil Sussex Caste and Christianity: a study of the development and influence of attitudes and policies concerning caste held by Protetsant Anglo-Saxon missions in India D B FORRESTER
1976 DPhil Sussex Sri Lanka and the powers: an investigation into Sri Lanka’s relations with Britain, India, US, Soviet Union and China, 1948-1974 Birty GAJAMERAGEDARA Coral Bell
1976 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Bombay city businessmen and politics, 1918-1933: the politics of indigenous colonial businessmen in relation to rising nationalism and a modernising economy A D D GORDON Prof J A Gallagher
1976 MSc Wales, UWIST The impact of the Central Freight Bureau of Sri Lanka on liner conferences and trade patterns M H GUNARATNE
1976 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Programming for a balanced development of modern industries in Bangladesh A K Md HABIBULLAH Prof P N Mathur
1976 MPhil East Anglia Techniques and management of annual planning with reference to Bangladesh Shamsul HAQUE
1976 MSc Wales, Swansea Employment planning in Sri Lanka Nimal HETTIARATCHY
1976 PhD Cambridge, Christ’s Agrarian structure and land productivity in Bangladesh: an analysis of farm level data Mahabub HOSSAIN Mrs S Paine
1976 PhD Glasgow Factor price distortions in Bangladesh M M HUQ
1976 PhD London, SOAS A quantitative study of price movements in Bengal during the 18th and 19th centuries A S M A HUSSAIN Dr K N Chaudhuri
1976 MPhil London A study of 19th century historical work on Muslim rule in Bengal: Charles Stewart to Henry Beveridge Muhammad D HUSSAIN Dr P Hardy
1976 MSc Wales Construction and use of new system of national accounts for Sri Lanka Siripala IPALAWATTE Prof P N Mathur
1976 PhD London, LSE Factor intensity and labour absorption in manufacturing industries: the case of Bangladesh R ISLAM Prof A Sen; Dr Dasgupta
1976 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth An investigation into the effect of farm structure on resource productivitiy in selected areas of Bangladesh Md Abdul JABBAR
1976 PhD London, Inst Comm India in the British Commonwealth: the problem of diplomatic representation 1917-1947 James L KEMBER Dr T Reese
1976 PhD Aberdeen International relations in the South Asian sub-continent since the emergence of Bangladesh: conflict or co-operation ? Ataur Rahman KHAN
1976 MSc Strathclyde Indian decision making and the Sino-Indian boundary conflict R LOUDIS
1976 PhD Glasgow Regional disparities and structural change in an underdeveloped economy: a case study of India M MAJMUDAR
1976 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Radical nationalism in India, 1930-1942: the role of the All India Congress Socialist Party Z M MASANI
1976 PhD London, SOAS Political leadership among the Hindu community in Calcutta, 1857-1885 John G McGUIRE Prof K A Ballhatchet
1976 MPhil Leeds Public enterprise and the economic development of Pakistan: a study of the relationship between industrial finance corporations and the development of the private sector I MEHDI
1976 PhD Manchester Marketing of social products: family planning in Bangladesh M A MIYAN
1976 PhD London, UC History of printing in Bengali characters up to 1866 Hussain Khan MOFAKHKHAR
1976 PhD Cambridge, Christ’s An Indian rural society: aspects of the structure of rural society in the United Provinces, 1860-1920 P J MUSGRAVE Prof E T Stokes
1976 PhD Cambridge, St John’s The British in India, 1740-1763: a study in imperial expansion into Bengal J B NICHOL Prof E T Stokes
1976 PhD London, LSE Education and educated manpower in Bangladesh: a study of development after the 1947 partition M NURUZZAMAN Dr C M Phillips
1976 PhD Manchester The sensitivity of the demand for Indian exports to world prices: a study of particular commodities N G PEERA
1976 PhD Glasgow Some methodological aspects of the cost benefit analysis of irrigation projcts: a case study of the Telegana region of India Gautam PINGLE Mr E RAdo; Dr R P Sinha
1976 DPhil Oxford, St John’s The role of India in imperial defence beyond its frontiers and home waters, 1919-1939 J O RAWSON Prof N H Gibbs
1976 PhD London, LSE Towards a spatial strategy for Indian development L R SATIN
1976 PhD London, SOAS Municipal markets of Calcutta: three case studies Mondira SINHA RAY
1976 PhD London, SOAS Munda religion and social structure Hilary STANDING
1976 PhD London, SOAS Pakistan: a geopolitical analysis, 1947-1974 Arif Hassan SYED
1976 MSc Wales, Swansea Child welfare planning in India Kalyani Sarojini THADI
1976 PhD Aston Techno-economic aspects of the competitive position of natural rubber with special reference to the natural rubber industry in Sri Lanka G VARATHUNGARAJAN
1976 PhD Cambridge, Sidney The impact of tariff protection on Indian industrial growth, 1918-1939, with special reference to the steel, cotton mill and sugar industries D M WAGLE Dr W J Macpherson
1976 DPhil Sussex The use of project appraisal techniques in the Indian public sector: a case study of the fertiliser industry John WEISS
1976 PhD London, SOAS Decisions and analogy: political structure and discourse among the Ho tribes of India Michael Piers YORKE
1976/77 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Living saints and their devotees: a study of guru cults in urban Orissa Deborah Anne SWALLOW Prof E R Leach
1977 PhD London, LSE The jute manufacturing industry of Bangladesh, 1947-1974 Q K AHMAD
1977 DPhil Oxford The Bengal Muslims, circa 1871-1906: the re-definition of identity R AHMED
1977 PhD Hull The Boria: a study of a Malay theatre in its socio-cultural context RAHMAN AZMAN
1977 PhD London,SOAS Guardianship in South Asia with special reference to alienation and limitation M BADARUDDIN
1977 PhD Lancaster The image of Gandhi in the Indo-Anglican nove D CHATTERJEE
1977 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Lancashire cotton trade and British policy in India, 1919-1939 Basudev CHATTERJI
1977 PhD Aberdeen Doctrinal and exegetical issues in the Hindu-Christian debate during the nineteenth century Bengal renaissance with special reference to St Paul’s teaching on the religions of the nations Chee Pang CHOONG
1977 PhD Glasgow Technological change in agriculture: the development experience of Tamil Nadu M D’SA
1977 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Indigo plantations and agrarian society in North Bihar in the 19th and early 20th centuries C M FISHER Prof E Stokes
1977 PhD Edinburgh Some aspects of the colonial administration in Ceylon, 1855-1865 Alison C FORBES Dr T J Barron
1977 PhD Manchester A model of manpower planning for India R D GAIHA
1977 PhD East Anglia Paddy and rice marketing in Northern Tamil Nadu, India Barbara HARRISS
1977 PhD East Anglia Technological change in agriculture and agrarian social structure in Northern Tamil Nadu John Charles HARRISS
1977 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Indian National congress and the Indian Muslims (1916-1928) M HASAN Dr A Seal
1977 MEd Wales, Aberystwyth Television strategies for health education in Pakistan Muhammad Anwar HASSAN
1977 PhD London, UC The tax burden on Bangladeshi agriculture – a welfare economics approach M HUQ
1977 PhD Durham Differentiation, polarisation and confrontation in rural Bangladesh B K JAHANGIR
1977 DPhil Oxford, St Hugh’s Gangaguru: the public and private life of a Brahmin community of North India A S JAMESON
1977 PhD Edinburgh A Bangladeshi town’s elite: a sociological study F KHAN
1977 MPhil London, King’s South Asia Muslims and the ocncept of equality with reference to the 20th century M LAHLOU Dr P Hardy
1977 PhD London, SOAS Evaluation of integrated rural development project in Pakistan W E LOVETT
1977 PhD London Depression kills more than a self: concepts of mental distress among Pakistanis R MALIK
1977 PhD London, SOAS The origins and early years of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, 1885-1907 Margot I MORROW Prof K A Ballhatchet
1977 MPhil London, SOAS Caste, rituals and strategies Rina NAYAR
1977 PhD Edinburgh The directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790 J G PARKER Dr J N M Maclean; Prof V G Kiernan
1977 PhD Hull Anglo-Burmese relations, 1795-1826 Gandadharan Padmanabhan RAMACHANDRA
1977 PhD Leicester The development of local transport in Bangladesh Abu REZA
1977 DPhil Sussex An analysis of the export performance and policies of Bangladesh since 1950 with special reference to the income and employment implications of trade in manufactures S A L REZA
1977 DPhil Sussex A study of political elites in Bangladesh, 1947-1970 Rangalal SEN Prof T B Bottomore
1977 PhD Leeds Organisation and leadership of industrial labour in Karachi, Pakistan Z A SHAHEED
1977 PhD Kent A monetary macro-economic model for India, 1951/52-1965/66 M A SHAHI
1977 MLitt Cambridge, Girton The Congress ministry in Bombay, 1937-1939 Rani SHANKAREDASS Prof J Gallagher
1977 mpHIL Edinburgh A comparative study of development policies in Pakistan, 1955-1970 S H SYED
1977 MPhil London, Birkbeck Differences between the UK and Indian management attitudes to organization development (OD) and manpower planning: a comparative study M N THAKUR
1977 PhD London, LSE Anglo-Indian economic relations, 1913-1928: with special reference to the cotton trade James David TOMLINSON Mr M E Falkus; Mr D E Baines
1977/78 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Thje unemployment problem and development planning in Pakistan Ghazy bin Subh-o MUHJAHID Mr D A S Jackson
1977/78 PhD London, LSE Economic inequality and group welfare: theory and application in Bangladesh S R OSMANI Prof A Sen
1977/78 PhD Cambridge, King’s The interrelation of agriculture and industry in a developing country: the case of Bangladesh A H WAHIDUDDIN MAHMUD Dr R M Goodwin
1978 PhD London, SOAS The economic and social organization of selected Mohmand Pukhtun settlements Akbar S AHMED
1978 MPhil Leeds Disguised unemployment in the rural sector in Bangladesh A H W M ALAM
1978 PhD London, SOAS British policy towards the Indian states, 1905-1939 S R ASHTON Dr B N Pandey
1978 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Lord Willington and India, 19192-1936 George W BERGSTROM Dr A F Madden
1978 DPhl Sussex Inequality, demand, structures and employment: the case of India R BERRY
1978 PhD Edinburgh The Kui people: changes in belief and practice Barbara Mather BOAL
1978 MPhil Sussex Islam in India since the partition of the sub-continent: issues in self-definition J A BOND
1978 PhD Leicester The civil and military patronage of the East India Company, 1784-1840 John Michael BOURNE
1978 PhD London, SOAS The history of Janakpurdham: a study of asceticism and the Hindu polity Richard BURGHART
1978 PhD London, SOAS The Hindu family firm and its future in the light of Indian tax law S C CHAKRABORTY
1978 PhD Exeter The production and trade of rice and cotton in Pakistan with special reference to exports to the European Community M A CHOUDHRY
1978 DPhil Oxford The colonial police and anti-terrorism: Bengal 1930-1936, Palestine 1837-1947 and Cyprus 1955-1959 D J CLARK Prof M E Howard
1978 DPhil Oxford, Hertford International trade and payments and economic policy in Ceylon during 1938/1953: a case study in the economics of independence D C DOLAWATTA Mr R W Bacon
1978 MPhil Leicester An econometric model of consumer behaviour in India, 1950/51-1972/73 A GHATAK
1978 PhD Durham Kinship and ritual in a South Indian micro-region Anthony GOOD
1978 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson Pineapples from Sri Lanka: the export potential of fresh fruit in relation to some aspects of post-harvest deterioration S J GOONERATNE Dr P H Lowings
1978 PhD London The law of homicide in Pakistan M HANIF
1978 PhD Cranfield Inter-urban bus operation in Bangladesh: a comparative study of the efficiency of the public and private bus sectors M ISLAM
1978 PhD Lancaster Religion and moderenisation: a case study of interactions between Christianity, Hinduism and modernisation in Northern Orissa, 1947-197 A KANJAMALA
1978 PhD Manchester Analysis of industrial efficiency in Pakistan, 1959/60 to 1969/70 A R KEMAL
1978 PhD Cambridge Indian business and nationalist politics, 1931-1939: the political attitude of the indigenous capitalist class in relation to the crisis of the colonial economy Claude MARKOVITS Dr A Seal
1978 PhD Lancaster Herman Merivale and the British Empire. 1806-1874, with special reference to British North America, Southern Africa and India D T McNAB Dr J M MacKenzie
1978 DPhil Oxford. The era of civillisation: British policy for the Indians of the Canadas, 1830-1860 John Sheridan MILLOY Dr F Madden
1978 PhD Exeter An analysis of the world jute economy and its implications for Bangladesh M G MOSTAFA
1978 PhD Surrey Causes of educated unemployment in less developed countries: the case of Sri Lanka T PERERA
1978 PhD Leeds Public expenditure growth and its role in developing countries: the case of Bangladesh A H PRAMANIK
1978 DPhil Sussex Capacity utilisation and labour employment in large scale manufacturing plant in Bangladesh Alimur RAHMAN B Dasgupta
1978 MPhil Liverpool A study in some aspects of demand and supply of food in a rapidly expanding population: the case of Bangladesh F RAHMAN
1978 PhD Essex Tenancy and production behaviour in agriculture: a study of Bangladesh agriculture K M RAHMAN
1978 MPhil Leeds The political economy of inflation: a case study of Bangladesh, 1959-1975 Syed Z SADEQUE
1978 PhD Wales, InstSciTech Spatial impact of growth poles in the context of regional development planning: a case study in the Ranchi Region (Bihar), India Suranjit Kumar SAHA
1978 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Agrarian structure, technology and marketed surplus in the Indian economy A SAITH
1978 MPhil London, LSE The Cominterm and the Communist Party of India, 1920-1929 Dushka Hyder SAIYID Prof J Joll
1978 PhD London, SOAS Relations between Roman Catholics and Hindus in Jaffna, Ceylon, 1900-1926: a study of religious encounter N M SAVERIMUTTU Prof K A Ballhatchet
1978 PhD London, SOAS Legal aspects of public enterprise in India and Tanzania: a comparative study A SEN
1978 PhD London, SOAS The life and writings of Sir John William Kaye, 1814-1876 Nihar Nandan Prasad SING
1978 PhD London, SOAS Some aspects of education and educational administration in the Madras Presidency between 1870 and 1898: a study of British educational policy in India S SRIVASTAVA Mr J Harrison
1978 PhD London, SOAS Public expenditure and state accumulation in India, 1960-1970 John F J TOTE Mr T J Byres
1978 PhD London, SOAS Law and order in Oudh, 1856-1877 D B TRIVEDI Prof K A Ballhatchet
1978 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Periodic markets in south Bihar, India Sudhir Vyankatesh WANMALI Dr GP Chapman Mr BH Farmer
1978 PhD Brunel Job satisfaction and labour turnover among women workers in Sri Lanka W T WEERAKOON
1978 PhD London, SOAS Gandhists and socialists: the struggle for control of the Indian National Congress, 1931-1939 James Carroll WILSON
1978 MPhil London, Insti Comm Political conflict and regionalism: Orissa, 1938-1948 T W WOLF Prof W H Morris-Jones
1979 MPhil Edinburgh National parks planning in Malaysia A K bin ABANG MORSHIDI
1979 PhD Cambridge Labour market and labour utilisation in Bangladesh agriculture: an analysis of farm level data Iqbal AHMED
1979 PhD London, SOAS The history of the city of Dacca, 1840-1884 S U AHMED Mr Harrison
1979 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Sugar cane cultivation in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh c.1890-1940: a study in the interrelations between capitalistic enterprise and a dependent peasantry S AMIN Dr Raychaudhuri
1979 PhD London, UC Occupational and spatial mobility among shanty dwellers in Poona: a study of selected settlements and implications for housing policy M M BAPAT
1979 MLitt Oxford, St Antony’s The Punjab and recruitment to the Indian Army (1846-1918) D BRIEF
1979 PhD Keele UN India Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM), 1965-1966 S CHAUHDRY
1979 PhD Wales Local government finance in Bangladesh Amirul Islam CHOWDHURY Mr J Eaton
1979 PhD Warwick Interrelationships between income redistribution and economic growth with special reference to Sri Lanka H M A CODIPPILY
1979 MPhil London, SOAS The constitutional history of Sri Lanka with special reference to the judiciary M J A COORAY
1979 PhD London, SOAS Local politics in Bengal, Midnapur District Swapan DAS GUPTA
1979 PhD Edinburgh Government and princes: India 1918-1939 G J DOUDS
1979 PhD Manchester The establishment of nuclear industry in less developed countries: the cases of Argentine, Brazil and India M DUAYER DE SOUZA
1979 DPhil Sussex Levels, the communication of programmes and sectional strategies in Indian politics with reference to the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and the Republican Party of India in Uttar Pradesh State and Aligarh District (UP) R I DUNCAN
1979 DPhil Oxford, Keble An anthropological analysis of the identity of the educated Bengali Muslim middle class of Calcutta, India P J K EADE Prof M Freeman
1979 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Bombay peasants and Indian nationalism: a study of economic change and political activity in the Bombay countryside, 1919-1939 Simon J M EPSTEIN
1979 DPhil Sussex Bilateral trade and payments agreements as an instrument of trade policy in Ceylon, 1952-1971 L S FERNANDO D Wall
1979 DPhil Oxford Military aid as a factor in Indo-Soviet relations, 1961-1971 P C GERHARDT
1979 PhD Manchester Image makers of Kumartuli: the transformation of a caste-based industry in a slum quarter of Calcutta Beth GOLDBLATT
1979 PhD Lancaster Achieving national development in the Third World: a systems study [Sri Lanka and Venezuela] P W GUNAWARDENA
1979 PhD London, SOAS Industrial development of Bengal, 1902-1939 A Z M IFTIKHAR-UL-AWWAL
1979 PhD Cambridge Afghanistan in British imperial strategy and diplomacy, 1919-1941 Lesley Margaret JACKMAN
1979 DPhil Sussex Changing production relations and population in Uttar Pradesh Vinod K JAIRATH S Epstein
1979 DPhil Oxford, Merton Religion and politics among the Sikhs in the Punjab, 1873-1925 R A KAPUR Prof R E Robinson
1979 PhD Aberdeen Nationalism in Bangladesh Ataur R KHAN
1979 MLitt Oxford, Wolfson Communities in Ceylon: an ethnic perspective on Sinhalese-Tamil relations P LANGTON Dr Schuyler-Jones
1979 PhD London, Wye An economic analyses of resource use with respect of farm size and tenure in an area of Bangladesh Md Abdur Sattar MANDAL
1979 DPhil Oxford Hindu pilgrimage with particular reference to West Bengal, India E Alan MORINIS
1979 MPhil York Sociolinguistics of language planning: a historical study of language planning in Sri Lanka Abul Monsur Md Abu MUSA Dr M W S De Silva
1979 PhD London, SOAS Chittagong Port: a study of its fortunes, 1892-1912 S H OSMANY Mr J B Harrison
1979 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s Punjab peasants and politics: a study of the Lower Chenab Canal, 1890-1020 B J POFF Prof E Stokes
1979 PhD Cambridge, Clare Agrarian structure and capital formation: a study of Bangladesh agriculture with farm level data Atiqur RAHMAN
1979 PhD London, SOAS The non-official British in India, 1883-1920 R K RENFORD
1979 PhD Aberdeen The soils of the central Sarawak lowlands, Malaysia I M SCOTT
1979 PhD Durham The socio-cultural determinants of fertility and the population policy in India M SEKHRI
1979 PhD St Andrews Macroeconmic forecasting in developing countries with special reference to fiscal policy: a case study of India Dinesh K SRIVASTAVA Dr GK Shaw
1979 PhD London, SOAS Emergency powers in the Indian constitution Jahnavi K P SRIVASTAVA
1979 PhD London, LSE Democratic considerations and population policies in development planning: a survey of third world countries with case studies of Bangladesh and Pakistan B F M STAMFORD Prof D V Glass
1979 PhD Edinburgh The development of British Indology K B SWANSON
1979 PhD London, Royal Holloway Anglo-French diplomacy overseas, 1935-1845, with special reference to West Africa and the Indian Ocean Rosalind M WALLER Prof G N Sanderson
1979/80 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Some aspects of the monetary and financial experience of a mixed economy: the case of Ceylon, 1950-1970 S W R D SARMARASINGHE Mr M G Kuczynski
1980 MPhil/PhD London, LSHTM Sex differential mortality: a study of the status of women in Pakistan A AHMAD
1980 DPhil Sussex Overseas aid and the transfer of technology – agricultural mechanisation in Sri Lanka D F BURCH E Brett
1980 PhD Aberdeen Aspects of population changes in British colonial Malacca: a study in social geography Kok Eng CHAN
1980 PhD London, SOAS Rural power and debt in Sind in late 19th century, 1865-1901 David CHEESMAN Dr Zaidi
1980 PhD London, UC Optimal development and various public policies: a case study of Bangladesh Omar H CHOWDHURY Mr Lal
1980 PhD Cambridge The agrarian economy of northern India, 1800-1880: aspects of growth and stagnation in the Doab S J COMMANDER Prof Stokes
1980 PhD Leeds Methodism and Sinhalese Buddhism: the Wesleyan-Methodist missionary encounter with Buddhism in Ceylon, 1814-1868, with special reference to the work of Robert Spencer Hardy Barbara A R COPLANS Dr E M Pye; Dr R C Towler
1980 PhD London, King’s British and Indian strategy and policy in Mesopotamia, November 1914-May 1916 P K DAVIS Dr M L Dockrill
1980 MPhil Edinburgh Use of technology: rural industrialization in Sri Lanka A DE WILDE
1980 PhD Cambridge, Trinity The Indian Civil Service. 1919-1947 H A EWING Dr A Seal
1980 PhD Edinburgh Devotional music in Mysore Gordon GEEKIE
1980 MPhil CNAA An approach to the assessment and control by developing countries of the economic costs and benefits of their national fleets, with particular reference to Sri Lanka M D H GUNATILLAKE
1980 DPhil Sussex Development of capitalism in agriculture in Pakistan with special reference to the Punjab Province S A HUSSAIN
1980 PhD Cambridge Popular Christianity, caste and Hindu society in south India, 1800-1915: a study of Travancore and Tirunelveli Susan Banks KAUFMANN
1980 PhD Edinburgh The cost and effictiveness of export incentive schemes in Pakistan, 1950-1970 Mohammad KHAYRAT
1980 PhD London, SOAS The city of Lucknow before 1856 and its buildings Rosaleen M LLEWELLYN-JONES Dr Chaudhuri
1980 PhD Manchester Domestic worship and the festival cycle in the south Indian city of Madurai Penelope LOGAN
1980 PhD Leeds The policy of the government of India towards Afghanistan, 1919-1947 C MAPRAYIL Prof D Dilks
1980 PhD Strathclyde Appropriate products, employment and income distribution in Bangladesh and Ghana: a case study of the soap industry A K A MUBIN
1980 PhD Manchester Choice and transfer of technology: the case of modernization of dairying in India S K MUKERJI
1980 DPhil Oxford The rebellion in Awadh, 1857-1858: a study in popular resistance R MUKHERJEE
1980 DPhil Sussex The Muriya and Tallot Mutte: a study of the concept of the earth among the Muriya Gonds of Bastar District, India Terrell POPOFF
1980 DPhil Oxford Saving in Pakistan, 1950-1977: estimation and analysis M Z M QURESHI
1980 PhD Durham A study of the status of women in Islamic law and society with special reference to Pakistan S F SAIFI
1980 PhD London, SOAS The political economy of rural poverty in Bangladesh K U SIDDIQUI Mr T J Byres
1980 DPhil Sussex Export led industrial development: the case of Sri Lanka Upanda VIDANAPATHIRANA Mr Godfrey
1980 PhD London Foreign investment law and policy of India: the control of private direct foreign investment S L WATKINS
1980 PhD Kent The little businessman of Bukit Timah: a study of the economic, social and political organisation of traders in a market complex in Singapore C W WONG
1981 PhD London, External An analysis of academic libraries in the Punjab (Pakistan)and proposals for their future development Nazir AHMAD
1981 DPhil Sussex Institutional structure, income distribution and economic development: a case study of Pakistan S E AHMAD R Jolly; P Chaudhuri
1981 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson Productivity, prices and distribution in Pakistan’s manufacturing sector, 1955-1970 Meekal A AHMED Mr Z A Silberston
1981 PhD Birmingham Pakistani entrepreneurs, their development, characteristics and attitudes Zafar ALTAF
1981 MPhil Reading Approaches to the optimisation of calving interval in large dairy herds in Sri Lanka V ARIYAKUMAR
1981 DPhil Sussex Adoption of high-yielding varieties of paddy: a case study of Bangladesh agriculture M ASADUZZAMAN
1981 MPhil Oxford Alternative approaches to the analysis of Indian agriculture: an evaluation P BALAKRISHNAN
1981 MLitt Oxford, Balliol The Indian state and the state of emergency Ashis BANERJEE Mr N Maxwell
1981 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s Migration theory with special reference to Delhi B BANERJEE Prof I M D Little
1981 PhD London, SOAS Evaluation of changes brought about by resettlement scheme in Sri Lanka G S BETTS
1981 PhD Newcastle Genetic variation and structure in selected populations of India S M S CHAHAL
1981 PhD London, LSE Commercial policy and industrialization with special reference to India since independence S CHATTERJEE Prof T Scitovsky
1981 PhD Edinburgh The politics and technology ofsharing the Ganges B CROW
1981 PhD Hull Karst water studies and environment in West Malaysia J CROWTHER
1981 DPhil Sussex Land and politics in West Bengal: a sociological study of a multicaste village A S DASGUPTA
1981 DPhil Sussex Population trends and changes in village organisation – Rampur revisited M DASGUPTA S Epstein; R Cassen
1981 MPhil London, King’s A study of female offenders in Sri Lanka and England S S H DE SILVA
1981 MPhil Oxford Educated unemployment in India D J DONALDSON
1981 DPhil Sussex Rules and transactions: some aspects of marriage among the Dhund Abbasi of North East Pakistan H DONNAN
1981 PhD London India’s relations with developing countries: a study of the political economy of Indian investment, aid, overseas banking and insurance S K DUTT
1981 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson Geomorphology and environmental change in South India and Sri Lanka Rita A M GARDNER Dr A S Goudie
1981 PhD Aberdeen A study of Bangladesh tea soils with particular reference to the efficiency of phosphatic fertilizers A K M GOLAM KIBRIA
1981 MPhil Oxford Some early British socialists in India N GOPAL
1981 PhD Cambridge, Churchill The agrarian economy of the Bombay Deccan, 1818-1941 Sumit GUHA
1981 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Planning for growth and structural change in an under-nourished economy: the case of India U R GUNJAL Dr D M Nuti
1981 PhD Manchester Buddism, magic and society in a southern Sri Lankan town M C HODGE
1981 PhD Cambridge, Churchill An investigation of the impact of British rule in India, c 1820-1860 in the context of political, social and economic continuity and change D J HOWLETT Dr G Johnson
1981 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The origins of the partition of India, 1936-1947 Anita INDER SINGH
1981 PhD Cambridge Jinnah, the Muslim League and the demand for Pakistan A JALAL
1981 PhD London, Imperial Supervisory style and work group satisfaction: an empirical study in the textile industry in Sri Lanka N W N JAYASIRI
1981 MPhil Sussex The effect of proximity to urban influence on rural leadership in Sri Lanka s JAYATILAKE R Dore
1981 MPhil London, LSHTM Relations between estimation biases and response errors in the analysis of a retrospective demographic survey of Bangladesh Mokbul Ahmed KHAN Prof W Brass
1981 MTh Aberdeen Salvation in a Malaysian context Boo Wah KHOO
1981 MPhil Edinburgh British and Indian post-war new towns: a comparative analysis D KUMER
1981 PhD London, LSE Bhutto, the People’s Pakistan Party and political development in Pakistan,1867-1977 M LODHI
1981 PhD Bradford The economics of railway traction with particular reference to India J MAJUMDAR
1981 PhD London, SOAS Law and development in Sri Lanka: an historical perspective, 1796-1989 M L MARASINGHE
1981 PhD Glasgow The techno-economic development of the Indian machine tool industry, with special emphasis on aspects affecting efficiency Ronald G MATTHEWS
1981 PhD Durham Spatial patterns of population growth and agricultural change in the Punjab, Pakistan, 1901-1972 M A MIAN
1981 PhD Cambridge Patterns of long-run agrarian change in Bombay and Punjab, 1881-1972 S C MISHRA
1981 PhD Edinburgh An empirical analysis of export promotion in Pakistan, 1959-1977 K MOHAMMAD
1981 DPhil Sussex The state and peasantry in Sri Lanka M P MOORE
1981 PhD Warwick Rural factor markets in Pakistan I NABI Prof Stern
1981 PhD Wales, UCNW Basic needs fulfillment and the evaluation of land use alternatives with special reference to forestry in Kerala State, India C T S NAIR
1981 MPhil Oxford The structure of Indian society: a study of some aspects of the work of Louis Dumont S S RANDERIA
1981 DPhil Sussex The historical problems of agricultural productivity with special reference to the use of modern technology inputs: a case study of Meerut district in western Uttar Pradesh Sumit ROY B Dasgupta
1981 PhD London, SOAS The thakur and the goldsmith: aspects of legitimation in an Indian village Christopher Thomas SELWYN
1981 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Hall The agrarian constraint to economic development: the case of India Abhijit SEN Mr J A Rowthorn
1981 MPhil London, LSE Control and regulation of cotton marketing in India, 1950-1975 J SENGUPTA Prof B S Yamey
1981 MPhil Kent Patani nationalism O bin SHEIKH AHMAD
1981 PhD Cambridge, St Edmund’s Canal irrigation and agrarian change under colonial rule: a study of the UP Doab, India, 1830-1930 Ian Edward STONE
1981 PhD London The growth of the Muslim League in the Punjab, 1937-1946 I A TALBOT
1981 MPhil Brunel A study of financing of small industries in UK and India J P TEWARI
1981 DPhil Sussex Population, growth and labour utilisation in a rural/urban context: a Sri Lanka case study W TILAKARATNE
1981 PhD London, SOAS Determinants of change in population resource relationships at village level: a study of two south Indian villages Christopher Louis WILDE
1981 PhD Bath Class formation, state intervention and rural development in South Asia G D WOOD
1981 PhD London, LSE The identification of developing Soviet strategy interests in the Indian Ocean, 1968-1974 Rashna Minoo WRITER Mr P Windsor
1981 PhD London, SOAS The impact of canal irrigation on the rural structuresof the Punjab: the canal colony districts, 1880 to 1940 Fareeha ZAFAR
1982 DPhil Sussex Capital accumulation, land productivity and agrarian structure in Bangladesh agriculture M ALAM
1982 PhD Warwick Effects of taxation on business in less developed countries with special reference to Sri Lanka P BENNETT
1982 DPhil Sussex Agrarian structure, economic change and poverty: the experience of central Gujerat BHANWARSINGH
1982 PhD London, Imperial Development of the labour process in the Indian electrical industry B BHUSHAN
1982 PhD Edinburgh Energy flows in subsistence agriculture: a study of a dry zone village in Sri Lanka Jan Roderic BIALY
1982 PhD Cambridge Conjugal units and single persons: an analysis of the social system of the Naiken of the Nilgirirs (South India) Nirut BIRD
1982 PhD Aberdeen A sociological study of the development of social classes and social structure of Bangladesh B M CHODWHURY
1982 PhD Salford Foreign aid and economic development: a case study of Pakistan with special reference to poverty and income distribution M K CHOUDHARY
1982 PhD Cabridge A study of cotton-weaving in Bangladesh: the relative advantages and disadvantages of handloom weaving and factory production Nuimuddin CHOWDHURY
1982 DPhil Sussex Technological innovation in agriculture in India: an analysis of economic policy and political pressures F C CLIFT
1982 DPhil Sussex Open unemployment and poverty in the rural sector in Sri Lanka I COOMARASWAMY
1982 DPhil Oxford, Balliol The jute economy of Bengal, 1900-1947: unequal interaction between the industrial, trading and agricultural sectors O GOSWAMI Dr Raychaudhuri
1982 DPhil Sussex Changing socio-economic relations in a Kandyan countryside P N GUNASINGHE S Epstein
1982 MPhil Leeds Recovery of gemstones from river gravels in Sri Lanka S M HERATH BANDA
1982 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The changing structure of cotton textile production in Bengal under the impact of the East India Company, 1750-1813, and the textile producers of Bengal Hameeda HOSSAIN Dr T Raychaudhuri
1982 MPhil Sussex The difference between ideological planning and service performance and the problems of differential access to agricultural credit in Bangladesh: the case of the integrated rural development programme Sajjad HUSSAIN
1982 PhD London, LSE Boundary problems in South Asia K H KAIKOBAD Prof I Brownlie
1982 DPhil Sussex Spring Valley: a social, anthropological and historical enquiry into the impact of the tea estates upon a Sinhalese village in the Uva Highlands of Sri Lanka C P KEMP
1982 DPhil Oxford, Trinity Pakistan’s relations with the USA, the USSR, China and India from the Sino-Indian war of 1962 to the Simla Pact Mohamed Jameelur Rehman KHAN Dr S Rose
1982 PhD London Aspects of the urban history, social, administrative and insttitutional of Dacca City, 1921-1947 Nazia KHANUM Mr J B Harrison
1982 MPhil Cambridge, Magdalene The British policy of withdrawal from India: in particular with reference to its impact on the subsequent political development of India S W KIM Mr C Barnett
1982 DPhil Oxford, New The Indian coal industry after nationalisation Rajiv KUMAR Mr S Lall
1982 PhD Lonon, SOAS Industrial location and regional policy in south India James William MACKIE Dr Bradnock
1982 PhD Cambridge Women’s work and economic power in the family: a study of two villages in West Bengal Linda Catherine MAYOUX
1982 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Construction of capital and labour coefficient matrices for the India economy and their use in framing a development plan Deba Kumar Datt MAZUMDAR Prof F N Mathur
1982 PhD Edinburgh Relativization in Bengali A K M MORSHED
1982 PhD London, LSE India and the EEC, 1962-1973 Bishakha MUKHERJEE
1982 PhD Keele Social aspects of production and reproduction in Bonda society Bikram N NANDA
1982 MPhil Reading The evaluation and control of constraints on the development of dairying in the Jaffna District of Sri Lanka A NAVARATNARAJAH
1982 DPhil Sussex Social change and class relations in rural Sri Lanka U L PERERA R Dore
1982 PhD Manchester An evaluationof the problems of measuring the profit performance of multinational enterprise in less developed countries: a case study of Bangladesh M Z RAHMAN
1982 DPhil Sussex Villagers education aspirations and their relationship to rural development: a south Indian case study Sudha V RAO S Epstein
1982 PhD Cambridge, Corpus On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India Subroto ROY Prof F Hahn
1982 PhD London, LSHTM Education and fertility in Pakistan Zeba A SATHAR
1982 PhD London, LSE Maintaining non-alignment: India’s political relations with the superpowers in the 1970s Muhammad Azher Zafar SHAH Mr C J Hill
1982 DPhil Sussex The process of rural change and its impact on income distribution in Gujerat Bhanwar SINGH R Cassen
1982 PhD Leeds Analytical techniques in agricultural development planning: a critical appraisal of a project for the modernization of an irrigation scheme in Sri Lanka Nelson VITHANAGE Mr I G Simpson
1982 PhD Reading A biological study of the benefits of intercropping in England and India N VORASOOT
1982/83 PhD Birmingham Pakistan: the energy sector: a study in sector planning Tariq RIAZ
1982/83 PhD Cambridge A study of the development of the sugar industry in Ahmednagar Diustrict, Maharashtra, (with particular reference to the harvesting and carting labourers employed in the industry Joy RICHARDSON
1982/83 PhD London, SOAS Politics and the state in Pakistan, 1947-1975 Mohammad WASEEM
1983 PhD London, LSHTM Dimensions of intra-household food and nutrient allocation: a study of a Bangaldeshi village M ABDULLAH Ms Wheeler
1983 PhD Aberdeen Inter-religious controversy in India: the interpretation of Jesus in the works of Rammohun Roy and Sayyid Ahmad Khan Muda Ismail bin AB-RAHMAN
1983 DPhil Oxford Emerson and India S ACHARYA
1983 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The contribution of Elphinstone College to higher education and political leadership in the Bombay Presidency. 1840-1940 Naheed AHMAD Prof R E Robinson
1983 PhD London, Inst Comm The Mujib regime in Bangladesh, 1972-75: an analysis of its problems and performance A U AHMED
1983 PhD London, King’s Chromite deposits of the Sakhakot-Qila ultramafic complex, Pakistan Zulfiqar AHMED
1983 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s Rural society and politics in Bengal, 1900-1950 Sugata BOSE Prof T E Stokes
1983 PhD City Conflict and communication in the Third World: a study of class and ethnic bases of conflict and relationships between these and the mass media in Pakistan and Nigeria C M BRYNIN
1983 PhD London, SOAS Contemporary problems in Hindu religious endowments Nihar Ranjan CHAKRABARTI
1983 PhD Cambridge Labour and society in Bombay, 1918-1940: workplace, neighbourhood and social organization R S CHANDAVARKAR Dr A Seal
1983 MLitt Oxford, Trinity The Congress ministers and the Raj, 1937-1939: a style of British policy and Indian politics Sunil CHANDER Dr T Raychaudhuri
1983 PhD London, King’s Transforming a traditional agriculture: the change from subsistence to commercial cropping in a part of Hazara District, Pakistan K L COOK
1983 PhD London, SOAS Family and business in a small town of Rajasthan C COTTAM Dr L Caplan
1983 MPhil Edinburgh Towards a national human settlements strategy for Pakistan M CRAGLIA
1983 PhD London, SOAS The urban demography of industrialization and its economic implications, with particular reference to a region of India from 1951 to 1971 Nigel Royden CROOK
1983 PhD Newcastle Agricultural export diversification and earnings instability of Sri Lanka Maxwell Peter DE SILVA
1983 PhD London, SOAS British firms and the economy of Burma, with special reference to the rice and teak industries Maria Serena Icaziano DIOKNO
1983 MPhil London, UC Jammu and Kashmir: a selected and annotated bibliography of manuscripts, books and articles together with a survey of its history, languages and literature from Rajatarangini, 1977/8 Ramesh Chander DOGRA
1983 PhD London, SOAS Trade unionism in Bengal before 1922: historical origins, development and characteristics Stephen N GOURLAY Dr K chaudhuri
1983 PhD Exeter Forms of Chhou: an investigation of an Indian theatre tradition S J HAWKES
1983 PhD London, Wye Food production and food entitlement in rural Bangladesh: five year outlook for a small community in an irrigated area Walza Md Hossaine JAIM Mr G Allanson
1983 PhD Cambridge The economic and social bases of political allegiance in Sri Lanka, 1947-1982 D J JAYANNATHA Mr G P Hawthonr
1983 PhD London, SOAS Domestic terms of trade and agricultural taxation policy in Pakistan, 1970-1977 Shahnaz KAZI Mr T Byres
1983 PhD Wales Production technology and industrial development: India’s planning period Edward Lawrence LYNK
1983 PhD London, SOAS Transport systems and urban growth in Punjab, Pakistan M K MALIK Dr R W Bradnock
1983 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Peasant society and agricultural development: a case study from coastal Orissa S MITRA Prof J A Barnes
1983 PhD London A general information programme for Pakistan: some problems and prospects with special reference to the promotion of cultures in the libraries and other information centres Rafia MOHADADALLY
1983 PhD London, UC A general information programme for Pakistan: some problems and prospects with special reference to the promotion of culture in the libraries and other information centres Rafia MOHAMMADALLY
1983 PhD Cranfield Smallholder mechanization in Pakistan A Q A MUGHAL
1983 DPhil Oxford Madrasahs, scholars and saints: Muslim response to the British presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab, 1803-1857 Farhan Ahmed NIZAMI Dr T Raychaudhuri
1983 MPhil Edinburgh Social consequences of rural economic change in South Asia O NOTE
1983 PhD London, SOAS A study of low caste consciousness and social protest in Western India in the later 19th century Rosalind O’HANLON Prof K Ballhatchet
1983 PhD Bradford Gandhi as a political organiser; an analysis of local and national campaigns in Inda B OVERY
1983 PhD London, SOAS Contact and controversy between Islam and Christianity in northern India, 1833-1857: the relations between Muslim and Protestant missionaries in the north-western provinces and Oudh Avril Ann POWELL Prof K Ballhatchet
1983 DPhil Sussex Technological capacity and production performance in the fertilizer and the paper industries in Bangladesh H A QUAZI
1983 PhD London, SOAS Differrentiation of the peasantry in Bangladesh: an empirical study with micro-level data A RAHMAN Mr T J Byres
1983 MPhil Edinburgh Planning for rural development with particular reference to Bangladesh A H S RAHMAN Mr J B Leonard; Prof P Johnson-Marshall
1983 PhD Birmingham A study of small indigenous church movements in Andra Pradesh S RAJ
1983 PhD London, InstiComm Problems of organisation, policies and mobilisation in the development of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, 1936-1947 Mohammed Harun-Or RASHID Prof W H Morris-Jones
1983 PhD London, UC Commodity taxes and employment policy in developing countries (with special reference to India) B RAYCHAUDHURI
1983 PhD Edinburgh Responsiveness and rules: parent-child interaction in Scotland and India V REDDY
1983 MPhil Sueery Alignment in Pakistan’s foreign policy, 1954-1977 Arif H SYED Prof C Pick
1983 MLitt Aberdeen The 1853 Government of India Act Jane THOMAS Miss R M RTyzack; Dr E C Bridges
1983 PhD Cambridge, Corpus Labour migration and economic development in an Indian hillarea W WHITTAKER Mr B H Farmer
1983 PhD Warwick Some experiments with a multisectoral intertemporal optimization model for Sri Lanka D E WIJESINGHE
1984 PhD Bristol The socio-economic aspects of the population age structure of Uttar Pradesh, India Mhammed ABUZAR Dr Morgan
1984 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Peasant production and capitalist development: a model with reference to Bangladesh Abu M S ADNAN
1984 PhD London, LSE Squatter settlements of Karachi: a comparative perspective of the culture of activism M O L AZAM
1984 PhD Cambridge, Sidney Regional dependence and rural development in Central India, 1820-1930 C N BATES Dr D A Washbrook
1984 DPhil Oxford Agricultural growth in Bangladesh and West Bengal J K BOYCE
1984 PhD Edinburgh The Vellore Mutiny, 1806 Alan D CAMERON Prof G Shepperson
1984 PhD Cambridge, Jesus Opening up the interior: the impact of railways on the north Indian economy and society, 1860-1914 Ian David DERBYSHIRE
1984 PhD Reading Technology, growth and distribution in Sri Lanka’s paddy sub-sector J FARRINGTON
1984 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Non capitalist land rent: theories and the case of North India J GHOSH Mr T Byres
1984 PhD Ulster The 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava: Whig Ulster landlord and imperial statesman A T HARRISON Dr T G Fraser
1984 PhD Edinburgh The cultural determinants of fertility in a region of South India Heather M JACKSON
1984 PhD London, SOAS Human rights – the Sri Lanka experience N JAYAWICKRAMA
1984 PhD London, Bedford Urban transport problems: the case of Bombay P JOSHI Dr D Hilling
1984 PhD London, LSE Caste and temple service in a Sinhalese highland village Andrew John KENDRICK Dr J P Perry
1984 PhD London, SOAS Tribal settlement and socio-economic integration: a case study of the Bannu lowlands, Pakistan Gul Mohammad KHAN Dr R Bradnock
1984 MPhil Sussex The effects of the changing patterns of leadership on succession problems and the use of ideology: a comparative study of India (1962-1969)and Japan (1929-1936) H KINASE-LEGGETT B D Graham
1984 PhD London, SOAS The British administaration of the Kandyan provinces of Sri Lanka, 1815-1833 K M P KULASEKERA Prof K A Ballhatchet
1984 PhD Cambridge, Clare Studies in the development of India’s non-traditional manufactured exports, 1957-1980 A KUMAR Prof W B Reddaway
1984 DPhil Sussex Implications of international mobility of labour for trade and development with particular reference to Bangladesh Raisul MAHMOOD Mr Godfrey
1984 MLitt Oxford, St Antony’s The Communist Movement in West Bengal. 1962-1980 Ross MALLICK Dr T Raychaudhuri
1984 PhD London, SOAS Role and ritual in Hindu marriage Werner F MENSKI Prof J D M Derrott
1984 DPhil Oxford, Magdalen Political mobilisation and the nationalism movement in India – a study of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, 1936-1942 Chandan S MITRA Dr T Raychaudhuri
1984 PhD Cambridge, Christ’s Instability in food grain production: causes, adjustments, policies: a case study of Bangladesh K A S MURSHID Prof A Robinson
1984 DPhil Sussex Poverty and inequality in rural India: a state-wide analysis of trends since 1950 R NAYYAR P Chaudhuri
1984 PhD Edinburgh Productivity and innovation in traditional agriculture: a comparative study of agricultural development in the Forth Valley, 1760-1841 and the Bengal Presidency, 1870-1914 Alastair William ORR
1984 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Alliance and elopement: economy, social order and sexual antagonism the Kalasha (Kalash Kafirs) of Chitral Peter S C PARKES Dr Schuyler-Jones
1984 PhD Leicester The structure, petrology and geochemistry of the Kohistan batholith, Gilgit, Kashmir, North Pakistan Michael George PETTERSON
1984 PhD Cambridgew Respecting power: temples, resources and authority in southern Tamilnadu, India Gordon Darge PRAIN
1984 PhD Cambridge, Churchill The evolution of the agrarian economy of western India, 1860-1940: a case study of selected Gujerat and Deccan districts S PRAKASH Dr G Johnson
1984 PhD London, LSE Rural protest and politics: a study of peasant movements in Western Maharashtra, 1875-1947 Livi Nancy Mary RODRIGUES
1984 PhD London, SOAS Crime and society in the Sinhala speaking areas of Sri Lanka, 1865-1905 John D ROGERS Prof K Ballhatchet
1984 MPhil Nottingham The right to property under the Indian independence constitution J S SANGHIA Prof Pear
1984 PhD Cambridge Rural organizations in Sri Lanka: official policy and institutional reform in the peasant agricultural sub-sector, 1948-1977 S SATHANANDAN
1984 PhD London, SOAS Muslim society and politics in the Punjab P SCRAGG Dr Zaidi
1984 MPhil London, LSE Bengal economic development, 1790-1830 P SEN Mr M E Falkus
1984 PhD Reading Tropical forest monitoring using digital Landsat data in northeastern India Ashbindu SINGH
1984 PhD Cambridge Temple “prostitution” and community reform: an examination of the ethnographic, historical and textual context of the devadasi of Tamil Nadu, south India A SRINAVASAN
1984 PhD Edinburgh Technology transfer in the Indian and Indonesian pharmaceutical industries A J STOKER
1984 PhD London, SOAS, British Attitudes to Indian Nationalism, 1922-1935. Pillarisetti SUDHIR. Professor Kenneth A. Ballhatchet.
1984 PhD London, SOAS Ritual status in the life cycles of women in a village of central India catherine S THOMPSON Prof A Mayer
1984 DPhil Sussex Gender as a variable in the political process: a case study of women’s participation in state-level electoral politics, Andhra Pradesh, India C WOLKOWITZ
1985 PhD Strathclyde The development of small-scale enterprises: a study of the agriculture-related engineering industry in Pakistan Punjab K AFTAB
1985 PhD London, Royal Holloway The emergence of Muslim socialists in North India, 1917-1947 Khizar H ANSARI Dr F C R Robinson
1985 PhD Salford The impact of farm mechanization on productivity and employment: a case study of Punjab, Pakistan M ASHRAF
1985 PhD Durham Blue-green algal nitrogen fixation associated with deepwater rice in Bangladesh A AZIZ
1985 PhD London, SOAS Indian opium and Sino-Indian trade relations F BAKHALA Prof K N Chaudhuri
1985 PhD Cambridge On the Srawacs or Jains: processes of division and cohesion among two Jain communities in India and England M J BANKS
1985 PhD London, SOAS Martial law in Bangladesh, 1975-`979: a legal analysis M E BARI
1985 PhD London, SOAS Thomas Munro: the decision making process in Madras, 1795-1830 H BREITMEYER Prof K A Ballhatchet
1985 PhD London, LSE Political radicalism and middle class ideology in Bengal: a study of the politics of Subhas Chandra Bose, 1928-1940 B CHAKRABARTY
1985 PhD Cambridge, Girton The behaviour of industrial prices in India, 1947-1977 Ruchira CHATTERJI Dr G Meeks
1985 PhD Edinburgh Lateritic soils and their managment in parts of West Bengal Sandip K CHAUDHURI
1985 PhD London, SOAS Social change and the development of “modern” politics in Travancore from the late 19th century to 1938 James L CHIRIYANKANDATH Dr P G Robb
1985 PhD Manchester The role of exchange rate policies in the balance of payments and adjustment process in a small open developing economy: a case study of Sri Lanka S S COLOMBAGE
1985 DPhil Sussex Sharecropping and sharecroppers’ struggles in Bengal, 1930-1950 Adrienne J COOPER Mr R Guha
1985 MSc Stirling The mechanism of distribution of marketed surplus in the models of dual economies through the Soviet, Chinese and Indian practice towards economic development Z COTTI
1985 PhD Sheffield Vegetation and land use studies in the Udawalawe Basin, Sri Lanka D S EPITAWATTA
1985 PhD Newcastle Analysis of the lactation curve of Pakistani dairy buffaloes K Z GONDAL
1985 DPhil Oxford, St Edmund Hall The relations between Britian, India and Burma in the formulaton of imperial policy, 1890-1905 G P GUYER
1985 PhD Lancaster The continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogacara in Indian Mahayana Buddhism I C HARRIS
1985 PhD London, LSE Women in the urban labour force in Pakistan: the case of Lahore Emma HOOPER
1985 PhD Strathclyde The choice of technique in cotton textiles and its impact on employment in Bangladesh M R ISLAM
1985 DPhil Sussex The impact of male outmigration on intra-village social relationships: a case study of Meharabad, a Punjabi village in Pakistan Naveed-I-Rahat JAAFRI
1985 PhD Edinburgh Health and the state in India Roger JEFFERY
1985 PhD Oxford Limites and renewals: transformations of belief in Kipling’s fiction S KEMP
1985 PhD Queen’s, Belfast The traditional tabla drumming of Lucknow in its social and cultural context J R KIPPEN
1985 MPhil CNAA, Kingston Poly The rubber industry in India: a vital industry in the planned economy P A MARS
1985 PhD Cambridge Economic relations between a centrally planned and a developing market economy: Indo-Soviet trade (1970-1982)and technology transfer (post 1955) Santosh Kumar MEHROTRA Dr P Nolan
1985 DPhil Oxford The Bengal Muslim intelligentsia, 1937-1977: the tension between the religious and the seccular Tazeen Mahnaz MURSHID
1985 PhD Kent The impact of colonial rule in Johore: a case of social and political adjustment M S H MUSTAJAB
1985 PhD London, LSE The sacred city of Anuradhapura: aspect of Sinhalese Buddhism and nationhood Elizabeth NISSAN Dr C J Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1985 MPhil Manchester Land ownership and irrigation development in the Sind region of Pakistan: institutional constraints on technical change Meherunissa M K PANWHAR
1985 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Social and political implications of changing land and labour relations in rural Bangladesh: a village level study Tanyal RAHMAN VIROOMAL
1985 DPhil Oxford, Lincoln The Naxalites and their ideology: a study in the sociology of knowledge Rabindra RAY Dr F Parkin
1985 PhD Cambridge Honour, nurture and festivity: aspects of female religiosity amongst Jain women in Jaipur J REYNELL
1985 PhD Queen’s, Belfast An analysis of the structure, conduct and performance of the date marketing system in Sind-Pakistan Muneer Ali Shah RIZVI
1985 PhD Brunel The influence of the state in the industrial relations systems of third world countries with special reference to Bangladesh S A SIDDIQ
1985 MPhil London, LSHTM Refugees, health and development: a case study of Tibetan refugees in India Staphanie Pietre Pardoe SIMMONDS
1985 PhD Durham Ritual tradition of Berava caste of southern Sri Lanka Robert SIMPSON Mr D Brooks
1985 DPhil Oxford, Christ Church Some aspects of implementing appropriate technology with special reference to cotton textiles in India Harsha Vardhana SINGH Mrs F J Stewart
1985 PhD Aston Nations and organisations: a comparative study of English and Indian work-related values and attitudes in matched manufacturing firms M H TAYEB
1985 PhD London, SOAS Planned language and Penang Hokkien: the socioeconomic effects of language planning on an urban Chinese community in West Malaysia Diane Arnauld de TERRA
1985 PhD London, Inst Ed Education and rural development in India since independence in 1947: with special reference to Kerala Joseph THAIKOODAN Prof B holmes
1985 PhD London, Queen Elizabeth Class, nutrition education and growth: a class analysis of the impact on infant nutritional status of maternal education concerning early supplementation in Bangladesh Katharine J WILSON Dr C Greissler
1985 PhD Edinburgh Upholding the veil: Hindu women’s perceptions of gender and caste identity in rural Pakistan Caroline Sara Lindsay YOUNG
1986 PhD Bradford Higher education in developing countries M A ADEEB
1986 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s Information, uncertainty and rural credit markets in Pakistan Irfan ALEEM Prof J A Mirrlees
1986 MPhil Edinburgh Housing and the state in Lahore, Pakistan I U BAJWA
1986 MPhil Edinburgh Visual patterns and the landscape of wet zone Sri Lanka S I BALASURIYA
1986 MPhil Ulster Russio-Afghan boundary demarcation. 1884-1895 Anila BALI Dr T G Fraser
1986 PhD London, SOAS The devolution of government in Sri Lanka: legal aspects of the relationship between central and local government: an historical and comparative study S A BANDARANAYAKE
1986 PhD Keele Migrant employment in the urban formal sector: the jute industry in Dacca, Bangladesh Salma BANU Prof D Dwyer
1986 PhD Sheffield The economic impact of a regional economy: the case of Bhilai Steel Plant (India) S BHATARA Mr W D Watts
1986 PhD Open Implementation across national boundaries: implementing the Government of India Act, 1935 V BOROOAH
1986 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth British politics and the East India Company, 1767-1773 H V BOWEN Prof P D H Thomas
1986 PhD London, LSHTM Evaluation of a community based oral rehydration programme in rural Bangladesh Ahmed M R CHOWDHURY
1986 PhD Exeter Household, kin and community in a Bangladesh village M A M CHOWDHURY
1986 PhD Cranfield Rice by-product production, disposal and utilisation in Sri Lanka S ELIAS
1986 PhD London Trade, kinship and Islamisation: a comparative study of the social and economic organisation of Muslim and Hindu traders in Tirunelveli District, South India Frank Sylvester FANSELOW
1986 PhD Aberdeen Inter-religious conflict in India – the dynamics of Hindu-Muslim relations in North Malabar, 1498-1947 Theodore Paul Christian GABRIEL Prof A Walls
1986 DPhil Sussex Rice in Bangladesh: post harvest losses, technology and employment M T GREELEY
1986 MSc Cambridge The impact of Sri Lankan land reform measures, 1972-1975, on the tea sub-sector S A P JAYATILAKA
1986 MLitt Oxford, Trinity The nature of Indian state: an investigation into the interrelationship between economic and political crisis (1965-75) A K JHA
1986 PhD London, LSE The functions of children in the household economy and levels of fertility: a case study of a village in Bangladesh N KABEER Mr C M Langford
1986 MPhil Edinburgh The role of incentives for paddy cultivation in developing countries with reference to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka G A M KARUNARATNE
1986 PhD Reading Obstacles to the adoption of modern rice cultivation practices by small farmers in Bangaldesh Md Abul KASHEM
1986 PhD Glasgow Handling of industrial disputes in the public sector industries in Bangladesh M A A KHAN
1986 DPhil York The state, village society and political economy of agricultural development in Bangladesh. 1960-1985 S A KHAN
1986 DPhil Oxford, Corpus Instability of jute prices and supplies: the impact on and implications for jute fibre production in Bangladesh Reza KIBRIA Mr M F G Scott
1986 MPhil Essex Selected aspects of India’s foreign trade in the 1970s S LAKRA
1986 MTh Wales, Aberystwyth The life of the people of north Mizoram prior to and subsequent to the advent of Christianity, up the the year of the Mizo Church’s jubilee in 1944 J M LLOYD
1986 PhD Bradford The modelling and analysis of national development strategies for India P MANDAL
1986 PhD Cambridge, Emmanuel Financial and manpower aspects of the Dominions and India’s contribution to Britain’s war effort, 1914-1919 G W MARTIN Dr Z S Steiner
1986 PhD Leicester Fulfilment theology: the Aryan race theory and the work of British Protestant missionariesin Victorian India Martin MAW
1986 PhD London, LSHTM Patterns of adult energy nutrition in a south Indian village G McNEILL
1986 PhD Dundee Estimates of gross domestic product by provinces in Pakistan A M MIRZA
1986 DPhil Oxford, New Caste, Christianity and Hinduism: a study of social organisation and religion in rural Ramnad C MOSSE Dr N J Allen
1986 MPhil East Anglia Go plough and eat: the impact of Gandhian intervention in a Bihar village between 1954 and 1974 Ivan Charles NUTBROWN
1986 PhD Londonb, SOAS A history of the London Missionary Scoiety in the Straits Settlements, 1815-1847 Ronnie Leona O’SULLIVAN Prof K Ballhatchet
1986 PhD Aston Investigation of relationship betrween product design and production departments in manufacturing companies (India) K PAWAR
1986 PhD Manchester Landed property and dynamic of instability: Bengal: the property-power nexus: state formation under colonialism and its contemporary siginificance H Z RAHMAN
1986 PhD Cranfield Appropriateness of incentives for small scale enterprise location in less developed areas: the experience of the UK, Japan and India K RAMACHANDRAN
1986 DPhil London, St Antony’s Exchange rate and commercial policy in a controlled trade regime: a case study of India Narhari RAO
1986 PhD City The social and economic conditions of export orientated industrialisation as a strategy of development [Sri Lanka] K RUPESINGHE
1986 PhD City British press coverage and the role of the Pakistan press from independence to the emergence of Bangladesh M SHAMSUDDIN
1986 PhD London SOAS Vallabhbhal Patel: his role and style in Indian politics, 1928-1947 R D SHANKARDASS
1986 PhD Sheffield Transport and regional development in Bangladesh: a geographical study A H M Raihan SHARIF
1986 PhD London, SOAS Sri Lanka: an examination of economic and social development associated with recolonisation on an irrigation scheme Richard Paul SLATER Dr A Turton
1986 PhD Leeds Pakistan’s relations with Britain, 1947-1951: with particular reference to some problems of partition M SOHAIL
1986 DPhil Oxford, Linacre Tenna: peasant, state and nation in the making of a Sinhalese rural community Jonathan R SPENCER
1986 PhD Salford Rural-urban population mobility in Bangladesh: its implications for rural areas with particular reference to two villages R M TALUKDAR
1986 PhD London, LSE Sacrifice and divine power: Hindu temple rituals and village festivals in a fishing village, Sri Lanka Masakazu TANAKA
1986 DPhil Oxford, St Peter’s India: colonialism, nationalism and perception sof develeopment Kevin WATKINS
1986 PhD Manchester Agrarian change in India: a case study of Bundwan District, West Bengal Neil Anthony WEBSTER
1986 MLitt Oxford, Wolfson A critical examination of Aurobindo’s contribution to the tradition of Vedanta Yvonne WILLIAMS Prof B K Matilal
1986 PhD East Anglia Cyclone vulnerability and housing policy in the Krishna Delta, South India, 1977-83 Peter WINCHESTER Dr P M Blaikie
1986 MPhil East Anglia Urban unemployment in peninsular Malaysia S R YAHYA Dr J T Thoburn
1986 PhD Edinburgh The realities of life from a Hindu Sindi perspective John Nicol YOUNG
1986 PhD London, LSE Sacrifice and the sacred in a Hindu “t-irtha”: the case of Pushkar, India Sushila Jane ZEITLYN Dr J R Parry
1986/87 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson Surplus appropriation and accumulation by rural households in India: a case study based on fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh Ravi Shankar SRIVASTAVA
1987 PhD London Royal Holloway All India Muslim League, 1906-1919 M S AHMAD
1987 PhD Sheffield Formulation of design criteria for industrial architecture in Bangladesh in light of the developments made in the United Kingdom and other developed countries N AHMED
1987 MPhil CNAA Sheffield Poly The effects of climate on the design and location of windows for buildings in Bangladesh Z N AHMED
1987 PhD Nwecastle Housing for the lower income people of Dhaka,Bangladesh: a peri-urban development approach S AMEEN
1987 MPhil City Personality, leadership and subordinate satisfaction: an empirical study in the civil service of Singapore C T ANG
1987 PhD London, RHBNC The Pirs of Sind and their relationship with the British, 1843-1947 Sarah Frances Deborah ANSARI Dr F R C Robinson
1987 MPhil Strathclyde The development of sugar manufacturing in Pakistan M AURANGZEB
1987 PhD Keele The growth and development of trade unionism in Bangladesh, 1947-1986 M Z BADIUZZAMAN
1987 PhD Loughborough A strategy for the integrated development of squatter settlements: a Karachi case study Q A BAKHTEARI
1987 PhD Edinburgh State and indigenous medicine in nineteenth and twentieth-century Bengal, 1800-1947 Poonam BALA
1987 PhD Cambridge Sectoral price determination and the inflationary process in the Indian economy, 1950-1980 P BALAKRISHNAN
1987 PhD East Anglia Draught animal power in Bangladesh D BARTON Dr D P Gibbon
1987 MPhil Manchester The role and contribution of the Alilgarh Muslim University in modern Indian Islam, 1877-1947 G N BUDDHANI
1987 PhD Cambridge, Magdalene From a pre-colonial order to a princely state: Hyderabad in tranition, c.1748-1865 S CHANDER
1987 PhD Dundee Financial development and agricultural development in Pakistan, 1952-1982 Mohammad Jamil CHAUDHARY
1987 PhD Leicester Conflict and change among the Khyber Afridis: a study of British policy and tribal society on the North-West Frontier, 1839-1947 R O CHRISTENSEN
1987 PhD Cambridge, Sidney State, tribe and region: policy and politics in Indiaa’s Jharkhand, 1900-1980 S E CORBRIDGE Mr B H Farmer
1987 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Communal riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 Suranjan DAS Dr T Raychoudhuri
1987 PhD Cambridge Money and finance in an underdeveloped economy: some themes from Indian economic history, 1914-1917 T DATTA Mr M G Kuczynki
1987 PhD London, SOAS Images and metaphor: an analysis of Iban collective representations J DAVISON
1987 PhD Keele The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), 1948-1965, with postscript on the impact of UNMOGIP on the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 Pauline DAWSON Prof A M James
1987 PhD London, SOAS The changing role of women in Bengal, c.1890-c.1930, with special reference to British and Bengali discourse on gender Dagmar ENGELS Prof K Ballhatchet
1987 PhD London, SOAS Psychiatry and colonialism: the treatment of European lunatics in British India, 1800-1858 Waltraud ERNST Prof K A Ballhatchet
1987 PhD Manchester The origins of inflation in Pakistan, 1959-1982: an evaluation of alternative hypotheses Faiz B FIROZE
1987 PhD Cambridge The brick trade in India: energy use, tradition and development S GANDHI
1987 DPhil Oxford Money and the real economy: a study of India, 1960-1984 S E GHANI
1987 PhD Cranfield Computer simulation of runoff and soil erosion from small agricultural catchments in Sri Lanka E GUNAWARDENA
1987 PhD Exeter Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah movement and its contribution to creating a separatist political consciousness among the Muslims of India, 1818-1872 Ghulam Muhammad JAFFAR
1987 PhD Salford Agricultural marketing and agrarian relations in Pakistan: a case study of the Nawahshak districrt, Sind M A KAMDAR Dr C P Simmons
1987 MLitt Cambridge, Trinity Hall Communal politics in the United Provinces, 1935-1947 Mukul KESAVAN Dr C A Bayley
1987 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Poverty and public policy: government intervention and levels of living in Kerala, India Bhaskar Gopalakrishna KUMAR Prof A K Sen
1987 DPhil Oxford, Hertford The rise and fall of the Indian cotton mill industry, 1900-1985: the Swadeshi movement and its political legacy Simon Robert Bough LEADBEATER Mr G P Williams
1987 DPhil Oxford, Oriel British architecture in Victorian Bombay Christopher W LONDON Dr R A Beddard
1987 PhD Cambridge West Bengal government policy, 1977–1985 Ross MALLICK
1987 PhD London, LSE Muslims, work and status in Aligargh Elizabeth Ashley MANN
1987 PhD London, SOAS Migration and the international Goan community Stella V MASCARENHAS-KEYES
1987 MPhil Edinburgh Women and the housing process: observations in a Katchi Abadi in Pakistan F McCLUNEY
1987 PhD Leicester The mineralogy and geochemistry of the carbonatites, syenites and fenites of North West Frontier Province, Pakistan Ihsanullah MIAN
1987 MPhil Sussex Linguistic nationalism in Pakistan (with special reference to the role and history of Urdu in the Punjab) Yameema MITHA Dr R I Duncan
1987 PhD Stirling Food retailing in Malaysia: a study of supermarket use in peninsular Malaysia K B OTHMAN
1987 DPhil Oxford British rule and the Konds of Orissa: a study of tribal administration and its legitimating discourse Felix J PADEL
1987 PhD Reading Extension needs of a plantation industry with special reference to the tea industry in Sri Lnaka W A PADMASIRI WANIGASUNDARA
1987 PhD Wales, UWIST The role of government in the administration and management of major ports in developing countries with special reference to India Jose PAUL
1987 PhD London, LSE Time, work and the gods: temporal strategies and industrislisation in central India Christopher PINNEY
1987 DPhil York The political dynamics of Indo-Soviet relations, 1930-1977 S S RAI
1987 PhD London, SOAS Islamization of laws in Pakistan with particular reference to the status of women Abdur RASHID
1987 PhD Aberdeen Availability and retention of zinc, especially in relation to the soils of Bangladesh H M RASHID
1987 DPhil York Indo-Soviet relations during the period 1955-1974 S S ROY
1987 PhD Liverpool The role of small towns in rural development: a case study of Bangaldesh Toufiq Mohammad SERAJ
1987 PhD Liverpool An analysis of squatter settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh M T SHAKUR
1987 PhD London, LSE Communism in Punjab up to 1867 Gurharpal SINGH
1987 PhD Edinburgh The implementation of systematic nursing in selected hospsitals in India: a chronicle of the change process Esther SIRRA
1987 DPhil Sussex Sri Lankan traders: a case study of credit relations and coconut marketing in a rural economy sARAH lLEWELLYN SOUTHWOLD
1987 PhD Leeds The life and influence of Shapurji Saklatvala Michael John SQUIRES
1987 PhD Leicester Evolution of the southern part of the Aravalli-Delhi orogen western India Tim J SUGDEN
1987 MSc Aberdeen Supply response analysis of palm oil in Malaysia, 1961-1985 B A TALIB
1987 PhD Leicester Communication and development in South India Pradip Ninan THOMAS
1987 PhD Southampton Developing a critical success factor approach to a holistic institutional evaluation for polytechnics in the states of Gujerat and Madhya Pradesh, 1977-1984 V N TRAFFORD
1987 PhD Cranfield The social relevance of postgraduate management education: a case study of India S VYAKARNAM
1988 PhD London Breast feeding, weaning and infant growth in rural Chandpur, Bangladesh S AHMED
1988 PhD London, External Islam in contemporary Bangladesh Umne Asman Begum Razia AKEER BANU Dr D Taylor
1988 PhD Bradford The impact of public policy on the poor in Sri Lnaka, 1970-1982 Pat ALAILIMA C Dennis; S Curry
1988 PhD Manchester Makran and Baluchistan from the early Islamic times to the Mongol invasion S S M AL-HUMAIDI Prof Bosworth
1988 PhD Birmingham The British iron and steel industry and India, 1919-1939 H J ANDERSEN
1988 PhD Edinburgh Some aspects of the political and commercial history of the Muslims of Sri Lanka with special referenmce to the British period Mahmudu Naina Marikar Kamil ASAD
1988 MPhil Kent The image of women in selected Malaysian novels Rosnah BAHARUDIN
1988 PhD Wales, UCNW Ecology, management and conservation of Pinus roxburghii forests in Kumaun Himalaya, India Bhagat Singh BURFAL
1988 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth The nineteenth-century book trade in Sind Allah Rakhio BUTT
1988 PhD London, King’s Soldiers of Christ: evangelicals and India, 1784-1833 Penelope S E CARSON
1988 DPhil Oxford, Exeter Punjab politics, 1909-1923 Amrita CHEEMA Dr T Raychaudhuri
1988 MSc Wales Economic appraisal of irrigated plantations of the Punjab, Pakistan: Changa Manga case study Faqir Ahmad CHOUDHRY
1988 PhD Reading State sponsrship of investment credit to promote rural development in India J G COPESTAKE
1988 PhD Leicester Leucogranites of the North West Himalaya: crust-mantle interaction beneath the Karakoram and the magmatic evolution of collisional belts Mark B CRAWFORD
1988 MPhil Brunel Aspects of the development of manufacturing industries of India Parviz DABIR-ALAI
1988 MLitt Oxford, Keble An ecumneical episcopate: Edwin James Palmer, seventh Bishop of Bombay and the reunion of the churches, with special reference to the church of South India R W DAVIS
1988 PhD Cambridge The irrigation and water supply systems of the city of Vijayanagara D J DAVISON-JENKINS
1988 PhD Kent Law, nation and cosmology in Sri Lanka: deconstructioni and the failure of closure Rochan DE SILVA Prof F Fitzpatrick
1988 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Application of social accounting matrix framework to agricultural policy analysis in Pakistan Shafique DHANANI Mr G H Peters
1988 DPhil Sussex Rural commerce in Sri Lanka: commercialisation and farm credit in the Uva highlands E DUE
1988 PhD Nottingham Environmental upgrading and intra-urban migration in Calcutta Margaret Sylvia FOSTER Prof J C Moughton; Dr T Oc
1988 PhD Southampton Catholic education in Sri Lanka during its first century as a British colony, 1796-1901 J B GNANAPRAGASAM
1988 PhD East Anglia Inter- and intra-household analysis in North Bihar village: implications for agricultural research Ruth GROSVENOR-ALSOP Dr S D Biggs
1988 PhD Cambridge Conservation and colonial expansion: a study of the evolution of environmental attitudes and conservation policies on St Helena, Mauritius and in India, 1660-1860 R H GROVE
1988 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Art, artists and aesthetics in Bengal, c.1850-1920: westernising trends and nationalist concerns in the making of new “Indian” art Tapati GUHA-THAKURTA Dr T. Raychaudhuri
1988 MSc Manchester Science and technology policy in developing countries of South Asia and South East Asia K R GUPTA
1988 PhD Queen’s, Belfast The sitar music of Calcutta: a study of two gharanas J S HAMILTON
1988 PhD London, UC Inbreeding and fertility in a South Indian village population Katherine Louise HANN Dr J Landers
1988 PhD London, Inst Ed Education and political instability in Pakistan, 1937-1971 M HAQUE
1988 PhD Strathclyde Tubewell irrigation and green revolution: impact on productivity and income distribution A IKRAMULLAH
1988 MPhil Edinburgh Marketing problems of farmers in Punjab, Pakistan: a case study Qamar-ul ISLAM
1988 PhD Edinburgh The reawakening of Islamic consciousness in Malaysia, 1970-1987 Fadzillah bin Mohd JAMIL
1988 PhD Cambridge, King’s Clientelism, corruption and capitalist development: an analysis of state intervention with special reference to Bangladesh Mushtaq Husain KHAN
1988 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s External developments and policy choices facing the non-oil developing countries in the post 1973 period Faizullah KHILJI Mrs F J Stewart
1988 DPhil Sussex Political and economic organisation in a Sri Lanka market town Colin KIRK
1988 PhD Leicester Media education, communications and public policy: an Indian perspective K J KUMAR
1988 PhD Leeds R K Narayan and V S Naipaul: a comparative study of some Hindu aspects of their work P LANGRAN
1988 DPhil Oxford Orientalism, utilitarianism and British India: James Mill’s “The history of British India” and the romantic orient Javed MAJEED Dr N G Shrimpton
1988 MPhil Edinburgh Policy issues for conservation: the case of Lahore walled city M I MIAN
1988 PhD Sheffield Development of small and medium sized towns in Bangladesh: a regional planning approach Mohammed A MOHIT
1988 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The question of nuclear weapons proliferation in the Indian sub-continent Ziba MOSHAVER Mr E A Roberts
1988 PhD London, UC The theoretical modelling and empirical measurement of the shadow economy with application to India U MUKHERJEE
1988 MPhil Reading Farming systems and information needs of tea smallholders in Sri Lanka D K NAWARATNA
1988 PhD London, SOAS A social history of a colonial steroetype: the “criminal tribes and castes” of Uttar Pradesh S B L NIGAM
1988 PhD London, LSE Policy making in the Indian offshore oil industry with reference to the period 1974-1986 M L NORONHA Prof D C Watt
1988 PhD London, LSE The Asiatic mode of production, historical materialism and Indian historiography Denis Brendan O’LEARY
1988 PhD Leicester Terraces, uplift and climate, Karakoram Mountains, Northern Pakistan Lewis Andrew OWEN
1988 MPhil London, LSE The tea plantation labour movement in the “Dooars” region of north Bengal, 1900-1951 Nayantara PALCHOUDHURI
1988 PhD Oxford, St Antony’s Decline of the Bengal zamindars: Mindapore, 1870-1920 C PANDA Dr T Raychaudhuri
1988 PhD London, King’s Between Mars and Mammon: the military and the political economy of British India at the time of the first Burma war, 1824-1826 Douglas M PEERS
1988 PhD Cambridge, Corpus British intelligence and Indian subversion: the surveillance of Indian revolutionaries in India and abroad R J POPPLEWELL
1988 PhD London, SOAS Socio-economic change in Bihar (India) in the later 19th and early 20th century Bihdeshwar RAM Dr P Robb
1988 PhD Kent Figuring Naipaul: the subject of the post-colonial world Dulluri Venkat RAO
1988 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Aspects of the ethnoarchaeology of Adilabad (Andhra-Pradesh), India Nandini Rameshwar RAO
1988 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The determinants of India’s manufactured export performance: industry-level and firm-level evidence Amit Shovon RAY
1988 DPhil Sussex Religion, class and function: the politics of communalism in twentieth century Punjab Mark ROBINSON Dr R I Duncan
1988 PhD London, SOAS The evolution of the printed Bengali character from 1778 -1978 Fiona Georgina Elizabeth ROSS
1988 PhD Keele Marginality, identity and the politicisation of the Bhangi community, Delhi Rama SHARMA
1988 PhD Kent Class, kinship and ritual: Islam and the politics of change in Pakistan S R SHERANI
1988 PhD De Montfort Temple architecture of the Marathas in Maharashtra A SOHONI
1988 PhD London, SOAS Nalanda Mahayihara, 1812-1939: some aspects of the study of its art and archaeology M L STEWART
1988 PhD Wales, Cardiff White-collar crime: a study of the nature, extent and control of income tax evasion in Pakistan Muhammad Shoaib SUDDLE
1988 PhD CNAA, Westminster A critical and comparative study of the practice and theology of Christian social witness in Indonesia and India between 1974 and 1983 with special reference to the work of Wayan Mastra in the Protestant Christian Church of Bali and of Vinay Samual in the Church of South India C M N SUGDEN
1988 PhD Leeds Some aspects of Muslim politics in the Pubab, 1921-1947 Qalb-i-Abid SYED Prof D N Dilks
1988 PhD Wales, UCNW Utility-based social shadow pricing and its comparison with other evaluation techniques: a cost-benefit study of fuelwood plantations in Bihar, India Satyendra Nath TRIVEDI
1988 PhD Glasgow Characteristics of public enterprise management in Bangladesh Syed J UDDIN Dr D Buchanan
1988 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Hall The economic and political context of Indian independence R P WANCHOO Dr C A Dayly
1988 PhD Bath In the teeth of the crocodile: class and gender in rural Bangladesh Sarah C WHITE
1988 PhD Nottingham Presenting the Raj: the politics of representation in recent fiction on the British empire R J F WILLIAMS
1988 PhD East Anglia Sources of growth and its beneficiaries in Pakistan’s large-scale manufacturing sector, 1955-1981 S WIZARAT
1988/89 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Household energy in rural Pakistan: a technical, environmental and socio-economic assessment A N QAZI
1988/89 PhD Cambridge, King’s Administration, classification and knowledge:land revenue settlements in the Panjab at the start of British rule R W SAUMAREZ-SMITH
1989 PhD Cambridge Sedimentology and structure of the Southern Kohat, Trans Indus Ranged, Pakistan Iftikhar AHMED
1989 PhD York Pakistan since independence: the political role of the Ulama Safir AKHTAR Dr T V Sathyamurthy
1989 PhD Strathclyde Growth of tubewell irrigation and agricultural development in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan M AKRAM
1989 PhD London, Wye A quantitative analysis of marketable surplus of paddy and food policy in Bangladesh S AKTER
1989 MA Leeds Communication influences on the political socialisation of Bangladeshi adolescents A M ALI Prof J G Blumer; Dr T J Nossiter
1989 MPhil London, LSE The India League and the Indian reconciliation group as factors in Indo-British relations, 1930-1949 Keshava Chand ARORA Prof I H Nish
1989 PhD London, King’s Pakistan crisis 1971: its political and strategic causes F J AZIZ
1989 PhD London, SOAS Indian monetary policy and the international liquidity crisis during rthe inter-war years (1919-1939) Gopalan BALACHANDRAN
1989 PhD London, LSE Communism in Tripura up to 1965 Harihar BHATTACHARYYA Dr T J Nossiter
1989 DPhil Oxford The evolution of classical Indian dance literature: a study of the Sanskritic tradition M BOSE
1989 PhD Kent An ethnographic account of the religious practice in a Tibetan Buddhist refugee monastery in Northern India Catherine Mary CANTWELL Dr J Endes
1989 MPhil Reading Cropping systems research in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan E W CHARLES
1989 PhD Glasgow The inter-war depression in British India: aspects of its economic and social impact, 1929-36 P S COLLINS
1989 DPhil Sussex Paliamentary representation in Sri Lanka, 1931-1986 R COOMARASWAMY Prof Lloyd
1989 PhD London, LSE Ideology and urban planning: the case of Hong Kong A R CUTHBERT Dr D R Diamond
1989 PhD Cambridge, Sidney Unfulfilled promises, popular protest, the Congress and the national movement in Bihar V DAMODARAN
1989 PhD London, LSE Embodying spirits: village oracles and possession rituals in Ladakh, North India Sophia Elizabeth DAY Dr J P Parry
1989 PhD London, SOAS Discourses of ethnicity: the adivasis of Jharkhand S B C DEVALLE
1989 MPhil Wales, Cardiff Rice leaffolders: natural enemies and management ractices in Sri Lanka Malgaha Gamage DHANAPALA
1989 PhD London, SOAS The growth of Buddhist monastic institutions in Sri Lanka as depicted in the Brahmi inscriptions K D M DIAS
1989 PhD Cambridge The socio-economic impact of a minor flood control project in rural Bangladesh B J DODSON
1989 PhD Bath Water to the swamp ? Irrigation and patterns of accumulation and agrarian change in Bangladesh M GLASER
1989 MPhil Cranfield Vocational training and self employment in developing countries: aspects of the design and approach of sucessful programmes John Patrick GRIERSON Prof M H Harper
1989 MPhil CNAA, Poly NLondon British women and the British empire in India, 1915-1947 Florence HAMILTON Mr E Wilson; Dr D Judd
1989 MPhil London, LSE The problem of federalism and regional autonomy in Pakistan Fayyaz Ahmad HUSSAIN P Dawson
1989 PhD Bradford The monetary transmission mechanism in Sri Lanka, 1977-1985 Ranee JAYAMAHA P Wilson; J Weiss
1989 DPhil Sussex The impact of international labour migration on the rural “Barani” areas of Northern Pakistan A F KHAN
1989 PhD Sheffield The implementation of rural poor programmes in Bangladesh T A KHAN
1989 PhD Manchester Perception and response to floods in Bangladesh M S KHONDAKER
1989 PhD Wales, Bangor, Cost benefit analysis and sustained yield forestry in India Periyapattanam Jayapal Dilip KUMAR
1989 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson Medical knowledge in rural Rajasthan: popular constructions of illness and therapeutic practice Helen Susanna LAMBERT Dr N J Allen
1989 MPhil London The expansion of the Indian Army during the Great War I D LEASK Prof M E Yapp
1989 Bath Technologies and transactions: a study of the interaction between new technology and agrarian structure in Bangladesh D J LEWIS
1989 PhD Edinburgh One or two sons: class, gender and fertility in north India Andrew LYON
1989 DPhil Sussex Capital accumulation in agriculture in the Punjab (Pakistan) Moazam MAHMOOD Prof M Lipton
1989 DPhil Oxford The performance of selected public sector industries in Bangladesh, 1972-1985 Syed A MAHMOOD
1989 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Hall Missionary of the Indian Road: a study of the thought and work of E Stanley Jones between 1915 and 1948 in the light of certain issues raised by M K Gandhi for Anglo-Saxon Protestant missionaries during the period P A J MARTIN Dr J J Lipner
1989 PhD Glasgow Exchange rate regimes of less developed countries: the cxase of India M J MELAZHAKAM
1989 PhD London, UC Appropriate evaluation techniques for urban planning in Sri Lanka N S P MNEDIS
1989 PhD Cambridge, Magdalene The Harappan civilisation: a study in variation and regionalisssssssation in Haryana, India V MOHAN Dr F R Allchin
1989 PhD Lancaster Three Hindu philosophers: comparative philosophy and philosophy in modern India Paul Martin MORRIS Prof N Smart; Dr D Smith
1989 PhD Manchester The role of financial information in collective bargaining in a developing country: the case of Bangladesh A J M H MURSHED
1989 PhD East Anglia Agrarian structure and rural poverty in Western India Thomas PALAKUDIYIL Dr J C Harriss
1989 PhD Wales, Cardiff The role of accounting in the economic development of Bangladesh Michael John PARRY
1989 PhD London, LSE Household organisation and marriage in Ladakh Indian Himalaya Maria Christina PHYLACTOU Dr C J Fuller
1989 PhD London, LSE Social representations of birth control and family welfare: an Indian study Ragini PRAKASH Prof R Farr
1989 PhD London, LSHTM Household food insecurity and its implications on health, nutrition and work – a study of a dry land farming community in Sri Lanka M K RATNAYAKE
1989 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Colonial policy, ethnic politics and the minorities in Ceylon Nira Konjit SAMARASINGHE Dr T Raychaudhuri
1989 PhD Cambridge Administration, classification and knowledge: land revenue settlements in the Panjab at the start of British rule R S SMITH
1989 DPhil Oxford, Somerville Inequality and economic mobility: an analysis of panel data from a south Indian village Madhura SWAMINATHAN Dr S Anand
1989 DPhil Oxford Art, artists and aesthetics in Bengal, c. 1850-1920: westernising trends and nationalist concerns in the making of a new “Indian” art Tapati G THAKURTA
1989 PhD Middlesex Polytechnic The impact of flood control on agricultural development in India: a case study in north Bihar P M THOMPSON Prof E Penning-Rowsell
1989 MPhil East Anglia The state and the determinants of the fiscal process in India: an application of James O’Connor’s Theory of the Fiscal Crisis of the State Sarah VARKKI
1989 PhD Aberdeen Some aspects of the chemistry and mineralogy of soil potassium in Sri Lanka acid tea soils and Scottish soils under a range of crops G WIMALADASA
1989 PhD Strathclyde Marketing implications of intermediate technology in the textile industry in Pakistan M ZAFARULLAH
1989 PhD Edinburgh Strategic planning: an exploratory study of its practice by agro-based public enterprises in Malaysia M ZAINAL ABIDIN
1990 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson The politics of pollution control: the Ganges at Varanasi Sara AHMED Prof T O’Riordan
1990 PhD London, LSE The budgetary process in uncertain contexts: a study of public sector corporations in Bangladesh Mansurai ALAM
1990 PhD Aberdeen Petroleum geochemistry of the tertiary sediments and oil samples from the Bengal Basin, Bangladesh M ALAM
1990 PhD Glasgow Size and management characteristics in the public sector: a case of Pakistan International Airlines A H M H H AL-ESHAIKER
1990 PhD CNAA Birmingham Poly The low-income housing production process in Lakore, Pakistan M I A ALVI
1990 PhD Aberdeen Theological education in relation to the identificaton of the task of mission and the development of ministries in India: 1947 to 1987 with special reference to the Church of South India Siga ARLES
1990 MPhil London, QMW A study of some influences on the development of Ruth Jhabvala’s Indian fiction Jayanti BAILUR
1990 PhD London, LSE Pakistan and the birth of the regional pacts in Asia, 1947-1955 Farooq Naseem BAJWA Prof I H Nish
1990 PhD Cam,bridge, King’s Procedural rationality in public expenditure decision making with specific reference to India A BASU
1990 PhD Cambridge Inter-urban and rural-urban linkages in terms of migration and remittances J R CHAUDHURI
1990 MPhil Bradford Kashmir and the partition of India: the politicians and the personalities involved in the partition of India, particularly in relation to the position of Kashmir at the moment of independence on 15th August, 1947 S CHOUDHRY Dr M J LeLohe
1990 PhD Aberdeen An Indian perspective on the church in the context of poverty and religious pluralism, with special reference to the works of M M Thomas Ashish J CHRISPAL Prof. Terrance
1990 PhD London, LSE Petty-trading in Calcutta: a socio-political analysis of a third world city Nandini DASGUPTA
1990 PhD London, King’s Rural Bengal: social structure and agrarian economy in the late eighteenth century Rajat DATTA Prof P Marshall
1990 PhD London, SOAS Development of Sinhala drama: a socio-cultural analysis (from Nadagama to modern theatre, up to 1922) T R G DELA BANDARA
1990 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson Indian death rituals: the enactment of ambivalence Gillian A EVISON Prof R F Gombrich
1990 PhD Bradford Financial reforms in Sri Lanka, 1977-1987 D J G FERNANDO
1990 PhD London, SOAS Discussions of polygamy and divorce by Muslim modernists in South Asia, with special reference to their treatment in Qur’an and Sunna Rehana FIRDOUS
1990 PhD Kent The six-nation initiative C FRANGONIKOLOPOULOS Prof A J R Groom
1990 PhD Sheffield Man mosquito interaction: the social context of Malaria transmisson in Sri Lanka Jayaratne Pinnikamaha GAMAGE Ms J M M Hoogvelt; Dr R A Dixon
1990 PhD London, LSE Paddy fields and jumbo jets: overseas migration and village life in Sylhet district, |Bangladesh Katherine Jane GARDNER
1990 PhD York The politics of British aid policy formation: the case of Bangladesh, 1972-1986 M GUHATHAKURTA
1990 DPhil Oxford Exports and exchange rate policy: the case of India B D GUPTA
1990 PhD London, SOAS The short story in Pakistan Panjab, 1947-1980 Salim Ullah HAIDRANI
1990 PhD London, External The phenomenonology of religious change in Bangladesh in relation to the theology and practice of conversion Ian McLaurin HAWLEY
1990 PhD London, UC The single dominant party system and political development: case studies of India and Japan Takako HIROSE
1990 MPhil London, External The economy and development of education in Bangladesh with particular reference to cost and some aspects of efficiency and effectiveness of higher education for the period 1972-1985 Mohammad Tazammul HUSSAIN
1990 PhD London Variations in mountain front geometry across the Potwar Plateau and Hazara/Kalachitta Hill ranges, North Pakistan C N IZATT
1990 PhD Open Charnockite formation in Southern India D H JACKSON
1990 PhD Leeds The effects of agrarian development on class formation and production relations in Pakistan Muhammad Siddique JAVED Mr J V Hillard
1990 MPhil Manchester Poly Ethnic identity and contemporary female costumes of Sri Lanka V R JAYASURIYA
1990 PhD London, UC Transfer of private external capital to LDCs with special reference to India in comparison to Brazil Veena JHA
1990 PhD Salford The impact of decentralisation on development, with special reference to the experience of Bangladesh since 1982 A K M A KALAM Prof M B Gleave; Dr B Ingham
1990 PhD Exeter Some statistical aspects of child health and growth modelling in Pakistan S KAMAL
1990 MSc Wales, Cardiff Analysis of the provision of sites and services schemes as a solution to low income housing in Colombo, Sri Lanka Somas Kandarajah KANDIAH
1990 PhD London, LSE Gender, caste and class in rural South India Karin KAPADIA
1990 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s The consequence of economic liberalisation in Sri Lanka Saman B KELEGAMA Dr S Anand
1990 PhD London, SOAS Revenue, agriculture and warfare in North India: technical knowledge and the post-Mughal elites from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century Iqbal Ghani KHAN
1990 PhD Kent Bengali elites’ perceptions of Pakistan – the road to disillusionment: uneven development or ethnicity Alqama KHAWAJA Prof A J R Groom
1990 PhD Bath Impact of irrigation upon the rural political economy in Bangladesh David LEWIS Dr G D Wood
1990 DPhil Oxford, Magdalen United States-Indian relations, 1961-1989: the pursuit and limits of accommodation Satu P LIMAYE Dr G Rizvi
1990 PhD London, UC Hydrogeology of part of South-Eastern Bangladesh S M MAHABUB-UL-ALAM
1990 PhD Lancaster The atavara myth in the in the Harivamsa, the Visnupurana and the Bhagavatapurana Freda MATCHETT Prof N Smart; Dr D Smith
1990 PhD Open East India patronage and the political management of Scotland, 1720-1774 G K McGILVARY Dr A L R Calder; Mr J Riddy
1990 PhD London, UC Epidemiology of coronary heart disease in Asians in Britain Paul Matthew McKEIGUE
1990 PhD Hull The fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: irony within a dual philosophical framework F F MERICAN
1990 PhD Leicester A thermotectonic evolution for the main central thrust and higher Himalaya, Western Garhwal, India Richard Paul METCALFE
1990 PhD Leeds A history of Nandyal Diocese in Andhra Pradesh, 1947-1990 Constance Mary MILLINGTON Prof A Hastings
1990 PhD Newcastle Becoming bilingual: a sociolinguistic study of the communication of young mother tongue Panjabi-speaking children S MOFFAT
1990 PhD Wales, BBangor Ecology and silviculture of Malamus manan in peninsular Malaysia A B MOHAMAD
1990 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The politics of Oriya nationalism, 1903-1936 Bishnu Narayan MOHAPATRA Dr G Rizvi
1990 PhD London, UC Rural development and the problem of access: the case of the integrated rural development programme in Bangladesh Salim MOMTAZ Prof R J C Munton
1990 PhD CNAA, Oxford Poly Geology and geochemistry of the Closepet granite, Karnataka, South India K A OAK
1990 PhD London, SOAS Indian Muslims and the Ottomans (1877-1914): a study of Indo Muslim attitudes to Pan-Islamism and Turkey Azmi OZCAN
1990 PhD London, Inst Ed The cooperative movement in the Jaffa district of Sri Lanka from 1911 to 1970 Kanthappoo PARAMOTHAYAN
1990 PhD Sheffield Man-mosquito interaction: the social context of malaria transmission in Sri Lanka J PINIKAHANAN GAMAGE
1990 PhD London, SOAS The mercantile community of Penang and the changing pattern of trade, 1890-1941 Chuleeporn PONGONGSUPATH Dr I Brown
1990 PhD Salford Gandhi and deep ecology: experiencing the nonhuman environment S A POWER
1990 PhD London, External Socio-economic and environmental aspects of under nutrition and ill health in an urban slum in Bangladesh Jane Allison PRYER
1990 PhD London, External Impact of zinc supplementation on Bangladeshi children suffering from acute and persistent diarrhoea Swapan Kumar ROY
1990 PhD London, Wye Persistent poverty among rice farmers in the major irrigated colonization scheme of Sri Lanka Madar SAMAD I Carruthers
1990 PhD London, Wye Persistent poverty among rice farmers in the major irrigated colonization schemes of Sri Lanka Madar SAMAD
1990 PhD St Andrews Political violence in the Third World: a case study of Sri Lanka, 1971-1987 Gemini SAMARANAYAKE Prof P Wilkinson
1990 PhD London, QMW The use of Hindu mythology in some novels of R K Narayan and Raja Rao Chitra SANKARAN
1990 PhD Liverpool State intervention in rural development: a case study of Bangladesh A E SARKER
1990 PhD London, SOAS The emergence of a Muslim “middle class” in Bengal: attitudes and rhetoric of communalism, 1880-194 Mohammad SHAH Dr P G Robb
1990 PhD Edinburgh Socioeconomic planning in social forestry with particular reference to Orissa State, India Ran Avtar SHARMA
1990 PhD Cambridge A “despotism of law”: a British criminal justice and public authority in north India, 1772-1837 Radhika SINGHA Dr C A Bayley
1990 PhD Wales, Swansea Indian merchant communities in 19th century western India Sheila M SMITH Dr R K Newman
1990 PhD London, LSHTM The estimation of fertility from incomplete birth registration records, with application to India Govind Singh SOMAWAT B Brass
1990 PhD Cranfield The role of industrial extension for the local production of agricultural machinery in developing countries with particular reference to Sri Lanka K-H STEINMANN I Crawford; F Inns
1990 PhD North London Poly The Viceroyalty of Lord Reading, 1921-1926, with particular reference to Indian political constitutional problems and progress Christine TURNBULL Dr D Judd
1990 PhD Cambridge Constructing difference: social categories and Girahya women: social kinship and resources in south Rajasthan Maya UNNITHAN Dr C Humphrey
1990 MPhil Essex An analysis of the effects of salinity on the growth of Sri Lankan rice cultivars S C WANIGASURIYA
1990 PhD London, Imperial The structure and metamorphism of the northern margin of Indian Plate, North Pakistan Mathew Philipps WILLIAMS
1991 MPhil Trinity College, Bristol Identity, Islam and Christianity in rural Bangladesh D W ABECASSSIS
1991 MPhil London, LSHTM Fertility trends in Pakistan: a birth order analysis Mohamed AFZAL J Blacker
1991 PhD Sheffield Intraurban residential mobility in the city of Karachi N AHMAD
1991 PhD Wales, Swansea Decentralisation and the local state under peripheral capitalism: a study in the political economy of local government in Pakistan Tofail AHMAD
1991 PhD Newcastle upon Tyne The effects of price and non-price factors on the production of major crops in Bangladesh S ALAM
1991 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s North Indian military culture in transition, 1770-1830 S ALAVE Dr C A Bayly
1991 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Inheriting then earth: Pakistan People’s Party: popular mobilisation and political conflict in Pakistan, 1967-1971 R F ALI Mr P G Hawthorn
1991 PhD London, LSHTM Anti-microbial chemotherapy of leprosy: a quantitiave theoretical basis for trial regimens with particular reference to India J E ALMEIDA
1991 PhD London, King’s The international arms trade: case studies of India and Pakistan, 1947-86 I ANTHONY
1991 PhD Manchester The role of the housing market in the development of Jaffna City and its fringe Krishnapillai ARUMUHAM Prof B Robson
1991 PhD London, SOAS Agricultural production in six selected Qasbas in eastern Rajasthan (c. 1700-1780) Madhavi BAJAKAL
1991 PhD LondonSOAS Agricultural production in six selected qasbas of eastern Rajastan (c.1700-1780) Madhavi BAJEKAL Prof K N Chaudhuri
1991 PhD Salford Some environmental implications of agricultural and agro-industrial developments in rural India S K BARAT
1991 PhD Newcastle upon Tyne Swami Vivekananda’s practical vedanta Vivienne BAUMFIELD Dr D H Killingley
1991 PhD Wales, Swansea The significqance of “Ostindien” in the evolution of German colonial thought, 1840-1885 Theodore Robert Maria BOSKE Prof M E Chamberlain
1991 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Communal politics and the partition of Bengal, 1932-1947 Joya CHATTERJI Dr A Seal
1991 PhD Cambridge A study of subsistance and settlement patterns during the late prehistory of northcentral India U C CHATTOPADHYAYA
1991 PhD London, King’s Indian nuclear strategy Mohammad Zafar Iqbal CHEEMA Prof L D Freedman
1991 MPhil Bradford Kashmir and the partition of India S CHOUDRY
1991 PhD London, UC The social implications of thalassaemia major among Muslims of Pakistani origin: family experience and service delivery Aamra Rashid DARR
1991 MPhil CNAA, Architectural Assoc The roots of power and root power: an enquiry into negotiations for the consolidation of illegal settlements in New Delhi, India S DASAPPA
1991 PhD London, SOAS Strategy and structure: a case study in imperial policy and tribal society in British Baluchistan Simanti DUTTA
1991 PhD Loughborough The Revd A G Fraser: his ecclesiastical, educational and political activity in Ceylon, 1904-1924 Brian EATHARD Dr Avril Powell
1991 PhD Cambridge, Churchill The political culture of the urban poor: the United Provinces between the two World Wars N GOOPTU Dr R S Chandavarkar
1991 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Azariah and Indian Christianity in the late years of the Raj S Bharper HARPER, s b
1991 DPhil Oxford, Green College Public health and medical research in India, c. 1860-1914 Mark HARRISON Miss M H Pelling; Dr P J Weindling
1991 PhD London, King’s College Rhizolith occurrence and formation within the quartnary coastal deposits of Tamil Nadu State, South East India Derek Albert HENDRY Dr R Garner
1991 PhD London, Wye Economic analysis of production opportunities, constraints and improvement policies in coconut-based farming systems in Sri Lanka Mudiyanselage Anura Lokubandara HERATH
1991 MPhil Wales Performance, problems and potential of irrigated land settlements in Sri Lanka: an analysis of past policies Thosapala HEWAGE
1991 PhD Cambridge Tax reform, public pricing and trade protection in Bangladesh S M HOSSAIN
1991 PhD London, SOAS The production and use of ritual terracottas in India Stephen Porter HUYLER
1991 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Defence production in a third world country: the case of the Indian aircraft industry 1940-1980 Shireen Karim Alimohamed JANMOHAMED Prof E A Roberts
1991 PhD London, LSE Rice, work and community among the Kelabit of Sarawak, East Malaysia Monica Rachel Hughes JANOWSKI
1991 PhD Stirling Fishery, population dynamics and breeding biology of Panulirus homarus (L.)on the south coast of Sri Lanka D S JAYAKODY
1991 PhD Stirling The utilisation of acid sulphate on soils for shrimp (Oenaeus monodon)culture on the west coast of Sri Lanka J JAYASINGHE
1991 PhD Durham Perception of, and adjustment to. drought hazard by farmers in southern Sri Lanka N L A KARUNARATNE
1991 DPhil Oxford, Trinity Competing through technology and manufacturing: a study of the Indian commerical vehicles industry Sanjay KATHURIA Dr J L Enos
1991 PhD Leicester Primary geochemistry and secondary dispersion from gold prospects in the Karkoram and Hindu Kush, northern Pakistan Abdul KHALIQ
1991 PhD London, RHBNC The contribution of the All India Muslim Educational Conference to the educational and cultural development of Indian Muslims, 1886-1947 Abdul Rashid KHAN Dr F C Robinson
1991 PhD Sheffield Low income settlement in city fringes: a case study of eastern fringe Dhaka R A KHAN Dr C Choguill
1991 PhD Edinburgh Women’s work and rural transformation in India: a study from Gujerat Uma KOTHARI
1991 DPhil Sussex The role of women in household survival strategies: a case study from an urban low-income settlement in Colombo, Sri Lanka Chandrika KOTTEGODA Dr K Young
1991 PhD Warwick Critical reflections on law and public enterprises in Bangladesh A K MASUDAL HAQUE
1991 PhD Sheffield Urban services in the national cities of India: organisation, financing, planning and delivery B MATHUR
1991 DPhil Oxford The ecological interaction between habitat composition, habitat quality and abundance of some wild ungulates in India V B MATHUR
1991 PhD Bath Poverty and patronage: a study of credit, development and change in rural Bangladesh James Allister McGREGOR Dr D G Wood
1991 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Caste, nationalism and communism in Malabar, 1900-1948 D M MENON Dr R S Chandravarkar
1991 PhD Southampton Municipal finance and local self government: the Indian experience Rajalakshmi MISHRA Dr D M Hill
1991 PhD Durham Industrial water pollution in a surface water system in Colombo, Sri Lanka S K MOHAMMED-ALI Prof I G Simmons
1991 PhD Warwick The migration and racialisation of doctors fromthe Indian subcontinent P J MOSS
1991 PhD London, LSE India and the Middle East: constancy of policy in the context of changing perspectives, 1947-1986 Prithvi Ram MUDIAM Dr G Sen
1991 PhD Surrey The impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on Patidar women in the Khada District of Gujerat P R NATTRESS
1991 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall People and trees: gender relations and participation in social forestry in West Bengal, India C A NESMITH Dr T P Bayliss-Smith
1991 PhD Nottingham Urban lower-middle class and middle income housing: an investigation into affordability and options, Dhaka, Bangladesh Mohammed Mahbubur RAHMAN Prof J C Moughton; Mr S Jalloh
1991 PhD Exeter Location-allocation modelling for primary health provision in Bangladesh S-U RAHMAN
1991 MSc Kent On the systematics and ecology of some freshwater turtles of Bangladesh S M A RASHID
1991 PhD London, SOAS Structure and performance: a case study of Pakistan’s large scale manufacturing sector (1950-1987) Shahnaz RAUF
1991 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Inter-urban and rural-urban linkages in terms of migration and remittances: case study – Durgapur (West Bengal) J RAY CHAUDHURI Prof G P Chapman
1991 PhD London, King’s A comparison of the diet and health of pre-menopausal Indian and Caucasian vegetarian women Sheela REDDY
1991 Cranfield, Silsoe A case study on training and development of cooperative managers in implementing “Irrigation management programme” of Bangladesh Rural Development Board in Hossainpur Upazila, Bangladesh M A SADEQUE
1991 PhD Warwick Towards a definition of Indian literary feminism: an analysis of the novels of K Markandaya, N Sahgal and A Desai Minola K SALGADO Ms P Dunbar
1991 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s South Asian Muslim politics, 1937-1958 Ahmad Y SAMAD Dr T Raychaudhuri
1991 PhD London, SOAS Poverty, growth and stagnation in north Indian agriculture: a comparative study in the political economy of poverty generation in western and eastern Uttar Pradash in the early 1970s Jean Diana SARGENT
1991 PhD CNAA, Leicester Poly Speech in Sri Lankan cleft palate subjects with delayed palatoplasty D A SELL
1991 DPhil Oxford, Wadham The biology of vitex (verbenaceae)in Sri Lanka Balangeda M P SINGHAKUMARA Dr C Huxley-Lambrick
1991 PhD London, King’s Nabob, historian and orientalist: the life and writing of Robert Orme (1728-1801) Asora SW TAMMITA-DELGODA Prof P J Marshall
1991 PhD London, LSE Donors, development and dependence: some lessons from Bangladesh, 1971-1986 Peter Graeme Rugge THOMSON Prof M Desai
1991 PhD East Anglia Errant males and the divided woman: melodrana and sexual difference in the Hindi social film of the 1950s Ravi VASUDEVAN
1991 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The uplift history of the Western Ghats in India Mike WIDDOWSON Dr K G Cox; Prof A S Goudie
1991 PhD Salford The causes and processes of rural-urban migration in 19th and early 20th century India: the case of Ratnagiri district G M YAMIN
1992 PhD East Anglia Models of household behaviour in subsistence agriculture: a case study of NWFP in Pakistan Farman ALI Prof A Parikh
1992 PhD London, King’s Nation-building and the nature of conflict in South Asia: a search for patterns in the use of force as a political instrument within and between the states of the region Syed Mahmud ALI
1992 PhD Aberdeen Aspects of Islamic revival and consciousness in Bangladesh, 1905 AC and 1975 AC A N M AMIN
1992 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Colonialism and the transformation of matriliny in Malabar, 1850-1940 G ARUNIMA Dr R S Chandavarkar
1992 LLD Edinburgh Dravidian studies Ronald ASHER
1992 PhD Kent The political implications of migration: a study of the British Sikh community S BALI Mr K Webb
1992 PhD Manchester A study of aspects of Indian theatre and its role: consideration and strategies for developing theatre in education in India S N BARHANPURKAR Dr Jackson
1992 PhD London^hUC The temples of the interface: a study of the relation between Buddhism and Hinduism at the Munnervaram temples, Sri Lanka Rohan Neil BASTIN
1992 PhD London, SOAS Poverty and power: survival strategies of the poorest in three villages of West Bengal, India Anthony BECK Dr R W Bradnock
1992 DPhil Oxford, St Anne’s The English East India Company and Hindu laws of property in Bengal, 1765-1801: appropriation and invention of tradition Nandini BHATTACHARYYA-PANDA Dr T Raychaudhuri
1992 MLitt Oxford, Magdalen South Asian women, midwives and the maternity system: the role of cultural differences in the creation of inequality Isobel M W BOWLER Dr R W Dingwall
1992 PhD London, LSE Agricultural pricing in developing countries: Pakistan 1960-1988 David Patrick COADY Prof N H Stern
1992 PhD St Andrews Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808), hydrographer to the East India Company and to the Admiralty, as publisher: a catalogue of books and charts. Andrew COOK Dr B P Lenman
1992 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Cross cultural conflict analysis: the “reality” of British victory in the second Anglo-Maratha War, 1803-1805 Randolf G S COOPER Dr G Johnson
1992 DPhil Sussex The determinants of private consumption and the impact of fiscal policy: a study of Sri Lanka Ginige A C DE SILVA Prof M T Sumner
1992 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Aspects of community participation among the slum dwellers in achieving housing in Bombay Vandana DESAI Dr M J Banks; Dr G C K Peach
1992 DPhil Sussex Biomass entitlements and rural poverty in India: a village study of crop residues in south Gujerat Priyamwada DESHINGKAR Dr M Greeley
1992 PhD Cambridge, Girton Indian thought, myth and folklore in the fiction of Rudyard Kipling and E M Forster C R DEVADAWSON Prof J B Beer
1992 PhD London, UC Residential location of low-income households in Hyderabad, India Pothuia Jonathan DHARMARAJ
1992 PhD London, UC Residential location of low-income households in Hyderabad, India J P DHARMARAT
1992 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Religion, identity and authority among the Satnamis in colonial central India S DUBE Dr R O’Hanlon
1992 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson College Continuity and recreation in the performing arts of India: a study of two artistic traditions Anne-Marie GASTON Mr B R Wilson
1992 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson The institutional politics of gender in development policy for rural development in Bangladesh A M M GOETZ Mr G P Hawthorn
1992 PhD CNAA, Central England The “Karnata Dravida” tradition: development of Indian temple architecture in Karnataka 7th to 13th centuries C A HARDY
1992 PhD Open State policy, liberalisation and the development of the Indian software industry Richard Brendan HEEKS
1992 DPhil Oxford Entreprenurial decline and the end of Empire: British business in India, 1919-1949 A-M HISRA
1992 PhD Cambridge, King’s Music of Northern Pakistan C E HUEHNS Dr R F Davis
1992 PhD London, SOAS Female migrants’ adaptation in Dhaka: a case study of the processes of urban socio-economic change Shahnaz HUQ-HUSSAIN Dr R W Bradnock
1992 PhD Bristol Hindu Muslim inter group relations in Bangladesh: a cognitive inter group analysis Mir R ISLAM Prof M R C Hewstone
1992 MLitt Cambridge, Christ’s Medical choice in an urban village: a study of Zamrudpur, Delhi R JALOTA
1992 MPhil London, Wye The economics of tea investments: an assessment of factors influencing the profitability of management and rehabilitation of tea establishments in Sri Lanka Jayakodi Arachchige Maikanthi JAYAKODY
1992 MPhil Liverpool The response of democratic governments to armed resistance: India, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Northern Ireland J KARUMBIAH
1992 PhD Leicester Plume-lithosphere interaction: petrology of Rajmahal continental flood basalts and associated lamproites, Northeast India Raymond William KENT
1992 PhD Nottingham Housing and landslides: a case study in Murree, Pakistan Amir Nawaz KHAN Prof J C Moughtin; Mr S Jalloh
1992 MPhil Bradford Investment in human capital in Pakistan M N KHAN
1992 PhD Strathclyde Foreign aid, domestic saving and economic growth in retrospect: the case of Pakistan (1960-1988) Naheed Zia KHAN Dr E Rahim
1992 PhD Strathclyde Settlement processes and strategy in metropolitan areas: policy options for improvements of slums in Pakistan Dost-Ali KHOWAJA A Ramsey
1992 PhD London, Wye Irrigation systems management under diversified cropping in Sri Lanka: a multiple objective economic assessment on performance of main-water management Hemesiri Bandara KOTAGAMA
1992 DPhil Oxford, St Cath’s A description of the trade in readers for children by Longmans to British India and by Thomas Nelson to the British West Indies (1900-1939)and an examination of the structure of motifs in the readers’ texts Wayne Barry KUBLALSINGH Dr T F Eagleton
1992 PhD Cambridge, Churchill College State power and the erosion of colonial authority in Uttar Pradesh, India, 1930-42 G KUDAISYA Prof D A Low
1992 PhD Cambridge The public career of G D Birla, 1911-1947 M Mlf G S KUDAISYA Prof D A Low
1992 PhD London, LSE An anthropological account of Islamic holy men in Bangladesh Samual Peter LANDELL-MILLS Dr A A F Gell
1992 PhD London, LSE Inequality, poverty and mobility: the experience of a north Indian village Peter Frederik LANJOUW Prof N Stern
1992 PhD Wales, Cardiff Planning education in small dispersed island states with particular reference to the Maldives Mohamed LATHEEF
1992 PhD London, LSE The demography of Indian famines: a historical perspective A MAHARATNA
1992 MPhil London, King’s The British in Bihar, 1757-81 Paramita MAHARATNA Prof P J Marshall
1992 MPhil London, King’s The establishment of British rule in Bihar, 1757-1981 Paraamita MAHARATNA Prof P J Marshall
1992 MPhil East Anglia Rural development in Pakistan: role and some effects of public sector Abrar Ahmad MALIK
1992 DPhil Sussex A study of rural poverty in Pakistan with special reference to agricultural price policy Shahnawaz MALIK Mr P Chaudhuri
1992 PhD Liverpool Prevalence and genetics of resistance of antimicrobial agents in faecal enterobacteriaceae from children in Bangladesh K Z MAMUM
1992 PhD Bradford Foreign joint ventures in Bangladesh: an empirical investigation of joint ventures in a less developed country between foreign multinational countries and local enterpirses: the case of Bangladesh G S MAOLA Prof P J Buckley
1992 DPhil Oxford, St Hilda’s Entreprenurial decline and the end of the Empire: British business in India, 1919-1949 Anna-Maria MISRA Dr T Raychaudhuri; Dr D R Tomlinson
1992 PhD London, Birkbeck Languages as identity symbols: an investigation into language attitudes and behaviour amongst second-generation South Asian schoolchildren in Britain including the special case of Hindi and Urdu M C MOBBS
1992 PhD Cambridge, Gonville From cattle to cane: the economic and social transformation of a Tarai village, North India R H MONTGOMERY Dr C Humphrey
1992 MPhil Leicester British newspaper coverage of Pakistan Ahmad MUKHTAR P Golding
1992 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Food Engel curves and equivalence scales in Sri Lanka M MURTHI
1992 PhD Glasgow The institution of cooperation, credit and the process of of development in the Indian and Pakistan Punjabs K MUSTAFA
1992 PhD CNAA, Huddersfield Hindu students in a further education college: an ethnographic enquiry P OLIVER
1992 DPhil Oxford , Hertford College Distress sales and exchange relations in a rural area of Rayalaseema Andhra Pradesh Wendy K OLSEN Mrs J U Heyer
1992 PhD Newcastle Vulnerability, seasonality and the public distribution system in western India: a micro-level study E A OUGHTON
1992 PhD Warwick Education and community in colonial Jallandhar, 1880-1935 Rajvinder S PAL Dr D A Washbrook
1992 PhD London, LSE Electricity demand and pricing in India, 1947-1986 Kirtida Vimai PARIKH Dr M S Morgan
1992 PhD London, Wye Micropropogation of the Sri Lankan anthurium cultivar “Crinkled Red” (Anthurium andreanum Lind) Sriyani Edussuriya PEIRIS
1992 MPhil CNAA, St John’s College, Nottingham The extended family in spouse selection: a critical study and theological evaluation of the patterns of Christian family life in India (especially in the churches of South India) P S C POTHAN
1992 PhD Sheffield A study of rainfall fluctuations in the homogeneous rainfall regimes in Sri Lanka M PUVANESWARAN
1992 PhD Stirling Studies of filter feeding carps of commerical importance in Bangladesh with particular emphasis on the use of automated counting methods S RAHMATULLAH
1992 PhD Strathclyde Solar radiation assessment in Pakistan I A RAJA
1992 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Forest policy in the Central Provinces, 1860-1914 Mahesh RANGARAJAN Dr T Raychaudhuri
1992 DPhil Oxford, Linacre College Ecophysiology of natural regeneration of “Abies pindrow” in the moist temperate forest of Pakistan RAZA-UL-HAQ Mr F B Thompson; Dr P S Savill
1992 PhD London, External Recent Christian-Hindu dialogue with reference to Christology Robert Arthur ROBINSON
1992 MPhil Newcastle upon Tyne Changing the attitudes of staff in a residential setting in India – a case study N ROTTON
1992 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam The effect of regular deworming on the growth, health and nutritional status of pre-school children in Bangladesh Emily Kate ROUSHAM Dr C G Mascie-Taylor
1992 PhD South Bank Effects of psycho-cultural factors on the socialization of British born Indian and indigenous British children living in England D SACHDEV
1992 PhD Birmingham An ecumenical ecclesiology: an historical and systemaic theological enquiry into the Church of North India D K SAHU
1992 PhD Reading A systems approach to the study of potential production of boro rice in the Haor region of Bangladesh M U SALAM
1992 PhD Aberdeen Farm level approaches to tree growing in agroforestry in Haryana, India P K SARDANA
1992 DPhil Oxford, Green Adoption and rejection of eucalyptus on farms in North-West India Naresh C SAXENA Dr B Harriss; Mr J E M Arnold
1992 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Women workers in the Bengal jute industry, 1890-1940: migration, motherhood and militancy S SEN Dr R S Chandabarkar
1992 PhD Cambridge^hTrinity Literary representation of national identity and the rhetoric of nationalism in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura R SETHI Mr T J L Cribb
1992 DPhil Sussex The determinants of private consumption and the impact of fiscal policy: a study of Sri Lanka G A C de SILVIA
1992 PhD Cambridge, Gonville A forest policy for Western India: the Dangs, 1800s-1920s A SKARIA Prof C A Bayly
1992 MPhil Birmingham The encounter between Christianity and Buddhism in Sri Lanka from the perspective of the Lausanne Movement S F SKUCE
1992 MPhil Birmingham The development of Gandhi’s moral and religious philosophy from 1888-1921 G E SMITH
1992 PhD Leicester The geology of the roof-zone of the Kohistan Batholith, Northwestern Pakistan Michael A SULLIVAN
1992 PhD Cambridge, Churchill The military and the state in colonial Punjab, 1900–1939 T Yong TAN Prof D A Low
1992 PhD London, SOAS Competing identities: the problem of what to wear in late colonial and contemporary India Emma Josephine TARLO
1992 DPhil Oxford, St John’s College Studies in English and European writing on India, 1600-1800 Kate ( Katherine S) TELTSCHER Prof J Carey; Mr J B Katz
1992 PhD London, LSE Health attitudes and personal health care decisions in Bombay, India Bayjool THAKKER Dr J E Stockdale
1992 PhD London, LSE Personal health care decisions in Bombay, India B THAKKER
1992 PhD East Anglia NGOs and rural development process in India: case studies from Rayalaseema V UMA
1992 PhD London, SOAS The personal pronouns and their related clitics in six Khasi dialects: a grammatical and sociolinguistic study B WAR
1992 PhD CNAA, North London Sir Walter Lawrence and India, 1879-1918 Catherine Mary WILSON Prof D Judd; Dr P Mercer
1993 PhD Open Women’s home-based income generation as a strategy towards poverty survival: dynamics of the “Khannawalli” (mealmaking)activity of Bombay D ABBOTT Mr A Thoms
1993 PhD Wales, Cardiff The role of communication in the rise of the Islamic movements in the Muslim world with special reference to Egypt, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey K ABU-ALKHAIR
1993 PhD Cambridge, Girton The People’s Party, the National Awami League and the political dynamics of federalism in Pakistan S J AHMED Mr G P Hawthorn
1993 PhD Dundee E M Forster at home and abroad: British and non-British elements in his fiction A AL-HOUT
1993 PhD Reading Farmer-extension worker interaction and upstream information transfer in the T V extension system in Bangladesh Md. Mozahar ALI Prof M J Rolls
1993 PhD London, Ext (LSHTM) Cultural influences on contraceptive behaviour in rural Bangaldesh A AL-SABIR J Simons
1993 PhD Bradford Agricultural credit for small farmers in Northern Pakistan: an analysis of access and productivity impact Shehla Nasreen AMJAD Dr Allan Low; Dr Behrooz Morvaridi
1993 PhD East Anglia Women’s experiences of a survival strategy: commoditisation of folk embroidery in Gujarat, India J B ANDHARIA
1993 PhD Liverpool Seaweed resources in Sri Lanka: culture of Gracilaria and intertidal surveys P ANNESTY JAYASURIYA
1993 PhD Sheffield A study of significant historic buildings in Lahore, leading towards the formulation of a national conservation policy for Pakistan M Y AWAN A Craven
1993 DPhil York The management of ethnic secessionist conflict with special reference to devolution of government: the external dimension and the big neighbour syndrome Abersinghe BANDARA Prof A Dunsire; Dr A Leftwich
1993 DPhil Oxford, Somerville A study of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement 1930-1947, North West Frontier Province, British India Mukulika BANERJEE Prof J Davis
1993 MPhil Eales, Cardiff A survey of the Pakistani Muslim community in Cardiff P G BATEMAN
1993 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Agrarian reforms and the politics of the Left in West Bengal D BHATTACHARYYA Mr G P Hawthorn
1993 PhD Leeds Salisbury at the India Office, 1866-67 and 1874-78 Paul R BRUMPTON Dr E D Steele
1993 PhD London, SOAS Contesting the resource: the politics of forest management in colonial Burma Raymond Leslie BRYANT
1993 PhD London, UC The incompatability between the the needs of low-income households and the perceptions and attitudes of architects and planners: a case study of Lahore, Pakistan Arif Qayyum BUTT
1993 PhD Kent Confidence building measures in South Asia Navnita CHADHA Prof A J R Groom
1993 DPhil Oxford The changing nature of the Indian hill station A CHATERJI
1993 MLitt Oxford, St Hilda’s The changing nature of the Indian Hill Station Aditi CHATTERJI Dr D I Scargill
1993 PhD Keele Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet”: historical approaches and Bakhtinian readings P CHILDS
1993 MPhil Sheffield Applicability of the CDS-ISIS package in the automation of University libraries with partciular reference to India S CHOWDHURY
1993 PhD London, SOAS Colonialism and cultural identity: the making of a Hindu discourse, Bengal, 1867-1905 Indira CHOWDHURY-SENGUPTA Prof D J Arnold
1993 MPhil London, SOAS The rhythmic organisation of North Indian classical music: tal, lay and laykari Martin Richard Lawson CLAYTON
1993 PhD London, SOAS From Bhakti to Buddhism: early Dalit literature and ideology Philip John CONSTABLE Prof D J Arnold
1993 PhD London The relevance and feasibility of community-based production of leaf concentrate as a supplement for pre-school children in Sri Lanka David Nicholas COX
1993 PhD Edinburgh Size isn’t everything: an anthropologist’s view of the cook, the potter, her engineer and his donor in appropriate technology development in Sri Lanka, Kenya and UK Emma CREWE Dr A Good; Dr M Noble
1993 PhD Essex An empirical study of technical and allocative efficiency of wheat farmers in the Indian village of Palanpur A CROPPENSTEDT
1993 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Privilege and policy: the indigenous elite and the colonial education system in Ceylon, 1869-1948 Lakshmi K DANIEL Dr T Raychaudhuri
1993 PhD REading Weed ecology studies in Sri Lanka: competition studies with maize, barley and oilseed rape N P DISSANAYAKER
1993 M.Phil Edinburgh A study of the indigenous contribution to Tamil Saiva bhakti C J EDEN
1993 PhD Lancaster Epic naratives inthe Hoysala temples: the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata Purana in Halebid, Belur and Amrtapura Kirsti Kaarina EVANS Dr David Smith
1993 PhD CNAA, Brighton Poly Sport and South Asian male youth S FLEMING
1993 PhD Manchester Intermarriage of Zoroastrian women in bombay H K FRASER
1993 PhD Brunel TV talk in a London Punjabi peer culture M GILLESPIE
1993 PhD Keele Occasions of grace: interpretations of truth in Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quartet” P A GLOVER
1993 PhD London, LSE The multiplicity of agencies promoting the health of refugees, with a case study of the Afghans in Pakistan, 1978-1989 Nancy GODFREY Prof B Abel-Smith
1993 PhD Open The Gujeratis of Bolton: the leaders and the led K G HAHLO
1993 PhD Loughborough Acquiring foreign language materials for Pakistani libraries: a study Syed Jalaluddin HAIDER Prof J P Feather
1993 Phil East Anglia The implications of tourism for the environment: a Maldives case study H HAMEED
1993 PhD London, SOAS Eurasians in British India, 1773-1833: the making of a reluctant community Christopher John HAWES Prof D J Arnold
1993 PhD Aberdeen Some aspects of the chemistry and mineralogy of soil magnesium in relation to Camellia growth on Sri Lankan acid tea soils L HETTIARACHCHI
1993 PhD Manchester Management control in public sector enterprises: a case study of budgeting in the jute industry of Bangladesh A K M Z HOQUE Prof T Hopper
1993 PhD Salford Rural accessibility and agricultural development in Bangladesh N A HUQ Dr R D Knowles
1993 PhD London, LSE Decentralized resource allocation in primary health care: formal methods and their application in Britain and Pakistan M ISHFAQ
1993 PhD Manchester Transnational corporations and economic development: a study of the Malaysian electronics industry M N ISMAIL
1993 PhD Edinburgh Rice marketing in Pakistan: the case for liberalisation ? Amanat Ali JALBANI
1993 DPhil York Language maintenance and bilingualism in Darbhanga Shailjanand JHA Dr C Verma
1993 PhD Cambridge Industrial concentration and performance: an empirical study of the structure, conduct and performance of Indian industry (1970-1985) U S KAMBHAMPATI
1993 PhD London A genetic analysis of diabetes mellitus in subjects of Indian origin Parminder Kaur KAMBO
1993 MPhil Strathclyde Famine and poliocy in the Central Provinces of India: the crises of 1896/97 and 1899/1900 Nicalas W KEYS Dr P S Collins
1993 PhD Kent Regional conflict in South Asia: the route to intractability in the Kashmir conflict, 1947-1990 A Robert KHAN Prof A J R Groom
1993 MPhil Wales, Bangor Wood production through agroforestry in Charsadda district, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan F S KHAN
1993 DPhil Oxford, St Hilda’s Indian Muslim perceptions of the West during the 18th century Gulfishan KHAN Dr I Malik
1993 PhD Wales, Bangor Ex-post cost benefit analysis of village woodlots of Gujarat, India J A KHAN
1993 PhD London, External The history of printing and publishing in Ceylon, with special reference to Sinhalese books, 1737-1912 Egodahettiarachchige Don Tilakapala KULARATNE
1993 MLitt Cambridge The security of new states, Pakistan and Singapore: a study in contrast and compulsion A UL I LATIF
1993 MLitt Glasgow The imperial eye: perceptions in British photography (1850-1870)of India and the Near East Alison J LINDSAY Dr C A Wilson
1993 DPhil Oxford, Somerville The role of culture in India’s international relations V MANI
1993 PhD London, SOAS Caring women: power and ritual in Gujerati households in East London Merryle Ann McDONALD Dr N Lindisfarne
1993 PhD Cambridge Governance and resistance in north Indian towns, c.1860-1900 Patrick M McGINN Prof C A Bayly
1993 PhD City Gamaka and Alamkara: concepts of vocal ornamentation with reference to Bara Khayal S M McINTOCH
1993 PhD Aston Management role in employee participation: a comparative study of multination enterprisei n India and the UK Santrupt MISRA Dr R Lumley
1993 PhD Aston Management role in employee participation: a comparative study of multinational enterprises in India and the UK Santrupt MISRA Dr R Lumley
1993 PhD London, LSE Inside and outside: conceptual continuities from household to region in Kumaon, North India Joanne MOLLER Dr C Fuller
1993 MPhil Loughborough Performance of concrete buried pipe distribution systems of surface irrigation under farm manager’s management in Tangail, Bangladesh Mohammed Abdul Karim MRIDHA Mr I K Smout
1993 PhD London, Wye The economic evaluation of agricultural research in Sri Lanka Jeyaluxmy NADARAJAH
1993 PhD Cambridge, St Edmund’s Co-option and control: the role of the colonial army in India, 1918-47 Namrata NARAIN Dr R S Chandavarkar
1993 PhD London, LSE Kinship, marriage and womanhood among the Nakarattars of South India Yuko NISHIMURA Dr C Fuller
1993 PhD Guildhall The determinants of direct overseas investment from Singapore Samual Bassey OKPOSEN M Cowen
1993 PhD Hull British policy and Chinese policy in Malaya, 1942-1955 HAK CHING OONG C J Christie
1993 PhD London, LSE Making hierarchy natural: the cultural construction of gender and maturity in Kerala, India Caroline OSELLA Dr C Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1993 PhD London, LSE Caste, class, power and social mobility in Kerala, India Filippo OSELLA Dr C Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1993 DPhil Oxford, Christ Church The confusions of an imperialist inheritance: the Labour Party and the Indian problem, 1940-1947 Nicholas J OWEN Dr J G Darwin
1993 DPhil York Imperialism, insularity and identity: the novels of Paul Scott G Martin PATERSON Mr Landig White
1993 PhD London, UC Effects of land use policies on land prices in middle income housing, Hyderabad, India Padmavathi PERVAR
1993 PhD London, UC Sir Leonard Rogers F.R.S. (1868-1962): tropical medicine in the Indian Medical Service Helen Joy POWER Prof WF Bynum
1993 DPhil Oxford, Campion Hall Satnamis: the changing status of a scheduled caste in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradash Gnana PRAKASAM Dr N J Allen
1993 MPhil Wales, Aberystwyth The career of Robert, first baron Clive (1725-1764) with special reference to his administrative and political career David Livett PRIOR Prof P D G Thomas
1993 PhD London, QMW Belonging and not belonging: understanding India in novels by Paul Scott, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and V S Naipaul Janet Mariana PUGH
1993 PhD Newcastle upon Tyne Coping strategies of domestic workers: a study of three settlements in Delhi metropolitan region, India P RAGHURAM Dr J D Jones
1993 MPhil Leicester Conceptions of health and health care among two generations of Gujerati-speaking Hindu women in Leicester V RAJA
1993 PhD London, LSE The political economy of agrarian policies in Kerala: a study of state intervention in agricultural commodity markets with particular reference to dairy pmarkets Velayudhan RAJAGOPALAN Prof T J Nossiter
1993 PhD Hull Religion, politics and the secular state in India after independence C S RANGANATHAN
1993 PhD London, LSE Construction of female gender in rural north India Deborah Edith RUTTER Dr J P Parry
1993 MPhil Newcastle-upon-Tyne Modelling growth of rainfed and irrigated sugarcane in the dryzone of Sri Lanka K SANMUGANATHAN
1993 PhD Hull Tribes, politics and social change in India: a case study iof the Mullukurumbas of the Nilgiri Hills S SATHIANATHAN
1993 PhD Keele The sources and supply of basic foods in Dhaka City Sayeed SAYEED
1993 PhD London, SOAS Pollution theory and Harijan strategies among south Indian Tamils Yasumasa SEKINE
1993 PhD London, Inst Comm The linkages between Pakistan’s domestic policies and its foreign policy, 1971-1991 Mehtab-Ali SHAH Dr P H Lyon
1993 PhD UEA Various approaches to the measurement of inefficiency in Pakistani agriculture: an empirical investigation M K SHAR
1993 PhD London, SOAS Consumer protection law in India: a socio-legal study Gurjeet SINGH
1993 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Quarternary alluvial sedimentology in Bihar, India Rajeev SINHA Dr P F Friend
1993 PhD Cambridge, King’s On religion and renunciation: the case of the Raikas of western Rajahastan Vinay Kumar SRIVASTAVA Dr C Humphrey
1993 PhD Leicester The empire aggrandized, a study in commemorative portrait statuary exported from Britain to her colonies in South Asia, 1800-1939 M A STEGGIES
1993 MPhil Warwick South Asians and employment in Great Britain with particular reference to agriculture R H G SUGGETT
1993 OhD London, SOAS Peasant agriculture and tenancy in Orissa (India): a study of three villages at different levels of development, with special reference to share tenancy M SWAIN
1993 PhD Warwick The politics of homeland: a study of ethnic linkages and political mobilisation amongst Sikhs in Britain and North America D S TALLA
1993 PhD Edinburgh Lakshmi in the market place: traders and farmers in a north Indian market M S TOMAR Dr P M Jeffrey; Dr R Jeffrey
1993 PhD Hull Nagas in the museum: an anthropological study of the material cculture of the Hill People of the Assam-Burnma border Andrew OChristopher WEST Mr L G Hill
1993 PhD London, SOAS The politics of moderation: Britain and the Indian Liberal Party, 1917-1923 Philip Graham WOODS Prof D J Arnold
1993 PhD Leeds Afghanistan in the defence of India, 1903-1915 Christopher Mark WYATT Dr K M Wilson
1993 PhD Exeter The correlates of contraceptive and fertility behaviour withon the framework of sociocultural ideology: a case study of two urban centres of Pakistan M I ZAFAR
1994 PhD Glasgow The non-compliant behaviour of the small states of South Asia: Nepal and Bangladesh in relation to India S AFROZE
1994 MPhil Lancaster The status of women and fertility: a case study of Pakistani women in Rochdale Salma AHMAD Dr Suzette Heald; Dr Sarah Franklin
1994 PhD London, UC The hydrogeology of the Dupi Tila sands acquifer of the Barind tract, NA Bangladesh Kazi Matin Uddin AHMED Dr W G Burgess
1994 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson Behavioural ecology of the Hoolock gibbon (Hylobates Hoolock)in Bangladesh M F AHSAN Dr D J Chivers
1994 PhD Cambridge, King’s Violence and the state in the partition of Punjab, 1947-48 Swarna AIYAR Prof D A Low
1994 PhD Manchester Taxation and economic development in Bangladesh with special reference to indirect taxation Sofia H J ALI Ms W Olsen
1994 PhD Salford Environmental assessment for wetlands management in Sri Lanka M D AMARASINGHE
1994 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Residential land price changes in selected peripheral colonies of Lucknow City, India, 1970-1990 F AMITABH Dr S E Corbridge
1994 PhD Cranfield, Silsoe Mechanisation of grain harvesting in Pakistan Nadeem AMJAD
1994 PhD London, SOAS Women’s consciousness and assertion in colonial India: gender, social reform and politics in Maharashtra, c.1870-c.1920 P ANAGOL-McGINN
1994 PhD London, SOAS Women’s consciousness and assertion in colonial India: gender, social reform and politics in Maharashtra, c.1870-1920 Padma ANAGOL-McGINNnagol Prof D J Arnold
1994 PhD Strathclyde Tourism in developing countries: a case study of Pakistan M I ANWAR
1994 PhD Bradford The understanding of truth and the human person in Gandhi’s thought C ARBER
1994 PhD Leicester Mineralogy, geochemistry and stable isotope studies of the ultramafic rocks from the Swat Valley ophiolite, North Western Pakistan: implications for the genesis of emerald and nickeliferous opaque phases Mohammad ARIF
1994 PhD Edinburgh The understanding of pastoral care and counselling in the Church of South India, with special reference to the work of the Christian Counselling Centre, Velore Nalini ARLES Prof A F Walls; Dr D Lyall
1994 PhD Birmingham Bangladeshi community organisations in East London: a case study analysis M A ASGHAR
1994 PhD London, SOAS Naqshbandi Sufis in a western setting A T ATAY
1994 PhD London, LSHTM Cost effectiveness of anti-malaria activities in Sri Lanka A M G G N K ATTANAYAKE
1994 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Is education beneficial ? A microeconomic analysis of the impact of education on the economic welfare of a developing country, Sri Lanka D H C ATURUPANE Dr P B Seabright
1994 PhD Leicester The Koga feldspathoidal syenite, North Western Pakistan: mineralogy and industrial applications Iftikar Hussain BALOCH
1994 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Workers’ politics in Bengal, 1890-1929: mill-towns, strikes and nationalist agitations Subho BASU Dr R S Chandavarkar
1994 BLitt Oxford, Lady Margaret The famine of 1899-1900 and the government of India M BHABA
1994 PhD Essex A comparative sociolinguistic study of urban and rural Sindhi M Q BUGHIO
1994 PhD Southampton India, Sri Lanka and the Tamil crisis, 1976-1990 A J BULLION
1994 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Fluvial landforms and sediments in the North-Central Gangetic plain, India S CHANDRA Dr K S Richards
1994 PhD London, LSE Legislators in India: a comparison of MLAs in five states Virender Kumar CHOPRA Prof T J Nossiter
1994 PhD London, King’s The development of Singapore land law as influenced by English and Australian law Panicker Alice CHRISTUDASON
1994 PhD Cambridge, King’s Urban texts: an interpretation of the architectural, textual and artefactual records of a Sri Lankan early historic city R A E CONINGHAM Dr F R Allchin
1994 PhD Kent Indias of the mind: the construction of post-colonial identity in Salman Rushdie’s fiction C P CUNDY
1994 MLitt Bristol British Baptist missionary activity in Orissa, 1822-1914 P K DAS
1994 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s The making of a Jat identity in the Southeast Punjab circa 1880-1936 Monica DATTA Prof C A Bayly
1994 MPhil Wales, Cardiff An evaluation of the attractiveness to Apia cerana F. of the honeybee flora growing in the Dhaka region of Bangladesh and the socio-economic value of these plants to the local community R J DAY
1994 DPhil Oxford, New Indian industry 1950-1990: growth, demand and productivity Ranu DAYAL
1994 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson Technical change and efficiency in Sri Lanka’s manufacturing sector Sonali D P DERANIYAGALA Mrs F J Stewart
1994 PhD Edinburgh Energy resources and the role of mini and micro hydro power in Northern India Alison DOIG
1994 PhD London, Wye Reaching the poor ? The identification and assessment of rural poverty by a non-governmental organisation (NGO)in Gujerat, India Talib Baahadurail Karmali ESMAIL
1994 PhD London, LSE Defence industrialization in the NICs: case studies from Brazil and India Carol Vervain EVANS
1994 PhD London Dying: death and bereavement in a British Hindu community Shirley Jean FIRTH
1994 MPhil Bristol Pakistan: a power in central Asia N GHUFRAN Dr V Hewitt
1994 PhD Hull Construction of the European Union: implications for the developing countries: case study of India D K GIRI
1994 PhD London Sufism and its development inthe Panjab Shuja Ul HAQ
1994 PhD Aberdeen Export performance and marketing strategy for Malaysian palm oil A HASHIM
1994 PhD Bradford Microenterprises in Pakistan: an efficiency and performance analysis of manufacturing microenterprises in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan Syed Amjad Farid HASNU Mr Michael Yaffey
1994 PhD Birmingham The quest of Ajneya: a theological appraisal of the search for meaning in his three Hindi novels R H HOOKER
1994 PhD Newcastle Mechanisation of wheat production in Bangladesh based on a growth modelling approach A H M S HOSSAIN
1994 PhD Newcastle Some factors affecting the performance of draught buffaloes in wetland rice cultivation in Sri Lanka S M HULANGAMUWA
1994 PhD Edinburgh The scented garden in Deccani Muslim literature S A A HUSAIN
1994 PhD Durham Rural-urban integration in Bangladesh: a study of linkages between villages and small urban centres M N ISLAM Dr P J Atkins
1994 PhD Nottingham Standards of safety in the underground coal mining industry of Pakistan K G JADOON
1994 PhD Bradford Trade liberalization and performance: the impact of trade reform on manufacturing sector performance: Sri Lanka, 1977-89 Kangesu JAYANTHAKUMARAN Prof C Kirkpatrick; Mr Michael Yaffey
1994 PhD Reading Changing patterns ofinformal and formal finance in a Rajasthan village J Howard M JONES Mr A Harrison
1994 PhD London, SOAS Polygamy and purdah in the royal households of Rajastan – 13th-19th centuries Varsha JOSHI Prof D J Arnold
1994 MPhil Oxford, St Cath’s Sustainability of public debt: an application to India Alka KACKER Dr E V K Fitzgerald
1994 PhD Reading Comparison of extension provision for the smallholder and estate tea sectors in Sri Lanka H R K K KARUNADASA Dr C J Garforth
1994 PhD Glasgow Factor price distortions, underutilisation of capacity and employment in the large-scale manufacturing sector of Pakistan R KAUSER
1994 PhD London, SOAS Missionaries: the Hindu state and British paramountcy in Travancore and Cochin, 1858-1936 Koji KAWASHIMA Prof D J Arnold
1994 MPhil Strathclyde Famine and famine policy in the central provinces of India: the crises of 1896-7 and 1899-1900 N W KEYS
1994 PhD Wales, Lampeter Indian Muslims in the political process O KHALIDI
1994 PhD Strathclyde Poverty, uneven development, urbanisation and economic planning policies in Pakistan: a case study of Peshawar, North West Frontier Province Assmatullah KHAN Prof U Wannop
1994 PhD Strathclyde Interlinkages between land-lease and credit markets: impact on the introduction of modern technology in the North West Frontier Province (Pakistan) H KHAN
1994 PhD Lancaster Saiva priests of Tamil Nadu G LAZAR
1994 PhD London Fertility transition in Malaysia: an analysis by state and ethnic group R LEETE
1994 PhD London, Inst Ed A comparative study of educational disadvantage in India within the Anglo-Indian community: a historical and contemporary analysis Antoinette Iris Grace LOBO Mr C Jones
1994 PhD London, SOAS The transformation of colonial perceptions into legal norms: legislating for crime and punishment in Bengal, 1790s to 1820s Shahdeen MALIK
1994 PhD Central England Housing finance in developing countries: a case study of Lahore, Pakistan T H MALIK
1994 PhD Open Thermal comfort for urban housing in Bangladesh F H MALLICK
1994 PhD London, Bedford Consciousness and the actors: a re-assessment of Western and Indian approaches to the actor’s emotional involvement from the perspective of Vedic psychology Daniel MEYER-DINKGRAFE
1994 DPhil Sussex The comprehensive crop insurance scheme in India, 1985-1991: a study of its working with special reference to Gujerat Pramod K MISHRA Prof M Lipton
1994 PhD London, SOAS From patriarchy to gender equity: family law and its impact on women in Bangladesh Taslima MONSOOR
1994 DPhil Sussex Re-reading the Raj: narrative and power in British fictions of India P G MOREY
1994 PhD Reading An effective communication model for the acceptance of new agricultural technology by farmers in the Punjab, Pakistan Sher MUHAMMAD Dr C J Garforth
1994 DPhil Sussex Brother, there are only two Jatis – men and women: the construction of gender identity, women, the state and personal laws in India M MUKHOPADHYAY
1994 PhD London, LSHTM Visceral leishmaniasis vectors in Pakistan Mohammad Arif MUNIR
1994 PhD Leeds Ramayana and Mahabharata: contemporary theatrical experiments in English with Indic oral traditions of storytelling V NAIDU
1994 PhD Durham Rural-urban interaction in Bangladesh: a study of linkages between villagers and small urban centres M N I NAZERN
1994 PhD Queen’s, Belfast Rukmini Devi and the Bharata Natyam – the revival of classical dance in India K OHTANI
1994 PhD London, SOAS Bauls of West Bengal: with special reference to Raj Khyapa and his followers Jeanne OPENSHAW Dr A Cantlie
1994 DPhil Sussex Agrarian structure, new technology and labour absorption in Indian agriculture: an empirical investigation of Gujerat Kirankumar Manubhai PANDYA
1994 PhD London Gender, discipleship and charismatic authority in the Rajneesh movement Marie Elizabeth PUTTICK
1994 PhD Durham Social change and fertility transition in Sri Lanka P PUVANARAJAN Prof J I Clarke; Mr A R Townsend
1994 PhD London, LSHTM Epidemiology of visceral leishmaniasis in northern areas of Pakistan with particular reference to the reservoir(s) Mohammed Abdur RAB
1994 PhD Brunel Management education and development strategies in Bangladesh A S M M RAHMAN
1994 PhD Wales, Swansea Decentralisation and rural society in Bangladesh: a study of bureaucratic restraints on access in the UPAZILA structure Mohammed Halibur RAHMAN Dr C Gerry
1994 DPhil Oxford, Worcester India and the north-south politics of global environmental issues: the case of ozone depletion, climate change and loss of biodiversity Mukund G RAJAN Dr A J Hurrell
1994 PhD Kent Causal factors and transmission mechanisms of inflationary impulses in Sri Lanka, 1970-1989 Purnima RAJAPAKSE Prof Thirlwall
1994 MPhil London, SOAS Remembering Burma: Tamil migrants and memories Audrey Beatrice Stephanie RAMAMURTHY Dr N Lindisfarne
1994 PhD Reading The analysis of farmer information systems for feeding dairy cattle in two villages of Kerala State, India S N RAMKUMAR
1994 PhD City Perception-production in relation to fronting of velars in Hindi and Marati speaking children M E RAO
1994 PhD London, UC Socio-economic status, channels of recruitment and the rural to urban migration of labour: a case study of the squatter settlements of Delhi, India Himmat Singh RATNOO
1994 PhD London, UC Haemoglobin disorders among the tribal population of Madhya Pradesh, India P H REDDY
1994 PhD Cambridge, Sidney Mohajir subnationalism and the Mohajir Qaumi Movement in Sindh Province, Pakistan J J RICHARDS Dr S Corbridge
1994 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Conversion and catholicism in Southern Goa, India R T ROBINSON Dr C Humphrey
1994 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Rural labour arrangements in West Bengal, India Benjamin N ROGALY Dr B Harriss
1994 PhD Cambridge, St John’s The politics of fiscal policy: some reflections on fiscal policy and state intervention in developing economies with special reference to India R ROY
1994 PhD Reading The taxonomy and ecology of the genus Licuala (Palmae)in Malaya L G SAW
1994 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Politics in Orissa, 1900-1956: regional identity and popular movements Jayanta SENGUPTA Dr R S Chandavarkar
1994 MPhil Newcastle Public participation in the Malaysian structure plan system practice, response and impact studies K SHAMSUDIN
1994 PhD Aberdeen Attitudes of tribal people towards social forestry with reference to Madhya Pradesh, India A SHUKLA
1994 PhD Manchester Decentralisation, participation and rural development in Bangladesh: an analysis pf the Upazila system N A SIDDIQUEE Dr D Hulme
1994 PhD Bradford The political economy of agricultural change in India Kalim U SIDDIQUI Dr Carolyn Dennis; Dr Behrooz Morvaridi
1994 PhD Leicester Electoral campaigns and the media: the coverage of India’s 1991 general election in the Indian and the British press Balwinder SINGH Ms O Linne
1994 DPhil York Case and agreement in Hindi: a GB approach Joga SINGH Mr M K Verma
1994 PhD Manchester Historical relations: representing collective identities. Small group portraiture in eighteenth-century England, British India and America K S STANWORTH
1994 PhD London, SOAS The symbolic construction of the Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil community in Britain D A TAYLOR
1994 PhD Leeds The development of the Bangladesh jute industry since 1971 F TERKELSEN
1994 PhD Reading Exploring media non-professionals’ participation in access television: towards a participatory production model for development broadcasting in India Korula VARGHESE Dr P Norrish
1994 PhD London, Goldsmiths’ What the neighbours say: gender and power in two low-income settlemets in Madras Penny VERA-SANSO Prof P Caplan
1994 PhD Queen’s, Belfast Creation in Santal tribal religion and Christian faith: a study in comparative religion W WALKER
1994 PhD Manchester Growth and adjustment after trade liberalisation: Sri Lanka, 1977-1992 D N WEERAKOON
1994 PhD London, UC The management of official records in Sri Lanka and its impact on public administration Sarath Sisira Kumara WICKRAMANAYAKA
1994 PhD REading The solubility of rice straw silica and its use as a silicon source in paddy cultivation D E WICKRAMASINGHE
1994 PhD London Effect of climatic factors on the growth of tea (“Camellia sinensis”)in the low country wet zone of Sri Lanka Madawala Arachchillage WIJERATNE
1994 PhD Leeds Young British Hindu women’s interpretation of the images of womenhood in Hinduism S M WILKINSON
1994 PhD Bradford Interlocking directorates in Hong Kong business organizations: a longitudinal study of their changing patterns G Y-Y WONG
1994 PhD London, SOAS Mission-conversion-dialogue: the process of Christianization of the Richi in south-West Bangladesh Cosimo ZENE Dr A Cantlie
1995 PhD London, King’s The implications of the Falklands War for the defence of India’s island territories Biju ABRAHAM Prof G Till
1995 PhD Exeter An investigation into programme factors and providers and providers’ perceptions of family welfare centres in Faisalabad district of Pakistan A AHMAD
1995 PhD Exeter An initiative into programme factors and providers’ perceptions at family welfare centres in Faisalbad district of Pakistan Ashfaq AHMED
1995 PhD Wales, Cardiff Aspects of influence over accounting and accounting for currency devaluation in Bangladesh J AHMED
1995 PhD Birmingham Social relations and migration: a study of post-war migration with particular reference to migration from Bangladesh to Britain F ALAM
1995 PhD Hull Keralites in Abu Dhabi: a study of skilled and unskilled Keralite migrant workers in the city of Abu Dhabi S A S ALKOBAISI
1995 PhD Reading The effect of a prolonged release formulation of bovine somatotropin (sometribove)on milk production of Bos Taurus and dairy crossbred cows in Malaysia A AZIZAN
1995 PhD Stirling Scholarly publishing in Malaysia: a study of marketing environment and influences on readership behaviour Firdaus Ahmad AZZAM
1995 PhD Strathclyde The role of the private sector in the provision of sites and services schemes for low income groups: a case study of Lahore, Pakistan Ihsan-Ullah BAJWA P Green
1995 PhD Open Crustal evolution and metamorphism in the high-grade terrain of South India J M BARTLETT
1995 PhD Lancaster A study of continuity within the Ramakrishna Math and Mission with reference to the practice of seva, service to humanity G T BECKERLEGGE
1995 MPhil Wales Population planning and its effect upon the development of agricultural policies in India since 1947 Austin BICKERS
1995 PhD London, SOAS An Indian cloth painting and its art worlds: perceptions of Orissan “patta” paintings Helle BUNDGAARD Dr C Pinney
1995 PhD London, LSE Gender, exchange and person in a fishing community in Kerala, South India Cecilia Jane BUSBY Dr Henrietta Moore
1995 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Britain, India and the genesis of the Colombo Plan, 1945-51 Philip J CHARRIER Prof D A Low
1995 MPhil Warwick Such a long journey: the Anglo-Indian literary tradition: a study in duality Mithu CHATTOPADHYAY
1995 DPhil Oxford, Somerville Orientalist themes and English verse in nineteenth century India Rosinka CHAUDHURI Dr R Young
1995 MPhil London, King’s College So peculiarly formed a corps: the beginnings of Gorkha service with the British A P (Jim) COLEMAN Prof B J Bond
1995 PhD London The elites of the Maldives: sociopolitical organisation and change Elizabeth Overton COLTON
1995 PhD Cambridge, Gonville Origins, development and organisation of national Antarctic programmes with special reference to the United Kingdom and India A DEY-NUTTALL
1995 PhD London The control of Callosobruchus maculatus (Fab.)in cowpeas in Sri Lanka: effect of varietal resistance, conventional insecticides and locally available bontanicals C M D DHARMASENA
1995 PhD London, SOAS The Gujerati lyrics of Kavi Dayarambhai R M J DWYER
1995 PhD Edinburgh Community health care the NGO way: an anthropological study of a maternal-child health and family planning programme in rural Bangladesh R V EBDON Dr A Good; Dr M C Jedrej
1995 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Co-option and exclusion: a study of Indian MPs Paul C R FLATHER Dr A F Heath
1995 PhD Strathclyde Solar based technology for crop drying in rural Pakistan Mohammad GHAFFAR Dr G Zawdie
1995 PhD Cambridge, St Edmund’s The enforcement of the zini ordinance by the Federal Shariat Court in the period 1980-1990 and its impact on women E GIUNCHI Dr B F Musallam
1995 PhD London, SOAS Popular resistance to Zamindari oppression in the Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, 1920-1960 Kusum GOPAL Prof D J Arnold
1995 PhD London, SOAS Geology in India, 1770-1851: a study in the methods and motivations of a colonial science Andrew GROUT Dr P G Robb
1995 PhD London Carbon dioxide abatement in an empirical model of the Indian economy: an integration of micro and macro analysis S GUPTA
1995 DPhil Oxford The Kishangarh school of painting, c 1680-1850 N N HAIDAR
1995 PhD Cambridge, King’s The implications of resettlement on Vasava identity: a study of a community displaced by the Sardar Sarovar (Narmada)Dam project R P HAKIM Mr G P Hawthorn
1995 PhD Keele Dimensions and types of Malay family interaction in Malaysia: a humanistic approach L M H HARUN
1995 PhD London, LSE Management practices and business development in Pakistan, 1950-1988 Naveed HASAN Dr G M Austin
1995 PhD London, Wye Factors influencing post-harvest longevity of embul bananas K S HEWAGE
1995 PhD Durham Singapore’s experience in ASEAN: the nature of trade and inward investment M A HILEY Dr R J A Wilson
1995 PhD East London Women’s right to divorce in rural Bangladesh Naima HUQ Mr J Roche; Dr J Cooper; Dr J Eade
1995 MPhil Wales, Lampeter Resistance, reformation and rejection: modernity and tradition in ninteenth century Hinduism S B JACOBS
1995 PhD London, LSHTM Gynaecological and mental health of low-income urban women in India Surinda Kaur Parmar JASWAL
1995 PhD Edinburgh Estate Tamil: a morphosyntactic study Nagita KADRURGAMUWE
1995 PhD Leeds Provision of corporate financial information in Bangladesh A K M Waresul KARIM Prof P Moizer; Ms H Short
1995 PhD East London Changing responses to child labour: the case of female children in the Bangladesh garment industry Sumaiya KHAIR Dr H Lim; Prof M Freeman
1995 PhD London, Imperial Inclincations towards enterprise – a typology of poor, enterprising and non-enterprising women in India U E KRAUS-HARPER
1995 PhD London, SOAS Metropolitan encounters: a study of Indian students in Britain, 1880-1930 Shompa LAHIRI Dr P G Robb
1995 PhD Exeter How to measure default risk: an empirical study on India’s operations in the loan and bond markets Geeta LAKSHMI Mr J Matatko; B Pearson
1995 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Financial development, economic growth and the effect of financial innovation on the demand for money in an open economy: an econometric analysis for Singapore Lamin LEIGH Dr J Muellbauer; Prof D F Hendry
1995 PhD Kent Structured dependency: lone mothers and social security in Hong Kong L C LEUNG
1995 PhD London, RHBNC Sufism, sufi leadership and modernisation in South Asia since c.1800 Claudia LIEBESKIND Prof F R C Robinson
1995 PhD Wales, Swansea Planning for the participation of vulnerable groups in communal management of forest resources: the case of the Western Ghats forestry projects Catherine LOCKE Prof Alan Rew
1995 PhD Wales, Cardiff Aspects of urban design with special reference to image and identity in built form – case study of Kuala Lumpur B S MAHBOB
1995 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Pakistan’s foreign policy, 1971-1981: the search for security Niloufer Q MAHDI Dr G Rizvi
1995 DPhil Oxford, St Peter’s Impact of highland-lowland interaction on agriculture in the Hunza Valley: the socio-economic transformation of mountain societies Arif MAHMUD Prof G C K Peach
1995 DPhil Oxford, Oriel Contractual arrangements in Pakistani agriculture : a study of share tenancy in Sindh Nomaan MAJID Dr B Harriss
1995 MD Manchester Maternal and environmental factors and the development of Pakistani children (6-18 months) S MAQBOOL
1995 PhD Nottingham Resource partitioning and productivity of perennial pigeonpea/groundnut agroforestry systems in India F M MARSHALL
1995 PhD Essex Social factors shaping fertility behaviour in Pakistan Rukhsana MASOOD Dr Joan Busfield; Mr? Sullivan
1995 PhD Kent Toward an integral ecotheology relevant for India MATHEW
1995 PhD Edinburgh Alexander Duff and the theological and philosophical background to the General Assembly’s mission in Calcutta to 1840 Ian Douglas MAXWELL Prof A F Walls; Dr A C Ross
1995 PhD London, SOAS Tibet and the British Raj, 1904-47: the influence of the Indian political department officers Alexander Colin McKAY Dr P G Robb
1995 PhD Cambridge, New Hall The politics of nationalism: the cast of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh A A MOHSIN Mr G P Hawthorn
1995 PhD Leicester Media, state and political violence: the press construction of terrorism in the Indian Pubjab Vipul MUDGAL Anders Hansen
1995 PhD Leicester Media, state and political violence: the press construction of terrorism in the Indian Punjab Vipul MUDGAL
1995 PhD Manchester An analysis of factors affecting farmers’ participation in two rice irrigation schemes in Sri Lanka S H MUDIYANSELAGE
1995 PhD Edinburgh Evolution of the early Himalayan Foreland Basin in North West India and its relationship to orogenesis Y M R NAJMAN
1995 PhD Lancaster The Mills and Boon memsahibs: women’s romantic Indian fiction, 1877-1947 Dominic OMISSI Prof J M MacKenzie
1995 PhD Surrey Consumption, fiscal policy and endogenous growth: the case of India I PATNAIK
1995 PhD Durham A theological reappraisal of the mission of the Christian church in Tamilnadu in the light of the challenge presented by the Dravida Kazhagam Movement (a secular humanistic)movement R PAULRAJ
1995 PhD Bradford A cointegration analysis of money demand in a developing country: a case study of Pakistan A QAYYUM
1995 PhD Edinburgh A comparative study of native and Pakistani geology research articles Mujib RAHMAN
1995 PhD Newcastle Eco-engineering prtactices in Malaysia N RAHMAN
1995 PhD Edinburgh Activating vs. resetting functional categories in second language acquisition: the acquisition of AGR and TNS in English by Sinhalese first language speakers Hemamala Vajira RATWATTE
1995 PhD Edinburgh George Orwell, the BBC and India: a critical study Abha S RODRIGUES Mr G D Carnell; Dr R C Craig
1995 PhD London, LSE Socio-cultural changes in an Indian peasant society Arild Engelsen RUUD Dr J Harries
1995 PhD London, UC Public transport in Kuala Lumpur: a model based approach A F SADULLAH
1995 MPhil Loughborough The macroeconomic impact of foreign capital inflows: a case study of Pakistan T SAEED
1995 PhD Strathclyde The lessons from privatization experience for privatization in Pakistan: from public sector enterprises to monopolistic utilities Mushtaq A SAJID
1995 PhD Leicester Mineralogy, geochemistry and possible industrial applications of illite-smectite rich clays from Karak, Northwestern Pakistan Akhtar Ali SALEEMI
1995 PhD Stirling Small enterprise development in Bangladesh: a study of the nature and effectiveness of support services J H SARDER
1995 PhD Cambridge Histological techniques for estimating age at death from human bone:an Indian case study A SAXENA
1995 MPhil Newcastle An analysis of prices and marketing margins for potatoes and onions in Pakistan S SHAH
1995 MPhil Leeds The development of an environmentally sensitive information system in the water industry in Bangladesh Mohammad Taslim Uddin SHARIF Prof T Moizer
1995 PhD Open A comparative study of Milton Keynes (UK)and Islamabad (Pakistan) M I H SIDDIQI Mr R Thomas; Mr J B Harison
1995 PhD Newcastle The reproductive biology and histology of three species of sceractinian corals from the Republic of Maldives, India Ocean C J SIER
1995 PhD Wales, Bangor Economic evaluation of agroforestry, forestry and agriculture projects in Orissa, India: with particular reference to financial profitability and basic needs fulfilment Jitendra Prasad SINGH Mr T H Thomas
1995 DPhil Oxford, Linacre The impact of migration, environment and economic conditions on the biological growth and physique of Sikhs Lakhwinder P SINGH Prof G A Harrison
1995 PhD London, Inst Ed Design and standardisation of a developmental test for Indian children: the Indian picture puzzle test R SINGHANIA
1995 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The stylistic development of the sculpture of Kashmir John E C SIUDMAK Mr G J S Sanderson
1995 MPhil London, LSE Auctioning the dreams: economy, community and philanthropy in a North Indian city Roger Graham SMEDLEY Dr C Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1995 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The stylistic development of the sculpture of Kashmir J E C SUIDMAK
1995 PhD Lancaster I see all the gods in your body: a study of religious doctrine in the Mahabharata N SUTTON
1995 PhD Sussex Utilisation of industrial R & D findings in Malaysia: a case study of selected public research institutions, universities and industry K THIRUCHELVAM
1995 PhD Middlesex A regional power : United States policy in the Indian Ocean and the definition of national security, 1978-1980 Paul TODD T Putnam; Prof F Halliday
1995 PhD London, LSE Sacred grove (kaavu): ancestral land of “landless agricultural labourers” in Kerala, India Yasushi UCHIYAMADA Dr C Fuller
1995 PhD East Anglia Employment and the small enterprise economy in India: an inquiry into its growth and significance for development Nalini VITTAL
1995 PhD Edinburgh Social control and deviance in Edinburgh’s Pakistani community Abdul Ali WARDAK
1995 MLitt Aberdeen From Banff to Bengal and beyond: the list, travel and writings of a remarkable north-east loon: Robert Wilson, M D. (1787-1871) Thelma G WATT Prof R Bridges
1995 phD Edinburgh Environmental effects on the growth of broad-leaved trees introduced under pine stands in Sri Lanka N D R WEERAWARDANE
1995 DPhil Oxford, Magdalen Manufactured exports, outward-orientation, and the acquisition of technological capabilities in Sri Lanka, 1997-1989 Ganeshan WIGNARAJA Dr S Lall
1995 PhD Birmingham A study of recent conversion to and from Christianity in the Tamil area of South India A D C WINGATE
1995 PhD Bradford The economic impact of temporary migrant workers remittances on the Pakistan economy: estimates from a macro economic model K U ZAMAN
1996 MLitt Oxford, Exeter The women’s movement in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s Nilofer AFRIDI-QAZI Dr M W Lau
1996 PhD Leicester Paleoenvironments, diagenesis and geochemical studies of the Dungan formation (Palaocene)eastern Sulaiman Range, Pakistan Nazir AHMAD
1996 PhD Sheffield A study of changes occurring in valuable aspects ofthe built environment of the core areas of historic settlements in Pakistan T AHMAD A Craven
1996 PhD Open Approaches to bioclimatic urban design for the tropics with special reference to Dhaka, Bangladesh K S AHMED
1996 DPhil Oxford, Linacre Oral traditions in Ladakh Monisha AHMED Dr R Barnes Dr N J Allen
1996 PhD London, RHBNC The emergence of Muslim feminism in South Asia, 1920-1960 Azra Asghar ALI Prof F R C Robinson
1996 MPhil Liverpool Molecular epidemiology of human and environmental enterobacteriaceae in rural Bangladesh K S ANWAR
1996 DPhil Sussex The spread of technology and the level of development: a comparative study of steel mills using electric arc furnace technology in India and Britain S S ATHREYE
1996 PhD Londond, SOAS A garland of razors: the life of a traditional musician in contemporary Pakistan Khalid Manzoor BASRA
1996 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Bharat versus India: peasant politics and rural-urban relations in North West India M J R BENTALL Dr S E Corbridge
1996 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson Four essays on the labour market in India Sonia R BHALOTRA Prof S J Nickell
1996 MPhil York Women writing India: a study of prose fiction by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Nayantara Sahgal and Sashi Deshpanda Shivani BHARGAVA Dr Joe Bristow
1996 PhD London, SOAS A necessary weapon of war: state policies towards propaganda and information in Eastern India, 1939-1945 Sanjoy BHATTACHARYA Dr P G Robb
1996 PhD Birmingham Rich pickings ? the political economy of solid waste management in Calcutta, India A BOSE I C Blore
1996 PhD Glasgow Cultural strategies of young women of south Asian origin in Glasgow, with special reference to health H BRADBY
1996 PhD Cambridge, Corpus European authority and caste disputes in South India, 1650-1850 N BRIMNES Prof C A Bayly
1996 PhD London, SOAS Contemporary uses of Vastu Vidya, the traditional Indian knowledge of architecture Vibhuti CHAKRABARTI Dr Giles Tillotson
1996 PhD Strathclyde Waterlogging and salinity in the Sukkur region of Sindh: causes and remedies Mohammed Nawaz CHAND Prof A I Clunies Ross
1996 PhD London, SOAS Slavery and the household in Bengal, 1770-1880 Indrani CHATTERJEE Prof D J Arnold
1996 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth A comparative analysis of centre-local relations in government with special reference to Pakistan and Britain Ishtiaq Ahmed CHOUDHRY
1996 PhD Dundee Audit expectations gap in the public sector of Bangladesh R R CHOWDHURY
1996 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Gujjars in Garhwal – parallel lives: situational identity and exchange B DALAL Dr C Humphrey
1996 PhD Cambridge, Churchill The Europeans of Calcutta, 1858-1883 Damayanti DATTA Prof C A Bayley
1996 MPhil Reading The effectiveness of different radio programme formats for the dissemination of information on safe use of insecticides in paddy cultivation in Mahaweli system C in Sri Lanka N DE SILVA
1996 PhD Cranfield Estimating groundwater recharge with limited resources with special emphasis on spatial variability: a study in the dry zone of Sri Lanka Roshan Priyantha DE SILVA R C Carter
1996 PhD London, LSE Religion and nationalism in India: the case of Punjab, 1960-1990 Harnick DEOL Prof A Smith
1996 MPhil London, SOAS Love and mysticism in the Punjabi Qissas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Jeevan Singh DEOL Prof C Shackle
1996 PhD Lancaster The development of Bhuddist monastic education in Sri Lanka with special reference to the modern period Naimbala DHAMMADASSI Prof G Samuel; Dr H Kawanami
1996 PhD Strathclyde Solar-based technology for crop drying in Pakistan M G DOUGGAR
1996 PhD Lancaster Touring the Taj: tourist practices and narratives at the Taj Mahal and in Agra T EDENSOR
1996 PhD London Indian music and the west: a critical history GJ FARRELL
1996 PhD Hull Standarisation versus adaptation of marketing strategies: British multinationals in Pakistan G GHOUS
1996 PhD Hull The religious and political thought of Swami Vivekananda A HARILELA
1996 PhD Leicester Cross cultural interpretatioins of television: a phenomenonological hermeneutic enquiry [India] Ramaswami HARINDRANATH Mr R Dickinson
1996 PhD Cambridge, Corpus Pre-cursors to post-colonialism : Leonard Woolf, E. J. Thompson, and E. M. Forster and the rhetoric of English India R B P HARRISON Prof J B Beer
1996 PhD Wales, Bangor Farmers’ knowledge and the development of complex agroforestry practices in Sri Lanka H HITINAYAKE
1996 PhD Aberdeen Effects of periodic drought on Acacia magum Willd. and Acacia auriculiformis A.Cunn.ex Benth growing on sand tailings in Malaysia A L HOE
1996 DPhil Sussex Replacing market with government: the Indian experience in credit control R KOHLI
1996 DPhil Oxford, Wadham Indian civil servants, 1892-1937: an age of transition Takehiko HONDA Prof J M Brown; Dr M C Curthoys
1996 PhD London, SOAS Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, 1880-1932: the status of Muslim women in Bengal H Y HOSSAIN
1996 PhD East London Born to be wed: Bangladeshi women and the Muslim marriage contract Shahnaz HUDA Dr K Green; Ms A Stewart
1996 PhD Manchester Social, psychological and economic factors in the growth of a small firm: a study of the small scale furniture and footwear firms in Pakistan S A HUSSAIN
1996 PhD Cambridge, Jesus Fluvial sedimentology of the Kamial Formation (Miocene)Himalayan Foreland, Pakistan J A HUTT Dr P F Friend
1996 DPhil York Development through conservation: a sustainable development strategy with special reference to a heritage zone in Madras R V ISIAH
1996 PhD Reading Improvement of Erythrina variegata L.: a multipurpose fast growing tree species in Bangladesh S ISLAM
1996 PhD East Anglia Constraints to the adoption of modern rice varieties during the Aman season in Bangladesh Md Abdul JABBER Dr Richard Palmer-Jones
1996 PhD London, UC Modern agricultural production and the environment: the case of wheat production in the Indian Punjab, 1971-1988 Amballur Jospeh JAMES
1996 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Agro-ecological knowledges and forest managment in the Jharkhand, India: tribal development or populist impasse ? S L JEWITT Dr T P Bayliss-Smit
1996 PhD Glasgow A study of human rights organizations and issues in India M JHA
1996 PhD London, UC Early iron and steel in Sri Lanka: a study of the Samanalawewa area G JULEFF
1996 PhD London, LSHTM Areal variations in use of modern contraceptives in rural Bangladesh Nashid KAMAL A Sloggett
1996 PhD Cambridge, Churchill A longitudinal anthropometric study of mother-infants pairs in Dhaka, Bangladesh E KARIM
1996 PhD Southampton Development of dietary assessment methods for use in the South Asian community N A KARIM
1996 DPhil Oxford, St Edmund Hall Capital market liberalization in Pakistan: 1980-1992 Bashir A KHAN Mr C J Cowton
1996 PhD Bradford Public sector accounting and financial reporting oractices in Bangladesh M A S KHAN
1996 PhD Leicester Genesis of stratabound scheelite and stratiform Pb-Zn mineralisation, Chitral, Northern Pakistan, and its comparison with South West England tin-tungsten deposits Mohammad Zahid KHAN
1996 PhD Wales, Swansea A political economy of forest resource use: case studies of social forestry in Bangladesh Niaz Ahmed KHAN Prof A Rew
1996 PhD Loughborough An analysis of risk sharing in Islamic finance with reference to Pakistan T KHAN
1996 PhD Leeds Central-local government relations in Pakistan since 1979 T KHAN Dr Owen Hartley
1996 PhD London, UC Economic values of resource depreciation and environmental degradation in Bangladesh Fahmida Akter KHATUN
1996 PhD Warwick Analysis of tariff and tax policies in Bangladesh: a computable general equilibrium approach B H KHONDKER
1996 PhD London, UC Subsistence and petty-capitalist landlords: an enquiry into the petty commodity production of rental housing in low-income settlements in Madras, India S KUMAR
1996 PhD London, LSE Civil-military relationships in British and independent India, 1918-1962, and coup prediction theory Apurba KUNDU Prof T J Nossiter
1996 PhD London, King’s Marketing and economic development: a case study of maize marketing in Mardan District, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan Teshome LEMMA R Black; M Byron; M E Frost
1996 PhD London, Imperial The effects of ozone and nitrogen dioxide on Pakistan wheat (“Triticum aestivum”l.)and rice (“Oryza sativa”L) cultivars R MAGGS
1996 PhD Keele The European Community and South Asia: development, economic cooperation and trade policies with India, Bangladesh and Bhutan, 1973-1993 M MARWAHA Christopher Brewin
1996 PhD Hull Corporate management styles of Malaysian parent companies in managing their local subsidiaries in the manufacturing sector N A MAZELAN
1996 PhD Cambridge Fertility and frailty: demographic change and the health and status of Indian women K McNAY
1996 MPhil Leicester Constraints to professionalism in Sri Lankan newspaper journalism Mahim MENDIS Anders Hansen
1996 PhD Wales, Bangor The ecology and management of traditional home gardens in Bangladesh M MILLAT-E-MUSTAFA
1996 PhD East London Land reform and landlessness in Bangaldesh M A MOMEN
1996 PhD London, King’s Passing it on: the army in India and the development of frontier warfare, 1849-1947 Timothy Robert MOREMAN Prof B J Bond
1996 MPhil London, SOAS Legal and penal institutions within a middle class perspective in colonial Bengal, 1854-1910 Anindita MUKHOPADHYAY Prof D J Arnold
1996 DPhil Oxford Space, class and rhetoric in Lahore R McG MURPHY
1996 PhD Cambridge, Trinity The crisis of the Burmese State and the foundations of British colonial rule in Upper Burma (1853-1900) T MYINT-U Prof C A Bayly
1996 PhD Nottingham Open distance learning aspects of adult basic educastion in the UK and their implications for Kerala (India) Chandrasekharan NAIR-MADHAVEN W J Morgan
1996 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Chidambaram – city and people in the Tamil tradition V NANDA Dr F R Allchin
1996 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Chidambaram: temple and city in the Tamil tradition Vivek NANDA Dr F R Allchin
1996 PhD London, Inst Ed Manpower planning in Pakistan: a study of its assumptions concerning the education-occupation relationship H K NIAZI
1996 PhD Southampton Exploring a bottom up approach to networking for open learning in India Asad Mohd NIZAM Dr A P Hart
1996 MPhil East Anglia Contradictions of organisation: a case study of a rural development NGO in Rajasthan, India Jane Elizabeth OLIVER
1996 PhD Reading Studies of black pepper (Piper nigrum L)virus disease in Sri Lanka D PADMINI DE SILVA
1996 PhD Sheffield The role of small towns and intermediate cities in regional development in India A PANNEERSELVAM C L Chogull
1996 PhD Birmingham The word of God is not bound: the necounter of Sikhs and Christians in India and the United Kingdom J M PARRY
1996 DPhil Oxford, Green College Regeneration and sucession following shifting cultivation of dry tropical deciduous forests of Sri Lanka Gamaralalage A D PERERA Dr N D Brown; Dr P S Savill
1996 PhD London Bureaucrats, development and decentralisation in India: the bureau-shaping model applied to Panchayati in Karnataka, 1987-1991 H J PERRY
1996 PhD London, LSHTM Linear growth retardation (stunting)in Sri Lankan children and the role of dietary calcium Ambegoda Geekiyanage Damayanthi PIYADASA
1996 DPhil Sussex English studies and the articulation of the nation in India P K PODDAR
1996 MPhil REading Village organisations and extension: a case study of Balochistan rural support programme A R QAZI
1996 PhD Cambridge Lactational amenorrhoea, infant feeding patterns and behaviours in Bangladeshi women M RAHMAN
1996 PhD Cambridge Relation between energetics, body composition and length of post-partum amenorrhoea in Bangladeshi women M RASHID
1996 MPhil Leicester Thermobarometry of the garnet bearing rocks of the Jijal complex (western Himalayas, northern Pakistan) Lucie RINGUETTE
1996 PhD London, SOAS The devotional poetry of Svami Haridasa Ludmila Lupu ROSENSTEIN Dr R Snell
1996 PhD London, SOAS Local perceptions of environmental change in a tropical coastal wetland: the case of Koggala Lagoon, Galle, Sri Lnaka V N SAMARASEKARA
1996 PhD Newcastle The production of seed potato (Solanum tuberosum L)tubers from stem cuttings in Sri Lanka P W S M SAMARASINGHE
1996 PhD London, SOAS Mangrove ecology in Sri Lanka V SAMARESKARA Prof P Stott
1996 PhD London, King’s Agrarian impacts on manufacturing expansion in the Indian Punjab Jagpal Kaur SANGHA Dr L Hoggart
1996 DPhil York A sociolinguistic study of Panjabi Hindus in Southall: language maintenance and shift Mukul SAXENA C Wallace
1996 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Political alignments, the state and industrial policy in Pakistan: a comparison of performance in the 1960s and 1980s A U SAYEED Dr M H Khan
1996 PhD Manchester The role of agriculture in the Indian economy: an analysis using a general equilibrium model based on a social accounting matrix Sabyasachi SEN Prof D Colman; Dr A Ozanne
1996 PhD London, SOAS Famine, state and society in North India, c.1800-1840 Sanjay Kumar SHARMA Dr P G Robb
1996 PhD Wales, Bangor Project appraisal under risk, threat and uncertainty: a case study of the afforestation project of Bihar, India Devendra Kumar SHUKLA Dr C Price
1996 PhD London Pakistan’s arms procurement decision-making A SIDDIQA
1996 PhD London, SOAS Political prisoners in India, 1920-1977 Ujjwal Kumar SINGH Dr Taylor
1996 PhD Liverpool Molecular and seroepidemiological studies of rotavirus from children in Bangladesh S TABASSUM
1996 PhD Beradford Environmental education and distance teaching: a case study from Pakistan F TAHIR
1996 MPhil Liverpool John Moores The demand for money in Pakistan: simple-sum versis Divisia S M TARIQ
1996 PhD Cambridge, Corpus Property rights and the issue of power: the case of inland fisheries in Bangladesh Kazi Ali TOUFIQUE Dr M H Khan
1996 MPhil Open Gender issues and social change: evaluating programme impact in rural Bangladesh A M VAN SWINDEREN Mr A Thomas
1996 PhD Cranfield The performance in public enterprises in a developing country: Sri Lanka’s experience in perspective Tillaka S WEERAKOON Prof Chris Brewster
1996 PhD Reading Evaluation of the effectiveness of radio and television in changing the knowledge and attitudes of cinnamon growers in Sri Lanka J WEERASINGHE
1996 PhD Manchester Rationales of accounting controls in a developing context: a mode of production theory anaysis of two Sri Lankan case studies D P WICKRAMASINGHE Prof T Hopper
1996 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s Socialist development ? Economic and political change in rural West Bengal under the Left Front G O WILLIAMS Dr S Corbridge
1996 PhD Bristol The politics of caste in India with special reference to the Dalit Christian campaign for scheduled caste reservations Andrew K J WYATT Dr D Turner; Dr V Hewitt
1997 PhD Stirling Strategic planning and strategic awareness in small enterprise: a study of small engineering firms in Bangladesh A F M ABDUL MOYEEN
1997 PhD Loughborough A strategy for managing brickwork in Sri Lanka W V K M ABEYSEKERA Dr A Thorpe
1997 PhD East Anglia Sex ratio imbalances in India: a disaggregated analysis S B AGNIHOTRI
1997 PhD Lancaster Gender roles and fertility: a comparative analysis of women from Britain and Pakistan S AHMAD
1997 PhD Nottingham Modelling the impact of agricultural policy at the farm level in the Punjab, Pakistan Z AHMAD
1997 PhD London, Imperial Particulate air pollution and respiratory morbidity in New Delhi, India S AKBAR
1997 PhD East London Keeping a wife at the end of a stick: law and wife abuse in Bangladesh Nusrat AMEEN Dr Kate Green; Ms N Lacey
1997 PhD Birmingham The generation of a tool for screening the early grammatical development of Bangla-speaking children and the potential useof this instrument in classes of hearing-impaired children N ANAM
1997 PhD Durham A mission for India: Dr Ellen Farrer and India, 1891-1933 Imogen S ANDERSON A J Heesom
1997 DPhil Sussex Changes in poverty and inequality in Pakistan during the period of structural adjustment (1987-88 to 1990-91) T ANWAR
1997 PhD Cranfield Sustainable farming systems and the role of change agents: Moneragala District, Sri Lanka J P ATAPATTU
1997 PhD Edinburgh Common property resource management in Haryana State, India: analysis of the impact of participation in the management of common property resources and the relative effectiveness of common property regimes Pasumarthy Venkata Subhash Chandra BABU
1997 MPhil Oxford, Nuffield Recognising minorities: a study of some aspects of the Indian Constituent Assembly debates, 1946-1949 Rochana BAJPAI Dr N Gooptu; Prof M S Freeden
1997 PhD London, SOAS The transformation of domesticity as an ideology: Calcutta, 1880-1947 Sudeshna BANERJEE Prof D J Arnold
1997 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Decentralising forest management in India: the case of Van Panchayats in Kumaun P C BAUMANN Mr G P Hawthorn
1997 PhD London, LSE Households, livelihoods and the urban environmental social development perspectives on solid waste management in Faisalabad, Pakistan J D BEALL
1997 PhD London, SOAS Tribe and state in Waziristan, 1849-83 Hugh BEATTIE Prof M E Yapp
1997 DPhil Sussex A study of small-scale community tank irrigation systems in the dry zone of Sri Lanka Saleha BEGUM Dr M Moore
1997 PhD Aberdeen The “empire of the raj:” conflict and cooperation with Britain over the shape and function of the Indian sphere in Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1850s-1930s Robert J BLYTH Prof R C Bridges; Ms Rosemary M Tyzack
1997 PhD Manchester Comparative human resource managment: a cross national study of India and Britain P S BUDHWAR
1997 PhD Wales, Lampeter Decision making and idjtihad in Islamic environments: a comparative study of Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom G L R BUNT
1997 DPhil Oxford, St Hilda’s A history of the trade to South Asia of Macmillan Co and Oxford University Press, 1875-1900 Rimi B CHATTERJEE Mr M Turner; Mr L W St Clair
1997 PhD East Anglia Innovation paths in developing country agriculture: true potato seed in India, Egypt and Indonesia a CHILVER
1997 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall From nabob to sahib: the construction of the British body in India, c.1800-1914 Elizabeth M COLLINGHAM Prof C A Bayley
1997 PhD London, UC Of moths and candle flames: the aesthetics of fertility and childbearing in the Northern areas of Pakistan Teresa Mary Helen COLLINS Dr N Redclift; Dr Murray Last
1997 PhD London, UC Environmental aspects of industrial location policy in India Mala DAMODARAN
1997 PhD Cambridge, Pembroke A comparative analysis of sharecropping and mudaraba business in Pakistan: a study of PLS in the context of the new theory of the firm M H A DAR Dr A M M McFarquhar
1997 PhD Open Multiple realities, multiple meanings: a reception analysis of television and nationhood in India S DAS
1997 PhD Portsmouth Control of mycotoxins in major food commodities in Bangladesh M DAWLATANA
1997 PhD Liverpool Evidence based decision making and managerial chaos in population displacement emergencies: a case study of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, 1992-93 P M DISKETT
1997 PhD Hull An investigation into effective management structure for tuna resources in the West Indian Ocean EDALY
1997 PhD London, External Parasitical clinical and sero-epidemiological studies of visceral leishmaniasis in Bangladesh Md A EL-MASUM
1997 PhD Manchester Production, consumption and labour supply linkages of farm households in the rice-wheat zone of Punjab, Pakistan U FAROOQ
1997 PhD Aberdeen An economic analysis of factors affecting the adoption of coconut-based intercropping systems in Sri Lanka M T N FERNANDO
1997 PhD Edinburgh Varieties of pilgrimage experience: religious journeying in central Kerala Alexander David Hanson GATH
1997 PhD Warwick Against purity, identity, Western feminism and Indian complications I GEDALOF
1997 PhD Oxford Brookes Spatial setting for household income generation: The case of intermediate sized cities, Bangladesh Shayer GHAFUR
1997 PhD Cambridge, Clare Literature, language and print in Bengal, c.1780-1900 Anindita GHOSH Dr R O’Hanlon
1997 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Conservation ecology of primates and human impact in North East India A K GUPTA Dr D J Chivers
1997 DPhil Oxford, New College The monetary system of Mughal India Syed N HAIDER Dr D A Washbrook
1997 PhD London Diet, exercise and CHD risk: a comparison of children in the UK and Pakistan Rubina HAKEEM
1997 PhD London, LSE India’s information technology industry: adapting to globalisation and policy change in the 1990s Gopalakrishnan HARINDRANATH
1997 PhD Cambridge, Girton State and local power relations in the towns of Gujerat, Surat and Cambray, c.1572-1740 F HASAN Dr G Johnson
1997 PhD Exeter The organisation, development and management of the population training programmes: a case study in Bangladesh Md Akhter HOSSAIN Dr A Ankomah; C Allison
1997 PhD Reading Involving women in the process of rural development: a project case study from Balochistan, Pakistan U HUBNERR
1997 MPhil London, Goldsmith’s Significant other: Anglo Indian female authors, 1880-1914 Karyn Marie HUENEMANN Dr B Moore-Gilbert
1997 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ Public housing in Hong Kong E C M HUI Dr B J Pearce
1997 PhD East London Law as a site of resistance: recourse to the law by “garments women” in Bangladesh Farmin ISLAM Dr Hilary Lim; Prof J Cooper
1997 PhD Middlesex The impact of flooding and methods of assessment in urban areas of Bangladesh K N ISLAM
1997 DPhil Sussex Democratic adjustment: explaining the political sustainability of economic reform in India Robert S JENKINS Prof J Manor
1997 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Labour and nationalism in Sholapur: conflict, confrontation and control in a Deccan city, Western India, 1918-39 M N KAMAT Dr R S Chandavakar
1997 PhD London, LSE Political communication in India Kavita KARAN Prof T J Nossiter
1997 PhD Cambridge, Churchill The social history of the Rajput clans in colonial North India circa 1800-1900 Malavika KASTURI Prof C A Bayley
1997 PhD Aberdeen Sustainability of small-holder sugar cane based production systems in Sri Lanka Adhikari P KEERTHIPALA
1997 PhD Manchester The market for local capital for small firms in Bangladesh: loan evaluation, monitoring and contracting practices Mohammed Hassanul Abedin KHAN P Taylor
1997 PhD Reading Improving precision of agricultural field experiments in Pakistan M I KHAN
1997 PhD London, Wye The mango production and marketing system in Sindh Pakistan: constraints and opprtunities A M KHUSHK
1997 PhD Aberdeen Factors influencing adoption of farm level tree planting in social forestry in Orissa, India A K MAHAPATRA
1997 PhD Bradford The quality of higher education in Pakistan: an exploration into the quality of curriculum taught in the universities M J MALIK
1997 PhD Surrey Management consultancies in developing countries: strategies for a competetive era – the case of Pakistan S H MALLICK
1997 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Non-seccessionist regionalism in India: the demand for a separate state of Uttarakhand E E MAWDSLEY Dr S E Corbridge
1997 PhD Cambridge Sadhana and salvation: soteriology in Ramanuja and John Wesley P R MEADOWS
1997 PhD Wales, Cardiff The unit head nurse in Pakistani hospitals: current and desired levels of practice G P MILLER
1997 PhD Edinburgh The lunatic asylum in British India, 1857-1880: colonialism, medicine and power James Henry MILLS Dr C N Bates; Dr P J Bailey
1997 PhD London, SOAS The making of a cultural identity: language, literature and gender in Orissa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Pragati MOHAPATRA Dr P G Robb
1997 PhD Leicester Conceptualising post-colonial policing: an analysis and application of policing public order S C MUKHOPADHYAY
1997 DPhil Sussex Small firm industrial districts in Pakistan Khalid M NADVI Dr H Schmitz
1997 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s British and American Army counterinsurgency learning during the Malaysian emergency and the Vietnam War J A M NAGL
1997 PhD London, External Constitutional breakdown and the judiciary in Pakistan M F NASEEM
1997 PhD Sheffield The external environment of housing in the third world: sustainability and user satisfaction in planned and unplanned low-income housing in Lahore, Pakistan N NAZ
1997 PhD London, UC Dynamics of urban spatial and formal changes of old Dhaka: a developmental influence on a historical city of the Third World Farida NILUFAR Alan Penn
1997 PhD London, SOAS The Hindi public sphere, 1920-1940 Francesca ORSINI Dr A S Kalsi
1997 PhD London, InstChild Health Iodine deficiency in the Northern Pujab of Pakistan M POULTON
1997 PhD REading Studies on weed management during early establishment of tea in low-country of Sri Lanka K G PREMATILAKA
1997 PhD Reading The effect of defoliation of vetch, barley and their mixtures on forage yield, quality and residual effects on succeeding crops in the rainfed areas of Pakistan I A QAMAR
1997 PhD Cambridge, Lucy Shifting culture in the global terrain: cultural identity constructions amongst British Hindu Punjabis D S RAJ Dr S N Bensen
1997 PhD Manchester The rural poor and technological change: an enquiry into agricultural extention in Sri Lanka T T RANASINGHE Dr J Mullen
1997 PhD Bradford Environmental education and agricultural education in Pakistan G RASUL
1997 PhD London, SOAS Social history of North Bengal, c.1870-1949 Rubhajyoti RAY Dr P G Robb
1997 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s Indian elites, urban space and the restructuring of Ahmedabad city, 1890-1947 Siddhartha RAYCHAUDHURI Prof C A Bayly
1997 PhD City Military rule and the media: a study of Bangladesh REZWAN-UL-ALAM
1997 PhD London, LSE The Kalbelias of Rajasthan: Jogi Nath snake charmers, an ethnography Miriam ROBERTSON Dr J Parry; Dr J Woodburn
1997 MPhil Open The role of caste in prostitution: culture and violence in the life histories of prostitutes in India M R ROZARIO
1997 PhD Hull A socio-economic assessment of collective choices in the coastal trawl fishery of Malaysia K H SALIM
1997 PhD London, LSHTM Contraception following birth in Bangladesh S M SALWAY Prof J Cleland
1997 PhD Nottingham People’s participation in community development and community work activities: a case study in a planned village settlement in Malaysia Asnarulkhadi Abu SAMAH
1997 PhD Bristol A basket of resources: women’s resistence to domestic violence in Calcutta P SEN
1997 MPhil Reading Evaluation of adoption levels of innovations in coffee in relation to technology transfer process in the Central Province of Sri Lanka M A P K SENEVIRATNE
1997 PhD Kent Choice and collection of agricultural survey data in Punjab and its use in planning improved food supply Javid SHABBIR Mr G M Clarke
1997 DPhil Sussex Participatory village resource management: case study of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), India Parmesh SHAH Dr M T Howes
1997 PhD London, SOAS The formation of the Indo-European telegraph line: Britain, the Ottoman Empire and Persia, 1855-1865 Sulieman SHAHVAR R M Burrell
1997 PhD Cambridge, Emmanuel The development of an Indian nuclear doctrine since 1980 W P S SIDHU Dr I Clark
1997 PhD Leeds Gender and nation in selected contemporary writing from Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan N M S SILVA
1997 PhD York Changing attitudes to design with nature: the urban Indian context P SINGH
1997 PhD Cambridge, Emmanuel Pollution and environmental policy in the Ganga Basin: a case study of heavy metal pollution by tanneries near Kanpur, India S SINHA Dr K S Richards
1997 PhD East Anglia Framing the nation: languages of “modernity” in India Ajanta SIRCAR
1997 PhD London, UC Islamic anthropology and religious practice among Muslims in a southern Sri Lankan town Llyn Frances SMITH Prof B Kapferer
1997 PhD Sussex The formal and informal sector of solid waste management in Hyderabad, India Marielle SNEL Dr T Binns
1997 PhD London, UC Urban development and the information technology industry: a study of Bangalore, India Sampath SRINIVAS Ms Julie Davila
1997 PhD London Land policies in Delhi: their contribution to unauthorised land development K SRIRANGAN
1997 PhD Southampton Coronary heart disease, diabetes, serum lipid concentrations and lung function in relation to fetal growth in South India C E STEIN
1997 PhD Open The involvement of the Church of Pakistan in development P SULTAN
1997 PhD Salford Off-farm activities in India: a case stury of rural househlds in Rurka Kalan Development Block, Punjab, c. 1961-1993 S S SUPRI
1997 PhD Cambridge, Robinson Gandhara art in the Swat Valley, Pakistan: a study based on the Peshawar University collection M F SWATI Dr J R Knox
1997 PhD Reading The compound verb in Assamese J TAMULI
1997 MPhil Newcastle Socio-economic problems of second genertion settelrs in Mahaweli irigation settlement in Sri Lanka T M P B TENNAKOON
1997 PhD London, SOAS The political economy of Burma TIN MAUNG MAUNG THAN Prof R Taylor
1997 PhD Warwick Reconstructing the history of women’s participation in the nationalist movement in India, 1905-1945: a study of women activitists inUttar Prqdesh Suruchi THAPAR-BJORKERT Dr C Wolkowitz; Ms Joanna Liddle
1997 PhD London, LSE Spiritual communities in India Dimitrios THEODOSSOPOULOS Dr P Loizos
1997 DPhil Oxford, New Rajput painting in Mewar A S TOPSFIELD
1997 PhD Manchester The role of management control systems in privatisation: a labour process analysis of a Bangladeshi case study S N UDDIN
1997 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Distribution improving development policies for Bangladesh: applying the equilibrium framework W J A VAN DER GEEST Prof D M G Newbery
1997 MPhil City Women, gender and news values: a case study of Bangladesh F R VEENA
1997 PhD Kingston Miocene-aged extension within the main mantle thrust zone, Pakistan Himalaya K J VINCE Dr P Treloar; Dr J Grocott
1997 PhD London, SOAS The development of Siraiki language in Pakistan M A WAGHA
1997 PhD Cambridge, King’s Worth its weight: gold, women and value in North West India H WARD Dr C Humphrey
1997 PhD London, Birkbeck Colonialism and culture in nineteenth century British India Caroline L WEAVER
1997 PhD Cambridge Hedgerow intercropping for soil improvement in Sri Lanka S M WEERASINGHE
1997 PhD London, LSHTM Control of anopheline vectors in a gem mining area in Sri Lanka A M G M YAPABANDARA
1998 PhD Liverpool Malaria and malarial control in Jeli Peninsular Malaysia M R ABDULLAH
1998 PhD Reading The management practices and organisational culture of large Malaysian construction contractors R ABU BAKER
1998 MPhil Aberdeen The determination of sheep and goat prices in the markets of Balochistan – Pakistan M AFZAL
1998 PhD London, SOAS Litigating in the name of the people: stresses and strains of the development of public interest litigation in Bangladesh Naim AHMED
1998 PhD London, UC An approach for the prevention of thalassaemia in Pakistan S AHMED
1998 PhD Leeds Foreign direct investment in Pakistan M AKHTAR Hugo Radice
1998 PhD Durham Water rationality: mediating the Indus Waters Treaty U Z ALAM Dr J D Rigg
1998 PhD Bath Fish consumption behaviour in Bangladesh Zulfiqar ALI Prof Chris Heady; Dr J A McGregor
1998 DPhil Oxford Operationalizing Amartya Sen’s capability approach to human development: a framework for identifying valuable capabilities Sabina ALKIRE
1998 PhD Reading The impact of Anand Pattern Cooperative Societies on the status of women in dairying households in Kerala, India S S ANIL
1998 PhD London, SOAS The politics of time: “primitives” and the writing of history in colonial Bengal Prathama BANERJEE Prof D J Arnold
1998 PhD Bristol Scripture as empowerment for liberation and justice: the experience of Christian and Muslim women in Bangaldesh Mukti BARTON Prof U King
1998 PhD Nottingham The protection of human rights in Islamic Republic of Pakistan with special reference to Islamic Shari’ah under 1973 Constitution A H BOKHARI
1998 PhD Wales, Cardiff A comparison of vocational schools and industrial training institutes in Malaysia A BRAHIM
1998 PhD London, SOAS The Nayak temple complex: architecture and ritual in southern Tamilnadu, 1550-1700 Crispin Peter C BRANFOOT Dr G Tillotson
1998 PhD Bristol Studies in early Indian Madhyamaka epistemology David F BURTON Dr P Williams; Dr R Gethin
1998 PhD Cambridge Agency, animacy and personification in “A passage to India” R BUZZA
1998 MPhil Birmingham Identifying the requirements of a parent education programme for the primary prevention of child physical abuse in the Indian State of Maharashtra M CAESAR
1998 PhD Birmingham Recent structural reforms in India: the role of the government S CHATTERJEE
1998 PhD Manchester Gender implications of industrial reforms and adjustment in the manufacturing sector of Bangladesh Salma CHAUDHURI ZOHIR Ms D Elson
1998 PhD Wales, Swansea Order and diversity: representing and assisting organisational learning in non government aid organisations [Bangladesh] Richard J DAVIES Prof A Rew
1998 PhD Kent Law, nation and cosmology in Sri Lanka: deconstruction and the failure of closure B R DE SILVE WIJEYERATNE
1998 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Muslim women in colonial North India, c.1920-1947: politics, law and community identity Karin A DEUTSCH Dr R O’Hanlon
1998 PhD Bath Factors influencing the growth of sustainable people’s organisations at grassroots level: the case of Caritas DEEDS and Sangathan in Bangladesh Benedict D’ROZARIO
1998 PhD Aberdeen South Asia: a case study of a subordinate internaltional system approach with a speicla reference fo India’s security policy during the Cold War B DUSADEEISARIYAWONG
1998 PhD London Childhood cataract in South India: aetiology, management and outcome M B ECKSTEIN
1998 PhD Leeds Neighbourhood perceptiopns of health and the value placed on health care deliverers in the slums of Mumbai Nick EMMEL Dr Ray Bush; J Soussan
1998 PhD Strathclyde Patrick Geddes, education and society in colonial India Michael EYRE Prof B R Tomlinson
1998 PhD London, LSE Migrants to citizens: changing orientations among Bangladeshis of Tower Hamlets, London K S GAVRON
1998 PhD Bradford Evaluating the performance of public infrastructure: the case of electric power and telecommications in Pakistan A G GHAFOOR
1998 PhD Bradford Budget deficits and the economy: the macro-economic effects of budget deficits in Sri Lanka, 1978-1996 Nandana Wijesiri GOONEWARDENA Prof C Kirkpatrick; Mr Roland Clarke
1998 MPhil Bradford An assessment of the survival of dairy residues associated with archaeological and ethnographic ceramics: GC and GC/MS analysis of lipid residues extracted from archaeological (Bronze Age Harappa)and ethnographic (modern Pakistan and India)ceramic vessels S M GRAYSON
1998 PhD Southampton Household structure, health and mortality in three Indian states Paula L GRIFFITHS Dr P Hinde
1998 PhD London, Goldsmiths Local politics in the Suru Valley of northern India Nicola GRIST Dr Sophie Day
1998 PhD London, LSHTM The impact of peer counsellers on breast feeding practices in Dhaka, Bangladesh Rukhsana HAIDER
1998 PhD Oxford Brookes Spatial setting of manufacturing activities in the metropolitan cities of developing countries: the example of Dhaka, Bangladesh Mahmudul HASAN
1998 DPhil Oxford, Jesus The Hindu Kush of Pakistan: mountain range evolution from an active margin to continent-continent collision P R HILDEBRAND Prof J F Dewe; Dr M P Searle
1998 PhD London, Institute of Child Health Iodine nutrition, cognition and school achievement of Bangladeshi schoolchildren S N HUDA
1998 PhD Open Education as a missionary tool: a study in Christian missionary education by English Protestant missionaries in India with special reference to cultural change J C INGLEBY
1998 PhD London, SOAS Urban planning in new Bombay: physical and socio-economic growth and development of a counter-magnet in India Alain JAQUEMIN
1998 PhD Open A critical and comparative study of the relationship between missionary strategy, Dalit consciousness and socio-economic transformation in the missionary work by SPG among the Nadar and Paraiya communities of Tirunelveli District between 1830 and 1930 S JAYAKUMAR
1998 PhD Birmingham Portfolio behaviour ofIslamic banks: case studies for Pakistan, 1974-1994, and Iran, 1984-1994 K A A KAGIGI
1998 PhD London, SOAS Performative politics: artworks, festival praxis and nationalism with reference to Ganipatil Utsav in western India Raminder Kaur KAHLON Dr C Pinney
1998 PhD London, SOAS The Vishnu Hindu Parishad in the rise of Hindu militancy in India Manjari KATJA Dr Taylor
1998 PhD Bradford Foreign aid as a determinant of health expenditure, life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rate in Pakistan, 1971-1990 S G H KAZMI
1998 PhD Reading Farmers’ objectives and the choice of new crops in the irrigated farming systems of Pakistan’s Punjab M A KHAN
1998 PhD Reading Improving the potential for adoption of agricultural technology through enhanced use of the mass media and the religious community in disadvantaged environments in Pakistan N KHAN
1998 MPhil Salford Pakistan’s and international textile and clothing trade regime S M KHAN
1998 MPhil Manchester Women’s access to credit and gender relations in Bangladesh Mubina KHONDKAR Dr D Hulme; Dr U Kothari
1998 PhD London, SOAS Politics of mass literacy in India; a case study of two North Indian villaages under the “Total Literacy” campaign (198-1995) Ajay KUMAR Dr S Kaviraj
1998 PhD London, SOAS Contesting seclusion: the political emergence of Muslim women in Bhopal, 1901-1930 Siobhan LAMBERT-HURLEY Dr A A Powell
1998 PhD Cambridge, Clare Prosodic prominence in Singapore English E L LOW Dr F J D Nolan
1998 PhD London, SOAS Pativratas and Kupattis: gender, caste and identity in Punjab, 1870-1920 Anshu MALHOTRA Dr A A Powell
1998 PhD Warwick Modelling macroeconomic adjustment with growth in developing economies: the case of India Sushanta Kumar MALLICK
1998 PhD London, UC Religion, ritual and the pantheon amongst the Sinhalese Buddhist traders of Kandy City, Sri Lanka Desmond MALLIKARACHCHI Prof Bruce Kapferer; Dr Danny Miller
1998 DPhil Sussex Rapid credit deepening and the joint liability of credit contract: a study of Grameen Bank borrowers in Madhupur Imran MATIN
1998 PhD Leeds Spatial and temporal change in the caste system: the Punjab to Bradford D J MEDWAY
1998 DPhil Sussex Contexts of scarcity: the political economy of water in Kutch, India Lyla MEHTA Dr M Greeley
1998 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Popular princes: kingship and social change in Travancore and Cochin, 1870-1930 Vikram MENON Prof J M Brown; Dr D A Washbrook
1998 PhD Manchester Perception of adolescent problems by form four malay students in Sarawak, Malaysia Z MERAWI
1998 DPhil Sussex The peculiar mission of Christian womanhood: the selection and preparation of women missionaries of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1880-1920 Jennifer MORAWIECKI C A Dyhouse; Prof P M Thane
1998 PhD Dundee Approaches to the integrated management of potato cyst nematode in Pakistan A MUNIR
1998 PhD Wales A study of the relation between Christianity and Khasi-Jaintia culture, 1899-1969, with particular reference to the theology and practice of the Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Church L MYLLIEMNGAP
1998 PhD London, Wye The pineapple industry in Sri Lanka: constraints and opportunities for its future development Arumugam NAGENDRAM
1998 PhD Southampton Study of rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea (Herbert)of Bangladesh N S NAHAR
1998 PhD London, LSHTM A study of policy process and implementation of the national tuberculosis programme India Thelma NARAYAN
1998 PhD London, SOAS English in the colonial university and the politics of language: the emergence of a public sphere in western India, 1830-1880 Veena NAREGAL Dr S Kaviraj
1998 PhD Southampton Women in Bangladesh: a study of the effects of garment factory work on control over income and autonomy M H NEWBY
1998 MPhil Oxford, Hertford Homeward bound ? the influence of the national norm on voluntary repatriation on the construction of Indian refugee policy with reference to the Bangladeshi Jumma refugees and the Sri Lanka Tamil refugees Pia A OBEROI
1998 PhD Southampton Theorising nuclear weapons proliferation: understanding the nuclear policies of India, South Africa, North Korea and Ukraine T OGILVIE-WHITE
1998 PhD Queen’s, Belfast Credit and women’s relative well-being: a case study of the Grameen Bank, Bangladesh L N K OSMANI
1998 PhD Warwick Pakistani children in Oslo: Islamic nurture in a secular context Sissel OSTBERG
1998 PhD London, UC Control of childhood epilepsy in rural India D K PAL
1998 PhD London, SOAS The politics of development and identity in the Jharkhand Region of Bihar (India), 1951-1991 Amit PRAKASH
1998 PhD Bristol The Assam Movement and the construction of Assamese identity G PRICE
1998 PhD Lancaster Social access to housing: a study of low-income settlements around the walled city of Amritsar, Punjab, India N K PUREWAL
1998 PhD Aberdeen An analysis of beef and bovine marketing systems in Pothwar Plateau of Punjab, Pakistan A H QURESHI
1998 PhD Aberdeen An analysis of beef and bovine marketing systems in Pothwar Plateau of Punjab, Pakistan A H QURISHI
1998 PhD Reading The role of the migrant moneylenders in North East India: the Kabuliwallahs of Assam S RAFIQUE
1998 MPhil Newcastle Integrated crop growth modelling system for Barind in Bangladesh M S RAHMAN
1998 PhD Kent Socio legal status of Bengali women in Bangladesh: implications for development S RAHMAN
1998 PhD Wales, Bangor Risk, store of wealth and land use choice: a socio-economic analysis of farmer adoption of woodlots in Karnataka, India D RAVINDRAN
1998 PhD London, SOAS Idealizing motherhood: the brahmanical discourse on women in ancient India (c500 BCE-300CE) Ujjayini RAY Dr I J Leslie
1998 DPhil Oxford, Somerville British women writers on India between the mid-eighteenth century and 1857 Rosemary A RAZA Prof J M Brown; Mr J M Prest
1998 PhD London, LSE Organisational identification of managers in multinational corporations: a quantitative case study in India and Pakistan C E W READE
1998 PhD London, RHBNC Intense weathering regimes of Deccan basalts Jennifer Lesley REEVES Dr J N Walsh
1998 PhD Leeds Sedimentology and dynamics of mega-dunes, Jamuna River, Bangladesh Julie Elizabeth RODEN Prof P Ashworth
1998 PhD Newcastle Owner-occupiers’ transformation of public low-cost housing in Peninsular Malaysia Azizah SALIM Dr A G Tipple
1998 PhD Strathclyde A study in inter-sectoral relations of linkages, trade and technology: the case of Bangladesh (an application of input-output analysis) Mohammed SALIMULLAH Prof I McNicoll
1998 PhD Wales, Swansea Contraband trade between Sri Lanka and India M SARVATHAN Mr J Whetton
1998 PhD London, SOAS The transitional state: Congress and government in Uttar Pradesh, India, 1947-1955 Suhit Kumar SEN Dr P G Robb
1998 PhD Manchester Gender implications of economic reforms in the education sector in India-care of Haryana abd Madhya Pradesh Manju SENAPATY Ms D Elson
1998 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s The creation of religious identities in the Punjab, c,1850-1920 Anil SETHI Prof C A Bayly
1998 PhD Reading Relative efficiency of crop production n the cotton-wheat cropping system of Pakistan’s Punjab M SHAFIQ
1998 PhD Nottingham Educational management: an exploratory study of management roles and possibilities of management development at college level in AJK, Pakistan Saeeda Jahan Ara SHAH Dr M Parker-Jenkins; Dr M Griffiths
1998 DPhil Oxford, Worcester Muslim politics in the North West Frontier Province, 1937-1947 Sayed W A SHAH Prof J M Brown
1998 PhD Reading Economic and non-economic factors that influence the adoption of no-tillage technologies at farm level in rice-wheat and cotton-wheat areas of Pakistana’s Punjab A D SHEIKH
1998 PhD Bradford Project performance and the impact of official development assistance: aid to agricultural development in Pakistan M K SHEIKH
1998 MLitt Aberdeen Selective evaluation of the cycle of women’s status through religious and social practices with special reference to Bengal S K SIRKAR
1998 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Transplanting liberal education: higher education in 19th century Bombay Presidency, India Anne H E SLIWKA Prof J M Brown
1998 MPhil Newcastle The Permatent emergency shelter cum roofing unit for Bangladesh David SORRILL Dr A G Tipple
1998 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ Colonialism and linguistic knowledge: John Gilchrist and the representation of Urdu in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries R D STEADMAN-JONES Dr V A Law
1998 PhD London, LSHTM Child work and school attendance in urban India H TAYLOR Prof I Timaeus; N Crook (SOAS)
1998 PhD Edinburgh Building Christianity on Indian foundations: the theological legacy of Brahmabandav Upadhyay (1861-1907) Timothy Craig TENNENT
1998 PhD Leeds Homelands and the representation of cultural and political identity in selected South Asian texts, 1857 to the present g f h TICKELL
1998 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Between two civilisations: history and self representation of Bangladeshi Buddhism Paola G TINTI Prof R F Gombrich
1998 PhD Kent Readings in the works of Michael Ondaatje (1963-1982) Monica TURCI Prof C L Innes
1998 PhD Queens, Belfast Formal and de facto states of emergency: the Indian experience, 1947-1997 K S VENKATESWARAN
1998 PhD Wales, Cardiff Studies on the biology and control of Tropilaelaps clareae: Asian parasitic brood mite in Apis mellifera colonies in Islamabad, Pakistan Camphour E S WAGHCHOURE
1998 PhD Wales, Cardiff Studies on the biology and control or Tropilaelaps clareae: Asian parasitic brood mites in Apis mellifera colonies in Islamabad, Pakistan Elizabeth S WAGHCHOURE-CAMPHOR
1998 PhD London, SOAS India’s small scale industry policy: an evaluation and a case study Trevor L WILLIAMS
1998 PhD Aberdeen Studies on weed populations in sugar cane in Sri Lanka W R G WITHARAMA
1998 PhD Strathclyde Industrialization and economic growth: a case study of Bangladesh A K M ZASHEEM UDDIN AHMED Dr M M Huq
1998 PhD Bristol Sangathan: the pursuit of a Hindu ideal in colonial India: the idea of organisation in the emergence of Hindu nationalism, 1870-1930 John ZAVOS Prof U King
1998 PhD Ulster Groundwater pollution and its environmental impact in Karachi Region (Pakistan) A ZUBAIR
1999 PhD London. LSE Banking and debt recovery: a comparative study of the law and practice in India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia Sonil G ABEYRATNE
1999 PhD Oxford Brookes A micro-level view of low-income rural housing in Bangaldesh K I AHMED
1999 PhD Cambridge A political economy of industrial policy and development: a comparative study of Pakistan and Malaysia A AKHLAQUE Industrial productivity
1999 MPhil Newcastle An appraisal of processes of soil degradation in the Barind Tract, Bangladesh S M M ALAM
1999 PhD Leeds Urban women in households and in the labour market under structural adjustment policy and programmes: a case study of Pakistani working women K ALI
1999 DPhil Oxford, Magdalen Operationalising Amartya Sen’s capability approach: a framework for identifying valuable capabilities S M ALKIRE Prof F J Stewart; Prof J M Finnis
1999 PhD Manchester Economic reform in India since 1991 with particular reference to direct foreign investment and privatisation Thanhkom ARUN Prof F Nixson
1999 PhD Hull Opium and heroin production in Pakistan A Z ASAD
1999 DPhil York Biodiversity and community ecology of mangrove plants, molluscs and crustaceans in two mangrove forests in Peninsular Malaysia in relation to local management practices E C ASHTON
1999 PhD Southampton A multilevel model of the impact of health services on child mortality in Bangladesh Michael Dennis ASHTON Dr J McDdonald
1999 PhD Southampton Genetic diversity of jackfruit in Bangladesh and development of propagation methods A K AZAD
1999 PhD London, King’s Nuclear weapons in the Indo-Pakistan conflict Sanjay BADRI-MAHARAJ
1999 PhD Leicester The growth of farm firms through production,investment and capital formation in the rice-wheat zone of the Punjab Province of Pakistan K A BAJWA
1999 PhD Aberdeen An economic analysis of farm household pluriactivity in Sri Lanka G BALASURIYA
1999 DPhil Oxford, St Cross This work on Oriya literature and the Jagannath cult, 1866-1936: quest for identity Subhakanta BEHERA Dr F A Nizami
1999 PhD London, UC Structure of the DP in Bangla Tanmoy BHATTACHARYA
1999 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The politics of religious identity in South Asia in the late nineteenth century Torkel BREKKE Prof R F Gombrich
1999 MSc Stirling Investigations to the biology and ecology of an unidentified isopod affecting the CARE CAGES aquaculture programme, Bangladesh P BULCOCK
1999 DPhil Sussex The global and the local in the post-colonial: popular music in Calcutta (1992-1997) R CHAKRAVARTY
1999 PhD London, SOAS Change and continuity in Naqshbandi Sufism: Mujaddidi branch and its Hindu environment T W P DAHNHARDT Prof C Shackle
1999 PhD Ulster Traveller acts: a critical ethngraphy of backpacker India K J DAVIDSON
1999 PhD London , LSE Tamil warps and wefts: an anthropological study of urban weavers in South India Geert Raymond DE NEVE Prof C Fuller; Prof J Parry
1999 PhD London, Wye Amelioration of the physical conditions of sandy soils with organic amendments under tropical conditions S H S A DE SILVA
1999 PhD Cambridge, Jesus Youth, gender and community change: a case study of Bangladeshi students in an inner city Eva DEBNATH Dr M M Arnot
1999 PhD Bath One foot in each boat: the macro politics and micro sociology of NGOs in Bangladesh Joseph DEVINE Dr G D Wood; Dr A McGregor
1999 PhD London, RHUL The image of the prophet in Bengali Muslim piety, 1850-1950 Amit DEY Prof F C R Robinson
1999 PhD London, RHBNC Images of the Prophet in Bengali Muslim piety, 1850-1950 Amit DEY Prof F R C Robinson
1999 PhD London, LSE Women and gold: gender and urbanisation in comtemporary Bengal Fentje Henrike DONNER Dr J F Parry; Dr C Fuller
1999 DPhil Oxford, Linacre A study of the origin, evolution and role in society of a group of chiselled steel Hindu arms and armour from Southern India, c.1400-1800 A D Robert F W ELGOOD Dr Schuyler Jones
1999 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Caste, ethnicity and nation in the politics of the Muslims of Tamil Nadu, 1930-1967 S M A K FAKHRI Dr R S Chandravarkar
1999 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn The ecology and behaviour of the pig-tailed macaque (Macaca Nemestrina Leonina)in Bangladesh M M FEEROZ
1999 PhD Wales At the feet of the goddess: a comparative study of local goddess worship in Khurdapur, a village settlement in Orisssa and Cholavandan, a small town in Tamil Nadu L F FOULSTON
1999 PhD Leeds Socio-economic changes in the peri-urban villages in Penang, Malaysia Suriati GHAZALI Dr D Preston
1999 PhD London, SOAS The dynamics of scientific culture under a colonial state: Western India, 1823-1880 Vaswati Bidhan Chandra GHOSH Prof P G Robb
1999 PhD Southampton A passage from India: British women travelling home, 1915-1947 Georgina GOWANS
1999 PhD London, External Solid waste management: a case study of Delhi V I GROVER
1999 PhD Aberdeen A study of factors influencing participation in joint forest management in the northwest Himalayas, India H K GUPTA
1999 PhD Southampton British relations with the Marathas under the Wellesley regime William A C HALLIWELL Dr C M Woolgar
1999 PhD Leeds A corpus-based study of apposition in written Malay H A HAROON
1999 PhD London, UC The vulnerability of the Dupi Tila Aquifer, Daka, Bangladesh Muhammed Kamrul HASAN Dr W G Burgess; Dr J Dottridge
1999 PhD London, LSHTM The prevalence of reproductive tract infections in rural Bangladesh Sarah Jane HAWKES
1999 PhD Warwick The colonial city and the challenge of modernity: urban hegemonies and civic contestations in Bombay City, 1905-1925 H HAZAREESINGH
1999 PhD Warwick Gandhi and the Muslim question Sandip HAZARIESINGH Dr D A Washbrook
1999 PhD London Malaria in Afghan refugee communities in North-Western Pakistan: appropriate strategies for vector control and personal protection S E HEWITT
1999 PhD London, SOAS Kings, things and courtly ideal in pre-colonial south India, 1500-1800 Jennifer Anne HOWES Dr Giles Tillitson
1999 PhD Cambridge, Clare The Gujerati literati and the construction of a regional identity in the late 19th century Riho ISAKA Dr R S Chandavarkar
1999 DPhil Sussex The Grameen Bank: rhetoric and reality Sanae ITO Dr M T Greeley
1999 PhD Stirling Gender and management: factors affecting career advancement of women in the federal civil service of Pakistan N JABEEN
1999 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Hindu identity, nationalism and globalization S R JACOBS
1999 PhD Reading Residual effect of phosphate fertiliser measured using the Olsen method in Pakistani soils Shahid JAVID
1999 PhD Edinburgh When horizons darken: the process and experience of religious conversion among Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in London A W JEBANESAN
1999 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Press and Empire: the London press, government news management and India, c.1900-1922 Chandrika KAUL Dr J G Darwin
1999 PhD Edinburgh Informal Islamic leadership in a Bangladeshi village Jeffrey William John KEMP
1999 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth The economics of milk production and marketing in the development of Pakistan with special reference to Peshawar District M KHAN
1999 PhD Essex Narratives of rise and fall: family, memory and mobility in Jaipur City Ajay K KHANDELWAL Prof P Thompson
1999 PhD Durham The provision of infrastructure services in Rohtak and Bhiwani Districts, Haryana, India, 1981-1998: a geographical analysis N KUMAR
1999 PhD Edinburgh From people’s theatre to people’s Eucharist: resources from popular theatre for Eucharist reform in the Church of South India, Kerala State. George KURUVILLA
1999 PhD Nottingham Spectrohistory: new historicism and beyond in Salman Rushdie’s novels C-H LAI
1999 PhD London, SOAS Institutional and social change among the Muslims of Malabar, with special refernce to Calicut, 1870-1947 Lakshminarayayanapuram R S LAKSHMI Dr Avril A Powell
1999 PhD London, LSE India’s relationship with the non-resident Indians, 1947-1996: a missed opportunity ? Marie-Carine LALL
1999 PhD London, SOAS The Islamic marble carving and architecture of Cambay in Gujerat between 1200 and 1350: a collection of merits from difference sources E A LAMBOURN
1999 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Science and related consciousness: a study of the response to modern science in colonial Bengal. c 1870-1930 John Bosco LOURDUSAMY Dr D A Washbrook
1999 PhD Manchester Runoff modelling from large glacierised basins in the Karakoram Himalayas using remote sensing of the transient snowline A LOWE
1999 MPhil Edinburgh The influence of light availability on attack by the mahogany shoot-borer (Hypsipyla rubusta Moore)in Sri Lanka M R MAHROOF
1999 PhD Kent The interpretation of Islam and nationalism by the elite through the English language media in Pakistan A L MAJOR
1999 PhD Hull Ethnicity and politics in the Kashmir Valley I S MALIK
1999 PhD London, LSHTM Undernutrition and impaired functional ability amongst elderly slum dwellers in Mumbai, India Mary C MANANDHAR
1999 PhD East Anglia Cotton leaf curl disease in Pakistan: molecular characterisation, diagnostics and genetically engineered virus resistance S MANSOOR
1999 PhD Birmingham Some historical responses to disability in South Asia and reflections on service provision, with focus on mental retardation in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and some consideration of blindness M MILES
1999 PhD Kent Sacred anthropology: a study of nondual conceptions of man in Hinduism and Christianity J R MILNE
1999 PhD Hull Perception of Islam in Indian nationalist thought A MISRA
1999 PhD London, Inst Comm The politics of privatisation in Bangladesh Mobasser MONEM Prof J Manor
1999 PhD Cambridge, King’s The Kisan world abd human rights: a displaced people of eastern India Ranjit NAYAK Dr K J Hart
1999 PhD Salford An analysius of information systems development across time and space: the case of outsourcing to Infia Brian NICHOLSON
1999 MLitt Oxford, St Anne’s Shaikh Mohammad Abdulllah and the movement for Muslim female education in North India (1890-1945) Farah NIZAMI Prof J M Brown; Prof F Robinson
1999 DPhil Oxford, Lincoln India, parliament and the press under George III: a study of British attitudes towards the East India Company amd empire in the later 18th and early 19th centuries Jeremy R OSBORN Dr D A Washbrook
1999 DPhil Oxford, Brasenose Identity and institutions in ethnic conflict:the Muslims of Sri Lanka Meghan L O’SULLIVAN Dr N Gooptu
1999 PhD Warwick Labour and land rights of women in rural India with particular reference to Western Orissa Reena PATEL
1999 PhD Edinburgh Legislating forests in colonial India, 1800-1880 Akhileshwar PATHAK
1999 DPhil York An environmental Leibenstein framework: population pressure, agricultural land use and and environmental change in Orissa (India) Lopamudra PATNAIK Prof C Perrings
1999 PhD Edinburgh Social and cultural processes of healing and rehabilitation in Sri Lanka Abigail PENNY Dr J Spencer
1999 PhD City Development and international business: an application to India M RAMAN
1999 PhD Liverpool Fertility in Kerala: the impacts of social development policies and gender relations Linda REICHENFELD Prof R I Woods; Mr W T S Gould
1999 PhD London Paleoclimate of South Asia over the last 80 ka: luminescent ages of sediments from former glaciations in Nepal and Pakistan B W M RICHARDS
1999 PhD Nottingham Fiscal response to foreign aid: applications to Pakistan and Costa Rica S E RODRIGUEZ
2000 PhD Cambridge, Newnham Religion and the economics of fertility in South India S IYER
2000 MPhil London, Inst Ed Privatisation and equity: the case of Pakistan urban secondary schools B R JAMIL
2000 PhD Exeter The Penjdeh crisis and its impact on the Great Game and the defence of India, 1885-1897 Robert A JOHNSON Prof J Black
2000 PhD Cambridge, Darwin The state and the political economy of industrial development in India: the automobile industry circa 1980-1996 Indraneel KARLEKAR Dr S E Corbridge
2000 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Gender, identity and development among the Wakhi of northern Pakistan Sabrina KASSAM-JAN Dr D Parkes; Dr N J Allen
2000 PhD Exeter Drug addiction syndrome among university students in Pakistan W KAUSAR
2000 PhD Bath Struggle for survival: networks and relationships in a Bangladesh slum M Iqbal Alam KHAN Prof G Wood; Dr J A McGregor
2000 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ An empirical study of human resource management in a developing country – the case of the banking industry of Pakistan Shaista Ensan KHILJI Mr C G Gill
2000 PhD Cambridge. Queens Human resource management in a developing country: the case of banking industry in Pakistan S E KHILJI Mr C G Gill
2000 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam A study of debates on Christian conversion in India, 1947-1999 from the perspective of Christian mission Sebastian Chang-Hwan KIM Dr B Stanley
2000 DPhil Oxford, St Edmund Hall The “domestic” world of the Mughals in the reigns of Babar, Humayan and Akbar (1500-1605) Ruby LAL Dr D A Washbrook; Dr J D Gurney
2000 PhD East Anglia Perceiving disability and practising community-based rehabilitiation: a critical examination with case studies from south India R P LANG
2000 PhD Keele The internationalisation of Malaysian business and its relevance to Malay entrepreneurs A J MAHAJAR
2000 PhD Birmingham The administration of waqf, pious endowment in Islam: a critical study of the State Islamic Religious Councils as the sole trustees of awqaf assets and the implementation of istibdal in Malaysia with special reference to the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur S M MAHAMOOD
2000 PhD Strathclyde Price competetitiveness and performance of manufactured exports: the case of Pakistan Seema K MAKHDOOMI Dr M Huq; Prof J Love
2000 MPhil Nottingham Levels of flat ownership by middle-income households in Dhaka, Bangladesh Nasima MATIN Mr S Jalloh; Prof J C Moughtin
2000 MPhil London, LSE European images of India before the rise of orientalism in the late eighteenth century Kyoko MATSUKAWA Dr G Wilson
2000 PhD East London Thermal comfort in havelis of Jaisalmer Jane MATTHEWS
2000 DPhil Sussex Distress diversification or growth linkages ? Explaining rural non-farm employment variations in Andhra Pradesh, India Prasado R MECHARIA D M Hunt
2000 PhD Bradford Social policy in Malaysia: a study of social support for the elderly in a rural area N MOHAMED
2000 PhD Oxford Brookes Seismic interpretation and sequence stratigraphy of the offshore Indus basin of Pakistan S MOHAMMAD
2000 PhD London Nationalism, literature and ideology in colonial India and occupied Egypt A A MONDAL
2000 MPhil Manchester Burma and British Cold War policy, 1946-1951 Benjamin John MORRIS Dr P C Lowe
2000 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Gender, work and familial ideology: women workers in the unorganised garment export industry, New Delhi, India T MUKHOPADHYAY Prof G P Hawthorn
2000 PhD Newcastle Supply reponse of major agricultural commodities in Pakistan K MUSHTAQ
2000 MPhil London, SOAS Political economic dimensions of East Asian development: South Korea, India Rajiv Chitazhi NARAYAN Dr R H Taylor
2000 DPhil Oxford, Christ Church Conservation management of the tiger, Panthera Tigris Tigris, in Bandhavgarh National Park, India Latika NATH Dr D W MacDonald
2000 PhD LSHTM Epidemiological immunochemistry of Helicobacter pylori in Jessore, BBHangladesh J NESSA
2000 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth An operational evaluation test of MEDLINE on CD-ROM in Malaysia with special reference to investigating practicable relevance-based perfoormance measures Roslina OTHMAN
2000 PhD Hull Changing dimensions of single European Market: implications for the non-member countries – a case study on India’s textile and clothing exports S Gnanasekara PANDIAN
2000 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Technology and environmental leapfrogging: three case studies from India R M PERKINS Dr B Vira
2000 PhD London, LSE Legal systems as a determinant of foreign direct investment: the case of Sri Lanka Amanda Joan PERRY Mr P Muchlinski
2000 PhD Lancaster A critical ethnography on the production of the Indian MBA discourse E PRIYADHARSHINI
2000 PhD Nottingham Trent Douglarisation and the politics of Indian/African relations in Trinidad writing Sheila RAMPERSAD
2000 PhD Edinburgh Another member of our family: aspects of television culture and social change in Varanasi, North India Simon William ROBERTS Dr A Good; Dr J Spencer
2000 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Communal conflict in Bengal, 1930-1947: political parties, the Muslim intelligentsia and the Pakistan Movement Sulagna ROY Dr R S Chandavarkar
2000 PhD Cambridge Matrilineal comunities, patriarchial realities: female headship in eastern Sri Lanka – a feminist economic reading K N RUWANPURA Mrs S Fennell
2000 MPhil Newcastle Modelling privatised minor irrigation systems in Bangladesh: an economic analysis F I M G W SARKER
2000 PhD Durham The influence of British political thought in China and India: the cases of Sun Yat-Sen, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru N A SCOTT
2000 PhD Wales, Bangor The influence of farmer knowledge, shade and planting density on smallholder rubber/banana intercropping in Sri Lanka A M W K SENEVIRATHNA
2000 DPhil Sussex Mother/child health and health care in Pakistan Shafqat SHEHZAD Mr P Chaudhuri; Dr A Wagstaff
2000 PhD Southampton Constitutional rights relating to criminal justice in South Asia: a comparison with the European Convention on Human Rights Kabiniyage Buddhappriya Asola SILVA
2000 PhD Warwick Gendered labour process and flexibility: a study of jewellery production in India U SONI-SINHA
2000 PhD London, SOAS The impact of Islamization on the Christian community of Pakistan P SOOKHDEO
2000 PhD Southampton The impact of rural-urban migration on child survival in India Robert STEPHENSON Dr J McDdonald
2000 PhD Open Coproducing universal primary education in a context of social exclusion: households, community organisations and state administration in a district of Karnataka, India R SUBRAHMANIAN
2000 PhD Edinburgh Development of a range management decision support system (RAMDSS)for forest planning in the Banavasi Range of the Western Ghats, India Ramanathan SUGUMARAN
2000 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Women’s political strategies to combat poverty: a study of a squatter settlement in Dhaka S M SULTAN Dr R S Chandavarkar
2000 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson Mapping hinduism: “Hinduism” and the study of Indian religions, 1630-1776 Barry W H SWEETMAN Dr J Lipner
2000 PhD Essex The perception of social support and the experience of depression in Pakistani women E TAREEN
2000 PhD Southampton Rural poverty and the role of the non-farm sector in economic development: the Indian experience M TIWARI
2000 PhD Portsmouth Illiteracy in India: a multi-level analysis S VENKATASUBRAMANIAN
2000 PhD Warwick The influence of culture and politics on accounting change in India from 1947 to 1998 Shradda VERMA
2000 PhD Cambridge, Corpus Cranial diversity and the evolutionary history of South Asians Samanti Dineshkumari WARUSAWITHANA KULATILAKE
2000 MPhil Wales, Aberystwyth Britain and the Muslims: imperial perceptions of Indian Muslims, 1914-1922 R A J WHITE
2000 MPhil Oxford, St Cross Released on both sides ? The origin and position of formless meditation in early Indian Buddhism Alexander WYNNE Prof R F Gombrich
2000 PhD Edinburgh The forest cooks and the people eat: nature and society in Mayurbhanj, Orissa Hannele Kirsi Aija YLO’NEN
2000 PhD Bradford Agriculture and pastorarlism in the late Bronze Age, North West Frontier, Pakistan R L YOUNG
2001 MPhil Glasgow Colonisation and Hijab: a case study of Egypt and India N AHMAD
2001 PhD Stirling Socio-economic aspects of freshwater prawn culture development in Bangladesh N AHMED
2001 PhD Leeds Thalassaemia carrier testing in pregnant Pakistani women: perceptions of “information ” and “consent” Shenaz AHMED
2001 PhD London, SOAS Early Indian moulded terracotta: the emergence of an iconography and variations in style, circa second century BC to first century AD Naman Parmeshwar AHUJA
2001 PhD Essex Pakistan’s export performance, 1972-1998 M AKBAR
2001 PhD Durham Slaves of water: indigenous knowledge of fisheries on the floodplain of Bangladesh M ALAM
2001 PhD Aberdeen Evaluation of environmental sustainability of forest land use policies of Bangladesh Mohammad ALI
2001 PhD Aberdeen The effects of low temperature and seed quality on the germination of fifteen rice (Oryza sative L)cultivars from Bangladesh M G ALI
2001 PhD Portsmouth The rise of a service class culture in India: the software industry in Bangalore Elaine ASSAR
2001 PhD Portsmouth The emergence of a new culture class: the software industry in Bangalore, India Elain Risa ASSER Dr P Churmer-Smit
2001 PhD Brunel The development of India’s crafts and their implication upon Indo-European furniture N W BAMFORTH
2001 PhD Strathclyde A critique of tourism development planning: a case of Sri Lanka H M BANDARA
2001 PhD Wales, Bangor Developing fodder resources on the forest grassland of tribal areas in western India Peter George BEZKOROWAJNYI
2001 PhD Bristol Conceptions: an exploration of infertility and assisted conception in India A BHARADWAJ
2001 PhD Oxford, St Antony’s The emergence of the Bombay film industry, 1913-1937 Kaushik BHAUMIK Dr D A Washbrook
2001 PhD Strathclyde Consumer preferences and public policy: a case study of water supply and waste management in Madras (Chennai), India A P BHAYAN KARAM
2001 PhD Strathclyde Contingent variation in a developing metropolis: an exploration of water and waste management in Madres Anand Prathivadi BHAYANKARAM Mr R Perman
2001 PhD Kingston The initiation and magmatic evolution of a juvenile island arc: the Kohistan arc, Pakistan Himalaya S M BIGNOLD
2001 PhD London, LSHTM The rational use of blood in India: intervention to promote good transfusion practice Timothy John BRAY
2001 PhD Aberdeen Chipko and crofter: land movements in northern India and the Highlands of Scotland Nandini B CHADHA Mr W T C Brotherstone; Dr J Forster
2001 PhD Strathclyde The impact of trade policy on growth in India Ramesh CHANDRA Prof J Love
2001 PhD Cambridge, Girton Colonial power and agrarian politics in Kheda District (Gujarat), c.1890-1930 Vinayak CHATURVEDI Prof C A Bayly
2001 PhD Leeds Appropriate disposal of sewage in urban and suburban Sri Lanka E J H COREA
2001 PhD London, RHUL Faith, unity, discipline: the making of a socio-political formation in urban India, Lahore,1935-1953 Markus DAECHSEL Prof F C R Robinson
2001 PhD Cambridge, Sidney Whither urban governance ? Self-help civil society, political conflicts and environmental services in Chennai, India S L DAHIYA Dr B J Devereux
2001 PhD Glasgow The Bengal Army and the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, 1856-1857 Julian Saul Markham DAVID Prof H F A Strachen
2001 PhD London Air pollution and agricultural insect pests in urban and peri-urban areas of India C DAVIES
2001 PhD Essex No time to play: social, economic and legal dimensions of child labour practices in India Rie DEBABRATA
2001 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Sikh discourses of community and sovereignty in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Jeevan S DEOL Prof C A Bayley
2001 PhD Exeter The effects of marital dissolution, fertility and contraceptive behaviour among men and woimen in Addu Atoll, Maldives Aminath Mohamed DIDI Dr N Ford; Dr A Ankomah
2001 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ The scars of piety: Islam and the dynamics of religious dispute on Androth Island, South India Brian John DIDIER Dr J A Laidlaw
2001 PhD London, RHUL Traditional rule and western conventions: the Maharajas of Bikaner and their partnership with the Raj, 1887-1947 Paolo DURISOTTO Prof F C R Robinson
2001 PhD Loughborough Venture capital financing in India: a study of venture capitalist’s valuation, structuring and monitoring practices Mansoor DURRANI
2001 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Commerce and diaspora: locating the business practices of Hindu Sindhis Mark Anthony FALZON Dr J A Laidlaw
2001 PhD London, SOAS Buddhist narratives in Burmese murals Alexandra Raissa GREEN Dr E H Moore; Dr G H R Tillitson
2001 PhD Lancaster A critical review of ecological impact assessment in Sri Lanka: with particular reference to the shrimp aquaculture industry Miriya Prasanni GUNAWARDENA
2001 DrPH London, LSHTM Regulation of the private health care sector in Pakistan Ajmal HAMID
2001 PhD South Bank Social exclusion and women’s health in Lahore, Pakistan N A HAMID
2001 PhD Liverpool Identity, conflict and nationalism: the Naga and Kuki peoples of northeast India and northwest Burma Seilen HAOKIP
2001 MPhil London, LSE Humanitarian assistance: the relationship between NGOs and the government of Sri Lanka Marit HAUG Prof C Fuller; Prof M Light
2001 PhD Durham The engineering behaviour of the tropical clay soils of Dhaka, Bangladesh A S HOSSAIN
2001 PhD London, Imperial The nitrogen economy of rice-based cropping systems in Bangladesh F HOSSAIN
2001 PhD Southampton Assessment of family planning outreach workers’ contact and contraceptive use dynamics in rural Bangladesh using multilevel modelling M B HOSSAIN
2001 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Essays on consumption and asset mobility in rural Pakistan: a microeconomic approach Taimur HYAT Prof B Harriss-White
2001 PhD Leeds Internet implementation and strategic subsidiary context of Malaysias subsidiaries located in the UK Azizi Ali IBRAHIM
2001 PhD Edinburgh The scent of jasmine: experiencing knowledge and emotion in cross cultural contextrs of South Indian classical dance Joanna Rose JACOBSON
2001 PhD Stirling Fishery biology and population dynamics of shrimps (Penaeua indicus)and Metapenaeus dobsoni)in the lagoon and coastal area of Negombo, Sri Lanka P A A T JAYAWARDANE
2001 PhD Birmingham A cluster randomised controlled trial of reorganising maternal health services in Sindh, Pakistan A H JOKHIO
2001 DPhil Oxford, St Edmund Hall Christian and non-Christian Angami Nagas with special reference to traditional healing practices Vibha JOSHI Dr N J Allen
2001 PhD London, SOAS The making of colonial psychiatry, Bombay Presidentcy, 1849-1940 Shruti KAPILA Prof D J Arnold
2001 PhD London, Inst Comm. Security, development and political accommodation in Bangladesh Shahnaz KARIM Prof J Manor; Prof R F Holland
2001 PhD Southampton Maternal health care utilisation among the urban poor of Maharashtra, India F KAUSAR
2001 DPhil Oxford Echo words in Tamil Elinor KEANE
2001 PhD Newcastle Enhancement of nutritional quality of straw-based diets in Pakistan by urea treatment or suppementation with protein or energy Muhammad Aslam KHAN
2001 PhD Nottingham Environmental hazards, risk perception and general environmental beliefs: a cross cultural study between UK and Pakistan N R KHAN
2001 DPhil Oxford, Wadham Poverty in Pakistan: a study on health, nutrition, income and consumption Salman H KHAN Dr C Muller
2001 DPhil Oxford, Wadham State, society and labour in colonial Bombay, 1893-1918 Prashant K KIDAMBI Dr D A Washbrook
2001 PhD Birminghm Mission pneumatology with special reference to the Indian theologies of the holy spirit of Stanley Samartha, Vandana and Samuel Rayan K KIM
2001 PhD Reading Sociolinguistic variation in urban India: a study of Marathi-speaking adolescents in Pune Sonal KULKARNI
2001 PhD Birmingham British South Asian identities and the popular cultures of British Bhangra music, Bollywod films and Zee TV in Birmringham r KUMAR DUDRAH
2001 PhD London, External Sarangi style in North Indian art music Nicolas Fairchild MAGRIEL Dr R Widdess
2001 PhD Lancaster Economic reforms in India: impact on savings and productivity of the manufacturing sector Vidya MAHAMBARE Prof V N Balasubramanyam
2001 PhD Stirling Small scale multispecies demersal fishery off Negombo, Sri Lanka R R P MALDENIYA
2001 PhD Oxford, St Antony’s A reluctant warrior: Hong Kong in Anglo-American interactions, 1949-1957 Chi Kwan MARK Dr R J Foot
2001 PhD Brunel Rushdie’s legacy: the emergence of a radical British Muslim identity G A McROY
2001 PhD Cambridge, Trinity African NGOs: turning knowledge and experience into power Sarah G MICHAEL Dr C Elliott
2001 PhD London, SOAS Painting awareness: a study in the use of exotic cultural traditions by the artists of the Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami Gregory B MINISSALE
2001 PhD Leeds Weak market efficiency and the determinants of share returns: a study of the listed companies on the Dhaka Stock Exchange Asma MOBAREK Prof K Keasey; Dr H Short
2001 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Love and marriage in Delhi Perveez MODY SPENCER Dr J A Laidlaw
2001 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Dispute settlement mechanism in the ASEAN free trade area (AFTA} Rahmat MOHAMAD
2001 PhD Leeds Dividend policy and behaviour and security price reaction to the announcement of dividends in an emergency market: a study of companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange A Sabur MOLLAH Prof K Keasey
2001 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Writing crime, writing empire: representing the colony in nineteenth century fiction fo crime Upamanyu Pablo MUKHERJEE Prof C I Donaldson
2001 PhD Kent On the strength of a likeness: Kipling and the analogical connections between India and Ireland Kaori NAGAI
2001 PhD Leeds Perceptions of empowerment and reproductive health decisions amongst rural India women Ann Marie NICHOLS Dr Ray Bush; Dr Z Aydin
2001 PhD London, LSE The Singapore entrepreneurial state in China: a sociological study of the Suzhou industrial park, 1992-1999 Alexius A PEREIRA Dr A Power
2001 PhD Hull Population biology and management of hilsa shad (Tenualosa ilisha)in Bangladesh Md Jalilur RAHMAN
2001 PhD London, LSHTM Utilisation of primary health care services in rural Bangladesh: the population and provider perspectives S A RAHMAN
2001 PhD Manchester Modelling demand and supply in Bangladesh agriculture: a computable general equilibrium approach to public policy and economic welfare S M Osman RAHMAN Dr N Russell
2001 PhD City The evolving devi: education, employment and British Hindu Gujerati women’s identity Hasmita RAMJI
2001 DPhil Oxford, Christ Church Constrictions of identity and cultural translation in relation to origin and destination: a generational comparison of South Asian expatriate and immigrant writers in Britain (1937-present) Ruvani RANASINHA Dr J A Mee
2001 PhD London, QMW Public interest environmental legislation in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh J RAZZAQUE
2001 PhD Manchester Participation and protected area conservation in India: ecodevelopment theory and practice Trevor Pritchard REES Prof D Hulme
2001 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall The making of ethnoHinduism: communalism, reservations and the Ahmedabad riot of 1985 Ornit SHANI Dr R S Chandravarkar
2001 PhD London, LSE Merchants, “saints” and sailors: the social production of islamic reform in a port town of western India Edward Lawrence SIMPSON
2001 PhD Wales, Swansea Gender participation and community forestry: the case of joint forest management in Madhya Pradesh, India R SINGH
2001 PhD Reading International experience of plant variety protection: lessons for India Chittur SSRINIVASAN Prof C G Thirtle
2001 PhD Cambridge, Sidney Sussex Ecological institutions: joint forest management in Bihar (Jharkhand)and West Bengal, India M TIWARY Dr S E Corbridge
2001 PhD Cambridge, Gonville Contested notions of sovereignty in Bengal under British rule, 1765-1785 Thomas R TRAVERS Prof C A Bayly
2001 MPhil Open The legacy of the controversies: the continuing impact on interfaith encounters in Sri Lanka of nineteenth century controversies between Buddhists and Christians M S VASANTHAKUMAR
2001 PhD Cambridge, Newnham The appeal of a modern god-person in contemporary India: the case of Mata Amritanandamayi and her mission M WARRIER Dr S B Bayley
2001 PhD Hertfordshire Identifying potential barriers to business process and information systems reengineering in Sri Lanka V WEERAKKODY
2001 PhD Southampton Short birth intervals and infant health in India Alison K WHITWORTH
2001 DPhil Oxford, St Hughes Governing property, making law: British conceptions of agrarian society and the administration of rural Bengal, c.1785-1835 Jon E WILSON Dr D A Washbrook
2001 DPhil Oxford, St Cross Process analysis of a total literacy campaign in India: a case study of Udaiput District Rie YAGI Dr C Brock
2001 PhD Loughborough The globalisation of Western advertising: a case study of the impact of imported advertising on cultural values Azizul Halim YAHYA
2001 PhD London, SOAS The intertextuality of women in Urdu litterature: a study of Fahmida Riaz and Kishwar Naheed Amina YAQIN
2002 PhD Wales, Bangor Basic needs analysis of social forestry participants in northwest Bangladesh S AKHTER Prof C Price
2002 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Child labour in the Bombay Presidency, 1850-1920 Emma Catherine ALEXANDER Dr R S Chandavarkar
2002 PhD London, Imperial Biological variation and chemical control of Rhizoctonia solani causing rice sheath blight disease in Bangladesh Md Ansar ALI
2002 PhD LSHTM An analysis of private hospital markets in Bangladesh M A AMIN
2002 PhD Stirling A question of “Chineseness”: the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, 1819-1950s Lynn Ling-Yin ANG Dr S Mishra
2002 MPhil Newcastle Trophy hunting and conservation: Himalayan Ibrex Capra Ibex sibirica in northern Pakistan Masood ARSHAD
2002 PhD London The political economy of policy reform: labour market regulation in India Roli ASTHANA
2002 PhD Sheffield Children’s drawings as research tool: establishing children’s environmental concepts and preferences with reference to urban openspace planning design in Johore Bahru, Malaysia M S A BAKAR
2002 PhD London, SOAS Buddhism and shamanism in village Sikkim A BALIKCI
2002 DPhil Oxford, Somerville The other side of the Raj: representation of colonial India in the writings of Edward John Thompson Nilanjana BANERJI Prof R J C Young
2002 PhD London, SOAS An investigation into the 56 Vinayakas in Banares and their origins Isabelle O T BERMIJN
2002 DPhil Oxford, Linacre Biodiversity and conservation of a cultural landscape in the Western ghats of India Shonil A BHAGWAT Dr N D Brown; Dr P S Savill
2002 DPhil Oxford, St Anne’s Stylistic features of Sanskrit in the Upanisads and Pali in early Buddhist texts with special reference to prose word order Pathompong BODHIPRASIDDHINAND Prof R F Gombrich
2002 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson Archaeological science as anthropology: time, space and matreriality in rural India and the ancient past Nicole Lise BOIVIN Dr C A French
2002 MPhil London, Birkbeck Religion and the experiences of Indo-Pakistani women in the fiction of Bharati Mukherjee, Bapsi Sidhwa, Hanif Kureishi and Salmon Rushdie N H BOWEN
2002 PhD London, SOAS Baloch nationalism: its origin and development up to 1980 Taj Mohammad BRESEEG
2002 PhD London Asakta Karman in the Bhagavadgita Simon Pearse BRODBECK
2002 PhD London, SOAS Indian religions Simon Pearse BRODBECK
2002 PhD Newcastle The integration of poverty-focused aquaculture in large-scale irrigation systems in South Asia Cecile D BRUGERE
2002 PhD London Local governance in Calcutta: bureaucratic performance and health care delivery Indranil CHAKRABARTI
2002 MLitt Oxford, St Antony’s Ashraf identity in early Urdu fiction Shardul Kumar CHATURVEDI Dr D A Washbrook; Dr N Gooptu
2002 PhD Bristol Towards the socialisation of children’s learning: pupils, parents and primary education in an Indian district – an ethnographic survey Rita CHAWLA-DUGGAN
2002 PhD London, UC The influence of ethnicity and beliefs on the course and outcome of schizophrenia in Singapore J L CHUA
2002 PhD London, LSE Social mobility in a Chamar community in eastern Uttar Pradesh, northern Indian Manuela CIOTTI
2002 DPhil Sussex Rural poverty in Bangaldesh: a comparative study of determinants of economic well-being and inequality Maria Jose A CORTIJO
2002 PhD Open Environmental impact of Deccan Trap flood basalt volcanism: assessment of regional floral responses to late Cretaceous-early Tertiary activity Jennifer Ann CRIPPS
2002 PhD De Montfort Maharashtra and the cross-fertilisation of style of Brahmanical caves in India Deepanjana DANDA
2002 PhD London, LSHTM The long term effect of child bearing on adult mortality in Matlab, Bangladesh Lisa Sioned DAVIES
2002 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson British policy in Bengal: 1939-1954 Bikramjit DE Prof J M Brown; Prof T Raychaudhuri
2002 PhD London, SOAS Institutionalizing education: colonial government, missionary and household education in British colonial Punjab Jeffrey Mark DIAMOND Dr A A Powell
2002 PhD Oxford Brookes The molecular basis of thalassaemia in Sri Lanka Christopher A FISHER
2002 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Globalization and religious revival in the imperial cities of the Indian Ocean rim, 1870-1820 Mark Ravinder FROST Dr T N Harper
2002 PhD Durham Indigenous knowledge, livelihood and decision -making strategies on floodplain farmers in Bangladesh G P GHOSH
2002 PhD Bath Competing interests and institutional ambiguities: problems of sustainable forest management in the northern areas of Pakistan A GOHAR
2002 PhD Edinburgh Untouchable citizens: an analysis of the Liberation Panthers and democratistion in Tamil Nadu Hugh GORRINGE
2002 PhD London, SOAS The Sufi saints of Awrangabad: narratives, contexts and identities Nile S GREEN
2002 PhD Cambridge. St John’s Mantle plumes and depositional sequences: onshore/offshore India A R W HALKETT Dr N J White
2002 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Famine process and famine policy: a case study of Ahmednagar District, Bombay Presidency, 1870-84 David N J HALL-MATTHEWS Dr D A Washbrook; Dr B Harriss
2002 PhD Leeds Computer misuse within the organisation: an evaluation of computer misuse legislation in Britain and Malaysia Zaiton HAMIN
2002 PhD London, Imperial Characterisation of Bacillus cereus strains in Bangladeshi rice Md Anwarul HAQUE
2002 PhD Edinburgh Growing gods: bidayuh processes of religious change in Sarawak, Malaysia F M A HARRIS
2002 DPhil Sussex British collecting of Indian art and artifacts in the 18th and 19th centuies Lucian G HARRIS
2002 PhD Reading Understanding farmers’ attitudes and behaviours towards the use of pesticides on cotton crop in Pakisdtan’s Punjab Tariq HASSAN
2002 PhD London The curriculum for health education in schools: issues of definition, choice and implementation: an illuminative study based on Uganda, Zambia and India Hubert William Richmond HAWES
2002 PhD Strathclyde The significance of ethnic ties and entreprenurial networks in the internationalisation of the firm: case study: the internationalisation of UK Indian enterprises Jaswinder Singh HAYER
2002 PhD Leeds The expression of syntax in Sri Lankan English: speech and writing S M F HERAT
2002 PhD Hull US – Pakistan partnership in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 1979-1988: causes, dynamics and consequences A Z A HILALI
2002 PhD Strathclyde An integrated performance measurement system of health care services: an empirical study of public and private hospitals in Malaysia Abdul Razak IBRAHIM
2002 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Alternative methods and sources for measuring vaccination coverage in rural Bangladesh MdD Shafiqul ISLAM Dr C G N Mascie-Taylor
2002 DPhil Sussex Voice, responsiveness and collaboration: democratic decentralization and service delivery in two Indian cities Jennifer JALAL J P Gaventa
2002 PhD Wales, Bangor Drivers of land use change and policy analysis: the case of Bangladesh Mohammed JASHIMUDDIN Prof G Edwards-Jones
2002 PhD Open An investigation of teaching and learning biology at a distance: with special reference to Sri Lanka B G JAYATILLEKE
2002 DPhil York Cultural construction of the “Sinhala woman” and women’s lives in post-independence Sri Lanka J D JAYAWARDENA Dr J de Groot
2002 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Greeks, Saracens and Indians: imperial builders in south India, 1800-1880 Ioma Shanti JAYEWARDENE-PILLAI Dr D A Washbrook
2002 PhD London, RHUL Being Sri Lankan: three cultural geographies Tariq JAZEEL Dr C Nash; Prof D Gower
2002 PhD Southampton The rhetoric and reality of gender issues in the domestic water sector: a case study from India Deepa JOSHI
2002 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Behavioural ecology of sympatric langures in Bangladesh Md Mofizul KABIR Dr D J Chivers
2002 MD Leeds Genetic and environmental determinants of cardiovascular risk factors in South Asian patients with cerebrovascular disease and their first degree relatives K KAIN
2002 PhD Nottingham The categories of Hindu nationalism: a neo-structuralist analysis of the discourse of Hindutva Christian KARNER
2002 PhD Manchester Metropolitan Public participation in environmental impact assessment in the developing and developed worlds: Pakistan and UK perspectives Amjad Ali KHAN
2002 PhD Kent Memory, dis-location, violence and women in the partition literature of Pakistan and India Furrukh Abbas KHAN Dr A S Gurnah
2002 MPhil London, UC Vitamin A deficiency in children in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)of Pakistan M A KHAN
2002 PhD Manchester An evaluation of the performance of small and medium enterprises in Bangladesh with special reference to finance Md Saiful Amin KHAN Prof F Nixson
2002 PhD Durham Women’s voices: the presentation of women in the fiction of South Asian women Lisa Ee Jia LAU Dr M A Crang; Dr E E Mawdsley
2002 PhD London The role of Islam in the legal system of Pakistan Martin Wilhelm LAU
2002 PhD Kent Power and patronage in Pakistan Stephen M LYON Mr R S Edmond
2002 PhD Reading The role of English in higher education in Pakistan S MANSOOR
2002 PhD Bristol The global regulation of marine fisheries and its impact on two developing states: Namaibia and Kerala Leonarda Enrica Camilla MARAZZI
2002 DClinPsy Leicester Illness representations, coping and locus of control in breast cancer: a comparative study amongst South Asian Indian women and white indigenous women R MARTYN
2002 PhD Durham Sowing new ideas; an investigation of anthropology’s contribution to rural development in south east Sri Lanka M MARZANO
2002 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The sepoy army and colonial Madras, c1806-57 Carina Anne MONTGOMERY Dr D A Washbrook
2002 PhD London, SOAS A lot of history: sexual violence, public memory and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 Nayanika MOOKHERJEE Dr C Pinney; Dr C Osella
2002 PhD London, SOAS Hindi film songs: and the cinema Anna Frances MORCOM Dr R Widdess
2002 PhD Bristol A study of the late Madhyamaka doxography Jundo NAGASHIMA
2002 PhD East Anglia Between work and school: children in rural Andhra Pradesh Masako OTA Prof J D Seddon; Dr R Palmer-Jones
2002 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson The fragile web of order: conflict avoidance and dispute resolution in Ladakh Fernanda PIRIE Dr M J Banks; Prof D Parkin
2002 PhD Glasgow Morphological and molecular systematic studies of Asian caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona) Bronwen PRESSWELL
2002 PhD London, LSE US foreign policy to Pakistan, 1947-1960: reconstructing strategy Saqib Iqbal QUERESHI Dr C Coker
2002 PhD Essex India in the making of liberal identities: the case of Mary Carpenter and Harrier Martineau Brenda A QUINN Prof C M Hall
2002 PhD Wales, Bangor Muslims and crime: a comparative criminological study of South Asian Muslims in Britain and Pakistan Muzammil QURAISHI Dr J Wardhaugh
2002 PhD London, LSE US foreign policy to Pakistan, 1947-1960: re-constructing strategy Saqib Iqbal QURESHI Dr C Coker
2002 PhD Aberdeen Seasonal availability and utilisation of feed resources and their impact on the nutrition of livestock in an agro pastoral system of the Hindu Kush Karakoram Himalayan region of Pakistan Abdur RAHMAN
2002 PhD East Anglia Standing one’s ground: gender, land and livelihoods in the Santal Parganas, Jharkhans, India Nitya RAO Prof C Jackson; Dr B Rogaly
2002 PhD Bradford Opening up spaces: engendering protracted social conflict and conflict transformation: an analysis with special reference to Sri Lanka C REIMANN
2002 PhD London, LSHTM Sustaining menstrual regulation policy: a case study of the policy process in Bangladesh Gabrielle Catherine ROSS
2002 PhD Aberdeen The economic viability of shrimp farming in the coastal areas of Pakistan Nizam SABIR
2002 PhD Wales, Cardiff Raj Bhakta Marg: the path of devotion to Srimad Rajcandra: a Jain community in the twenty first century E K SALTER Dr Johnson
2002 PhD Edinburgh Negotiations and contradictions: local perceptions of tourism on Langkawi Island, Malaysia Nor Hafizah SELAMAT
2002 PhD London, UC A study to determine the effects of the status of women on child growth undertaken in the Mysore region of Karnataka, India K SETHURAMAN
2002 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth The resolution of environmental disputes in India D SHANNUGANATHAN
2002 PhD Newcastle Application of information technology to improve the design process in the construction sector in Pakistan: a case of the specification management process B K SHAR
2002 PhD London, SOAS Communism in India Shalini SHARMA Dr S Kaviraj
2002 PhD Cambridge, Darwin The sacred geography of Sanchi Hill: the archaeological setting of Buddhist monasteries in central India J SHAW Dr D K Chakrabarti
2002 PhD Wales, Cardiff Metaphysical psychology: an analysis of Sri Aurobindo Ghose’s theory of psychological consciousness development with special reference to his concepts of integral Brahman and the psychic entity Girija SHETTAR Dr Johnson
2002 MPhil/PhD Reading Credit constraints on the growth of rural non-farm sector in India Anchita SHUKLA (TRIPATHI) Dr S L Wiggins
2002 PhD Bath Escape and “struggle”: routes to women’s liberation in Bihar Indu B SINHA Dr G Wood; Dr J A McGregor
2002 PhD Wales, Cardiff Representative agent modes and macroeconomic poliocy: an application to the UK Naveen SRINIVASAN
2002 DPhil Oxford, Trinity Bhuvanekabahu VII and the Portuguese: temporal and spiritual encounters in Sri Lanka, 1521-1551 Alan Leiper STRATHERN Dr P B R Carey; Prof T F Earle
2002 PhD Cranfield, Silsoe An evaluation of public and private groundwater irrigation systems in Bangladesh and Pakistan David SUTHERLAND Dr R Carter
2002 DPhil Oxford Clothing culture: sex, gender and transvestism with reference to UK transvestites and the hijras of India Charlotte SUTHRELL Prof M Banks
2002 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson A study of consecration ritual in Indian Buddhist tantrism: a critical and annotated transslation of selected sections of the Kriyasagrahapanjika of Kuladatta Ryugen TANEMURA Prof A G J Sanderson
2002 PhD Wales, Bangor Influence of crop profitability, market, labour and land on smallholder cropping systems in rubber-growing areas of Sri Lanka Sunethra Pushpa Kumri Thennakoon THENNAKOON-MUDIYANSELAGE Dr F Sinclair
2002 DPhil Oxford, Hertford Negotiating the boundaries of gender and empire: Lady Mary Curzon, Vicereine of India Nicola J THOMAS Dr P Coones; Dr J R Ryan
2002 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam The institutional responses to the water needs of peri-urban communities in Delhi, India Kathryn Signe TOVEY Dr B Vira
2002 PhD Cambridge, Christ’s Crafting discourse: mat weaving in Pattamadai, South India S VENKATESAN Dr D A Swallow
2002 PhD East Anglia Foreign aid, power and elementary education reform in Pakistan from 1992 to 1999 Michael WARD Dr R McBride
2002 PhD Nottingham Salman Rushdie: imagining the other name foe Islam Y YACOUBI
2002 PhD London, SOAS The Vinaya in India and China: spirit and transformation Jing YIN Dr T Skorupski
2002 PhD Reading An application of theory of planned behaviour and logistic regression models to understand farm level tree planting and its determinants in the district of Dera Ismail of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province Muhammad ZUBAIR
2003 PhD Birmingham Women empowerment and intrahousehold resource allocation through micro-finance: a comparative study of two micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh Shahnaz Tarannum ABDULLAH
2003 PhD Glasgow An ethnographic study of violence experienced by Dalit Christian women in Kerala State, India, and the implications of this for feminist theology S ABRAHAM
2003 PhD London, LSE Federal formation and consociational stabilisation: the politics of national identity, articulation and ethnic conflict regulation in India and Pakistan Katharine ADENEY Prof B O’Leary
2003 PhD Stirling An empirical study of employee share ownership in Malaysia Mohmad ADNAN B ALIAS
2003 PhD Exeter Linking India with Britain: the Persian Gulf cable, 1864-1906 Farajollah AHMADI Prof J Black; Dr L P Morris
2003 PhD London, UC Ethnicity and environment in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Bangladesh Farid AHMED Dr M Banerjee
2003 DPhil Sussex The construction of childhood in Monipur: negotiating boundaries through activities Iftikhar AHMED
2003 PhD Manchester Sri Lankan export-orientated clothing manufacturing industry: a comparison of management development practices across foreign, joint venture and local companies Vathsala AKURATIYAGAMAGE B Cooke; A Mamman
2003 PhD Queen’s, Belfast We are fighting for the women’s liberation also: a comparative study of female combatants in the national conflicts in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland M ALISON
2003 PhD London, SOAS Dominant texts, subaltern performances: two tellings of the Ramayan in central India S ANITHA
2003 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson A political biography of Don Stephen Senanyake, (1931-1952): the former prime minister of Sri Lanka Drene Terana APONSO Dr G Johnson
2003 DPhil Oxford, St Cross Education reform in developing countries:decentralisation with reference to India and Pakistan Linda F C ARTHUR Dr C Brock
2003 PhD London, UC Childhood epilepsy in Bangladesh: clinical profile, predictors of outcome and randomised controlled trial of efficacy and side effects of treatment S H BANU
2003 MPhil Birmingham A comparative examination of critical, religious and interreligious ingredients contributing to intercommunal harmony and disharmony in Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu dynamism, British Christian evangelism and the rise of 20th century Sinhalese Buddhist militancy A R BECKETT
2003 PhD Manchester Perceptions of user education in the university libraries of Pakistan Rubina BHATTI T Christie; G Price
2003 PhD Oxford Brookes Revolution, military personnel and the war of liberation in Banglaldesh O A BIR BIKRAM
2003 MPhil London, SOAS Hindustani music in the reign of Aurangzeb Katherine Ruth BROWN Dr R Widdess
2003 PhD London, SOAS We Nelpalis: language, lliterature and the formation of a Nepali public sphere in India, 1914-1940 Rhoderick Alasdair MacDonald CHALMERS Dr M Hutt
2003 PhD Leeds The relationship between knowledge and power in the work of Amitav Ghosh C G CHAMBERS
2003 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Hall Mysore: the making and unmaking of a model state, c. 1799-1834 Nigel Hugh Mosman CHANCELLOR Prof C A Bayly
2003 PhD Edinburgh Rishtas: transational Pakistani marriages Katharine CHARSLEY
2003 PhD Sheffield Birth for some women in Pakistan: defining and defiling M CHESNEY
2003 PhD Edinburgh Admitted truths in Muslim-Christian dialogue: a study of William Muir, Sayyid Ahmad Khan and William Goldsack in 19th century India David Otis COFFEY
2003 DPhil Oxford, Queen’s Marxism and middle class intelligentsia: political ideology and culture in Bengal, 1920-1950 Rajarshi DASGUPTA Dr N Gooptu
2003 DPhil Oxford, St Hugh’s Bridging educational and social divides ? private school outreach for out-of-school children in India Laura L DAY Dr C Brock
2003 PhD London, SOAS Local brokers: knowledge and trust and organisation in the practice of agricultural extension for small and marginal farmers in Rajasthan, India Bina DESAI Dr D Mosse
2003 PhD Newcastle The regulation of private schools for low-income families in Andrha Pradesh,India: an Austrian economic approach P DIXON
2003 PhD Cambridge, Girton Orientalism, Sanskrit scholarship and education in colonial north India, ca 1775-1875 Michael Sinclair DODSON Prof C A Bayley
2003 PhD Wales, Cardiff Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna movement: the question of continuity Paul W EATON Dr Johnson
2003 PhD London, SOAS Jews and Judaism in modern Indian discourse Yulia EGOROVA Prof C Shackle
2003 PhD Cambridge, Clare Hall Behind the scenes at the magic house: an ethnoggraphy of the Indian Museum, Calcutta M J ELLIOTT Dr D A Swallow
2003 PhD Cambridge, Jesus A study of agricultural production at the level of household, community and region: long term trends in India and China Shailaja FENNELL Dr P H Nolan
2003 PhD London, SOAS Sinhala Buddhist nationalism from revivalism to militant political ideology: the struggle to shape public culture in Sri Lanka Yolanda FOSTER Dr DTaylor
2003 PhD Gloucestershire Exiled from glory: Anglo-Indian settlement in nineteenth century Britain with special reference to Cheltenham S FRASER Dr C R V More; Dr J M Bourne
2003 PhD Gloucestershire Exiled from glory: Anglo-Indian settlement in nineteenth century Britain with special reference to Cheltenham Stuart J FRASER Dr C R V More; Dr J M Bourne
2003 PhD London, LSE From local tensions to ethnic conflict: the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a Christian/Hindu “tribal” community in Chhattisgargh, northern India Peggy FROERER Dr L Sklar
2003 PhD Cambridge, Churchill An economic perspective on resettlement of populations displaced by large dams: the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project displaced, India Supriya GARIKIPATI
2003 PhD London, SOAS The origins and early development of anthropomorphic Indian iconography Madhuvanti GHOSE Dr G H R Tillotson
2003 DPhil Oxford, St Edmund Hall Subduction-related metamorphism, structure and tectonic evolution of the Kohistan arc and main mantle thrust zone, Pakistanm Himalayas Simon J GOUGH Dr D J Waters; Dr M P Searle
2003 PhD Birmingham Islamic activism in South Asia: the reasons for the electoral under-achievement of the Jama’at Islami Party of Pakistan, 1947-1977 F HAMEED
2003 PhD Derby A critical analysis of policy initiatives involving small and medium enterprises in Malaysia A B A HAMID
2003 PhD Sunderland Identity and the Bengal Muslims: mapping changing perspectives (1905-1971) F HASHEM
2003 PhD London, External Patterns and dynamics of loan use: a study of BRAC borrowers in Bangladesh F HASIN
2003 PhD Durham Arsenic toxicity in Bangladesh: health and social hazards Md Manzarul HASSAN
2003 DPhil Sussex Elite public discourses of poverty and the poor in Bangladesh Naomi T HOSSAIN M P Moore
2003 PhD Southampton Quality of care in maternity services: childbirth among the urban poor of Mumbai, India Louise A HULTON
2003 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Effect of weekly iron supplementation and antihelminthic treatment on the physical growth and development of Bangladeshi children Mohammad Mushtuq HUSAIN
2003 PhD Essex Factors limiting productivity and adoption of rubber tea intercropping in the low country wet zone of Sri Lanka S M M IQBAL
2003 MPhil Birmingham A call to Christian discipleship in a situation of conflict: a study of Christian mission in the socio-ethnic conflict of Sri Lanka, with special reference to the life witness and theoleogy of Dietrich Bonhoefer M B JEYAKUMAR
2003 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ Novels of the South Asian diaspora in East Africa Stephanie Jillian JONES Mr T L J Cribb
2003 PhD London, LSE Governing morals: state, marriage and householfd among the Gaddis of north India Kriti KAPILA
2003 MPhil London, SOAS The power behind the throne: relations between the British and Indian states, 1870-1909 Caroline J KEEN Dr A A Powell
2003 PhD Cambridge, Corpus Representing children: power, policy and the discourse on child labour in the football manufacturing industry of Sialkot Ali KHAN Dr D Sneath
2003 PhD Manchester The impact of privatisation in Pakistan Iram Anjum KHAN Dr P Cook
2003 PhD Cambridge, Hughes Hall A social and political history of the telegraph in the Indian empire, circa 1850-1920 Deep Kanta LAHIRI CHOUDHURY Prof C A Bayley
2003 PhD Cambridge,Fitzwillliam Colonial governmentality: spaces of inperialism and nationalism in India’s new capital, New Delh S I LEGG Dr J S Duncan
2003 PhD London, SOAS Women, equality, autonomy: study of women’s rights in India Sumi MADHOK Dr S Kaviraj
2003 PhD Aberdeen The performance of agricultural institutions in disseminating new technologies: a case study of modern rice variety BR 32 in Bangladesh’ B MAJUMDER
2003 PhD Reading Vegetation mapping in the north west of Pakistan R N MALIK
2003 DPhil Sussex Gendered places, transnational lives: Sikh women in Tanzania, Britain and Indian Pubjab K P K MAND
2003 PhD Stirling Policy transfer and policy translation: day care for people with dementia in Kerala, India L F M McCABE
2003 PhD Southampton Barriers and opportunities in effective contraceptive management in Bangladesh Juliet McEACHRAN
2003 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Federalism in Malaysia: a constitutional study of the federal institutions established by the Federal Constitution of Malaysia and their relationships with the traditional institutions in the constitution (with special reference to the Islamic religious power and bureaucracy in the states) K A MOKHTAR
2003 PhD Leeds The levels of integration of people with spinal cord lesion in Bangladesh Abdul Khair Mohammed MOMIN
2003 PhD Loughborough Modelling a flow of funds and policy simulation experiments in the financial sector in India Tomoe MOORE
2003 PhD London, LSE Tradition and modernity: a sociological comparison between Sri Lankan women in Colombo and in London in the late 1990s Fathima Fatheena MUBARAK
2003 PhD London, Goldsmiths Doing development: voluntary agencies in the Sundarbans of West Bengal Amites MUKHOPADHYAY Prof P Caplan
2003 PhD London, LSHTM Gender and reproductive health in Pakistan: a need for reconceptualisation Z MUMTAZ
2003 PhD London, SOAS Romance and pleasure in a restrictive society: understanding the sexual conduct of unmarried middle class young people in Bangladesh Lazeena MUNA Prof J Cleland (LSHTM)
2003 PhD London, LSE Marxism and beyond in Indian politicval thought: J P Narayan and M N Roy’s theory of radical democrary Eva-Maria NAG Dr Chun Lin
2003 PhD London, SOAS The museum in colonial India (1770-1936): a history of collecting, exhibiting and disciplining of knowledge Savithri Preetha NAIR De G H R Tillotson
2003 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Second World War Japanese atrocities and British minor war crimes trials: the issue of fair trial in four selected British war crimes trials in Malaysia and Singapore in 1946-1947 Arujanan NARAYANAN
2003 PhD London, UC The life cycle of clothing: recycling and the efficacy of materiality in contemporary urban India Katherine Lucy NORRIS Dr S Kuechler-Fogden
2003 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Refugees on the Indian sub-continent, 1947-1998: state policy and practice Pia A OBEROI Dr G S Goodwin-Gill
2003 PhD Aberdeen The classification and efficiency of use of forage resources under semi-arid conditions in the Hindukush, Karakoram and Himalayan region of Pakistan R M OMER
2003 PhD Birmingham The echoes of a faded memory: a contribution to a history of the Tamil Coolie Mission P J T PEIRIS
2003 PhD London, SOAS The formation of a divided public: print, language and literatuire in colonial Goa R PINTO
2003 PhD Greenwich A tapestry of resistance: Afghan educated refugee women in Pakistan: “Agency” identity and resistance in war and displacement N POURZAND
2003 PhD Dundee Quality assurance in undergraduate medical education: a multiple case study in Bangladesh, Thailand and Indonesia Titi Savitri PRIHATININGSIH
2003 PhD Reading International joint ventures in developing economies: an analysis of Indo-British ventures in India Raji RAJAN Prof M Utton; Dr U Kambhampati
2003 PhD London, SOAS Law and social change in India Gopalan RAMAN
2003 PhD London, LSHTM The consequences of health insurance for the informal sector: two non-governmental, non-profit schemes in Gujerat Michael Kent RANSON
2003 PhD Durham A study of land transformation in Savar Upazila, Bangladesh, 1915-2001: an integrated approach using remore sensing Md Shahedur RASHID Dr P J Atkins
2003 PhD Cambridge, Sidney Sussex Auditing “development”: an anthropological study of “audit culture” within a “participatory rural development” project in eastern India M J REW
2003 MPhil Newcastle Development and land relations in tribal India: a study of Chotanagpur Richard ROBERTS P W Kellett
2003 PhD Edinburgh William Roxburgh (1751-1815)the founding father of Indian botany Timothy Francis ROBINSON
2003 DPhil Sussex Representing rebellion: visual aspects of counter-insurgency in colonial India Daniel J RYCROFT
2003 PhD Wawick Malaysian pre-school children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in inclusive settings S SAAD
2003 PhD Bristol Voices from an island: a reading of four Sri Lankan novelists in English D SAIKIA
2003 PhD Bradford A social constructionist account of children’s rights under the conditions of globalisation: the issue of child labour in India G SANGHERA
2003 PhD Warwick The knowledge and perspectives about Educational Management Information System (EIS/SMPP) of decision makers in the Malaysian Ministry of Education (MMOE): an enquiry into the implementation of an EMIS M W SARWANI
2003 PhD Manchester Institutions and poverty reduction: a case study of rural Bangladesh Md Golam SARWAR Dr J Mullen
2003 PhD London, SOAS Woman and communal violence in India Atreyee SEN Dr D Mosse
2003 PhD Manchester Information technology and the construction industry in Pakistan Ali SHAR Prof S Guy
2003 PhD Cambridge, St Cath’s The making of modern Assam, 1826-1935 Jayeeta SHARMA Prof C A Bayley
2003 PhD Wales, Cardiff Arsenic mobility in sediments and contamination of he Bengal Basin Darren SHAW
2003 PhD Bradford Microfinance and social change: a case study of household finance, development and change in gender relations in rural Bangladesh M N I SHEKH
2003 DPhil Sussex Resisting stigma and interventions: situating trafficked Nepali women’s struggles for self-respect, safety and security in Mumbai and Nepal M M SHIVADAS
2003 PhD Leicester Violence as non communication: the news differential of Kashmir and north east conflicts in the Indian national press Prasun SONWALKAR Prof A Sreberny
2003 PhD Aberdeen Factors affecting tree growing in traditional agriforestry systems in Werstern Himalaya, India K K SOOD
2003 PhD Brunel Moral continuity: Gujerati kinship, women, children and rituals Alison SPIRO, Mary
2003 PhD London, SOAS Social exclusion and cohesion: the case of leprosy in South India James STAPLES Dr D Mosse
2003 PhD London, LSE Bringing the Empire back in: patterns of growth in the British imperial state, 1890-1960 (with special reference to Indian and Africa) Gita SUBRAHMANYAM
2003 PhD Birmingham Imagining Hinduism: a post colonial perspective S SUGIRTHARAJAH
2003 PhD Manchester A feminist analysis of “white-ness” in an Indian research context Maria SUMMERSON Prof L Stanley
2003 PhD London, SOAS Prostitution and the law in Pakistan: a case study of Lahore’s Hira Mandi R TAK
2003 PhD Open South Asian women and the construction of political identity S TAKHAR
2003 PhD Warwick Foreign music: linguistic estrangement and its textual effects in Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov and Rushdie J TAYLOR
2003 DPhil Oxford, Wadham Monetary remedy for breach of constitutional rights in the United States, India, New Zealand and the United Kingdom Lisa Anne TORTELL Prof P P Craig
2003 PhD London, SOAS Literature and the politics of identity in Orissa Lopamudra TRIPATHY Dr S Kaviraj
2003 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Growth empirics within a low income country: evidence from states in India,1960-1992 Kamakshya D TRIVEDI Dr G M F Cameron
2003 PhD London, LSE Rebels and devotees of Jharkhand: social, religious and political transformation among the Adivasis of northern India Barbara VERARDO
2003 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Institutional change and natural resource management: the case of forest policy reform in India Bhaskar VIRA Prof P H Nolan
2003 PhD East Anglia Embodied working lives: manual labouring in Maharashtra, India Louise WAITE Dr C Jackson; Dr R Palmer-Jones
2003 PhD Warwick Pakistan’s teaching hospitals: present measures quality and proposed quality improvement programmes G WAJID
2003 DPhil Oxford, St Cross Bangladeshi pupils: experiences, identity and achievement Sue WALTERS Dr C W R Davies; Prof S Tomlinson
2003 PhD East Anglia The growth of the Indian software industry: a social history Meera WARRIER Dr K Sen
2003 PhD Edinburgh Stereotyped Scots: representations and realities of Scottish missionary and military experience in colonial and post-independence Pakistan Jeremy WESTON
2003 PhD Wales Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922): a re-evaluation of her life and work Keith J WHITE
2004 PhD Cambridge, Lucy The world is established through the work of existence: the performance of Gham-Khadi among Pukhtun Bibiane in northern Pakistan: Amineh A AHMED Dr S B Bayly
2004 PhD Hull Political regime change and local government in Bangladesh Tariq AHMED L Summers
2004 MPhil Bradford Community level conflict transformation for sustainable peace: a Barefoot University for peace education in Sri Lanka Monica ALFRED
2004 MPhil De Montfort Arsenic speciation in foodstuffs from Bangladesh and a method for arsenic removal from water Shaban W AL-RMAILLY
2004 PhD Wales, Cardiff The portfolio behaviour of the GCC islamic and conventional banks Abdulaziz Mohammad N AL-SAEED
2004 DPhil Oxford, Linacre Just a pile of stones ! The politicization of identity , indigenous knowledge and sacred landscapes among the Lepcha and the Bhutia tribes in contemporary Sikkim, India Vibha ARORA Prof D Parkin; Prof M J Banks
2004 DPhil Oxford, Campion Hall From outcaste to caste: the use of symbols and myths in the construction of identity: a study of conflict between the Paraiyars and the Vanniyars in Tamil Nadu, South India Chockalingam Joe ARUN Dr M J Banks
2004 PhD Durham Economic and structural reforms and bank efficiency: a comparative analysis of India and Pakistan, 1990-1998 A ATAULLAH
2004 PhD Bradford Quality assurance in the basic nurse education programme in Pakistan: a case study aimed at improving the quality assurance practices in the basic nurse education in Pakistan A AZIZ
2004 PhD Greenwich A sustainable competitiveness model for strategic alliances: a study of rural entrepreneurs and commercial organisations in Malaysia with special emphasis on Malaysian farmer’s organisations S A BAHARUM
2004 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield The legisimating vocabulary of group rights in contemporary India Rochana BAJPAI Prof M S Freedom; Dr N Gooptu
2004 PhD Reading Farmers’ risk and uncertainty perceptions and their influence on farm level decision-making in the cotton-wheat zone of Pakistan’s Punjab K A BAJWA Dr T Rehman
2004 PhD London, InstEd An evaluation of the impact of school-based resource management and formula funding of schools and on the efficiency and equity of resource allocation in Sri Lanka Balasooriya Mudiyanselage Jayantha BALASOORIYA Prof A Little; Prof R Levacic
2004 PhD Cambridge, Downing Skill upgrading within informal training: lessons from the Indian auto mechanic J C BARBER Dr L Caley
2004 DBA Strathclyde The competitive advantage of Pakistan: empirical analysis of the textile/apparel industry K M BARI
2004 PhD London, Goldsmiths In service in India: the ethics of rule and conduct of British administrators and army officers in late nineteenth and early twentieth century India Jatinder BARN N Rose
2004 MPhil SOAS The dispensary movement in Bombay Presidency: ideology and practice, 1800-1876 Jennifer BLAKE Prof D Arnold
2004 PhD Middlesex The “divine heirarchy”: the social and institutional elements of vulnerability in South India B BOSHER
2004 PhD London, SOAS Challenging development: western discourses and Rajasthan women Tamsin Jane BRADLEY
2004 PhD Cambridge, Queens Tectono-metamorphic evolution of the central and western Himalayas M CADDICK Dr T J B Holland
2004 PhD Coventry Empire and authority: Curzon, collisions, character and the Raj, 1899-1906 M CARRINGTON
2004 DPhil Sussex Bringing citizens back in: public sector reform, service delivery performance and and accountability in an Indian state Jonathan CASELEY Dr A Joshi
2004 PhD Sheffield Site-formation studies and paleolithic investigations in the Siwalik Hill of northern India: reconsidering the Soanian history P R CHAUHAN
2004 PhD London, SOAS Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka and Taiwan W-Y CHENG
2004 PhD Warwick Uncovering injustice: towards a Dalit feminist politics in Bangladesh Shraddha CHIGATERI C Wright
2004 PhD London, SOAS The Da’sanami-Samnyasis: the integration of ascetic lineages into an order Matthew James CLARK
2004 PhD Manchester We are the kings: the children of Dhaka’s streets Alessandro CONTICINI D Hulme
2004 PhD Anglia Adaptation and change in a traditional society: sustainable development in the context of a Ladakhi village Robert COOK
2004 PhD Cambridge, Darwin The Irish expatriate community in British India, c1750-1900 Barry James Conleth CROSBIE Prof C A Bayley
2004 DPhil Oxford, Balliol Much ado about religion: a critical and annotated translation of the Agamadambara, a satirical play by the 9th century Kashmirian philosopher Bhatta Jayanta Csaba DEZSO Prof J A Sanderson
2004 PhD Manchester Marginal Indian Punjabi Sikh men; a psychotherapeutic perspective Kamaldeep Singh DHILLON Dr C Bates
2004 PhD Nottingham Inherited factors in pre-eclampsia: molecular genetic and epidemiological studies in a Sri Lankan population V H W DISSANAYAKE
2004 PhD Bristol Gender and human rights: a discursive study of “violence against women” in Mexico and Pakistan Silvie DRESSELHAUS Dr J Weldes; Dr V Hewitt
2004 PhD Portsmouth The growth and applicationof Shari’ah in India: a legislative and judicial interpretation since 1947 E EHSANULLAH
2004 PhD London, SOAS Portugal and Portuguese India, 1870-1961 Bernard Dale ETHELL Prof P G Robb
2004 PhD Bradford Ceramic specialisation and standardisation in early historic South Asia: an interdisciplinary investigation of rouletted ware, grey ware and Arikamedu Type 10 L A FORD
2004 PhD Hull Identity, war and the state in India: the case of the Nagas Mr T FRANKS
2004 PhD London, King’s Improving the quality management systems for pharmaceutical services in developing countries: a case study in Sri Lanka Piyadasa Galalla GAMAGE
2004 PhD Oxford, Blackfriars The Vedantic cosmology of Ramanuja and its western parallels Robindra GANERI Prof J S K Ward
2004 PhD Nottingham Slavery in ancient Greek poleis and ancient Sri Lanka: a comparison W M W GEDARA
2004 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ Of poverty and markets: the political economy of informal waste recovery and plastic recycling in Delhi K GILL Dr B Vira
2004 PhD St Hugh’s Caitanya Vaisnava Vedanta: acintyabhedabheda of Jiva Gosvani’s Catusutri Tika Ravi Mohar GUPTA Dr S Gupta-Gombrich; Prof J S K Ward
2004 PhD London, SOAS Samaj and unity: the in Bengali literati’s discourse on nationhood, 1867-1905 Swarupa GUPTA Prof P G Robb
2004 PhD London, SOAS The politics of language and nation-building: the Nehruvian legacy and representations of cultural diversity in Sahgal, Rushdie and Seth A M GUTTMAN
2004 PhD East Anglia Understanding gender and intra-household relations: a case study of Shaviyani Atoll, Maldives Hala HAMEED Prof C Jackson
2004 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The dynamics of low-caste conversion movements: rural Punjab c 1880-1935 Christopher Gerard Michael HARDING Prof J M Brown
2004 PhD London, SOAS Religious mobilisation and the construction of political space in the Indian North West Frontier tribal areas in the early twentieth century Sana HAROON
2004 MPhil Leicester Lord Lake of Laswaree and Delhi, 1744-1808 Roger HARRIS Dr H V Bowen
2004 PhD Durham Detection, monitoring and management of small water bodies: a case study of Shahjadpur Thana, Bangladesh Khondaker Mohammod Shariful HUDA Dr P J Atkins; Dr D Donaghue
2004 PhD Warwick Problem of national identity of the middle class in Bangladesh and state-satellite television Zeenat HUDA Dr P Mukta
2004 PhD Essex Initial public offerings in Pakistan T IMTIAZ
2004 PhD South Bank Parental involvement, attitudes and responsibilities in educaton: a case study of parents in Britain and Pakistan N INAYAT
2004 PhD Cranfield Technology catch-up actions for manufacturing companies in Pakistan N IQBAL
2004 PhD London, SOAS Protestant translations of the Bible (1714-1995) and defining a Protestant Tamil identity Hephziba ISRAEL
2004 PhD London, LSE People and tigers: an anthropological study of the Sundarbans of West Belgal, India A JALAIS
2004 PhD Cambridge, Queens’ The agency of normal food: performing normality in contemporary urban Bengal Manpreet Kaur JANEJA Prof C Humphrey
2004 DPhil Oxford, Nuffield Bridging the digital divide: regulating universal access in India Akash K KAPUR Ms B Morgan
2004 PhD Reading Constraints and opportunities for sustainable livelihoods and forest management in the mountains of North West Frontier Province, Pakistan Jahangir KHAN Dr H M Jones
2004 PhD Cambridge, Selwyn Ecology and conservation of the Bengal tiger in the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangadesh M M H KHAN Dr D J Chivers
2004 PhD De Montfort Temple architecture of Bengal 9th to 16th centuries A KHARE
2004 PhD Keele Reconstructing rights: an analysis of the role of rights in reconstructing gender relations in the earthquake affected area, Maharashtra, India Jane KRISHNADAS
2004 PhD London, SOAS Resolution and rupture: the paradox of violence in witch accusations in Chhatisgarh, India Helen M MACDONALD Dr D Mosse
2004 PhD London, SOAS Resolution and rupture: the paradox of violence in witch accusations in Chhattisgarh, India Helen M MacDONALD
2004 PhD Edinburgh Pious flames: changing Western interpretations of widow burning in India to 1860 Andrea MAJOR Dr C Bates; Dr I Duffield
2004 PhD Oxford, St John’s Cricket in colonial India, 1850-1947 Boria MAJUMDAR Dr D A Washbrook
2004 PhD Nottingham Land tax administration and compliance attitudes in Malaysia N A A MANAF
2004 PhD London, King’s Countering hegemony: the geopolitics of agrobiotechnology and the regulatory role of the Indian state Martin MANSKI M Mulligan
2004 PhD Birmingham The interdependency and the relationship between the government and private sector and their changing role in the development of micro island tourism in the Maldives Abdulla MAUSOOM
2004 PhD Durham Travelling knowledges: urban poverty and slum/shack dwellers international Colin McFARLANE Dr G Macleod
2004 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth The establishment and growth of selected pioneer tree species from disturbed tropical rainforest sites in Malaysia H MD NOOR
2004 PhD London, King’s Reterritorialising transnational corporate hegemony: the geopolitics of agribiotechnology and the regulatory role of the state in India Martin MENSKI
2004 PhD London, SOAS Zorastrian music Raiomond MIRZA Prof O Wright; Dr R Widdess
2004 PhD London, SOAS Space, borders and histories: identity in colonial Goalpura (India) Sanghamitra MISRA Prof P G Robb
2004 PhD Cambridge, St John’s Crystal structure of north east India and southern Tibet and a comparison with thelithosphere of the stable Indian shield S MITRA Dr K F Priestley
2004 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s The British in India and their domiciled brethern: race and class in the colonial context, 1858-1930 Satoshi MIZUTANI Dr D A Washbrook
2004 MPhil Leeds Enabling and disabling factors of community cohesion among Pakistani Muslims in Bradford Dominic J MOGHAL Dr K Knott
2004 PhD London , UC Reworking modernity: the impact of resettlement in the Narmada valley, India Kuheli MOOKERJEE Dr C Dwyer; Dr A Varley
2004 PhD London, InstArch An examination of the spatial and temporal variation of lithic technology throughout the early Bronze Age of Pakistan Justin Collard MORRIS K Thomas
2004 PhD London, UC Lithic technology and cultural change during the late prehistoric period of northwest South Asia J C MORRIS
2004 PhD Cambridge, Lucy Markets, transport and the state of Bengal economy, c.1750-1800 T MUKHERJEE Prof C A Bayley
2004 PhD London, SOAS The perception of the “medieval” in Indian popular films, 1920s -1960s Urvi MUKHOPADHYAY Dr D Ali; Dr R Dwyer
2004 PhD Cambridge Impact of food supplementation on pregnancy weight gain and birth weight in rural Bangladesh Shamsun NAHAR
2004 PhD Cambridge. Sidney Caught in the digital divide: transforming meanings of space, gender and identity for high tech professionals in Bangalore city, India Roopa NAIR Prof S E Corbridge
2004 PhD Reading The motivation of masons in the Sri Lankan construction industry Leyon NANAYAKKARA
2004 PhD Wales, Aberystwyth Second World War Japanese atrocities and British minor war crimes trials: the issue of fair trial in the four selected British minor war crimes trials in Malaya and Singapore A NARAYAN
2004 PhD London, SOAS The Gandavyuha-sutra: a study of wealth, gender and power in an Indian Buddhist narrative Douglas Edward OSTO
2004 PhD London, SOAS Archaic knowledge, tradition and authenticity in colonial north India Rakesh PANDEY Dr D Ali
2004 PhD West of England Performance measurement and evaluation of supply chain: the Indian automobile industry B PATEL
2004 PhD Aberdeen Emergency obstetric care: needs of poor women in Bangladesh E PITCHFORTH
2004 PhD London, LSE Multinationals, local firms and economic reforms in Indian industry Tushar PODDAR
2004 PhD Birmingham Mineral chemistry and metal extraction of Sri Lanka beach sands W A P PREMARATNE
2004 PhD London, LSE A micro-econometric analysis of alcohol prohibition in India L RAHMAN
2004 PhD London, Wye Measurement of productivity and efficiency of rice farmers in Bangladesh: an empirical study Mohamed Mizanur RAHMAN
2004 PhD Cambridge, Wolfson Seismic characteristics of the southern Indian and the adjacent pan-African high grade terranes of Gondwanaland Abhishek Kumar RAI Dr K F Priestley
2004 PhD Leeds Nation, celebration and selected works of Michel Ondaatje and Carol Shields Gillian Marie ROBERTS
2004 PhD Cambridge, Gonville HLA-DBQ1 – reproduction and health in consanguinous and non consanguinous families in Bangladesh S ROY CHOUDHURY Dr L A Knapp
2004 PhD Leeds The Sixteenth Landers, 1822-1846: the experience of regimental soldiering in India J H RUMSBY
2004 PhD Newcastle Trade reforms: total factor productivity and profitability of manufacturing sectors in Pakistan Naveeda SALAM
2004 PhD Open Psychedelic whiteness: rave tourism and the materiality of race in Goa Joseph Johannes Arun SALDANHA Dr J D Robinson; Prof D B Massey
2004 PhD Manchester The effect of globalisation on the grassroots women in Bangladesh Nasreen SATTAR Ms S Rowbotham
2004 PhD London, LSE Understanding the state: an anthropological study of rural Jharkhand, India A SHAH
2004 PhD London, SOAS The Balochi verb: an etymological study Azim SHAHBAKHSH
2004 DPhil Oxford, Wolfson State and society in: Gujerat, c.1200-1500: the making of a region Samira SHEIKH Dr D A Washbrook
2004 PhD Edinburgh Living with HIV/AIDS: turning points, transitions and transformations in the lives of women in Bombay and Edinburgh Dina Pervez SIDHVA
2004 PhD Cambridge Exploring inclusive education in an Indian context N SINGAL
2004 PhD Birmingham The question of method in Dalit theology: in search of a systematic approach of an Indian liberation theology Charles SINGARAM
2004 MPhil Wales, Swansea Policy and practice of forest management through local institutions in Himachal Pradesh, India M P SOOD
2004 PhD South Bank Health beliefs and health practices of South Asian and British white adults with and without myocardial infarction Dooroowadave SOOKHOO
2004 DPhil Oxford, Linacre Secularism in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s children” and Vikram Seth’s “A suitable boy”: history, nation, language Neelam F R SRIVASTAVA Dr J A Mee
2004 PhD Cardiff Crossing boundaries: an ethnography of occupational socialization of post-diploma baccalaureate nursing students in Pakistan Grace D STANLEY
2004 PhD Cardiff Crossing boundaries: an ethnography of occupational socialization of post-diploma baccalaureate student nurses in Pakistan Grace Dianne STANLEY M Neary; G A Donald
2004 PhD Cambridge, Downing From “Palestine” [poem] to India: Bishop Heber’s poetic pilgrimage I TAKAHASHI Dr N J Leask
2004 PhD London, SOAS Towards a definitive grammar of Bengali: a study and critique of research on selected grammatical structures Hanne-Ruth THOMPSON Dr W Radice
2004 PhD Birmingham Support and supervision of secondary school teachers in Bangladesh H THORNTON
2004 DPhil Oxford, Worcester Tectonic, metamorphic and magmatic evolution of the central Karakoram crust, northern Pakistan aNDREW THOW Dr D J Waters; Prof R R Parrish; Dr M P Searle
2004 DPhil Oxford, St Cross The grammar and poetics of Murti-Seva: Caitanya Vaisnava image worship as discourse, ritual and narrative Kenneth R VALPEY Dr S Gupta-Gombrich; Prof J S K Ward
2004 PhD Birmingham Differences in school performance between Tamil Brahmin and Malabar Muslim children in Kerala, India: a socio-cutural approach V P VAZHALANICKAL
2004 PhD Open Science, technology and agency in the development of drought prone areas: a cognitive history of drought and scarcity Linden Faith VINCENT Prof D V Wield
2004 PhD Coventry Partition and locality: case studies of the impact of partition and its aftermath in the Punjab region, 1947-1961 Pritpal VIRDEE Prof I A Talbot
2004 PhD Cambridge, St Edmund’s Eating and identity in the novels of V S Naipaul, Anita Desai, Timothy Mo and Salman Rushdie Paul Matthew John VLITOS Dr A D B Poole
2004 PhD Cambridge, Churchill Thuggee and the “construction” of crime in early nineteenth century India Kim Ati WAGNER Prof C A Bayley
2004 PhD Cambridge, Emmanuel Between bureaucrats and beneficiaries: the implementation of eco-development:in Pench tiger reserves, India Jo L WOODMAN Dr B Vira
2004 PhD Glasgow The analysis of human mitochondrial DNA in peninsular Malaysia Z ZAINUDDIN
2004 PhD London, King’s Remote sensing and GIS based assessment of El-Nino related fire activity on Borneo, 1982-1998 Athanossios ZOUMAS
2005 PhD Loughborough Alternative arrangements for water supply in urban areas: case studies in Karachi, Pakistan Noman AHMED
2005 PhD London, UC Through “spirits”: cosmology and landscape ecology among the Nyishi tribe of upland Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India Alexander AISHER Dr C Pinney; Dr M Banerjee
2005 PhD Keele The cultural politics of production: ethnicity, gender and the labour process in Sri Lanka tea plantations Chandana G ALAWATTAGE
2005 PhD London, King’s Studies on slected Malaysian plants as antidiabetic agent H M ALI
2005 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Equality of educational opportunity and public policy in Bangladesh Mohammad Niaz ASADULLAH Dr R Kingdon; Dr S Dercon
2005 PhD London, LSE Structural changes in East Asia: factor accumulation, technological progress and economic geography Shuvojit BANERJEE
2005 PhD Manchester The politics of market space in Calcutta, India: past and present Martin BEATTIE Prof S Guy
2005 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s Missionary education knowledge and and north Indian society, c 1880- 1915 Hayden John-Andrew BELLENOIT Dr D A Washbrook
2005 PhD London, King’s The changing goddess: the religious lives of Hindu women in West Bengal Cynthia BRADLEY Prof F Hardy
2005 PhD London, UC Mental illness, medical pluralism and Islamism in Sylhet, Bangladesh Alyson Fleur CALLAN Prof R Littlewood
2005 PhD London, SOAS Muzaffar Ahmad, Calcutta and socialist politics, 1913-1929 Suchetana CHATTOPADYHYAY Prof P G Robb
2005 PhD East Anglia Surface tension: water and agrarian change in a rainfed village, West Bengal, India Daniel COPPARD Dr B Lankford
2005 PhD Edinburgh Sri Pada: diversity and exclusion in a sacred site in Sri Lanka Delkandura Arachchige Premakumara DE SILVA
2005 PhD London, LSHTM Social capital and maternal mental health: a cross cultural comparison of four developing countries [Peru, India, Ethiopia, Vietnam] Mary Joan DE SILVA Ms S Huttly; Prof T Harpham
2005 PhD Cambridge. Trinity Hall Second language acquisition of articles and plural markings by Bengali learners of Engish Hildegunn DIRDAL Dr T Parodi
2005 MPhil London, UC The servant/employer relationship in19th century England and India Fae Ceridwen DUSSART Prof C M Hall
2005 PhD London, Royal Holloway Analysing the impact of labour and education laws on child labour in Pakistan during the 1990s T FASIH
2005 PhD London, Inst Ed Ways forward to achieve school effectiveness and school improvement: a case study of school leadership and teacher professional development in Sri Lanka B N A B FERNANDO
2005 PhD London, SOAS Surrendering to the earth: a feminine interpretation of Dharma worship in Bengal with special reference to ‘Sunya Purana Fabrizio FERRARI
2005 PhD Edinburgh Twentieth century South Asian Christian theological engagement with religious pluralism: its challenges for pentecostalism in India Geomon Kizhakkemalayil GEORGE
2005 MPhil Birmingham Sikhism and violence P GILL
2005 PhD Cambridge, Gonville Inverted metamorphism in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalay: structural, metamorphic and numerical studies S GOSWAMI Prof M J Bickle
2005 MPhil West of England A study of “enabling conditions” in primary schools in Negombo Education Zone in Sri Lanka with special reference to effective leadership and physical and material resources Egodawatte Arachchige Don GUNAWARDENA
2005 DPhil Oxford, St Cross Discourses of religion and development: agency, empowerment and choices or Muslim women in Gujerat, India Laila N HALANI Dr M J Banks
2005 PhD Reading Farmers’ decision-making in rice pest management: implications for farmer field school approaches in Bangladesh Mohammad Abdul HAMID Dr D D Shepherd
2005 PhD Manchester A fire of tongues: narrative patterning in the Sanskrit Mahabharata James Marcel HEGARTY
2005 PhD London, Queen Mary Intellectual property law and e-commerce in Sri Lanka: towards a jurisprudence based on consitution, Roman-Dutch law and Buddhist principles T S K HEMARATNE
2005 PhD Edinburgh Rights based development: formal and process approaches in Pakistan Shiona Mary HOOD
2005 PhD Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Ecology, economy and society in the eastern Bengal delta, c.1840-1943 Khondker Iftekhar IQBAL Prof C A Bayley
2005 PhD Plymouth International freight transport multimodal development in developing countries: the case of Bangladesh Dewan Mohammad Zahurul ISLAM Dr R Gray
2005 DPhil Sussex Women, employment and the family: poor informal sector women workers in Dhaka city Farzana ISLAM Dr H Standing
2005 PhD London, LSE Assessing the impact of Gujerat’s resettlement and rehabilitation policy on the livelihoods of women and their empowerment post-displacement Anupma JAIN
2005 PhD Open Volcanic architecture of the Deccan Traps, western Maharashtra, India: an integrated chemostratigraphic and paleomagnetic study Anne E JAY
2005 PhD Cambridge, Darwin Cross cultural perspectives in contemporary Sri Lankan writing in English Sharanya JAYAWICKRAMA Dr P Gopal
2005 DPhil Oxford, St Antony’s India divided: state and society in the aftermath of partitition: the case of Uttar Pradesh, 1946-1952 Yasmin KHAN Prof J M Brown; Prof I A Talbot
2005 PhD London, LSE Soldiers’ experience of war, Burma 1942-1945 Tatjana Genoveva Ursula KRALJIC Prof M Knox
2005 MPhil West of England An investigation of primary teachers’ professional attitudes in Sri Lanka with special reference to Negombo Educational Zone Nihil Tissa Kumara LOKULIYANA
2005 DPhil Oxford Implications of displacement and resettlement for the Gonds of central India Preeti MANN Dr D Chatty; Dr M J Banks
2005 PhD Queen’s, Belfast Women’s human rights in Islam and international human rights regime: the case of Pakistan N MIAN
2005 PhD London, SOAS Merchants, markets and the monopoly of the East India Company: the salt trade in Bengal under colonial control c. 1790-1836 Sayako MIKI Prof P G Robb
2005 PhD London, SOAS The transmission and performance for khyai composition in the Gwalior gharana of India vocal music A D MORRIS
2005 PhD Essex A case of interest maximisation? Military-civil bureaucratic behaviour and political outcomes in Bangladesh (1975-1990) Khairuzzaman MOZUMDER
2005 EdD Birmingham Exploring the potential for educational change through participatory and democratic approaches in Pakistan N MUHAMMAD
2005 PhD Nottingham United Nations charter and treaty-based international human rights monitoring in relation to the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment: a study of two states, the United Kingdom and the Republic of India A MUKHERJEE
2005 DPhil Sussex Knowledge, identity, place and (cyber)space: growing up male and middle class in Bangalore N C NISBETT
2005 PhD Edinburgh Case study of a health-oriented NGO in Pakistan Madeline PATTERSON
2005 PhD Edinburgh From medical relief to community health care: a case study of non-governmental organisation (Frontier Primary Health Care) in North Western Province, Pakistan Margaret Madeline PATTERSON
2005 dpHIL Oxford, Balliol Through district eyes: local raj and the myth of the Punjab tradition in British India, 1858-1907 Dara Milnes PRICE Dr D A Washbrook
2005 PhD London, SOAS The sant traditioin and community formation in the works of Guru Nanak and Dadu Dayal Susan Elizabeth PRILL Dr C Shackle
2005 PhD King’s, London Gender disadvantage as a risk factor for common mental disorder in women residing in Rawalpindi/Islamabad F QADIR
2005 EdD Durham Nurse education, foreign aid and development: a case study from Bangladesh Patricia ROBSON
2005 DPhil Sussex Tamil youth: the performance of hierarchical masculinities: an anthropological study of youth groups in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India M C ROGERS
2005 PhD London, Insti Comm Socio-economic rights as constitutional human rights: Canada, South Africa and India compared Desa ROSEN Dr M Craven (SOAS); Dr P Gready
2005 PhD London, SOAS Early photography in India, 1850s-1870s Stephanie S ROY
2005 PhD Cambridge, Trinity Sentimental imperialism: British literature and India, 1770-1830 Andrew John RUDD Dr N J Leask
2005 PhD Edinburgh Conversion and communication: Christian communication and indigenous agency in conversion among the Kui people of Orissa, India, 1835-1970 Jagat Ranjan SANTRA
2005 PhD London, SOAS The formation of Islamic community identity in medieval north India Nilanjan SARKAR Dr D Ali
2005 PhD London, SOAS The political identity of the Delhi Sultanate, 1200-1400: a study of Zia ud-din Barani’s Fatawa-i-Jahandari Nilanjan SARKAR Dr D Ali
2005 PhD London, SOAS Globalization and identity: Sikh nationalism, diaspora and international relations Giorgiandrea SHANI
2005 PhD Sheffield Structure and composition of India’s exports with speial reference to India’s post- liberalisation period Abhijit SHARMA
2005 PhD De Montfort Colonial intervention and urban transformation: a case studyof Shahjahanabad, Old Delhi J P SHARMA
2005 PhD London, SOAS A study of the Amaravati stupa: the chronology and social contexts of an early historic Buddhist site in the Lower Krishna Valley Akira SHIMADA Dr D Ali
2005 DPhil Oxford, Green The business of schooling:the school choice processes, markets and institutions governing low-fee provate schooling for disadvantaged groups in India Prachi SRIVASTAVA Dr M Birbili; Prof G Walford
2005 DPhil Oxford The experience of four famines in NWP & O (1837-1838, 1860- 1861; 1868-1869; 1896-1897): the gainers and the losers Seema SRIVASTAVA
2005 MPhil Nottingham The effects of Asean on trade flows and assessing trade flows of the candidate country (case study: India) Puttachat SUWANKIRI
2005 PhD Edinburgh Prime time and prayer time: television, religion and the practices of everyday life of Marthoma Christians in Kerala, India Sham Padinjattethil THOMAS
2005 PhD Strathclyde Car dependency and traffic congestion: a case of a Malaysian city in Borneo L TSESED KONG
2005 MPhil Dundee Motivation and incentives in government organisations: a study of the Income Tax Department in India Mohanish VERMA
2005 PhD Cambridge, Jesus Seeking cultural safety: NGO responses to HIV/AIDS among South Asians in Delhi and London Hannah Jill WESTON Dr G Kearns
2005 MPhil London, King’s Sri Lankan perceptions of health and illness: quantitative and qualitative approaches Yapa Mudiyanselage Charitha Gothami WIJERATNE
2005 PhD Sunderland Women’s ordination in Theravada Buddhism:ancient evidence and modern debates L WILLIAMS
2005 PhD London, SOAS Literate networks and the production of Sgaw and Pwo Karen writing in Burma, c.1830-1930 William Burgess WOMACK Dr M Charney Professor Ian Brown
2005 PhD Nottingham Predictors of language learning success in Bangladeshi secondary education institutions Feroza YASMIN Prof Z Dornyel
2006 PhD London, LSHTM Quality of care for reproductive tract morbidities by rural private practitioners in north India Meenakshi GAUTHAM
2006 DPhil Sussex Poor women’s experiences of marriage and love in the city of New Delhi: every day stories of Sukh and Dukh Shalini GROVER
2006 PhD Newcastle Valuation techniques of protected areas: a case study of Gir, Gujarat, India Mohan Lal SHARMA
2006 PhD London, Imperial Contaminated irrigaton water and food safety in India Kerry Vivienne SWANTON
Table 2: List of theses with incomplete data, listed alphabetically by the University and College followed by the AUTHOR (in capital letters) followed by the Supervisor(s) where available and the thesis Title. The Year and/or Degree were not available in the public database. If you are an author or supervisor or other academic representative, please write in with these details if possible.
Aberdeen Sultan Ali ADIL An economic analysis of energy use in irrigated agriculture of Punjab PhD
Birmingham 0.365217391 S A KARUNANAYAKE An evaluation of the present system of local government in Ceylon in the light of national needs for unity and economic and social development and proposals for appropriate changes PhD
Birmingham 0.369264706 M G KANBUR Spatial equilibrium analysis of trhe rice economy of South India 2000
BradfordCambridge, Trinity Z KHAN The development of overt nuclear weapon states in South Asia PhD
Cambridge Katherine Helen PRIOR The British administration of Hinduism in India, 1780-1900 PhD
Cambridge G CHAKRAVARTY Imagining resistance: British historiography and popular fiction on the Indian Rebellion of 1857-1859 PhD
Cambridge 0.327375 Ajit Kumar GHOSE Production organisation, markets and resource use in Indian agriculture PhD
Cambridge 0.361285714 M J EGAN A structural analysis of a Sinhalese healing ritual PhD
Cambridge, King’s 0.301 J A LAIDLAW The religion of Svetambar Jain merchants in Jaipur PhD
Cambridge, Pembroke H T FRY Prof E E Rich Alexander Dalrymple, cosmographer and servant of the East India Company PhD
Cambridge, Trinity Magnus Murray MARSDEN Dr S B Bayly Islamization and globalization in Chitral, Northern Pakistan
Cambridge, Trinity Hall C J JEFFREY Dr S E Corbridge Reproducing difference: the accumulation strategies of richer Jat farmers in Western Uttar Pradesh, India 2002
Cambridge, Wolfson Gethin REES DrD K Chakrabarti Buddhism and trade: rock cut caves of the Western Ghats PhD
Cranfield, Silsoe Ariyaratne DISSANAYAKE J Morris Research and development and extension for agricultural mechanisation in Sri Lanka
De Montfort S JAIN The havelis of Rajasthan: form and identity PhD
Durham 0.401311475 M F A KHAN The arid zone of West Pakistan PhD
East Anglia John HARISS Technological change in agricultural and agrarian social structure in Northen Tamil Nadu, India PhD
Edinburgh N THIN High spirits and heteroglossia: forest festivals of the Nilgiri Irulas PhD
Edinburgh AKSHAY KHANNA Sexuality as a political object in civil society: active formations in India 2003
Edinburgh Rebecca WALKER Concepts of peace in conflict situations in Sri Lanka PhD
Glasgow Sana KHOKHAR Dr F Noorbakhsh; Dr A Paloni An evaluation of the structural adjustment and economic reform programme: a case study of Pakistan MPhil
Lancaster J A BURR Cultural stereotypes and the diagnosis of depression: women from South Asian communities and their experience of mental distress 1980
Leeds E K TARIN Health sector reforms: factors influencing the policy process for government initiatives in the Punjab (Pakistan) health sector, 1993-2000 PhD
Leeds 0.35375 A P A FERNANDO Agricultural development of Ceylon since independence (1948-1968)- an investigation into some aspects of agricultural development in Ceylon and an evaluation of major agricultural policies adopted in the peasant sector PhD
Leeds 0.35375 M S KHAN Policies and planning for agricultural development with a high population density: a case study of East Pakistan PhD
London F R M HASAN Ecology and rural class relations in Bangladesh: a study with special reference to three villages PhD
London B GHOSH Dr Anstey The Indian salt industry, trade and taxation PhD
London R L HATFIELD Management reform in a centralised environment: primary education administration in Balochistan, Pakistan, 1992-1997 MSc
London GAYAS-UD-DIN Medical library and information system for India PhD
London Sarmistha PAL Choice of casual and regular labour contracts in Indian agriculture: a theoretical and empirical analysis 2000
London, SOAS Pillarisetti SUDHIR Mr Chaudhuri British attitudes to Indian nationalism, 1922-1935 2001 (Apropos the author’s correction in the Comments section, this entry has been moved to the main list.)
London, External 0.357464789 A A KHATRI Marriage and family relationships in Gujerati fiction PhD
London, Imperial Sinniah JEYALINGAWATHANI Thr utilisation of indigenous and imported Bos indicus breeds in the dry zone of Sri Lanka 2002
London, LSE A KUNDU Prof Allen; Mr Booker Statistical measures of five year plans in India 2003
London, LSE Flora Elizabeth CORNISH Dr C Campbell Constructing an actionable environment: colelctive action for HIV prevention among Kolkata sex workers MPhil
London, LSE 0.423157895 B P DUTIA Economic aspects of production and marketing of cotton in India PhD
London, LSHTM Margaret J LEPPARD Obstetric care in a Bangladeshi hospital: an organisational ethnography PhD
London, LSHTM Steven RUSSELL Can households afford to be ill ? the role of the health system, maternal resources and social networks in Sri Lanka PhD
London, LSHTM Syed Mohd Akramuz ZAMAN Cohort study of the effect of measles on childhood morbidity in urban Bangladesh PhD
London, LSHTM Mrigesh Roopchandra BHATIA Economic evaluation od malaria control in Surat, India: bednets versus residual insecticide apray PhD
London, SOAS A B M MAHMOOD Mr Harrison The land revenue history of the Rajshahi zamindari, 1765-1793 PhD
London, SOAS Oliver David SPRINGATE-BAGINSKY Dr S I Jewitt Sustainable development through particpatory forest management: an analysis of the long term role of the cooperative forest societies of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India PhD
London, SOAS Isabella NARDI Dr G Tillotson The Citrasutras: the Indian theory of painting 1929? MA
London, SOAS Angela ATKINS Dr R Snell The Indian novel in English and Hindi PhD
London, SOAS Angela C EYRE Land, language and literary identity: a thematic comparison of Indian novels in Hindi and English MA
London, SOAS Rajit Kumar MAZUMDER Prof P G Robb The making of Punjab: colonial power, the Indian army and recruited peasants, 1849-1939 MA
London, SOAS Lalita Nath PANIGRAHI Prof a l Basham The practice of female infanticide in India and its suppression in the North Western Provinces PhD
London, SOAS 0.318795181 Terumichi KAWAI Freedom of religion in comparative constitutional law with special reference to the UK, US, India and Japan MPhil
London, SOAS 0.3432 W P KINNEY Dr M Caldwell; P C Ayre Aspects of economic development in Malaya MA
London, SOAS 0.35375 K D GAUR Economic crimes relating to income tax in India: a critical analysis of tax evasion and tax avoidance PhD
London, SOAS 0.35375 A GHAFFAR Protection of personal liberty under the Pakistan constitution BLitt
London, SOAS 0.35375 K P MISHRA Dr J B Harrison The administration and economy of the Banaras region, 1738-1795 BLitt
London, SOAS 0.382153846 K M KARIM The provinces of Bihar and Bengal under Shabjahan 2003
Manchester A BERADLEY Prof Muir Settlement of the Madras Presidency, 1765-1827 MA
Manchester W A G HARRINGTON The theory and practice of non-formal education in developing countries with case studies from India PhD
Manchester Jane HAGGIS Professional ladies and working wives: female missionaries in the London Missionary Society and its South Travancoe District, South India, 1850-1900 MPhil
Manchester 0.401311475 S T G FERNANDO A historical and analytical account of export taxation in Ceylon, 1802-1958 PhD
Manchester 0.411864407 R L KUMAR India’s post-war balance of payments sincce 1945-1955 DPhil
Manchester 0.417413793 T S EPSTEIN A comparative study of economic change and differentiation in two South Indian villages PhD
Manchester Metropolitan S PAREKH Relationships between children with cerebral palsy and their siblings: an ethnography in Kolkata, India
Newcastle Alice MALPASS Dr P Phillimore Hibred kala: the hybrid age of choice, dissent and imagination: contract faming and genetically modified cotton in Karnataka, South India MSC
Newcastle 0.373432836 K K KHOSLA Conditions of labour and labour legislation of industrial workers in India since 1947 2001
North London Jasmin ARA Ms R Glanville Primary health care facilities in Bangladesh: a method of planning and design taking account of limited resources, local technology, future growth and change 2000
Oxford W M KHAN An economic evaluation of the alternative uses of land under state forests in Baluchistan 1999
Oxford, Campion Hall P EKKE Dr D F Brook An ethnogaphic survey of the Oraons and the Mundas of Chota-Nagpur 1991
Oxford, Nuffield Alistair McMILLAN Dr N Gooptu; Prof A F Heath Scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and party competition in India 1991
Oxford, St Hilda’s H Vinita TSENG Prof R F Gombrich The Nidanavagga of the Saratthappakasini: the first two vaggas 1993
Oxford, Wolfson Somadeva VASUDEVA Prof A G J S Sanderson The yoga of the Malinivijayottaratantra 1994
Reading 0.38671875 M A KAMAL Balances and unbalanced growth as exemplified by a decade of planning experience in India 1994
Salford S CHOWDHURY Mr E K Grime Housing in Bangladesh 1998
Sheffield RITA SAIKIA Prof M F Lynch The utility of object-oriented domain specification in the context of a large organisation in India 1998
Southampton 0.369264706 Mohammad A MONDAL A suggested approach to the solution of the profit measurement and asset valuation with reference to the developing economies of India and Pakisttan 1999
Strathclyde 0.37358209 T G GEHANI A critical review of the work of Scottish Presbyterian missions in India, 1878-1914 1999
Sussex R G HESELTINE The development and impact of jute cultivation in Bengal, 1870-1930 2000
Wales Animesh HALDER Potential diversification in India’s export pattern 2000
Wales, Swansea S S MUKHERJEE Urban process in Calcutta: some planning implications 2004
Wales, Swansea Julia CLEEVES Gender and reproductive health: issues in hormonal contraception in India 2004
Wales, University College of Swansea 0.346621622 E A KUMARASINGHE Information for health planning in Sri Lanka 1965
My American years Part One 1980-90: battles for academic integrity & freedom
February 11, 2009 — drsubrotoroysee revised and expanded version
My American years: Part One 1980-90: battles for academic integrity & freedom
On the Blacksburg campus February 1982, my second year in America.
I had come to Blacksburg in August 1980 thanks to a letter Professor Frank Hahn had written on my behalf to Professor James M Buchanan in January 1980.
I was in an “All But Dissertation” stage at Cambridge when I got to Blacksburg; I completed the thesis while teaching in Blacksburg, sent it from there in September 1981, and went back to Cambridge for the viva voce examination in January 1982.
Professor Buchanan and his colleagues were welcoming and I came to learn much from them about the realities of public finance and democratic politics, which I very soon applied to my work on India.
Jim Buchanan had a reputation for running very tough conferences of scholars. He invited me to one such in the Spring of 1981. We were made to work very hard indeed. One of the books prescribed is still with me, In Search of a Monetary Constitution, ed. Leland Yeager, Harvard 1962, and something I still recommend to anyone wishing to understand the classical liberal position on monetary policy. The week-long 1981 conference had one rest-day; it was spent in part at an excellent theatre in a small rural town outside Blacksburg. This photo is of Jim Buchanan on the left and Gordon Tullock on the right; in between them is Ken Minogue of the London School of Economics — who, as it happened, had been Tutor for Admissions when I became a freshman there seven years earlier.
(I must have learnt something from Jim Buchanan about running conferences because nine years later in May-June 1989 at the University of Hawaii, I made the participants of the India-perestroika and Pakistan-perestroika conferences work very hard too.)
My first rooms in America in 1980 were in the attic of 703 Gracelyn Court, where I paid $160 or $170 per month to my marvellous landlady Betty Tillman. There were many family occasions I enjoyed with her family downstairs, and her cakes, bakes and puddings all remain with me today.
A borrowed electric typewriter may be seen in the photo: the age of the personal computer was still a few years away. The Department had a stand-alone “AB-Dic” word-processor which we considered a marvel of technology; the Internet did not exist but there was some kind of Intranet between geeks in computer science and engineering departments at different universities.
It was at Gracelyn Court that this letter reached me addressed by FA Hayek himself.
Professor Buchanan had moved to Blacksburg from Charlottesville some years earlier with the Centre for Study of Public Choice that he had founded. The Centre came to be housed at the President’s House of Virginia Tech (presumably the University President himself had another residence).
I was initially a Visiting Research Associate at the Centre and at the same time a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Economics Department. I was very kindly given a magnificent office at the Centre, on the upper floor, perhaps the one on the upper right hand side in the picture. It was undoubtedly the finest room I have ever had as an office. I may have had it for a whole year, either 1980-81 or 1981-82. When Professor Buchanan and the Centre left for George Mason University in 1983, the mansion returned to being the University President’s House and my old office presumably became a fine bedroom again.
I spent the summer of 1983 at a long libertarian conference in the Palo Alto/Menlo Park area in California. This is a photo from a barbecue during the conference with Professor Jean Baechler from France on the left; Leonard Liggio, who (along with Walter Grinder) had organised the conference, is at the right.
The first draft of the book that became Philosophy of Economics was written (in long hand) during that summer of 1983 in Palo Alto/Menlo Park. The initial title was “Principia Economica”, and the initial contracted publisher, the University of Chicago Press, had that title on the contract.
My principal supporter at the University of Chicago was that great American Theodore W. Schultz, then aged 81,
to whom the Press had initially sent the manuscript for review and who had recommended its prompt publication. Professor Schultz later told me to my face better what my book was about than I had realised myself, namely, it was about economics as knowledge, the epistemology of economics.
My parents came from India to visit me in California, and here we are at Yosemite.
. 
Also to visit were Mr and Mrs Willis C Armstrong, our family friends who had known me from infancy. This is a photo of Bill and my mother on the left, and Louise and myself on the right, taken perhaps by my father. In the third week of January 1991, during the first Gulf War, Bill and I (acting on behalf of Rajiv Gandhi) came to form an extremely tenuous bridge between the US Administration and Saddam Hussain for about 24 hours, in an attempt to get a withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait without further loss of life. In December 1991 I gave the widow of Rajiv Gandhi a small tape containing my long-distance phone conversations from America with Rajiv during that episode.
I had driven with my sheltie puppy from Blacksburg to Palo Alto — through Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; my parents and I now drove with him back to Blacksburg from California, through Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia. It may be a necessary though not sufficient condition to drive across America (or any other country) in order to understand it.
After a few days, we drove to New York via Pennsylvania where I became Visiting Assistant Professor in the Cornell Economics Department (on leave from being Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech). The few months at Cornell were noteworthy for the many long sessions I spent with Max Black. I shall add more about that here in due course. My parents returned to India (via Greece where my sister was) in the Autumn of 1983.
In May 1984, Indira Gandhi ruled in Delhi, and the ghost of Brezhnev was still fresh in Moscow. The era of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America was at its height. Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India emerging from my doctoral thesis though written in Blacksburg and Ithaca in 1982-1983, came to be published by London’s Institute of Economic Affairs on May 29 as Occasional Paper No. 69, ISBN: 0-255 36169-6; its text is reproduced elsewhere here.
It was the first critique after BR Shenoy of India’s Sovietesque economics since Jawaharlal Nehru’s time. The Times, London’s most eminent paper at the time, wrote its lead editorial comment about it on the day it was published, May 29 1984.
It used to take several days for the library at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to receive its copy of The Times of London and other British newspapers. I had not been told of the date of publication and did not know of what had happened in London on May 29 until perhaps June 2 — when a friend, Vasant Dave of a children’s charity, who was on campus, phoned me and congratulated me for being featured in The Times which he had just read in the University Library. “You mean they’ve reviewed it?” I asked him, “No, it’s the lead editorial.” “What?” I exclaimed. There was worse. Vasant was very soft-spoken and said “Yes, it’s titled ‘India’s Bad Example’” — which I misheard on the phone as “India’s Mad Example” 😀 Drat! I thought (or words to that effect), they must have lambasted me, as I rushed down to the Library to take a look.
The Times had said
“When Mr. Dennis Healey in the Commons recently stated that Hongkong, with one per cent of the population of India has twice India’s trade, he was making an important point about Hongkong but an equally important point about India. If Hongkong with one per cent of its population and less than 0.03 per cert of India’s land area (without even water as a natural resource) can so outpace India, there must be something terribly wrong with the way Indian governments have managed their affairs, and there is. A paper by an Indian economist published today (Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India by Subroto Roy, IEA £1.80) shows how Asia’s largest democracy is gradually being stifled by the imposition of economic policies whose woeful effect and rhetorical unreality find their echo all over the Third World. As with many of Britain’s former imperial possessions, the rot set in long before independence. But as with most of the other former dependencies, the instrument of economic regulation and bureaucratic control set up by the British has been used decisively and expansively to consolidate a statist regime which inhibits free enterprise, minimizes economic success and consolidates the power of government in all spheres of the economy. We hear little of this side of things when India rattles the borrowing bowl or denigrates her creditors for want of further munificence. How could Indian officials explain their poor performance relative to Hongkong? Dr Roy has the answers for them. He lists the causes as a large and heavily subsidized public sector, labyrinthine control over private enterprise, forcibly depressed agricultural prices, massive import substitution, government monopoly of foreign exchange transactions, artificially overvalued currency and the extensive politicization of the labour market, not to mention the corruption which is an inevitable side effect of an economy which depends on the arbitrament of bureaucrats. The first Indian government under Nehru took its cue from Nehru’s admiration of the Soviet economy, which led him to believe that the only policy for India was socialism in which there would be “no private property except in a restricted sense and the replacement of the private profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service.” Consequently, the Indian government has now either a full monopoly or is one of a few oligipolists in banking, insurance, railways, airlines, cement, steel, chemicals, fertilizers, ship-building, breweries, telephones and wrist-watches. No businessman can expand his operation while there is any surplus capacity anywhere in that sector. He needs government approval to modernize, alter his price-structure, or change his labour shift. It is not surprising that a recent study of those developing countries which account for most manufactured exports from the Third World shows that India’s share fell from 65 percent in 1953 to 10 per cent in 1973; nor, with the numerous restrictions on inter-state movement of grains, that India has over the years suffered more from an inability to cope with famine than during the Raj when famine drill was centrally organized and skillfully executed without restriction. Nehru’s attraction for the Soviet model has been inherited by his daughter, Mrs. Gandhi. Her policies have clearly positioned India more towards the Soviet Union than the West. The consequences of this, as Dr Roy states, is that a bias can be seen in “the antipathy and pessimism towards market institutions found among the urban public, and sympathy and optimism to be found for collectivist or statist ones.” All that India has to show for it is the delivery of thousands of tanks in exchange for bartered goods, and the erection of steel mills and other heavy industry which help to perpetuate the unfortunate obsession with industrial performance at the expense of agricultural growth and the relief of rural poverty.”…..
I felt this may have been intended to be laudatory but it was also inaccurate and had to be corrected. I replied dated June 4 which The Times published in their edition of June 16 1984:
I was 29 when Pricing, Planning and Politics was published, I am 54 now. I do not agree with everything I said in it and find the tone a little puffed up as young men tend to be; it was also five years before my main “theoretical” work Philosophy of Economics would be published. My experience of life in the years since has also made me far less sanguine both about human nature and about America than I was then. But I am glad to find I am not embarrassed by what I said then, indeed I am pleased I said what I did in favour of classical liberalism and against statism and totalitarianism well before it became popular to do so after the Berlin Wall fell. (In India as elsewhere, former communist apparatchiks and fellow-travellers became pseudo-liberals overnight.)
The editorial itself may have been due to a conversation between Peter Bauer and William Rees-Mogg, so I later heard. The work sold 700 copies in its first month, a record for the publisher. The wife of one prominent Indian bureaucrat told me in Delhi in December 1988 it had affected her husband’s thinking drastically. A senior public finance economist told me he had been deputed at the Finance Ministry when the editorial appeared, and the Indian High Commission in London had urgently sent a copy of the editorial to the Ministry where it caused a stir. An IMF official told me years later that he saw the editorial on board a flight to India from the USA on the same day, and stopped in London to make a trip to the LSE’s bookshop to purchase a copy. Professor Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University had been a critic of aspects of Indian policy; he received a copy of the monograph in draft just before it was published and was kind enough to write I had “done an excellent job of setting out the problems afflicting our economic policies, unfortunately government-made problems!” My great professor at Cambridge, Frank Hahn, would be kind enough to say that he thought my “critique of Development Economics was powerful not only on methodological but also on economic theory grounds” — something that has been a source of delight to me.
Siddhartha Shankar Ray told me when we first met that he had been in London when the editorial appeared and had seen it there; it affected his decision to introduce me to Rajiv Gandhi as warmly as he came to do a half dozen years later.
In the Autumn of 1984, I went, thanks to Edwin Feulner Jr of the Heritage Foundation, to attend the Mont Pelerin Society Meetings being held at Cambridge (on “parole” from the US immigration authorities as my “green card” was being processed at the time). There I met for the first time Professor and Mrs Milton Friedman.
Milton Friedman’s November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India is referred to in my monograph as “unpublished” in note 1; when I met Milton and Rose, I gave them a copy of my monograph; and requested Milton for his unpublished document; when he returned to Stanford he sent to me in Blacksburg his original 1955-56 documents on Indian planning. I published the 1955 document for the first time in May 1989 during the University of Hawaii perestroika-for-India project I was then leading, it appeared later in the 1992 volume Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, edited by myself and WE James. (The results of the Hawaii project reached Rajiv Gandhi through my hand in September 1990, as told elsewhere here in “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”.) The 1956 document was published in November 2006 on the front page of The Statesman, the same day my obituary of Milton appeared in the inside pages.
Meanwhile, my main work within economic theory, the “Principia Economica” manuscript, was being read by the University of Chicago Press’s five or six anonymous referees. One of them pointed out my argument had been anticipated years earlier in the work of MIT’s Sidney Stuart Alexander. I had no idea of this and was surprised; of course I knew Professor Alexander’s work in balance of payments theory but not in this field. I went to visit Professor Alexander in Boston, where this photo came to be taken perhaps in late 1984:
Professor Alexander was extremely gracious, and immediately declared with great generosity that it was clear to him my arguments in “Principia Economica” had been developed entirely independently of his work. He had come at the problem from an American philosophical tradition of Dewey, I had done so from a British tradition of Wittgenstein. (CS Peirce was probably the bridge between the two.) He and I had arrived at some similar conclusions but we had done so completely independently.
Also, I was much honoured by this letter of May 1 1984 sent to Blacksburg by Professor Sir John Hicks (1904-1989), among the greatest of 20th Century economists at the time, where he acknowledged his departure in later life from the position he had taken in 1934 and 1939 on the foundations of demand theory.
He later sent me a copy of his Wealth and Welfare: Collected Essays on Economic Theory, Vol. I, MIT Press 1981, as a gift. The context of our correspondence had to do with my criticism of the young Hicks and support for the ghost of Alfred Marshall in an article “Considerations on Utility, Benevolence and Taxation” I was publishing in the journal History of Political Economy published then at Duke University. In Philosophy of Economics, I would come to say about Hicks’s letter to me “It may be a sign of the times that economists, great and small, rarely if ever disclaim their past opinions; it is therefore an especially splendid example to have a great economist like Hicks doing so in this matter.” It was reminiscent of Gottlob Frege’s response to Russell’s paradox; Philosophy of Economics described Frege’s “Letter to Russell”, 1902 (Heijenoort, From Frege to Gödel, pp. 126-128) as “a document which must remain one of the most noble in all of modern scholarship; a fact recorded in Russell’s letter to Heijenoort.”
In Blacksburg, by the Summer and Fall of 1984 I was under attack following the arrival of what I considered “a gang of inert game theorists” — my theoretical manuscript had blown a permanent hole through what passes by the name of “social choice theory”, and they did not like it. Nor did they like the fact that I seemed to them to be a “conservative”/classical liberal Indian and my applied work on India’s economy seemed to their academic agenda an irrelevance. This is myself at the height of that attack in January 1985:
Professor Schultz at the University of Chicago came to my rescue and at his recommendation I was appointed Visiting Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
I declined, without thanks, the offer of another year at Virginia Tech.
On my last day in Blacksburg, a graduate student whom I had helped when she had been assaulted by a senior professor, cooked a meal before I started the drive West across the country. This is a photo from that meal:
In Provo, I gratefully found refuge at the excellent Economics Department led at the time by Professor Larry Wimmer.
It was at Provo that I first had a personal computer on my desk (an IBM as may be seen) and what a delight that was (no matter the noises that it made). I recall being struck by the fact a colleague possessed the incredible luxury of a portable personal computer (no one else did) which he could take home with him. It looked like an enormous briefcase but was apparently the technology-leader at the time. (Laptops seem not to have been invented as of 1985).
In October 1985, Professor Frank Hahn very kindly wrote to Larry Wimmer revising his 1980 opinion of my work now that the PhD was done, the India-work had led to The Times editorial and the theoretical work was proceeding well.
I had applied for a permanent position at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and had been interviewed positively at the American Economic Association meetings (in New York) in December 1985 by the department chairman Professor Fred C. Hung. At Provo, Dr James Moncur of the Manoa Department was visiting. Jim became a friend and recommended me to his colleagues in Manoa.
Professor Hung appointed me to that department as a “senior” Assistant Professor on tenure-track beginning September 1986. I had bargained for a rank of “Associate Professor” but was told the advertisement did not allow it; instead I was assured of being an early candidate for promotion and tenure subject to my book “Principia Economica” being accepted for publication. (The contract with the University of Chicago Press had become frayed.)
Hawaii was simply a superb place (though expensive).
Professor James Buchanan won the Economics “Nobel” in 1986 and I was asked by the Manoa Department to help raise its profile by inviting him to deliver a set of lectures, which he did excellently well in March 1988 to the University as well as the Honolulu community at large. Here he is at my 850 sq ft small condominium at Punahou Towers, 1621 Dole Street:
In August 1988, my manuscript “Principia Economica” was finally accepted for publication by Routledge of London and New York under the title Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason In Economic Inquiry. The contract with University of Chicago Press had fallen through and the manuscript was being read by Yale University Press and a few others but Routledge came through with the first concrete offer. I was delighted and these photos were taken in the Economics Department at Manoa by a colleague in September 1988 as the publisher needed them.
Milton and Rose Friedman came to Honolulu on a private holiday perhaps in January 1989; they had years earlier spent a sabbatical year at the Department.
Here is a luncheon that was arranged in their honour. They had in the Fall of 1988 been on their famous visit to China, and as I recall that was the main subject of discussion on the occasion.
Milton phoned me in my Manoa office and invited me to meet him and Rose at their hotel for a chat; we had met first at the 1984 Mont Pelerin meetings and he wished to know me better. I was honoured and turned up dutifully and we talked for perhaps an hour. I recall making a strong recommendation that he write his memoirs, especially so that the rumours and innuendo surrounding eg the Chile episode could be cleared up; I also said a “Collected Works” would be a great idea; when Milton and Rose published their memoirs Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998) I wondered if my first suggestion had come to be taken; as to the second, he wrote to me years later saying he felt no Collected Works were necessary.
From 1986 onwards, I had been requested by the University of Hawaii to lead a project with William E James on the political economy of “South Asia” .I had said there was no such place, that “South Asia” was a US State Department abstraction but there were India and Pakistan and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and Afghanistan etc. Sister projects on India and Pakistan had been sponsored by the University, and in 1989 important conferences had been planned by myself and James in May for India and in June for Pakistan.
I was determined to publish for the first time Milton’s 1955 memorandum on India which the Government of India had suppressed or ignored at the time. At the hotel-meeting, I told Milton that and requested him to come to the India-conference in May; Milton and Rose said they would think about it, and later confirmed he would come for the first two days.
This is a photo of the initial luncheon at the home of the University President on May 21 1989. Milton and India’s Ambassador to the USA at the time were both garlanded with Hawaiian leis. The first photo was one of a joke from Milton as I recall which had everyone laughing.
There was no equivalent photo of the distinguished scholars who gathered for the Pakistan conference a month later.
The reason was that from February 1989 onwards I had become the victim of a most vicious racist defamation, engineered within the Economics Department at Manoa by a senior professor as a way to derail me before my expected Promotion and Tenure application in the Fall. All my extra time went to battling that though somehow I managed to teach some monetary economics well enough in 1989-1990 for a Japanese student to insist on being photographed with me and the book we had studied.
I was being seen by two or three temporarily powerful characters on the Manoa campus as an Uppity Indian who must be brought down. This time I decided to fight back — and what a saga came to unfold! It took me into the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii and then the Ninth Circuit and upto the United States Supreme Court, not once but twice.
Milton Friedman and Theodore Schultz stood valiantly among my witnesses — first writing to the University’s authorities and later deposing in federal court.
Unfortunately, government lawyers, far from wanting to uphold and respect the laws of the United States, chose to deliberately violate them — compromising a judge, suborning demonstrable perjury and then brazenly purchasing my hired attorney (and getting caught doing it). Since September 2007, the State of Hawaii’s attorneys have been invited by me to return to the federal court and apologise for their unlawful behaviour as they are required by law to do.
They had not expected me to survive their illegalities but I did: I kept going.
Philosophy of Economics was published in London and New York in September 1989
The hardback quickly sold out on its own steam and the book went into paperback in 1991, and I was delighted to learn from a friend that it had been prescribed for a course at Yale Law School and was strewn along an alley in the bookshop:
The sister-volumes on India and Pakistan emerging from the University of Hawaii project led by myself and James were published in 1992 and 1993 in India, Pakistan, Britain and the United States.
As described elsewhere, the manuscript of the India-volume contributed to the origins of India’s 1991 economic reform during my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi in his last months; the Pakistan-volume came to contribute to the origins of the Pakistan-India peace process. The Indian publisher who had promised paperback volumes of both books reneged under leftwing pressure in Delhi; he has since passed away and James and I still await the University of Hawaii’s permission to publish both volumes freely on the Internet as copyright rests with the University President.
In 2004 from Britain, I wrote to the 9/11 Commission stating that it was possible that had the vicious illegalities against me not occurred at Manoa starting in 1989, we may have gone on after India and Pakistan to study Afghanistan, and come up with a pre-emptive academic analysis a decade before September 11 2001.
To be continued in Part Two.
India’s “pork-barrel politics” needs a nice (vegetarian) Hindi name! “Teli/oily politics” perhaps? (And are we next going to see a Bill of Rights for Lobbyists?)
January 3, 2009 — drsubrotoroy“Pork barrel politics” has been known as a concept in America and other Western countries for more than a century. India is clearly playing catch-up here but advancing quickly. The so-called “second fiscal stimulus” announced yesterday by Dr Manmohan Singh’s chief economic policy aide no longer makes any pretence of any engagement with serious public finance economics at all and is instead a plain bill of rights for lobbyists, especially organised business (and with it, organised labour).
In fact New Delhi’s way seems to be for organised lobbies to deal directly with the higher bureaucracy with executive political approval or acquiescence; pork arising from legislative politics may be secondary.
Now “pork” is too ugly a term for our Indian sensibilities and not many people eat any in the country (though, believe it or not, pork-production literally speaking is still the recipient of a government subsidy!). So we do need a nice preferably vegetarian name for “pork-barrel politics” Indian-style. “Tel” or “oil” may provide some ideas, and as a rough approximation I would suggest “Teli politics” or “Oily politics” but suggestions are welcome.
There are groups in America known as “Porkbusters” :
Any similar resistance in India responding to our version of pork-barrel politics might have to be called “Tel busters” or “Oil busters” or just “Detergents”.
And finally, since there has been a complete takeover of the economic policy process (and the mainstream media) by organised business lobbies, are we going to be perhaps seeing next a formal Bill of Rights for Lobbyists?
Subroto Roy, Kolkata
The Indian Revolution
December 8, 2008 — drsubrotoroyThe Indian Revolution
by
Subroto Roy
Prefatory Note Dec 2008: This outlines what might have happened if (a) Rajiv Gandhi had not been assassinated; (b) I had known at age 36 all that I now know at age 53. Both are counterfactuals and hence this is a work of fiction. It was written long before the Mumbai massacres; the text has been left unchanged.
“India’s revolution, when it came, was indeed bloodless and non-violent but it was firm and clear-headed and inevitably upset a lot of hitherto powerful people.
The first thing the Revolutionary Government declared when it took over in Delhi was that the rupee would become a genuine hard currency of the world economy within 18 months. This did not seem a very revolutionary thing to say and the people at first did not understand what was meant. The Revolutionaries explained: “Paper money and the banks have been abused by all previous regimes ruling in Delhi since 1947 who learnt their tricks from British war-time techniques. We will give you for the first time in free India a rupee as good as gold, an Indian currency as respectable as any other in the world, dollar, pound, yen, whatever. What you earn with your hard work and resources will be measured by a sound standard of value, not continuously devalued in secret by government misuse”.
The people were intrigued but not enlightened much. Nor did they grasp things to come when the Revolutionary Government abolished the old Planning Commission, sending its former head as envoy to New Zealand (with a long reading-list); attached the Planning Commission as a new R&D wing to the Finance Ministry; detached the RBI from the Finance Ministry; instructed the RBI Governor to bring proper work-culture and discipline to his 75,000 staff and instructed the Monetary Policy Deputy Governor to prepare plans for becoming a constitutionally independent authority, besides a possible monetary decentralization towards the States. India’s people did not understand all this, but there began to be a sense that something was up in Lutyens’ Delhi faraway.
The Revolutionary Government started to seem a little revolutionary when it called in police-chiefs of all States — the PM himself then signed an order routed via the Home Ministry that they were to state in writing, within a fortnight, how they intended to improve discipline and work-culture in the forces they commanded. Each was also asked to name three reliable deputies, and left in no doubt what that meant. State Chief Ministers murmured objections but rumours swirled about more to come and they shut up quickly. The Revolutionary Government sent a terse note to all CMs asking their assistance in implementation of this and any further orders. It also set up a “Prison Reform and Reconstruction Panel” with instructions to (a) survey all prisons in the country with a view to immediately reduce injustices within the prison-system; (b) enlarge capacity in the event fresh enforcement of the Rule of Law came to demand this.
The Revolutionary Government then asked all senior members of the judiciary to a meeting in Trivandrum. There they declared the judiciary must remain impartial and objective, not show favoritism even to members of the Revolutionary Party itself who might be in court before them for whatever reason. The judges were assured of carte blanche by way of resources to improve quality of all public services under them; at the same time, a new “Internal Affairs Department” was formed that would assure the public that the Bench and the Bar never forgot their noble calling. When a former judge and a former senior counsel came to be placed in two cells of the new prison-system, the public finally felt something serious was afoot. Late night comics on TV led the public’s mirth — “Thieves have authority when judges steal themselves”, waxed one eloquently.
The Revolutionary Government’s next step reached into all nooks and crannies of the country. A large room in the new Finance Ministry was assigned to each State – a few days later, the Revolutionary Government announced it had taken over control under the Constitution’s financial emergency provision of all State budgets for a period of six months at the outset.
Now there was an irrepressible outcry from State Chief Ministers, loud enough for the Revolutionary Government to ask them to a national meeting, this time in Agartala. When the Delhi CM sweetly complained she did not know how to get there, she got back two words “Get there”; and she did.
There the PM told the CMs they would get their budgets back some day but only after the Revolutionary Government had overseen their cleaning and restoration to financial health from their current rotten state. “But Prime Minister, the States have had no physical assets”, one bright young CM found courage to blurt out.
“That is the first good question I have heard since our Revolution began,” answered the PM. “We are going to give you the Railways to start with — Indian Railways will keep control of a few national trains and tracks but will be instructed to devolve control and ownership of all other assets to you, the States. See that you use your new assets properly”. There was a collective whoop of excitement. “During the time your budgets remain with us, get your police, transport, education and hospital systems to work for the benefit of common people, confer with your oppositions about how you can get your legislatures to work at all. Keep in mind we are committed to making the rupee a hard currency of the world and we will not stand for any waste, fraud or abuse of public moneys. We really don’t want to be tested on what we mean by that. We are doing the same with the Union Government and the whole public sector”. The Chief Ministers went home nervous and excited.
Finally, the Revolutionary Government turned to Lutyens’ Delhi itself. Foreign ambassadors were called in one by one and politely informed a scale-back had been ordered in Indian diplomatic missions in their countries, and hence by due protocol, a scale-back in their New Delhi embassies was called for. “We are pulling our staff, incidentally, from almost all international and UN agencies too because we need such high-quality administrators more at home than abroad”, the Revolutionary Foreign Minister told the startled ambassadors.
Palpable tension rose in the national capital when the Revolutionary Government announced that Members of Parliament would receive public housing of high quality but only in their home constituencies! The MPs would have to vacate their Delhi bungalows and apartments! “But we are Delhi! We must have facilities in Delhi!”, MPs cried. “Yes, rooms in nationalized hotels suffice for your legislative needs; kindly vacate the bungalows as required; we will be building national memorials, libraries and museums there”, replied the radicals in power. Tension in the capital did not subside for weeks because the old political parties all had thrived on Delhi’s social circuit, whose epicenter swirled around a handful of such bungalows. Now those old power-equations were all lost. A few MPs decided to boycott Delhi and only work in their constituencies.
When the Pakistan envoy was called with a letter for her PM, outlining a process of détente on the USSR-USA pattern of mutual verification of demilitarization, both bloated militaries were upset to see their jobs and perks being cut but steps had been taken to ensure there was never any serious danger of a coup. The Indian Revolution was in full swing and continued for a few years until coherence and integrity had been forced upon the public finances and currency of a thousand million people….”
see also
https://independentindian.com/2013/11/23/coverage-of-my-delhi-talk-on-3-dec-2012/
Of a new New Delhi myth and the success of the University of Hawaii 1986-1992 Pakistan project (with 2015 Postscript)
November 15, 2008 — drsubrotoroyA leading Indian commentator says in this morning’s paper (November 15 2008) about Manmohan Singh:
“His formulation on Kashmir (“I have no mandate to change borders, but we can make borders irrelevant”), became the obvious solution once he articulated it.”
Such may be how modern New Delhi’s myths and self-delusions get born — since in fact there is no evidence that Manmohan Singh or any of his acolytes had anything to do with originating the Pakistan-India peace process in recent decades, just as there has not been that Manmohan Singh or any of his acolytes had anything to do with originating the Congress Party’s new economic thinking in 1990-1991.
(Lest I be misunderstood I should add at the outset that I have the highest personal regard for Dr Singh, he has been in decades past a friend of my father’s, he at my father’s request consented to discuss economics with me in Paris in 1973 when I was a callow lad of 18, he himself has not claimed the originality that has been frequently mis-attributed to him by others for whatever reason, etc.)
The origins of the idea about India-Pakistan and J&K expressed by Manmohan Singh’s words are to be found in the last paragraph of the Introduction by the Editors of a book which arose from the University of Hawaii’s 1986-1992 Pakistan project, which read:
“Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.”
The University of Hawaii’s Pakistan project, involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the volume Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, including the most hawkish of Islamabad’s hawks, and Pervez Musharraf’s 2006 proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department, may have grown from that paragraph. The Editors of the book, as economists themselves, decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had
“greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.”
Such words were impossibly bold in the late 1980s-early 1990s. However, as stated in a special editorial article “What to tell Musharraf” in The Statesman of December 16 2006, they seemed in recent years incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project and the one who had conceived it. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the Pakistani state (as it had become prior to the splendid 2008 elections).
The Hawaii project had involved top Pakistani economists, political scientists and other commentators but had deliberately chosen to keep the military and the religious clergy out of its chapters. And it was the military and religious clergy who in fact came to dominate Pakistan’s agenda in the 1990s, at least until the 9/11 attacks in America indirectly altered the political direction of the country.
The peaceful and mundane economic agenda outlined for Pakistan in the Hawaii project has come into its own by way of relevance ever since. A few weeks ago, the first trucks filled with fruit, woolens and many other goods traversed across the “Line of Control” in J&K for the first time in sixty years. The Pakistan project that James and I led at the University of Hawaii in the late 1980s may be now declared a success. Among other things, our book explained to Indians that there does exist a Pakistani point of view and perhaps explained to Pakistanis that there does exist an Indian point of view. That is something that had not existed before our book.
Postscript 18 Nov 2015: I have made clear at Twitter that I find the K.M. Kasuri book promoted and publicized in India by MS Aiyar, S Kulkarni, B Dutt and others in Delhi and Mumbai is mendacious where it is not merely self-serving. Its clear intent is to get India to accept the (false) ISI/Hurriyat narratives about 1947, Kashmir, Bangladesh, terrorism etc. Its purported ideas of demilitarisation and a borderless Kashmir are essentially lifted from my earlier 1980s work in America cited above — which I myself have rejected as naive since the Pakistani aggression in Kargil in 1999. More anon.
How the Liabilities/Assets Ratio of Indian Banks Changed from 84% in 1970 to 108% in 1998: the PurnimaMihir Graph
October 20, 2008 — drsubrotoroyThis graph was created by me in 2002 from Reserve Bank of India data published until 1998.
Although I had been “full professor” at the time for six years at something known as an “Institution of National Importance” in India, I had received not a rupee by way of any research-assistance, and had to be assisted in the creation of this graph by two very elderly lay persons, one aged 87 and another aged 77, who read out over many hours (despite frail eyesight) long columns of RBI data which I then typed into an Excel file.
[My Research Assistants about six years after they’d helped me create the graph from RBI data…so the graph deserves to be dubbed the PurnimaMihir Graph].
The graph came to be published for the first time to accompany my two-part article “Indian Inflation” published in The Statesman April 15-16 2008, and available elsewhere here.
The Prime Minister of India has today spoken in India’s Parliament of how sound India’s banking seems to him compared to that in the rest of the world at present. I trust he has available to him vast amounts of fresh data since 1998 which the many members of his “Dream Team” of government and other establishment economists in Delhi and Mumbai have analysed adequately to justify his confidence. The data in my RBI graph end at 1998 but they do cover all the years of the PM’s own career as India’s top economic bureaucrat up through his tenure as Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao Government.
As it happens, I do think India’s banks are relatively insulated from the world economy and its present financial crisis but the reason for that insulation has nothing to do with any purportedly better bank governance in India; rather it has to do with the fact the rupee is not a hard convertible currency and therefore there has been a vast and continuing distortion of relative prices (including interest rates and wages) from world prices.
Subroto Roy, 20 October 2008
Monetary Integrity and the Rupee (2008)
September 28, 2008 — drsubrotoroyMonetary Integrity and the Rupee: Three British Raj relics have dominated our macroeconomic policy-making
First published in Business Standard 28 September 2008
Taxation via inflation “does not require detailed legislation, and can be administered very simply. All that it requires is to spend newly created notes. The resulting inflation automatically imposes a tax on cash balances by depreciating the value of money”. Philip Cagan said this in a pioneering 1956 study of hyperinflations worldwide. Britain’s Hugh Dalton observed how government deficits could be met by “use of the printing press to manufacture legal tender paper money” to pay government creditors either directly “with new paper money specially printed for the purpose” or indirectly “out of loans to itself from the Central Bank”. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz pointed to America’s wartime resort to inflation.
Government debt held by a central bank quickly filters through to appear as an asset in balance-sheets of commercial banks, causing expansion of bank-lending and hence of bank-deposits and broad money. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, the US Treasury could get from the Federal Reserve or commercial banks “any funds that it needed beyond those secured by taxation and by borrowing from non-bank sources”. America’s wartime banking system became “a mechanism for providing funds to finance government expenditure” — deposits grew because “bank buying of government securities increases bank deposits”.
In RF Harrod’s words: “There is a well-known aphorism that ‘bank loans create deposits’…. if the central bank has an increase of assets, whether through a gold inflow or its own increase of ‘lending’ (including the purchase of bills or bonds), some commercial bank will have an increase of assets of equal amount, in the form of claims on the central bank (deposits at it or notes issued by it) and an increase of deposit liabilities of equal amount to its customers”.
India has followed in peacetime over six decades what the USA and Britain followed during war. Our vast growth of bank-deposits in recent decades has been mostly a paper (or nominal) phenomenon caused by unlimited deficit-finance in a fractional reserve banking system. Policy-makers have widely misinterpreted it as indicating a real phenomenon of incredibly high savings behaviour. In an inflationary environment, people save their wealth less as paper deposits than as real assets like land, cattle, buildings, machinery, food-stocks, jewellery etc.
Almost 50% of annual public revenues in real terms may have been arising from inflationary finance in recent decades. To take a specific example, during Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Finance Minister, Union Government expenditure net of operational income was some Rs. 1.3 trillion (Rs 1.3 lakh crore) in 1994-1995. Some Rs. 675 billion (1 bn= 100 crore) was raised from all taxation that year, Rs 183 billion from direct taxes. The remaining Rs. 620.8 billion was borrowed on behalf of future generations of citizens using the Government of India’s credit. What is termed “Gross Fiscal Deficit” is this additional or marginal annual borrowing — it adds itself to the ongoing stock of public debt every year and has been continually monetised insofar as our mostly nationalized banking system annually comes to hold government securities to that additional amount.
India’s inflation-history shows a first phase from the 1870s until the Second World War when money prices fluctuated in response to real shocks, positive and negative, domestic and international. E.g., the US Civil War and First World War caused demand surges for Indian manufactures like cotton textiles and steel railway-tracks, while the Great Depression saw Indian prices crashing with world prices.
During the Second World War, money prices in India rose at their fastest rate ever, caused by deliberate British policy to pay for war expenditure by printing money. The British resort to inflationary wartime finance saw the highest money supply growth rates in India ever to occur to date. This pattern came to be adopted and institutionalised by independent India’s socialist authorities, so there has been a third phase of steady inflationary finance from the 1950s until today, along with negative shocks like military and civil conflicts, droughts and oil price-rises, as well as happier developments like technological progress leading to growth of real income (see graph).
Two more relics from the wartime British Raj continue to dominate Indian macroeconomic policy to this day. One is unlimited spending on vast standing armies — our supposed adversary itself being a political remnant of the Raj with similar macroeconomic problems to ourselves. India’s army has some 19 divisions facing Pakistan, Pakistan’s army has 19 divisions facing India!
The other relic has been the Indian rupee becoming inconvertible as a world money ever since import quotas were imposed across the Sterling Area in 1940-1942. Lack of convertibility has made all government finance in India unlike that in modern Western economies. US government bonds are held freely in foreign portfolios so a Swiss household or Japanese bank may trade these as they please. Bond prices vary inversely with interest-rates, and yield curves would be attempted to be defined reflecting the maturity-structure and state of expectations. Competitive arbitrage in international capital markets may succeed in ensuring government debt is priced accurately.
A central bank with a convertible currency sells debt to raise monetary interest rates and attract capital flows, buys up its debt to lower rates and cause capital outflows. Money growth unwarranted by real growth depreciates the currency under floating exchange rates; a partial export of inflation occurs under fixed-rates. Debt instruments are liquid near-moneys, and it is because US Government debt has been liquid that debt instruments of its sub-sovereign divisions like States or municipalities are almost as liquid. If sovereign debt is not liquid, nor will be sub-sovereign debt.
In India, bank assets may be liquid domestically but are illiquid internationally. Government debt is not held by domestic households as voluntary savings nor has it been a liquid asset held worldwide in foreign portfolios. The same holds *a fortiori* for debt issued by more than two dozen State Governments. “Mutual funds” created in recent years do contain government debt on modern principles of portfolio-selection but amounts involved are small. The Rupee achieving monetary integrity after more than six decades of governmental misuse would be indicated only when any ordinary Indian resident can freely hold or trade India’s money for foreign moneys or precious metals as he/she pleases. India’s economy and money can begin to move towards coherence and integrity only when we put to rest the three relics from the wartime British Raj which we unthinkingly have allowed to dominate our macroeconomic policy-making ever since.
The Excel graphs built on my data were made into a nice picture by Business Standard but seem to have been removed from their website, and hence are reproduced here now for the first time today, Oct 2, 2011:
See also, more recently,
India’s Money, 2012,
Critical assessments of India’s economic policy, plus my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi talk on India’s money, Interview on Lok Sabha TV 2012, GDI Impuls Zürich Interview, Sunday Guardian Interview & Asian Age/Deccan Herald coverage
https://independentindian.com/2013/11/23/coverage-of-my-delhi-talk-on-3-dec-2012/
Milton Friedman’s defence of my work
September 15, 2008 — drsubrotoroyTwenty years have passed since the acceptance of my book Philosophy of Economics for publication — which coincided with the attack on me arising out of the very success of the India-perestroika and Pakistan-perestroika projects I had been leading (an attack from within the University that had sponsored the projects since 1986). I was graced with the support of two of the 20th Century’s great economists, TW Schultz (1902-1998) and Milton Friedman (1912-2006). Professor Schultz’s defence of my work has been published already. Here is that of Professor Friedman. Both Professor Friedman and Professor Schultz were later expert witnesses on my behalf in a federal trial (a trial that unfortunately came to be marred by demonstrable bribery and perjury, yet to be rectified).
Addendum 23 Dec 2016: the jury trial demanded 14 Feb 1990 has never happened; a bench trial with an admittedly compromised judge happened in 1992, marred by demonstrated bribery and perjury https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/my-american-years-1980-96-battling-for-the-freedom-of-my-books/become-a-us-supreme-court-justice-explorations-in-the-rule-of-law-in-america/
My books in the Library of Congress and British Library
September 12, 2008 — drsubrotoroySix volumes are listed in the United States Library of Congress in Washington DC under my name <http://www.loc.gov>. For convenience, these are given with their call numbers below.
Four are now in pdf here.
Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry
© 1989, 1991, 2007 Subroto Roy
https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/pricing-planning-politics-a-study-of-economic-distortions-in-india-1984/
[ 1 ] Roy, Subroto
Foundations of India’s political economy : towards an agenda for the 1990s / editors, Subroto Roy, William E. James. 1992
ACCESS: Jefferson or Adams Bldg General or Area Studies Reading Rms
CALL NUMBER: HC435.2 .F68 1992
[ 2 ] Roy, Subroto
Foundations of Pakistan’s political economy : towards an agenda for the 1990s / editors, William E. James, Subroto Roy. 1992
ACCESS: Jefferson or Adams Bldg General or Area Studies Reading Rms
CALL NUMBER: HC440.5 .F59 1992
[ 3 ] Roy, Subroto
Margaret Thatcher’s revolution : how it happened and what it meant /edited by Subroto Roy and John Clarke. 2005
[ 4 ] Roy, Subroto
Roy, Subroto. Philosophy of economics : on the scope of reason in economic inquiry / Subroto Roy. 1991
[ 5 ] Roy, Subroto
Roy, Subroto. Philosophy of economics : on the scope of reason in economic inquiry / Subroto Roy. 1989
ACCESS: Jefferson or Adams Bldg General or Area Studies Reading Rms
CALL NUMBER: HB72 .R69 1989
[ 6 ] Roy, Subroto
Roy, Subroto. Pricing, planning, and politics : a study of economic distortions in India / Subroto Roy. 1984
ACCESS: Jefferson or Adams Bldg General or Area Studies Reading Rms
CALL NUMBER: HC435.2 .R66 1984
The British Library in London http://catalogue.bl.uk, has the same titles under 9 listings as below:
1 Foundations of India’s political economy : 1992. 96/06669 DSC ORW.1993.a.1142
2 Foundations of Pakistan’s political economy : 1992. YC.1993.a.2144 ORW.1994.a.1019
3 Foundations of Pakistan’s political economy : 1992. 93/06010 DSC
4 Margaret Thatcher’s revolution : 2005. SPIS.320.941
5. Roy, Subroto. Philosophy of economics : 1989. 8458.S.1/92
6 Roy, Subroto. The philosophy of economics : 1989. 89/23299 DSC
7 Roy, Subroto. Philosophy of economics : 1989 YK.1991.a.5102
8 Roy, Subroto. Pricing, planning and politics : 1984. X.0519/26
9 Roy, Subroto. Pricing, planning and politics : 1984. 6217.450000 No.69 DSC
(The difference may have been caused by different editions or reprints being listed, for example the volume on Pakistan was published in Karachi too.)
“Rangarajan Effect”
August 24, 2008 — drsubrotoroyReddy’s reckoning
August 10, 2008 — drsubrotoroy
Growth of Real Income, Money & Prices in India 1869-2008
July 28, 2008 — drsubrotoroyI have warned against a “monetary meltdown” in India for more than a decade and a half now. I said it to Rajiv Gandhi (who listened with care and respect) and after he was gone I have said it to Government economists in India, to IMF/World Bank bureaucrats in Washington, to academic audiences in India and the UK and to India’s general newspaper reading public.
Obviously I hope such a meltdown does not come about. But inflation, or the decline in the value of money, presently is in double-digits even by the Government’s own admission. (As a general rule, I think the decline in the value of money has been higher by several percent than what the Government says at any given time.) Hence I am publishing again some results of my macroeconomic research on India over the years. You are free to use them and communicate with me about them but please acknowledge them properly and do not steal.
The first graph of 1869-2004 data was published in print to accompany my Growth and Government Delusion in The Statesman February 22, 2008; it had also accompanied other similar articles, e.g. The Dream Team: A Critique in January 2006. The second graph of 1935-2008 data was published in print to accompany my article Indian Inflation in The Statesman of April 22 2008.
Subroto Roy
Distribution of Govt of India Expenditure (Net of Operational Income) 1995
July 27, 2008 — drsubrotoroyFor more than a decade and a half now, I have been engaged in some “fundamental research” about India’s public finances. This has involved inter alia transforming the entire set of government accounting data (both Union and all States) from their present obscurity and opaqueness to what I have called a condition of “maximum feasible transparency” (see my April 29 2000 address to the Reserve Bank’s Conference of Finance Secretaries).
Here is an example of the Union Government’s 1994-1995 expenditure (net of operational income).
It is from my unpublished ongoing research and is being released as a public service for India’s people. Readers are welcome to use it with acknowledgement under the normal “fair use” rule. Please try not to steal it, i.e. use it without proper acknowledgement.
from-ongoing-research-of-dr-subroto-roy-on-india
Subroto Roy
see also https://independentindian.com/2013/11/23/coverage-of-my-delhi-talk-on-3-dec-2012/
Nuksaan-Faida Analysis = Cost-Benefit Analysis in Hindi/Urdu
June 30, 2008 — drsubrotoroyI have published about a half dozen or more articles, mainly in The Statesman‘s Editorial Page, on the India-US Nuclear Deal, e.g. “Imperialism Redux”14 March 2006, “Towards an Energy Policy” 2 April 2006, “India’s Energy Interests” 27-28 August 2006, “Need for Clarity”, 19 August 2007. One of my main complaints has been that the Prime Minister and his acolytes seem to have failed to do a proper cost-benefit analysis of the whole thing. The same currency-risk that made the Dabhol-Enron project instantly unviable is also faced a fortiori in the idea of importing nuclear fuel and reactors. The Finance Minister and Finance Secretary who failed to calculate that currency risk in the former project, and hence caused its failure, have now failed again as PM and Planning Commission chief while advocating the latter project. Is the Indian rupee destined to depreciate in the long run? Of course it is: just look at the long run trends and compare our money supply growth rates and inflation rates with those of the USA or EU. The cost of imported nuclear power in India must be recalculated under different scenarios for the exchange-rate of the Indian rupee including e.g. a 20% depreciation.
It is not as if the Government of India is ignorant of what Cost-Benefit Analysis is supposed to be! For example, look up
“*Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions* * *THE INDIAN ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES (PROBATIONERS’ FINAL EXAMINATION) REGULATIONS, 1955* * *In pursuance of rule 7 of the Indian Administrative Service (Probation) Rules, 1954, the Central Government, in consultation with the State Governments and the Union Public Service Commission, hereby makes the following regulations, namely* *1. Short title:- These regulations may be called the Indian Administrative Service (Probationers’ Final Examination) Regulations, 1955.* *2. Definition:- 2(1) In these regulations, unless the context otherwise requires,-* *(a) `Academay’ (sic) means Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration;* *(b) [ ];* *(c) `Director’ means the Director of the Academy; and * *(d) `Schedule’ means a Schedule appended to these regulations.* *2(2) All other words and expressions used in these regulations and not defined shall have the meanings respectively assigned to them in the Indian Administrative Service (Probation) Rules, 1954.* *3. Final examination.- 3(1) Every probationer shall, at or about the end of the period of training in the Academy appear at a final examination.* *3(2) The examination shall be conducted by the 4Director in the manner laid down in these regulations….4. PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION AND MANAGEMENT* *Essentials of Administration-Organisational Structure of Governments, Role of Civil Servants, Administrative Ethics and Accountability, Delegation and Decentralisation-District and Local Administration-Personal Administration, Police Administration-Jail Administration Panchayati Raj Administration- CalamityAdministration-Administration of Development and Welfare Programmes- Budget and Role of Audit and general financial principles-Role of District Officer/SDO-Conduct of Elections.* *Management and Organisation* *Behavioural Science Motivation, Leadership, Decision-Making, MBO, Management of Conflicts, Management of Change ,Transactional Analysis, -MIS-O&M & Work study-Pert-CPM, Time Management Methodology of Presentation of a subject-Financial Management Capital Budgeting, Discountal Cash Flow, Ratio Analysis, Project Formulation, Cost benefit Analysis, Project Evaluation Interpretation of Balance Sheets….” (emphasis added)
How come there has been none with the India-US nuclear deal then? I think we need a new more comprehensible term for Cost-Benefit Analysis, and that should be, most simply, its Hindi/Urdu equivalent: “Nuksaan-Faida Analysis”.
What is the estimated Nuksaan?
What is the estimated Faida?
How do they compare? It all becomes so much easier!
Subroto Roy
University of Hawaii Project on India’s Political Economy 1986-1992
June 13, 2008 — drsubrotoroy
University of Hawaii Project on India’s Political Economy 1986-1992
This is dated May 21 1989 and located at the University of Hawaii President’s House. Prof. Milton Friedman and the Indian Ambassador to the USA are wearing Hawaiian leis. The academic result of this project was the work Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by myself & WE James and published by Sage. The practical and political result was the origin of the 1991 Indian economic reform when the project manuscript in unpublished form reached Rajiv Gandhi through my hand on September 18 1990 at 10 Janpath New Delhi; the story of my encounter with Mr Gandhi has been told elsewhere here.
see https://independentindian.com/1990/09/18/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/
https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/
Assessing Manmohan: The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake
April 25, 2008 — drsubrotoroyAssessing Manmohan:
The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, April 25 2008,
The best thing that may be said of the Manmohan Singh premiership is that when it began in May 2004, it seemed, for a short while, refreshing in comparison to the dysfunctional arrogance and brutality displayed by its predecessor. By the last months of the Vajpayee-Advani Government, there were party appointees who had ended all pretence of purportedly Hindu values and were raking it in shamelessly. The Golden Rule of Democracy is “Throw the rascals out”, which is what Indian democracy upheld as it has done time and again. By 2009, India’s electorate will have the chance to decide whether the incumbent government deserves the same fate.
Lok Sabha
Manmohan Singh was seriously discussed as the Congress’s putative nominee for PM as early as 2001. The idea brewing at the time with the party’s next generation of wannabe leaders (in their 50s and 60s, where Manmohan was near 70) was that they needed to maintain good relations with the Great White Queen and wait out one term of an inevitable Singh premiership before having a shot at the top job themselves.
What is surprising is Dr Singh appeared never to feel it necessary to educate himself privately on how to retool himself for the necessary transformation from being the archetypal bureaucrat he had been in his working career to becoming the national statesman he wished to be after retirement. It is doubtful, for example, if he ever stood in front of a mirror and practised an extempore political speech in Hindi in preparation for the highest executive post in the country, let aside writing a clear-headed, original vision or mission statement of substance as to where he wished to lead it. As Narasimha Rao’s Finance Minister, he could meekly take orders from his PM; it seemed he wished to continue in the same mode even when PM himself.
Jawaharlal Nehru is supposed to have been a hero of Dr Singh’s ~ but Nehru was a thorough parliamentarian, among the finest anywhere, and someone who always respected the Lok Sabha immensely. Dr Singh, after he lost to VK Malhotra for the South Delhi seat in 1999, made not the slightest effort to enter the Lok Sabha again, even when the Akalis indicated they might not oppose him in a Punjab contest. When asked specifically at a large press conference about not entering the Lok Sabha, Dr Singh murmured words to the effect he had better uses of his time ~ a display, if anything, of the misplaced arrogance of many New Delhi academics and intellectuals. Dr Singh may be the first PM in any parliamentary democracy never to have won a seat in the lower house nor felt a need to do so.
Dr Singh’s bureaucratic expertise assisted him well in the first national crisis that came his way, which was the Tsunami of 26 December 2004. There appeared to be an air of efficiency about the Government’s response and he seemed in his element as commander of bureaucratic forces while working with Pranab Mukherjee in enlisting the military. George W. Bush (not a great geographer or historian) was apparently impressed to see on a map that India had naval forces deployed as far as the Andamans.
By 2005 though, Dr Singh’s bureaucratic mindset had its negative impact. Montek Ahluwalia had been his Finance Secretary when he was Finance Minister. Mr Ahluwalia’s spouse had been a main supporter of Dr Singh’s unsuccessful Lok Sabha attempt. During the Vajpayee Government, Mr Ahluwalia remained a Planning Commission Member for several years before moving to Washington. With Dr Singh as PM, Mr Ahluwalia returned from the USA in mid 2004 to become Deputy Chair at the Planning Commission. Simultaneously with his return, the idea that the American nuclear industry would like to sell “six to eight lightwater reactors” to India arose.
That is as much as is presently known in public. Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia may in the national interest want to frankly and precisely explain to the Indian people the full story of the sudden origins of this idea. Certainly, none of the lessons of the Dabhol fiasco a decade earlier seemed to have been learnt, and the Maharasthtra Government (and hence the Government of India) ended up paying some $300 million to General Electric and Bechtel Corporation for Dabhol before any nuclear talks with the USA could begin. Nor had any serious cost-benefit analysis been done or discussion taken place comparing nuclear energy with coal, hydro and other sources in the Indian case.
Indian foreign policy became frozen in its focus on nuclear negotiations with the USA, swirling around Dr Singh’s fife-and-drum welcome at the White House and President Bush’s return visit to India. At the same time arose the issue of Paul Volcker’s UN committee mentioning the name of India’s foreign minister. As The Statesman put it, regardless of the latter’s involvement, “the damage to India’s diplomatic reputation in the world” was done and it was inevitable a new foreign minister would be necessary. After dilly-dallying and much 10 Janpath to-and-fro, Dr Singh followed Nehru’s mistake of becoming his own foreign minister. The idea was that this would be temporary but it became almost a year.
Instead of transforming himself towards Indian political statesmanship, Dr Singh advanced other retired bureaucrats’ ambitions on similar career-paths. Foreign policy went out of the MEA’s control and seemingly into the control of the new “National Security Adviser”. Dr Singh, sometimes with MK Narayanan beside him, travelled a large number of countries from Brazil to Finland and Uzbekistan to South Africa and Japan. Dr Singh also found time and willingness to accept honorary degrees from British and Russian universities during these short months.
While Dr Singh seemed thus preoccupied, two of India’s main neighbours underwent massive democratic revolutions (leave aside magnificent Bhutan). Nepal’s people practically stormed their Bastille while Dr Singh and Mr Narayanan visited Germany to discuss BMWs. Pakistan’s democratic forces could hardly believe the cold indifference shown to them by a New Delhi merely following Bush’s support for Pervez Musharraf. While Pakistan and Nepal, and to lesser extent Bangladesh, saw movements towards better governance, Sri Lanka descended towards civil war ~ India’s PM remained obsessed with the magic wand that the nuclear deal was supposed to be.
Inflation
Then suddenly the magic vanished ~ Dr Singh seemed to finally come to a silent private recognition that the economics of the nuclear deal simply did not add up if it meant India importing “six to eight lightwater reactors” on a turnkey basis from the USA or anywhere else. Dr Singh seemed to come out of his self-imposed trance and return a little better to reality. By the time he visited China, although he was as deferential to Hu Jintao in his body language as he had been to Bush and Musharraf and even accepted an indoor guard of honour, he also seemed willing to stand up for India. The Arunachal visit was a reality-check.
Now there is inflation ~ and one year left in the UPA’s term. What the country needs is tough sensible macroeconomics and clean public finance. A pandering profligate budget in February was not a healthy sign. Instructing Mr Ahluwalia to close down the Planning Commission and make it a minor R&D wing of the Finance Ministry would be instead a good step. Instructing the RBI to clean up its bureaucratic wastefulness and prepare itself for institutional independence from the Finance Ministry would be even better. Getting proper financial control over every Union and State government entity spending public money and resources would be most important of all. Such major institutional changes in the policy-making process are what an economist might expect of an economist prime minister who wishes to lead India in the 21st Century. India’s currency is at stake.
(See also: “The Politics of Dr Singh”, May 2006; “Mistaken Macroeconomics”, June 2009, etc.)
Indian Inflation: Upside Down Economics from New Delhi’s Establishment (2008)
April 16, 2008 — drsubrotoroyIndian Inflation:
Upside Down Economics From The New Delhi Establishment
by
Subroto Roy
First published in two parts in
The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article,
April 15-16, 2008
Suppose there are only three real goods and services in the economy, and their prices per unit expressed in terms of money were Rs 3, Rs 2, Rs 6 respectively. If those money prices per unit doubled to Rs 6, Rs 4, Rs 12 respectively, we would say inflation of 100% occurred during the relevant time-period. If the prices had gone instead to Rs 4.50, Rs 3, Rs 9, we would say inflation was 50%, and so on. Notice the ratios between the three prices have remained the same in these examples; i.e., while the money prices of the items have changed, relative prices between them remained constant. In reality, there are many hundreds of millions of differentiated real goods and services in any economy though the logic stays the same.
Decline of money
It is well within living memory that the monthly salary of a Government of India Joint Secretary was Rs 3,000. Middle class parents would wed their daughters respectably to a groom earning such a figure. A Joint Secretary today makes 20 times as much and Rs 3,000 is made by his driver or children’s nanny whose equivalent back then made perhaps Rs 150 per month. The relative distance between the Joint Secretary and his driver has not decreased but the absolute amount of rupees made by each has been multiplied by a factor of 20. That indicates the fall in the value of rupees or rise in prices of goods and services relative to rupees during that period.
One reason this has happened is that the monopoly issuer of rupees, namely the Government of India, has vastly enlarged the stock of rupees present in the economy, both paper-notes and bank-deposits. Inflation, strictly speaking, is uniform decline in the value of money or, what is the same thing, uniform increase in all rupee prices, including wages, with relative prices constant. The time-period could be a year or even a month; “hyperinflation” may start to be defined if the value of money falls at more than 10% per month.
The main problem with inflation is that rupee prices never expand uniformly and hence some classes of people gain unexpectedly while others suffer catastrophe. E.g., all those with debts expressed in rupee terms pay back less in real terms while their creditors go bankrupt. Those with fixed or slow-changing incomes (like old people, unorganised non-unionised workers etc) and those with paper assets (like currency rather than land or jewelry) are all made worse off by inflation. Unionized workers, like Government employees, do very well from inflation relative to others in society as their compensation is inflation-indexed. And the Government of India itself, as the largest debtor in the economy, gains massively from inflation; indeed, printing more paper is a standard way for all governments around the world to reduce their real debts by subterfuge.
The farmers at Singur or the SEZs who hand over their land for paper rupees from the Government will find the value of that paper declining and the value of that land rising over future years ~ which may help explain the recent keenness of city-people to take over rural India.
Rupee prices are one key variable that tend to expand via inflation with expansion of money stock. The other main change occurs in real income through growth. The Joint Secretary and his driver both use colour TVs for entertainment and gas-stoves for cooking these days; their earlier counterparts would have used transistor radios and coal-fired ovens.
To that extent, we have superior standards of living than we did in the past. There has been enormous technological progress, mostly through spontaneous learning and productivity increase, and that leads to vastly greater commerce and transactions between people, hence greater income and wealth through specialization. The vastly increased volume and value of commerce requires more money to expedite its turnover.
India’s money stock in recent decades has been growing at no less than 15% per annum, most recently reaching an all-time high of 22% per annum last year. Even if current Government estimates of growth of real income at some 9% are taken at face-value, that may mean growth in all rupee prices, i.e. inflation, near 22-9=13% per annum. TV economists parrot Government WPI inflation at 5% per annum, and now newspaper headlines are screaming WPI inflation is at 7.4% ~ more realistically, the decline in the value of India’s paper money has likely been in double-digits for years.
Paper money is a peculiar thing as it has no intrinsic value ~ even a hair pin or shirt-button has more usefulness as such. Paper money derives whatever value it has only because each of us in the economy believes everyone else will accept it in transactions in payment of wages or to purchase food and other items with.
Gold standard
The currency note in your pocket may carry the signature of the RBI Governor and his “promise to pay the bearer” the face-value ~ as if he is going to pay you its equivalent in gold held by the Government. But this is open humbug, a childish fiction. In 1931 the British pound, and the Indian rupee which linked to it at the time, went off the “gold standard” and there has been no backing of the Indian currency with gold ever since then.
In a pure gold standard, gold is money ~ interchangeable in the sense the central bank guarantees it will exchange gold for the paper it issues at an announced price. If that price changes up or down, there is devaluation or revaluation of the currency with respect to gold (depending on how you count it).
A gold exchange standard is similar except gold is not used as money and central banks of nations guarantee the announced prices of their paper moneys with respect to gold in transactions with one another. In the dollar exchange standard (or Bretton Woods system from 1944 to 1971), the US Government alone and uniquely undertook to guarantee the price of the dollar at $35 a troy oz of gold in transactions with all other central banks. That was the underpinning of the international financial system until Richard Nixon “closed the gold window” on 15 August 1971 because the US had largely financed the Vietnam War through money-creation, and other countries’ central banks (like France) had accumulated large dollar-balances.
The “gold standard”, “gold exchange standard”, and “dollar exchange standard” are all examples of “fixed” exchange rate systems which came to end in 1971-1972. The price of gold at $35 an oz was obviously unrealistically low, and it shot up at once, and has even reached $1000 an oz recently. Since 1972, the Western world has been on “floating exchange rates” where currencies find their own values and gold is merely one asset among many. Fixed exchange rate systems can lead to speculation, runs against currencies and the irresponsible international export of inflation which floating exchange rate systems tend to avoid because there will tend to be market-determined movement in the exchange-rate instead.
Elite capital flight
India today has neither a proper fixed nor a proper floating exchange-rate system but instead continues a system of highly discriminatory exchange controls. Twenty or thirty million people in our major cities know how to use the present system well enough to exchange their Indian rupees for as much as US $200,000 per annum to send their children and relatives settled abroad as foreign nationals. Plus Indian corporations have been allowed to convert rupees to buy sinking foreign companies. Foreign-currency reserves have vastly climbed too as domestic Indian companies have been allowed to incur foreign-currency denominated debt. Hence the thirty million special people are rather cleverly able to borrow foreign currency with one hand and then transmit it abroad with the other.
The net result is a clear policy of government-induced elite capital flight, unprecedented in its irresponsibility anywhere in world economic history ~ signed, sealed and delivered by the Montek-Manmohan-Chidambaram trio now just as Yashwant-Jaswant-KC Pant and friends had done a little earlier. The Communists would only be worse, as their JNU economists renounce all standard textbook microeconomics and macroeconomics in favour of street-shouting instead.
Outside the thirty million Indians with NRI connections, the average Indian today is disallowed from holding foreign exchange accounts at his/ her local bank or holding or trading in gold or other precious metals freely as he/she may please ~ the physical arrest of Mohun Bagan’s hapless Brazilian footballer by our inimitable Customs officers the other day reveals the ugliness of the situation most poignantly.
Every TV economist in Delhi, Bombay and Kolkata now seems to have a solution about India’s inflation and all sorts of fallacious reasoning is in the air. Some recommend the rupee appreciating or depreciating ~ as if anyone in the country has the faintest idea how elastic imports, exports and capital flows may be in fact to changes in the (controlled) exchange-rate. The Finance Minister and PM keep saying inflation is being “imported” because international commodity prices are high ~ someone should explain to them inflation is “imported” when fixed exchange rates allow transmission through the price-specie flow mechanism, and that is far from being India’s main problem. The extra-constitutional “Planning Commission” has, we may be thankful, remained silent about inflation, and seems to have abandoned earlier misconceptions about using forex reserves for “infrastructure”. The UPA Chair, we may be thankful, also has been silent and admits innocence of all economics, implicitly trusting her PM’s wisdom in all such matters instead.
What no one wants to talk about is the hippopotamus that is present in the room, namely, the chronically diseased state of accounts and public finances of the issuer of India’s paper-rupees, the Union Government, as well as the diseased accounts and finances of more than two dozen State Governments that are subservient to it. The macroeconomic and fiscal policy process that the Congress, BJP, Communists and everyone else in the political class in New Delhi and the State capitals have been presiding over for decades is one that turns normal economics upside down.
What happens in the West is that an estimate of technological progress and population growth is made by policy-makers, then an “acceptable” or “unavoidable” or “natural” rate of inflation is added (the figure of monetary change needed for efficiency in the real economy so relative prices adjust to equilibrium in response to demand and supply changes), then a monetary growth target is set, to which the fiscal authority ~ i.e. the legislature handling the Government’s budget ~ must adjust taxation and spending plans accordingly.
What has been happening in India every year for decades is that each of some two dozen state legislatures runs up a large deficit, which are all added up and passed on to the “Centre”; the “Centre” and its “Yojana Bhavan”, at the behest of every conceivable organised interest-group with access in Delhi especially government unions and the military, runs up its own vastly larger fiscal deficit, and then this grand total of fiscal-deficits is offered to the Reserve Bank at the end of a loaded pistol ~ to pay for one way or another via new public debt creation and money printing. Subtract the WPI rate from the Money Supply Growth rate and government spokesmen and their businessmen friends then exclaim that the economy must try to reach the difference as its “warranted” growth rate! It is all economics upside down from people who have either learnt nothing significant in the subject or forgotten whatever little they once did.
Fragile financial state
The net result has been a banking system (mostly nationalized) in which the asset side of banks’ balance-sheets is made up almost entirely of rather dubious government debt, interest payments on which are received every year from fresh money-printing. The liability side of those balance-sheets consists of course of customer-deposits. In this fragile monetary and financial state, a government-induced capital flight has been allowed to continue under pretence of liberalization ~ with Indian companies being allowed to borrow from foreign markets many times their domestic rupee-denominated net worth by which to acquire ailing foreign companies and brands. Furthermore, there has been a massive fiscal effect as vast new Government spending programs ~ like buying foreign aircraft carriers, fighter-jets or passenger aircraft or writing off farm loans ~ come to be announced and absorbed into expectations of future inflation. A monetary meltdown is what the present author cautioned against in 1990-1995 and again, publicly, in 2000-2005. Economics, candidly treated, tells us not only that there is no such thing as a free lunch but also that chickens come home to roost.
Articles of related interest include “Against Quackery”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability”, “Indian Money and Credit”, “Indian Money and Banking”, “The Dream Team: A Critique” etc. See https://independentindian.com/2013/11/23/coverage-of-my-delhi-talk-on-3-dec-2012/
Growth & Government Delusion (2008)
February 22, 2008 — drsubrotoroyGrowth & Government Delusion:
Progress Comes From Learning, Enterprise, Exchange, Not The Parasitic State
By Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article,
February 22, 2008
P Chidambaram, Montek Ahluwalia and Manmohan Singh, like their BJP predecessors, delude themselves and the country as a whole when they claim responsibility for phenomenal economic growth taking place. “My goal is to continue to maintain growth but at the same time the government reserves the right to make rapid adjustments depending upon the evolving international situation” is a typical piece of nonsensical waffle.
Honest Finance Ministers in any country cannot take personal responsibility for rates of economic growth nor is any government in the world nimble, well-informed and intelligent enough to respond to exogenous shocks in a timely manner. The UPA and NDA blaming one another for low growth or taking credit for high growth merely reveal the crude mis-education of their pretentious TV economists. There are far too many measurement and data problems as well as lead-and-lag problems for any credibility to attach to what is said.
Per capita real GDP
Indian businessmen and their politician/ bureaucratic friends seem to think “growth” refers to nominal earnings before tax for the corporate sector, or some such number that can be sold to visiting foreigners to induce them to park their money in India: “You will get a 10 per cent return if you invest in India” to which the visitor says “Oh that must mean India has 10 per cent growth going on”. Of such nonsense are expensive Davos and Delhi conferences made.
What is supposed to be measured when we speak of economic growth? It is annual growth of per capita inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (National Income or Net National Product would be better if available). West Germany and Japan had the highest annual per capita real GDP growth-rates in the world starting from devastated post-War initial conditions. What were their rates? West Germany: 6.6 per cent in 1950-1960, falling to 3.5 per cent by 1960-1970, and 2.4 per cent by 1970-1978. Japan: 6.8 per cent in 1952-1960; 9.4 per cent in 1960-1970, 3.8 per cent in 1970-1978. Thus, only Japan in the 1960s measured more than 9 per cent annual growth of real per capita GDP.
Now India and China are said to be achieving 9 per cent plus routinely. Perhaps we are observing an incredible phenomenon of world economic history. Or perhaps we are just being fed something incredible, some humbug. India’s population is growing at 2 per cent so even if the Government’s number of 9 per cent is taken at face-value, we have to subtract 2 per cent population growth to get per capita figures. Typical official fallacies include thinking clever bureaucratic use of astronomically high savings rates causes growth. For example, Meghnad Desai of Britain’s Labour Party says: “China now has 10.4 per cent growth on a 44 per cent savings rate… ” Indian savings have been alleged near 32 per cent. What has been mismeasured as high savings is actually paper expansion of bank-deposits in a fractional reserve banking system induced by runaway government deficit-spending in both countries.
Real economic growth arises from spontaneous technological progress, improved productivity and learning-by-doing of the general population. World economic history suggests growth occurs in spite of, rather than due to, behaviour of an often parasitic State. Technological progress in a myriad of ways and discovery of new resources are important factors contributing to India’s growth today. But while the “real” economy does well, the “nominal” paper-money economy controlled by Government does not.
Continuous deficit financing for half a century has led to exponential growth of public debt and broad money. The vast growth of bank-deposits has been misinterpreted as indicating unusual savings behaviour when it in fact signals vast government debt being held by nationalised banks. What Messrs Chidambaram, Ahluwalia,Manmohan Singh, the BJP et al have been presiding over is annual paper-money supply growth of 22 per cent! That is what they should be taking honest responsibility for because it certainly implies double-digit inflation (i.e. decline in the value of paper-money) perhaps as high as 14 or 15 per cent. If you believe Government numbers that inflationis near 5 per cent you may believe anything.
The mainsprings of real growth in the wealth of the individual, and so of the nation, are greater practical learning, increases in capital resources and improvements in technology. Deeper skills and improved dexterity cause output produced with fewer inputs than before, i.e. greater productivity. Adam Smith said there is “invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many”.
Consider a real life example. A fresh engineering graduate knows dynamometers are needed in testing and performance-certification of diesel engines. He strips open a meter, finds out how it works, asks engine manufacturers what design improvements they want to see, whether they will buy from him if he can make the improvement. He finds out prices and properties of machine tools needed and wages paid currently to skilled labour, calculates expected revenues and costs, and finally tries to persuade a bank of his production plans, promising to repay loans from his returns.
Overcoming restrictions of religion or caste, the secular agent is spurred by expectation of future gains to approach various others with offers of contract, and so organize their efforts into one. If all his offers ~ to creditors, labour, suppliers ~ are accepted he is, for the moment, in business. He may not be for long ~ but if he succeeds his actions will have caused an improvement in design of dynamometers and a reduction in the cost of diesel engines, as well as an increase in the economy’s produced means of production (its capital stock) and in the value of contracts made. His creditors are more confident of his ability to repay, his buyers of his product quality, he himself knows more of his workers’ skills, etc. If these people enter a second and then a third and fourth set of contracts, the increase in mutual trust in coming to agreement will quickly decline in relation to the increased output of capital goods. The first source of increasing returns to scale in production, and hence the mainspring of real economic growth, arises from the successful completion of exchange.
Risk and enterprise
Transforming inputs into outputs necessarily takes time, and it is for that time the innovator or entrepreneur or “capitalist” or “adventurer” must persuade his creditors to trust him, whether bankers who have lent him capital or workers who have lent him labour. The essence of the enterprise (or “firm”) he tries to get underway consists of no more than the set of contracts he has entered into with the various others, his position being unique because he is the only one to know who all the others happen to be at the same time. In terms introduced by Professor Frank Hahn, the entrepreneur transforms himself from being “anonymous” to being “named” in the eyes of others, while also finding out qualities attaching to the names of those encountered in commerce.
Profits earned are partly a measure of the entrepreneur’s success in this simultaneous process of discovery and advertisement. Another potential entrepreneur, fresh from engineering college, may soon pursue the pioneer’s success and start displacing his product in the market ~ eventually chasers become pioneers and then get chased themselves, and a process of dynamic competition would be underway. As it unfolds, anonymous and obscure graduates from engineering colleges become by dint of their efforts and a little luck, named and reputable firms and perhaps founders of industrial families. Multiply this simple story many times, with a few million different entrepreneurs and hundreds of thousands of different goods and services, and we shall be witnessing India’s actual Industrial Revolution, not the fake promise of it from self-seeking politicians and bureaucrats.
see also 12 June 2009
A Note on the Indian Policy Process
February 21, 2008 — drsubrotoroyA Note on the Indian Policy Process
Subroto Roy
During the University of Hawaii perestroika-for-India project two decades ago, I had wished to attract Sukhamoy Chakravarty from Delhi. He very kindly met me on July 14 1987 and presented me his last personal signed copy of the famous RBI report his committee had chaired. He said he could not come to Hawaii because of ill health but he strongly recommended I take C. Rangarajan instead because, he said, Dr Rangarajan was the main author of the report. I met Dr Rangarajan in Kolkata at Jadavpur University where he was giving a speech in his role as President of the Indian Economic Society that year. Later in correspondence, he wrote to say he was over-committed but that if I took Amaresh Bagchi instead, he would help co-author Bagchi’s contribution to our project. So I commissioned Amaresh Bagchi, then Director of New Delhi’s National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
In my next project-related visit to Delhi in December 1988, I met Amaresh Bagchi personally for the first time; he was about to retire or had already done so. He told me he knew my name from the fact the High Commission of India in London had sent the Finance Ministry in Delhi the May 29 1984 lead editorial of The Times of London on my work which had been very critical of Indian economic policy; Bagchi had been at the time in the Finance Ministry, and, as an old sarkari statist, had naturally taken exception to what I had said by way of liberal criticism. He wished to co-write his contribution for our Hawaii project with a young colleague of his; I declined permission for him to do that and told him our understanding was that Dr Rangarajan would be writing with him.
In any case, in May 1989, Amaresh was the first person to reach Honolulu in the team we had put together for the project, arriving early by several days. He was all alone and seemed miserable, so I took him to the supermarket and later invited him to dine with my small family at our home at Punahou Towers, 1621 Dole Street. It pleased him to eat some home-cooked Indian food, and he warmed slightly. He told me he had joined the Government as a bureaucrat in the income tax department and later acquired a doctoral degree in economics, though I did not get a sense that he was familiar with traditional public finance of the sort in Richard Musgrave’s classic textbook. I gifted him a copy of James Buchanan’s lectures that I had put together when Professor Buchanan had visited the University of Hawaii at my invitation in 1988 and which the University had then published with a preface by myself. He remarked he found it terrible that American supermarkets had all this canned pet food when the world was so hungry. Later I invited him to a larger dinner party again at my home before the conference began.
At the conference itself, I placed him next to Milton Friedman, which some said was a master-stroke. There was a long and somewhat heated interchange between him and TN Srinivasan, though not with Milton, as Milton was, as always, invariably polite, patient and clear-headed in argument for the two days that he stayed.
The chapter Amaresh Bagchi wrote for us in the book Foundations of India’s Political Economy, edited by myself and WE James, was useful as practically the only statement until that time on the fiscal-induced monetary weakness of India (that still continues today, indeed may have gotten worse since). It contributed to placing him in the policy-limelight in his post-retirement years. Dr Rangarajan was not a co-author after all but apparently contributed the most important paragraphs on the subject. (We have been trying for almost a year now to get the University of Hawaii to allow free republication of the book on the Internet; the original publisher, now dead, reneged on a promise to produce a paperback edition after there was leftist academic pressure on him in Delhi.)
I gave a copy of our book to Manmohan Singh when I met him and his senior aides in September 1993 in Washington at the Indian Ambassador’s Residence; I was introduced to Dr Singh by the then Ambassador of India SS Ray as the person on whose laptop computer the 1991 economic reform had been designed for Rajiv Gandhi during Rajiv’s last months, a statement accurate enough as has been told elsewhere. (Dr Singh had 20 years earlier kindly visited our then-home in Paris at 14 Rue Eugene Manuel at the invitation of my father who knew him, to advise me about economics just before I headed to the London School of Economics as an 18 year old freshman; but in 1993 both he and I had forgotten that earlier 1973 meeting.)
Today’s newspapers report Amaresh Bagchi’s passing and say that “When (Manmohan) Singh was finance minister in the early 1990s, Bagchi was one of his key advisers on fiscal policy”. Dr Singh has described Bagchi as “one of our most distinguished fiscal policy experts” and said “It is no exaggeration to state that Amaresh has been associated with almost every major fiscal policy reform in the past 30 years”.
I am afraid I disagree with the Prime Minister of India in that I do not see any “major fiscal policy reform” having taken place at all in India, just a lot of unsystematic tinkering here and there. The root cause has been the failure to face or want to comprehend the extremely dismal state of government and public sector accounts throughout the country. Without proper government accounting, there can be neither accountability nor any serious fiscal policy, and hence no serious monetary or macroeconomic policy either.
Our Dismal Politics: Will Independent India Survive Until 2047? (from 2008)
February 1, 2008 — drsubrotoroyOur Dismal Politics
Will Independent India Survive Until 2047?
By SUBROTO ROY
First published in The Statesman Editorial Page, Special Article, Feb 1 2008
Mayawati and Narendra Modi are both in their 50s. So are the current leaders of Russia, Germany, Britain, France, the USA. No country, not even Communist Party China, is as pretentiously corrupt as ours in allowing a whole generation to be bred of “babalog” politicians among children of dead politicians or existing elderly politicians in their 70s and 80s. These babalog, Rahul Gandhi pre-eminent among them, are usually in their late 30s or early 40s. Having developed no useful marketable skills in life nor done anything worthwhile or creative, they have tended to arbitrage the political positions of their parents (whether departed or living) into gaining access and advantage in Delhi or the State capitals. Some nepotism is being seen in the USA with the Bush and Clinton families but nobody had heard of a Putin, Merkel or Sarkozy before they won their way into political power.
Inheriting advantage
The Indian phenomenon of the inheritance of advantage is also seen in organised business, in Bollywood and in journalism, which, like our politics, tend to be sold via TV. Academic institutions and the civil and military services are not far behind although there the phenomenon more usually involves exporting adult children (and bank accounts) especially to the USA or UK or Australia, and then making annual trips abroad during the hot summer months to be able to tell the neighbours about later.
The idea that the future of Indian politics is in the hands of a babalog GenNext is sheer nonsense and fantasy. The victories of Mayawati and Modi were also defeats of the expectations raised by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress. There is a continuity of years between someone like Sonia Gandhi and her children which implies there can be no discontinuous jump from Sonia to Rahul in the leadership of the Congress. In between, as it were, are people like Kamal Nath among “Friends of Sanjay” or Mani Shankar Aiyar (a solitary Rajivist), both of whom have won seats in the Lok Sabha unlike Sonia’s current elderly PM. If Sonia Gandhi devolves political power to her son who then leads the Congress into another defeat, of which UP and Gujarat have been examples, there will be a revolt among senior middle-aged politicians in the Congress, and the Congress may splinter into a Right Faction and Left Faction leaving Rajiv Gandhi’s family to look after the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation which is what they should have been doing in the first place rather than playing at Indian politics.
A Congress disintegration may or may not finally cause a useful bipolarisation in Indian politics because Indian politics has not only an economic dimension, it has a social or communal dimension too. Besides being (ostensibly) pro-poor or anti-poor, you can be either “Islamophilic” or “Islamophobic” ~ i.e. either pro-Muslim “secularist” /”pseudo-secularist”/minorityist, or anti-Muslim “communalist”/ “fascist”/majority communitarian.
Narasimha Rao cleverly manipulated the median parliamentary vote along these two dimensions so as to maintain a weak Government in power for five years by seeming to ally with the BJP on economic issues and seeming to ally with Leftists on social issues. If the Congress splits after another major defeat caused by Sonia-Rahul incompetence, with the Right Faction joining hands with whatever the BJP morphs into, and the Left Faction joining hands with whatever the CPI-M and CPI morph into, the central question will become which side of the split along the economic dimension holds the median voter along the pro-Muslim/anti-Muslim social dimension.
The BJP remains as dreadful and unscientific a gathering as it has been always without displaying the slightest creative trace of being able to evolve into a serious Conservative Party that India remains in desperate need of. AB Vajpayee and LK Advani led it into electoral defeat but that was not enough for their patriarchy to be disturbed by competent new younger people. In any case, the BJPs more articulate better-educated members in their 50s and 60s are unable to command nation-wide respect nor, with the exception of Modi, are they able to win an election on their own steam. The idea that e.g. Pramode Mahajan’s son could “succeed” him on the 10 JanPath pattern fortunately self-exploded. The best the BJP could do was to choose an inarticulate member as its nominal head while the patriarchy continued unchanged in its backward communalised thinking. Its RSS parent occasionally shows a little savant-like intelligence but generally remains in mental and physical regression.
As for the so-called Left, its multi-dimensional hypocrisy and incompetence has been permanently exposed in the heartland of what passes for Indian communism, Bengal. After the demise of the USSR and transition of Communist China towards Capitalism/ Fascism, there has been no real reason why the CPI and CPI-M cannot merge into one and then renounce together their retrograde ideology in favour of becoming a genuine Social Democratic and Labour Party representing working people and the poor. But that, like any corporate merger, would mean administrative redundancies, retrenchment and new management, and the last thing Stalinist politburo members like is the idea of losing their Rajya Sabha sinecures (in Russia and China they lost their heads but Indian conditions are kinder, gentler, more non-violent).
Besides the Congress, BJP and “Left”, most other parties in India revolve around the whims, personality and IQ of some single local political warlord/warlady. The Naxals and other extremists, including Hindu and Muslim religious terrorists, at least make some pretence at representing political interests of some sections of the people; there is thus at least a slight authenticity about them, no matter how disengaged their thought processes may be from realities around them.
Endless deficit finance
The 2008 Budget or the 2009 General Election seem likely to remain in the grip of all such dramatis personae permanently on the Indian stage, and no new real creative constructive force seems likely to appear. Every political misdemeanour will be paid for by endless deficit finance and money-printing, the accounts and auditing of all public institutions shall remain in a shambles while private pockets of the heads of public institutions come to be lined with gold, the armed forces shall be ready to fight their Pakistani counterparts while deferring to any more formidable adversary, rich business people will continue with their grotesque conspicuous consumption, young people graduating from India’s pampered institutions of tertiary education will continue to line up outside foreign embassies to seek hope and escape.
Can India survive as an independent democratic republic for 100 years after 1947, let alone be a country where all citizens are reasonably free and comfortable? A worst-case scenario may see North India in endless conflict with a chaotic Pakistan, Eastern India hived off under Beijing’s influence, and peninsular India from Surat to Vizag being Western-dominated with “SEZs” on the pattern of pre-communist Coastal China. The failure of our elite classes to provide healthy creative governance over generations must inevitably result in the putrefaction of our body politic.
(Author’s Note: The graph that accompanied this article is published elsewhere here under the title “Median Voter Model of India’s Electorate”.)
Hutton and Desai: United in Error
December 14, 2007 — drsubrotoroyHutton and Desai: United in Error
Subroto Roy
In an engaging debate in Prospect Magazine about a year ago, republished at China Digital Times, Will Hutton and Meghnad Desai have made the same cardinal error: they have assumed (like almost everyone else who has considered China’s or India’s recent macroeconomics) that savings rates are some astronomical figure.
Typical official fallacies in both countries include thinking that clever bureaucratic use of such high savings rates can and does cause high growth. In fact, real growth arises not because of what politicians and bureaucrats do but because of spontaneous technological progress, improved productivity and learning-by-doing of the general population ~ mostly despite not because of an exploitative parasitic State.
Here is Hutton on this issue: “China’s economic growth is based on the state channelling vast under-priced savings into huge investment … How much longer can China’s state-owned banks carry on directing billions of dollars of savings into investments that produce tiny or even negative returns…” (italics added)
Here is Desai: “China has achieved rapid growth with a policy of under-consumption and over-saving… China… now has 10.4 per cent growth on a 44 per cent savings rate….” (italics added)
What has been mismeasured as high savings in China and India is actually the expansion of bank-deposits in a fractional reserve banking system induced by runaway government deficit-spending.
On the basis of Indian evidence, I said this in public for the first time at Patrick Minford’s seminar on monetary economics at Cardiff and a week later at the IEA London in the spring of 2005 in a lecture titled “Can India become a superpower or will there be a monetary meltdown?” My recent general articles in The Statesman “The Dream Team: A Critique”, “Fallacious Finance”, “Against Quackery” etc speak a little more of this in the Indian case. What little I have seen of Chinese evidence indicates a similar phenomenon at work.
I said in 2005:”New technological progress in a myriad of ways, as well as the discovery of new resources… are all important factors contributing to real economic growth in India today. While the real side of the economy does well, the “nominal” economy, within the Government’s control, displays disconcerting trends. Continual deficit financing for half a century has led to exponential growth of public debt and broad money. The vast growth of time-deposits in banks may have been misinterpreted as indicating a real phenomenon such as unusual savings behaviour when it is more likely to be a nominal phenomenon resulting from increasing amounts of government debt being held by the largely nationalised banking sector. (The same may be true of China).”
As for growth-rates, before anyone at all waffles on about China’s and India’s allegedly high growth-rates, it is best to bring to mind a little hard evidence from other countries eg Germany and Japan where growth was starting from devastated post-War initial conditions:
West Germany: 6.6% in 1950-1960, falling to 3.5% by 1960-1970, and 2.4% by 1970-1978. Japan: 6.8% in 1952-1960; 9.4% in 1960-1970, 3.8% in 1970-1978.
China and India sustaining 8%, 9%, 10% annual growth of per capita real GDP for years on end? Naaaaah. Or rather, if you believe that, you will believe anything.
see also https://independentindian.com/2009/06/12/mistaken-macroeconomics-an-open-letter-to-prime-minister-dr-manmohan-singh/
Mistaken Macroeconomics: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh 12 June 2009
Against Quackery (2007)
September 24, 2007 — drsubrotoroyAgainst Quackery
First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, September 23 2007, The Statesman September 24 2007
by
Subroto Roy
Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms; the Communists have been appeased or bought; the BJP is incompetent
WASTE, fraud and abuse are inevitable in the use and allocation of public property and resources in India as elsewhere, but Government is supposed to fight and resist such tendencies. The Sonia-Manmohan Government have done the opposite, aiding and abetting a wasteful anti-economics ~ i.e., an economic quackery. Vajpayee-Advani and other Governments, including Narasimha-Manmohan in 1991-1996, were just as complicit in the perverse policy-making. So have been State Governments of all regional parties like the CPI-M in West Bengal, DMK/ AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, Congress/NCP/ BJP/Sena in Maharashtra, TDP /Congress in Andhra Pradesh, SP/BJP/BSP in Uttar Pradesh etc. Our dismal politics merely has the pot calling the kettle black while national self-delusion and superstition reign in the absence of reason.
The general pattern is one of well-informed, moneyed, mostly city-based special interest groups (especially including organised capital and organised labour) dominating government agendas at the cost of ill-informed, diffused anonymous individual citizens ~ peasants, small businessmen, non-unionized workers, old people, housewives, medical students etc. The extremely expensive “nuclear deal” with the USA is merely one example of such interest group politics.
Nuclear power is and shall always remain of tiny significance as a source of India’s electricity (compared to e.g. coal and hydro); hence the deal has practically nothing to do with the purported (and mendacious) aim of improving the country’s “energy security” in the long run. It has mostly to do with big business lobbies and senior bureaucrats and politicians making a grab, as they always have done, for India’s public purse, especially access to foreign currency assets. Some $300 million of India’s public money had to be paid to GE and Bechtel Corporation before any nuclear talks could begin in 2004-2005 ~ the reason was the Dabhol fiasco of the 1990s, a sheer waste for India’s ordinary people. Who was responsible for that loss? Pawar-Mahajan-Munde-Thackeray certainly but also India’s Finance Minister at the time, Manmohan Singh, and his top Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Montek Ahluwalia ~ who should never have let the fiasco get off the ground but instead actively promoted and approved it.
Cost-benefit analysis prior to any public project is textbook operating procedure for economists, and any half-competent economist would have accounted for the scenario of possible currency-depreciation which made Dabhol instantly unviable. Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia failed that test badly and it cost India dearly. The purchase of foreign nuclear reactors on a turnkey basis upon their recommendation now reflects similar financial dangers for the country on a vastly larger scale over decades.
Our Government seems to function most expeditiously in purchasing foreign arms, aircraft etc ~ not in improving the courts, prisons, police, public utilities, public debt. When the purchase of 43 Airbus aircraft surfaced, accusations of impropriety were made by Boeing ~ until the local Airbus representative said on TV that Boeing need not complain because they were going to be rewarded too and soon 68 aircraft were ordered from Boeing!
India imports all passenger and most military aircraft, besides spare parts and high-octane jet fuel. Domestic aviation generates near zero forex revenues and incurs large forex costs ~ a debit in India’s balance of payments. Domestic airline passengers act as importers subsidised by our meagre exporters of textiles, leather, handicrafts, tea, etc. What a managerially-minded PM and Aviation Minister needed to do before yielding to temptations of buying new aircraft was to get tough with the pampered managements and unions of the nationalized airlines and stand up on behalf of ordinary citizens and taxpayers, who, after all, are mostly rail or road-travellers not jet-setters.
The same pattern of negligent policy-behaviour led Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in an unprecedented step to mention in his 2007 Union Budget Speech the private American companies Blackstone and GE ~ endorsing the Ahluwalia/Deepak Parekh idea that India’s forex reserves may be made available to be lent out to favoured private businesses for purported “infrastructure” development. We may now see chunks of India’s foreign exchange reserves being “borrowed” and never returned ~ a monumental scam in front of the CBI’s noses.
The Reserve Bank’s highest echelons may have become complicit in all this, permitting and encouraging a large capital flight to take place among the few million Indians who read the English newspapers and have family-members abroad. Resident Indians have been officially permitted to open bank accounts of US $100,000 abroad, as well as transfer gifts of $50,000 per annum to their adult children already exported abroad ~ converting their largely untaxed paper rupees at an artificially favourable exchange-rate.
In particular, Mr Ratan Tata (under a misapprehension he may do whatever Lakshmi Mittal does) has been allowed to convert Indian rupees into some US$13,000,000,000 to make a cash purchase of a European steel company. The same has been allowed of the Birlas, Wipro, Dr Reddy’s and numerous other Indian corporations in the organised sector ~ three hundred million dollars here, five hundred million dollars there, etc. Western businessmen now know all they have to do is flatter the egos of Indian boxwallahs enough and they might have found a buyer for their otherwise bankrupt or sick local enterprise. Many newcomers to New York City have been sold the Brooklyn Bridge before. “There’s a sucker born every minute” is the classic saying of American capitalism.
The Sonia-Manmohan Government, instead of hobnobbing with business chambers, needed to get Indian corporations to improve their accounting, audit and governance, and reduce managerial pilfering and embezzlement, which is possible only if Government first set an example.
Why have Indian foreign currency reserves zoomed up in recent years? Not mainly because we are exporting more textiles, tea, software engineers, call centre services or new products to the world, but because Indian corporations have been allowed to borrow abroad, converting their hoards of paper rupees into foreign debt. Forex reserves are a residual in a country’s international balance of payments and are not like tax-resources available to be spent by Government; India’s reserves largely constitute foreign liabilities of Indian residents. This may bear endless repetition as the PM and his key acolytes seem impervious to normal postgraduate-level economics textbooks.
Other official fallacies include thinking India’s savings rate is near 32 per cent and that clever bureaucratic use of it can cause high growth. In fact, real growth arises not because of what politicians and bureaucrats do but because of spontaneous technological progress, improved productivity and learning-by-doing of the general population ~ mostly despite not because of an exploitative parasitic State. What has been mismeasured as high savings is actually expansion of bank-deposits in a fractional reserve banking system caused by runaway government deficit-spending.
Another fallacy has been that agriculture retards growth, leading to nationwide politically-backed attempts at land-grabbing by wily city industrialists and real estate developers. In a hyperinflation-prone economy with wild deficit-spending and runaway money-printing, cheating poor unorganised peasants of their land, when that land is an asset that is due to appreciate in value, has seemed like child’s play.
What of the Opposition? The BJP/RSS have no economists who are not quacks though opportunists were happy to say what pleased them to hear when they were in power; they also have much implicit support among organised business lobbies and the anti-Muslim senior bureaucracy. The official Communists have been appeased or bought, sometimes so cheaply as with a few airline tickets here and there. The nonsensical “Rural Employment Guarantee” is descending into the wasteland of corruption it was always going to be. The “Domestic Violence Act” as expected has started to destroy India’s families the way Western families have been destroyed. The Arjun-DMK OBC quota corrodes higher education further from its already dismal state. All these were schemes that Congress and Communist cabals created or wholeheartedly backed, and which the BJP were too scared or ignorant to resist.
And then came Singur and Nandigram ~ where the sheer greed driving the alliance between the Sonia-Manmohan-Pranab Congress and the CPI-M mask that is Buddhadeb, came to be exposed by a handful of brave women like Mamata and Medha.
A Fiscal U-Turn is Needed For India to Go in The Right Economic Direction
Rajiv Gandhi had a sense of noblesse oblige out of remembrance of his father and maternal grandfather. After his assassination, the comprador business press credited Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh with having originated the 1991 economic reform. In May 2002, however, the Congress Party itself passed a resolution proposed by Digvijay Singh explicitly stating Rajiv and not either of them was to be so credited. The resolution was intended to flatter Sonia Gandhi but there was truth in it too. Rajiv, a pilot who knew no political economy, was a quick learner with intelligence to know a good idea when he saw one and enough grace to acknowledge it.
Rule of Law
The first time Dr Manmohan Singh’s name arose in contemporary post-Indira politics was on 22 March 1991 when M K Rasgotra challenged the present author to answer how Dr Singh would respond to proposals being drafted for a planned economic liberalisation that had been authorised by Rajiv, as Congress President and Opposition Leader, since September 1990. It was replied that Dr Singh’s response was unknown and he had been heading the “South-South Commission” for Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, while what needed to be done urgently was make a clear forceful statement to restore India’s credit-worthiness and the confidence of international markets, showing that the Congress at least knew its economics and was planning to take bold new steps in the direction of progress.
There is no evidence Dr Singh or his acolytes were committed to any economic liberalism prior to 1991 as that term is understood worldwide, and scant evidence they have originated liberal economic ideas for India afterwards. Precisely because they represented the decrepit old intellectual order of statist ”Ma-Bap Sarkari” policy-making, they were not asked in the mid-1980s to be part of a “perestroika-for-India” project done at a foreign university ~ the results of which were received, thanks to Siddhartha Shankar Ray, by Rajiv Gandhi in hand at 10 Janpath on 18 September 1990 and specifically sparked the change in the direction of his economic thinking.
India is a large, populous country with hundreds of millions of materially poor citizens, a weak tax-base, a vast internal and external public debt (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), massive annual fiscal deficits, an inconvertible currency, and runaway printing of paper-money. It is unsurprising Pakistan’s economy is similar, since it is born of the same land and people. Certainly there have been real political problems between India and Pakistan since the chaotic demobilisation and disintegration of the old British Indian Army caused the subcontinent to plunge into war-like or “cold peace” conditions for six decades beginning with a bloody Partition and civil war in J&K. High military expenditures have been necessitated due to mutual and foreign tensions, but this cannot be a permanent state if India and Pakistan wish for genuine mass economic well-being.
Even with the continuing mutual antagonism, there is vast scope for a critical review of Indian military expenditures towards greatly improving the “teeth-to-tail” ratio of its fighting forces. The abuse of public property and privilege by senior echelons of the armed forces (some of whom have been keen most of all to export their children preferably to America) is also no great secret.
On the domestic front, Rajiv was entirely convinced when the suggestion was made to him in September 1990 that an enormous infusion of public resources was needed into the judicial system for promotion and improvement of the Rule of Law in the country, a pre-requisite almost for a new market orientation. Capitalism without the Rule of Law can quickly degenerate into an illiberal hell of cronyism and anarchy which is what has tended to happen since 1991.
The Madhava Menon Committee on criminal justice policy in July proposed a Hong Kong model of “a single high-tech integrated Criminal Justice complex in every district headquarters which may be a multi-storied structure, devoting the ground floor for the police station including a video-installed interrogation room; the first floor for the police-lockups/sub-jail and the Magistrate’s Court; the second floor for the prosecutor’s office, witness rooms, crime laboratories and legal aid services; the third floor for the Sessions Court and the fourth for the administrative offices etc…. (Government of India) should take steps to evolve such an efficient model… and not only recommend it to the States but subsidize its construction…” The question arises: Why is this being proposed for the first time in 2007 after sixty years of Independence? Why was it not something designed and implemented starting in the 1950s?
The resources put since Independence to the proper working of our judiciary from the Supreme Court and High Courts downwards have been abysmal, while the state of prisons, borstals, mental asylums and other institutions of involuntary detention is nothing short of pathetic. Only police forces, like the military, paramilitary and bureaucracies, have bloated in size.
Neither Sonia-Manmohan nor the BJP or Communists have thought promotion of the Rule of Law in India to be worth much serious thought ~ certainly less important than attending bogus international conclaves and summits to sign expensive deals for arms, aircraft, reactors etc. Yet Rajiv Gandhi, at a 10 Janpath meeting on 23 March 1991 when he received the liberalisation proposals he had authorized, explicitly avowed the importance of greater resources towards the Judiciary. Dr Singh and his acolytes were not in that loop, indeed they precisely represented the bureaucratic ancien regime intended to be changed, and hence have seemed quite uncomprehending of the roots of the intended reforms ever since 1991.
Similarly, Rajiv comprehended when it was said to him that the primary fiscal problem faced by India is the vast and uncontrolled public debt, interest payments on which suck dry all public budgets leaving no room for provision of public goods.
Government accounts
Government has been routinely “rolling over” its domestic debt in the asset-portfolios of the nationalised banks while displaying and highlighting only its new additional borrowing in a year as the “Fiscal Deficit”. More than two dozen States have been doing the same and their liabilities ultimately accrue to the Union too. The stock of public debt in India is Rs 30 trillion (Rs 30 lakh crore) at least, and portends a hyperinflation in the future.
There has been no serious recognition of this since it is political and bureaucratic actions that have been causing the problem. Proper recognition would entail systematically cleaning up the budgets and accounts of every single governmental entity in the country: the Union, every State, every district and municipality, every publicly funded entity or organisation, and at the same time improving public decision-making capacity so that once budgets and accounts recover from grave sickness over decades, functioning institutions exist for their proper future management. All this would also stop corruption in its tracks, and release resources for valuable public goods and services like the Judiciary, School Education and Basic Health. Institutions for improved political and administrative decision-making are needed throughout the country if public preferences with respect to raising and allocating common resources are to be elicited and then translated into actual delivery of public goods and services. Our dysfunctional legislatures will have to do at least a little of what they are supposed to. When public budgets and accounts are healthy and we have functioning public goods and services, macroeconomic conditions would have been created for the paper-rupee to once more become a money as good as gold ~ a convertible world currency for all of India’s people, not merely the metropolitan special interest groups that have been controlling our governments and their agendas.
An Open Letter to Professor Amartya Sen about Singur etc (2007)
July 31, 2007 — drsubrotoroy
A letter to Prof. Sen (2007)
First published in The Statesman 31 July 2007, Editorial Page Special Article
Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University
Dear Professor Sen,
Everyone will be delighted that someone of your worldwide stature has joined the debate on Singur and Nandigram; The Telegraph deserves congratulations for having made it possible on July 23.
I was sorry to find though that you may have missed the wood for the trees and also some of the trees themselves. Perhaps you have relied on Government statements for the facts. But the Government party in West Bengal represents official Indian communism and has been in power for 30 years at a stretch. It may be unwise to take at face-value what they say about their own deeds on this very grave issue! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there are many candid communists who privately recognise this dismal truth about themselves. To say this is not to be praising those whom you call the “Opposition” ~ after all, Bengal’s politics has seen emasculation of the Congress as an opposition because the Congress and communists are allies in Delhi. It is the Government party that must reform itself from within sua sponte for the good of everyone in the State.
The comparisons and mentions of history you have made seem to me surprising. Bengal’s economy now or in the past has little or nothing similar to the economy of Northern England or the whole of England or Britain itself, and certainly Indian agriculture has little to do with agriculture in the new lands of Australia or North America. British economic history was marked by rapid technological innovations in manufacturing and rapid development of social and political institutions in context of being a major naval, maritime and mercantile power for centuries. Britain’s geography and history hardly ever permitted it to be an agricultural country of any importance whereas Bengal, to the contrary, has been among the most agriculturally fertile and hence densely populated regions of the world for millennia.
Om Prakash’s brilliant pioneering book The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630-1720 (Princeton 1985) records all this clearly. He reports the French traveller François Bernier saying in the 1660s “Bengal abounds with every necessary of life”, and a century before him the Italian traveller Verthema saying Bengal “abounds more in grain, flesh of every kind, in great quantity of sugar, also of ginger, and of great abundance of cotton, than any country in the world”. Om Prakash says “The premier industry in the region was the textile industry comprising manufacture from cotton, silk and mixed yarns”. Bengal’s major exports were foodstuffs, textiles, raw silk, opium, sugar and saltpetre; imports notably included metals (as Montesquieu had said would always be the case).
Bengal did, as you say, have industries at the time the Europeans came but you have failed to mention these were mostly “agro-based” and, if anything, a clear indicator of our agricultural fecundity and comparative advantage. If “deindustrialization” occurred in 19th Century India, that had nothing to do with the “deindustrialization” in West Bengal from the 1960s onwards due to the influence of official communism.
You remind us Fa Hiaen left from Tamralipta which is modern day Tamluk, though he went not to China but to Ceylon. You suggest that because he did so Tamluk effectively “was greater Calcutta”. I cannot see how this can be said of the 5th Century AD when no notion of Calcutta existed. Besides, modern Tamluk at 22º18’N, 87º56’E is more than 50 miles inland from the ancient port due to land-making that has occurred at the mouth of the Hooghly. I am afraid the relevance of the mention of Fa Hiaen to today’s Singur and Nandigram has thus escaped me.
You say “In countries like Australia, the US or Canada where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing”. Last January, a national daily published a similar view: “For India to become a developed country, the area under agriculture has to shrink, urban and industrial land development has to take place, and about 100 million workers have to move out from agriculture into industry and services. This is the only way forward for bringing prosperity to the rural population”.
Rice is indeed grown in Arkansas or Texas as it is in Bengal but there is a world of difference between the technological and geographical situation here and that in the vast, sparsely populated New World areas with mechanized farming! Like shoe-making or a hundred other crafts, agriculture can be capital-intensive or labour-intensive ~ ours is relatively labour-intensive, theirs is relatively capital-intensive. Our economy is relatively labour-abundant and capital-scarce; their economies are relatively labour-scarce and capital-abundant (and also land-abundant). Indeed, if anything, the apt comparison is with China, and you doubtless know of the horror stories and civil war conditions erupting across China in recent years as the Communist Party and their businessman friends forcibly take over the land of peasants and agricultural workers, e.g. in Dongzhou.
All plans of long-distance social engineering to “move out” 40 per cent of India’s population (at 4 persons per “worker”) from the rural hinterlands must also face FA Hayek’s fundamental question in The Road to Serfdom: “Who plans whom, who directs whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others?”
Your late Harvard colleague, Robert Nozick, opened his brilliant 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia saying: “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)”. You have rightly deplored the violence seen at Singur and Nandigram. But you will agree it is a gross error to equate violence perpetrated by the Government which is supposed to be protecting all people regardless of political affiliation, and the self-defence of poor unorganised peasants seeking to protect their meagre lands and livelihoods from state-sponsored pogroms. Kitchen utensils, pitchforks or rural implements and flintlock guns can hardly match the organised firepower controlled by a modern Government.
Fortunately, India is not China and the press, media and civil institutions are not totally in the hands of the ruling party alone. In China, no amount of hue and cry among the peasants could save them from the power of organised big business and the Communist Party. In India, a handful of brave women have managed to single-handedly organise mass movements of protest which the press and media have then broadcast that has shocked the whole nation to its senses.
You rightly say the land pricing process has been faulty. Irrelevant historical prices have been averaged when the sum of discounted expected future values in an inflationary economy should have been used. Matters are even worse. “The fear of famine can itself cause famine. The people of Bengal are afraid of a famine. It was repeatedly charged that the famine (of 1943) was man-made.” That is what T. W. Schultz said in 1946 in the India Famine Emergency Committee led by Pearl Buck, concerned that the 1943 Bengal famine should not be repeated following dislocations after World War II. Of course since that time our agriculture has undergone a Green Revolution, at least in wheat if not in rice, and a White Revolution in milk and many other agricultural products. But catastrophic collapses in agricultural incentives may still occur as functioning farmland comes to be taken by government and industry from India’s peasantry using force, fraud or even means nominally sanctioned by law. If new famines come to be provoked because farmers’ incentives collapse, let future historians know where responsibility lay.
West Bengal’s real economic problems have to do with its dismal macroeconomic and fiscal position which is what Government economists should be addressing candidly. As for land, the Government’s first task remains improving grossly inadequate systems of land-description and definition, as well as the implementation and recording of property rights.
With my most respectful personal regards, I remain
Yours ever
Suby
India and Her Neighbours
May 15, 2007 — drsubrotoroyWe & Our Neighbours
Pakistanis And Bangladeshis Would Do Well To Learn From Sheikh Abdullah
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman May 15 2007, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net
Pakistan and Bangladesh, unlike ourselves in India, have yet to properly establish elementary constitutional institutions. “Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation”, said Benjamin Disraeli. The continual political chaos on the streets of Pakistan and Bangladesh ~ not just in recent weeks but in recent years and decades ~ indicate such institutions are still lacking or stillborn there. Tear gas, water cannon and hordes of armed policemen to charge at enraged stone-throwing crowds are not part of any solution but part of the political problem itself.
One main purpose of constitutional institutions has to do with peaceful transfer of power from one political party to its adversary. Mulayam Singh Yadav has just transferred political power to Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, an Indian State more populous than either Pakistan or Bangladesh. Not long ago Lalu Prasad Yadav did the same to Nitish Kumar in Bihar, and Atal Behari Vajpayee to an appointee of Sonia Gandhi for all India itself. Modern democratic institutions are precisely about such peaceful transfers of power after voters have acted periodically to try to “throw the rascals out”.
Honeymoon period
It would be foolish to suppose an incoming Government of UP, Bihar or all India itself will be very much better than the one it displaces. But certainly in its first few “honeymoon” months or weeks at least, it will not be any worse. The tail-end of any scheduled democratic government, whether in India, Britain, the USA or elsewhere, is quite a disgusting sight, as those in their last days of power grab whatever they can from office before departure without any pretence of shame or embarrassment. Serious decision-making in the public interest would have long ago ceased. Almost anything new would be better.
At the same time, among those coming into power there will be some earnest wish at least to make some small difference for the better ~ a wish that will surely disappear within weeks of entering office after which the old cynicism and corruption will take hold again, and it will be the same ugly business as usual. But certainly, voters can expect slightly fresh air for a brief time after they have thrown one party out of power and chosen to bring in another. That is as about as good as democracy gets in modern practice.
Of India’s dozen or more larger States, we have, in the sixth decade of our Constitution, quite a few in which bipartisan democratic processes have been taking shape. UP was not one of them, and it is to Mayawati’s credit that she has broken the pattern of hung assemblies and now heads a majority government. Bihar too had seemed in the monolithic grip of Lalu Yadav until Nitish Kumar broke it, though the latter’s honeymoon period is now long over and it is business quite as usual there. Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and even J&K each have a noticeable bipartisan nature developing with at least one “national” party present to be counted. Tamil Nadu has been bipartisan but in an unhealthy way based on the personality cults of antagonistic leaders rather than any political principles or class-interests ~ which is a pity as the old Madras once had seemed a source of some new rationality in Indian politics. West Bengal’s voters have been definitely bipartisan, the communist vote being no more than that of the Congress and Trinamul combined. But for decades the local Congress has been notoriously sold down the river to its communist adversary by the Congress “leadership” in Delhi, and that has allowed an entrenched and wholly corrupted communist cultural and political mindset to rule in Kolkata. The Basu-Bhattacharjee Government was palpably bewildered over the Singur and Nandigram events because of their self-induced delusion about the economic and political realities of the State.
Throughout India though, periodic elections have acquired enough legitimacy to be accepted as the means of peaceful change of government. And with bipartisan politics there is a tendency for the median voter to be wooed at election-time.
We have of course many other continuing problems in our political economy ~ most notorious of which is the rotten state of our public finances and the continuous massive deficit finance that has ruined our paper currency and banking system ever since Indira Gandhi’s rule, coinciding with the start of Manmohan Singh’s career as an economic bureaucrat and Pranab Mukherjee’s as a politician in the early 1970s. Our acceptance of the democratic way has to an extent depended on our notoriously irresponsible macroeconomic policies ~ since every State and Union Government entity has been allowed to face no effective binding financial budget-constraint, and all its perverse decision-making can flow eventually into the swamp that is our Public Debt which constitutes the asset-side of the domestic banking system. India’s cardinal problem then becomes one of how to improve our macroeconomics without losing our democracy ~ something the Sonia-Manmohan-Pranab Congress, the BJP/RSS and the Communists are all equally clueless about.
Across our borders, our Pakistani and Bangladeshi cousins were cut from the same constitutional cloth as ourselves, namely the 1935 Government of India Act and the Montague-Chelmsford reforms before that. But after Jinnah’s death they refused to admit this and instead embarked on trying to write and implement a Constitution for a new Caliphate. The initial demand was “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”. In Rashid Rida and Maulana Maududi’s words, Islam becomes “the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. The philosophical foundation of Western democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Lawmaking is their prerogative and legislation must correspond to the mood and temper of their opinion… Islam… altogether repudiates the philosophy of popular sovereignty and rears its polity on the foundations of the sovereignty of God and the viceregency (Khilafat) of man.” (Rosenthal, Islam & the Modern National State, Cambridge 1965). Pakistan’s constitutionalists thus have faced an impossible battle to overcome the ontological error of assuming that any mundane government can be in communication with God Almighty.
J&K’s Constitution
Now Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was as pious a Muslim as any but was far more modern in his 5 November 1951 speech to J&K’s Constituent Assembly: “You are the sovereign authority in this State of Jammu & Kashmir; what you decide has the irrevocable force of law”. Referring to the American and French Constitutions, he said the “basic democratic principle” was of the “sovereignty of the nation”. “We should be clear about the responsibilities that this power invests us with. In front of us lie decisions of the highest national importance which we shall be called upon to take. Upon the correctness of our decisions depends not only the happiness of our land and people now, but the fate as well of generations to come.”
Can a modern conclave of Pervez Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto and Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed decide or declare any better for Pakistan today? Or one of Khaleda, Hasina and whichever cabal of generals and bureaucrats happens to head Bangladesh at present?
If Pakistan and Bangladesh each chose to restart with the modern-minded constitutional example Sheikh Abdullah set more than a half century ago in J&K, they may find their political problems less severe in due course. It is a long road ahead.
Swindling India (2007)
April 2, 2007 — drsubrotoroySWINDLING INDIA
by
Subroto Roy
First published in slightly abbreviated form as “A scam in the making” in The Sunday Statesman April 1 2007, Front page comment
A gigantic financial scheme is in the making. Will it come to be seen in future years as having been in fact a scam – indeed India’s scam of the 21st Century for which India’s unknowing masses will be made to pay for many generations? The scheme is mind-boggling in size as well as its sheer audacity. Bofors, Quattrochi etc amount to peanuts in comparison.
No less a personage than the Finance Minister of India, P Chidambaram, has openly praised the potential of this financial scheme. And he has done so in no less an open and transparent place than his latest Budget Speech to Parliament last February.
It is a scheme openly advocated and currently being developed by our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s closest acolytes, Planning Commission head Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia and HDFC head Mr Deepak Parekh, in collaboration with Reserve Bank Governor Dr YV Reddy and the Finance Ministry’s top bureaucrats. The PM himself has come close to endorsing it explicitly. And this PM is not an elected member of the Lok Sabha but holds office and acts as the executive agent of the UPA Chairperson and Lok Sabha Member from Rae Bareilly, Sonia Gandhi.
I hasten to add nobody in the BJP has objected to this financial scheme — in fact had the BJP been in power today instead of Congress, they would have been likely even more agreeable to the scheme given their close proximity to business lobbies and organized capital. As for the Communists, none of their JNU economics professors is technically competent enough to comprehend or recognize what is going on.
The scheme involves private companies “borrowing” India’s foreign exchange reserves from the Reserve Bank of India, allegedly for purpose of “infrastructure” creation — in collaboration with the American bank Citigroup, the American financial business, Blackstone Group, and possibly the American giant, GE Capital too. Mr Chidambaram took the unprecedented step of naming Mr Deepak Parekh as well as Citigroup and Blackstone in the text of his Budget Speech.
To begin to comprehend the nature of this scheme, we need to recall an earlier case.
Foreign exchange reserves of countries typically include foreign currency holdings as well as gold stocks. One of the biggest Wall Street scams of the 1980s-1990s involved private companies borrowing not countries’ foreign currency reserves but their gold reserves.
In that scam, it was not the Reserve Bank of India that was cheated but the Central Banks of Poland, Malaysia, Portugal and Yugoslavia. The New York financial company involved was a subsidiary of the Drexel Burnham Lambert Group. The Drexel parent went bankrupt on February 13 1990 and its subsidiary followed on May 9 1990.
A report on June 4 1990 by Leah J. Nathans (now Leah Nathans Spiro) in New York’s highly respected Business Week magazine said: “Central banks, those pillars of monetary virtue, lost $219 million ($21.9 crore) to an obscure commodities subsidiary called Drexel Burnham Lambert Trading Corporation”. The sum was small by American standards but it was “a big, big number” for the countries involved at the time.
What had these national central banks done? They had been lured into becoming greedy. They had been sitting on stocks of gold as part of their national reserves which they felt “just collect dust”. So they yielded to the temptation offered by the Drexel subsidiary of leasing the gold to private parties.
In Ms. Nathans’ words, “By leasing gold, a central bank earns a modest interest rate, ranging from less than 0.5% to 2.5%. Typically, the central bank consigns the gold to a dealer – say, for 90 days. The dealer can then lend the gold to a customer, at a higher interest rate. It may be a speculator, who hopes to repay the borrowed gold when the price falls, or a gold mine that wants to repay the broker with gold produced later.”
But the Drexel parent and subsidiary went bankrupt through bad financial decisions. Drexel’s Michael Milken went to jail. The Central Banks of Poland, Malaysia, Portugal and Yugoslavia were left empty-handed – and had to sue as creditors in New York’s courts trying desperately to get back the gold they had been lured into parting with. It would be unwise to take bets on how much of their gold they ever got back.
All the present PM’s men — Messrs Chidambaram, Ahluwalia, Parekh, Reddy et al in collaboration with one or two American financial companies – now have a scheme that will use not the RBI’s gold but its foreign currency reserves.
Mr Ahluwalia and Mr Parekh have made the outlandish claim that “India needs US$320 billion” (US 32,000 crore) by way of “investment for physical infrastructure” during the so-called “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”. (How many so-called “Five Year Plans” is India going to have incidentally? We had our “First Plan” when Manmohan Singh was a student at Punjab University. Stalin, who invented the “Five Year Plan”, died during that time, and even his old USSR has ceased to exist, let alone its “Five Year Plans”.)
That vast amount of “investment for physical infrastructure” is what Mr Ahluwalia says he knows India needs for his purported “9% growth rate” to be achieved. Where are the macroeconomic models and time-series data sets from him or his friends to back such assertions? There are none. None of the PM’s men, no one in the Finance Ministry or RBI or Planning Commission, nor any of their JNU economics professor friends or anyone else in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata etc have any such models or data with which to back such assertions. Nor do the World Bank etc. It is all sheer humbug – all a lie. It is part of the mendacity and self-delusion that our capital city has been floating upon.
In any event, the RBI reportedly has “opposed the idea of deploying forex reserves for infrastructure development on the grounds that it will create monetary expansion”. But Mr Chidambaram’s Finance Ministry owns the RBI, and the Ministry has said “the RBI’s concerns had been taken care of, as the investments would be deployed only through a structured mechanism”. (Business Standard 23 March 2007, p. 3)
What is a “structured mechanism”? Mr Chidambaram, mentioning Citigroup and Blackstone Group specifically, said in his Budget Speech that Mr Deepak Parekh has “suggested the establishment of two wholly-owned overseas subsidiaries of India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd with the following objectives: (i) to borrow funds from the RBI and lend to Indian companies implementing infrastructure projects in India, or to co-finance their External Commercial Borrowings for such projects, solely for capital expenditure outside India; and (ii) to borrow funds from the RBI, invest such funds in highly rated collateral securities, and provide ‘credit wrap’ insurance to infrastructure projects in India for raising resources in international markets. The loans by RBI to these two subsidiary companies will be guaranteed by the Government of India and the RBI will be assured of a return higher than the average rate of return on its incremental investment.”
You do not understand? Well, no one is supposed to. The most exquisite thievery occurs after all not in darkness but in broad daylight with everyone watching but no one able to see or comprehend anything. So let us return to elementary first principles.
What are foreign exchange reserves and why do countries hold them? It is quite simply answered. Consider the USA and Canada, each with its own dollar. Canadians want to purchase American goods and services, give gifts and make loans to American residents, and make investments in the USA. Americans want to do the same in Canada. Each has to use the domestic money of the other when it does so. If an American wishes to lend money to a Canadian or to purchase something from him, he receives Canadian dollar notes from the Canadian Government to make his Canadian transactions, handing over his American dollar notes instead. The American dollar notes he hands over become part of Canada’s foreign exchange reserves, held by its Central Bank. Roughly speaking, a country’s foreign exchange reserves are the residual foreign currency assets its central bank holds after all these transactions are carried out on both sides of the border.
In the US-Canada case, neither Government prevents its citizens from exchanging domestic money for foreign money. In India, our rupee has been inconvertible since about 1940. The average Indian cannot freely exchange his/her rupee-denominated assets for foreign exchange denominated ones even if he/she wished to. There has been some import-liberalisation in recent years but only someone with the political access of Mr Tata or Mr Birla can purchase foreign assets and foreign companies using their Indian money – because the rupee is inconvertible, any bad financial decisions they make in using their foreign assets will be implicitly paid for by the Indian public.
Now a country’s central bank, such as our Reserve Bank, is the custodian of its foreign exchange reserves. India’s reserves are supposed to have reached $195.96 Billion ($19,596 Crore) as of March 16 2007. Keep in mind we do not know why they have risen: they can rise merely because foreigners (including NRIs) have lent us more of their money, not because foreigners have bought more of our goods and services. In fact Business Standard yesterday 31 March 2007 said on its front page “external commercial borrowing” was “a major source of accretion” of India’s reserves.
Also keep in mind that the Reserve Bank has the duty to manage these foreign-denominated assets against which it has already issued Indian rupees. It might receive a small conservative income from the cash-management aspect of this but it may not risk them or place them in any jeopardy!
Yet the whole idea behind the Chidambaram-Ahluwalia-Parekh-Reddy scheme under discussion by the Sonia-Manmohan Government is that the RBI will “lend” some of the billions of Americans dollars in its custody to overseas subsidiaries of Indian companies – say, for example, to the Tatas who have now bought foreign “capital assets” of some US$ 12 Billion ($1200 Crore) from Corus without having anything near that kind of foreign income.
Such favoured Indian companies might then use these “borrowed” funds as collateral for other borrowings. In exchange, they will go about undertaking purported “infrastructure” projects in India. So much for the “structured mechanisms” being touted by Messrs Chidambaram, Ahluwalia, Parekh et al.
Before India’s public understands it, the schemers will shout (as they have done with the SEZ Act) that Parliament has passed it. The BJP will applaud with envy. The Communists might uncomprehendingly complain a little, and then be bought off with a sop or two that they do understand, like a little pro-China rhetoric or being let off lightly on Nandigram.
Now international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements officially exist to advise central banks to stay along the straight and narrow and to avoid all such mischief. Here is what the IMF explicitly warned about such schemes in its Guidelines for Foreign Exchange Reserve Management dated September 20 2001:
“Liquidity risk. The pledging of reserves as collateral with foreign financial institutions as support for loans to either domestic entities, or foreign subsidiaries of the reserve management entity, has rendered reserves illiquid until the loans have been repaid. Liquidity risks have also arisen from the direct lending of reserves to such institutions when shocks to the domestic economy led to the borrowers’ inability to repay their liabilities, and impairment of the liquidity of the reserve assets.
Credit risk. Losses have arisen from the investment of reserves in high-yielding assets that were made without due regard to the credit risk associated with the issuer of the asset. Lending of reserves to domestic banks, and overseas subsidiaries of reserve management entities, has also exposed reserve management entities to credit risk.”
Dostoevsky believed man could have evil intent. Socrates was more generous and said man does not do wrong knowingly. It is not impossible our Indian schemers have innocent intent and do not even realize how close they are to becoming scamsters, or are already in the grip of scamsters. But at least we are now forewarned: India faces a clear risk of being swindled of its foreign exchange reserves. Prevention is better than cure.
Uttar Pradesh Polity and Finance
March 24, 2007 — drsubrotoroyUttar Pradesh Polity & Finance
A Responsible New Govt May Want To Declare A Financial Emergency
First published in The Statesman Editorial Page, March 24 2007
by
Subroto Roy
Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls beginning April 7. Nothing may succeed better in focusing the minds of its citizens and political candidates than some hard macroeconomic realities. Discussing UP’s public finances may be the first step to bringing cool rationality to the cauldron of its politics ~ consisting as it does of seemingly deep and irreconcilable divisions of religion, caste and personality.
UP shared initials of the old British “United Provinces of Agra and Oudh”, and in 1947 was mostly the same territory. It deserves better than to be known merely as our “Northern State”: UP has been India’s fulcrum, deeply affecting our history, culture and politics. There could have been today not merely a new Uttarakhand but also perhaps Agra, Bareilly (Rohilkhand), Jhansi (Bundelkhand), Meerut, Avadh (Ayodhya, Oudh), Kanauj, Varanasi etc.
History and politics
Each has had its history. Oudh was seen by the British before Dalhousie as a northern buffer for their Bengal possessions. Bareilly was “an important centre of disaffection” of Muslim soldiers against the British in 1857 and also where Hindus after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 had “thrown off the imperial yoke” refusing to pay tribute to Delhi. The very idea of “Pakistan” was mostly a UP-invention. Long before Iqbal and Jinnah, Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786-1831) initiated a mass migration of Muslims and created a theocratic principality in the NWFP (Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah) which collapsed due to conflict between his Pashtun and North Indian followers. Pervez Musharraf’s family were frankly nostalgic during their India-visit, and indeed Pakistan’s Mohajirs long for fertile UP more than the arid country they in fact possess ~ even more than for J&K on which Pakistanis since Liaquat (UP’s most prominent Muslim legislator between 1926-1940) became fixated instead.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the “Ram Janambhoomi/Babri Masjid” dispute may have been mostly a gigantic, inchoate, incoherent national exercise in defining our identity: “Who are we?” or perhaps “Who are we not?” as modern Indians, questions that remain unanswered. Certainly, in 1908 the Imperial Gazetteer of India Vol XIX pp 279-280 reported: “After Babar had gained a footing in Hindustan by his victory at Panipat in 1526, and had advanced to Agra, the defeated Afghan house of Lodhi still occupied the Central Doab, Oudh, and the eastern districts of the present United Provinces. In 1527, Babar, on his return from Central India, defeated his opponents in Southern Oudh near Kanauj, and passed on through the Province as far as Ajodhya where he built a mosque in 1528, on the site renowned as the birthplace of Rama. The Afghans remained in opposition after the death of Babar in 1530, but were defeated near Lucknow in the following year.”
History books and doctoral theses should have been perhaps where all such old facts deserved to remain in a modern self-confident, self-aware India.
Today’s UP at more than 166 million people exceeds in population France and Germany combined. One in every six or seven Indians is from UP. The State has become notorious for its chaotic politics, its “history-sheeters”, its corruption, crimes, badlands, astrology and other superstition. Its popular power gets divided between Mulayam, Mayawati and the BJP: each the self-appointed spokesman of Muslims, “Bahujans” and Hindu upper castes respectively. Congress, once India’s grand old secular national party, has been side-lined in UP politics.
Yet UP’s pivotal role remains such that the healthiest development for Indian democracy today may be for the Lok Sabha Member from Rae Bareilly to close down 10 Janpath as a residence and office for herself, and live instead as an exemplary parliamentarian among the common people of her constituency, setting the example too for her son to do the same in Amethi. Their permanent departure from New Delhi, becoming prominent UP politicians instead, would be the desperately needed “tough love” required by the Congress Party ~ which finally, after many decades, would be compelled to grow up and elect a leadership for itself based on some real political principles and not mere sycophancy.
Focussing on UP’s Public Finances is the first constructive step towards a rational political economy arising in the interests of its many citizens. As with other States of our Union, it is not impossible to understand what is going on with UP’s finances, though it does take some serious effort. The State receives tax revenues, income from State operations (like bus fares etc), and grants transferred from the Union. Of these revenues, more than 70% arise from taxation. Of those taxes, about 45% is collected by the Union on behalf of the State according to the Finance Commission’s formulae; 55% is collected by the State itself, and about 50% of what the State collects is Sales Tax. On the expenditure side, some 43% has been going to repay the State’s debts plus interest owed on that debt. The remainder gets distributed as summarily shown in the table.
Audit and restructuring
As with the Union of India, as well as with other States like West Bengal, the wide difference between income and expenditure implies the Government must then issue new public debt, which typically has been a larger and larger sum every year, greater than the maturing debt being amortised or extinguished. The grave consequences of this will be obvious to any householder, and makes it imperative that calm, sober thought and objective analysis occur about UP’s financial condition and budget constraint. E.g., what is revealed at a higher level of detail is that in 2003-2004, Rs. 5.43 Bn (Rs 543 crores) were spent to collect Rs. 1.18 Bn (Rs. 118 crores) of land revenue! UP has also spent extraordinarily vast public resources (and World Bank loans) on electricity ~ yet its power supply remains dismal.
These kinds of facts may be enough for any responsible new Government of UP (perhaps even a “Unity Government”) to declare a financial emergency under Article 360 of the Constitution, followed by ordering the most stringent of audits of all government departments and projects using public resources as well as recognition of public assets, followed in turn by a restructuring of the public budget over a few years with the aim of cutting all waste, fraud and abuse, and directing public resources instead to areas of highest social usefulness.
The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman
UP Government Finance 2003-2004
EXPENDITURE ACTIVITIES : Rs Billion (Hundred Crore)
government & local government
judiciary
police (including vigilance etc)
prisons
bureaucracy
collecting land revenue & taxes
government employee pensions
schools, colleges, universities, institutes
health, nutrition & family welfare
water supply & sanitation
roads, bridges, transport etc.
electricity
irrigation, flood cntrl., environ, ecology
agricultural subsidies, rural development
industrial subsidies
capital city development
social security, SC, ST, OBC, lab.welfare
tourism
arts, archaeology, libraries, museums
miscellaneous
debt amortization & debt servicing
total expenditure
30.33
3.17
25.81
1.13
11.63
8.41
29.00
62.79
18.97
6.04
16.13
200.22
29.98
16.07
8.19
1.08
18.36
0.20
0.37
0.53
373.60
3.52%
0.37%
2.99%
0.13%
1.35%
0.98%
3.36%
7.28%
2.20%
0.70%
1.87%
23.23%
3.48%
1.86%
0.95%
0.13%
2.13%
0.02%
0.04%
0.06%
43.34%
tax revenue
operational income
grants from Union
loans recovered
total income
268.74
22.82
24.82
124.98
Govt. Borrowing Requirement:
(total expenditure minus total income) 420.67
financd by:
new public debt issued
use of Trust Funds etc.
385.41
35.26
420.67
From the author’s research based on latest available data published by the C&AG of India
Fallacious Finance: Congress, BJP, CPI-M et al may be leading India to hyperinflation (2007)
March 5, 2007 — drsubrotoroyFallacious Finance: Congress, BJP, CPI-M et al may be leading India to hyperinflation
by
Subroto Roy
first published in The Statesman, 5 March 2007
Editorial Page Special Article
It seems the Dream Team of the PM, Finance Minister, Mr. Montek Ahluwalia and their acolytes may take India on a magical mystery tour of economic hallucinations, fantasies and perhaps nightmares. I hasten to add the BJP and CPI-M have nothing better to say, and criticism of the Government or of Mr Chidambaram’s Budget does not at all imply any sympathy for their political adversaries.
It may be best to outline a few of the main fallacies permeating the entire Governing Class in Delhi, and their media and businessman friends:
1. “India’s Savings Rate is near 32%”. This is factual nonsense. Savings is indeed normally measured by adding financial and non-financial savings. Financial savings include bank-deposits. But India is not a normal country in this. Nor is China. Both have seen massive exponential growth of bank-deposits in the last few decades. Does this mean Indians and Chinese are saving phenomenally high fractions of their incomes by assiduously putting money away into their shaky nationalized banks? Sadly, it does not. What has happened is government deficit-financing has grown explosively in both countries over decades. In a “fractional reserve” banking system (i.e. a system where your bank does not keep the money you deposited there but lends out almost all of it immediately), government expenditure causes bank-lending, and bank-lending causes bank-deposits to expand. Yes there has been massive expansion of bank-deposits in India but it is a nominal paper phenomenon and does not signify superhuman savings behaviour. Indians keep their assets mostly in metals, land, property, cattle, etc., and as cash, not as bank deposits.
2. “High economic growth in India is being caused by high savings and intelligently planned government investment”. This too is nonsense. Economic growth in India as elsewhere arises not because of what politicians and bureaucrats do in capital cities, but because of spontaneous technological progress, improved productivity and learning-by-doing on part of the general population. Technological progress is a very general notion, and applies to any and every production activity or commercial transaction that now can be accomplished more easily or using fewer inputs than before. New Delhi still believes in antiquated Soviet-era savings-investment models without technological progress, and some non-sycophant must tell our top Soviet-era bureaucrat that such growth models have been long superceded and need to be scrapped from India’s policy-making too. Can politicians and bureaucrats assist India’s progress? Indeed they can: the telecom revolution in recent years was something in which they participated. But the general presumption is against them. Progress, productivity gains and hence economic growth arise from enterprise and effort of ordinary people — mostly despite not because of an exploitative, parasitic State.
3. “Agriculture is a backward sector that has been retarding India’s recent economic growth”. This is not merely nonsense it is dangerous nonsense, because it has led to land-grabbing by India’s rulers at behest of their businessman friends in so-called “SEZ” schemes. The great farm economist Theodore W. Schultz once quoted Andre and Jean Mayer: “Few scientists think of agriculture as the chief, or the model science. Many, indeed, do not consider it a science at all. Yet it was the first science – Mother of all science; it remains the science which makes human life possible”. Centuries before Europe’s Industrial Revolution, there was an Agricultural Revolution led by monks and abbots who were the scientists of the day. Thanks partly to American help, India has witnessed a Green Revolution since the 1960s, and our agriculture has been generally a calm, mature, stable and productive industry. Our farmers are peaceful hardworking people who should be paying taxes and user-fees normally but should not be otherwise disturbed or needlessly provoked by outsiders. It is the businessmen wishing to attack our farm populations who need to look hard in the mirror – to improve their accounting, audit, corporate governance, to enforce anti-embezzlement and shareholder protection laws etc.
4. “India’s foreign exchange reserves may be used for ‘infrastructure’ financing”. Mr Ahluwalia promoted this idea and now the Budget Speech mentioned how Mr Deepak Parekh and American banks may be planning to get Indian businesses to “borrow” India’s forex reserves from the RBI so they can purchase foreign assets. It is a fallacy arising among those either innocent of all economics or who have quite forgotten the little they might have been mistaught in their youth. Forex reserves are a residual in a country’s balance of payments and are not akin to tax revenues, and thus are not available to be borrowed or spent by politicians, bureaucrats or their businessman friends — no matter how tricky and shady a way comes to be devised for doing so. If anything, the Government and RBI’s priority should have been to free the Rupee so any Indian could hold gold or forex at his/her local bank. India’s vast sterling balances after the Second World War vanished quickly within a few years, and the country plunged into decades of balance of payments crisis – that may now get repeated. The idea of “infrastructure” is in any case vague and inferior to the “public goods” Adam Smith knew to be vital. Serious economists recommend transparent cost-benefit analyses before spending any public resources on any project. E.g., analysis of airport/airline industry expansion would have found the vast bulk of domestic airline costs to be forex-denominated but revenues rupee-denominated – implying an obvious massive currency-risk to the industry and all its “infrastructure”. All the PM’s men tell us nothing of any of this.
5. “HIV-AIDS is a major Indian health problem”. Government doctors privately know the scare of an AIDS epidemic is based on false assumptions and analysis. Few if any of us have met, seen or heard of an actual incontrovertible AIDS victim in India (as opposed to someone infected by hepatitis-contaminated blood supplies). Syringe-exchange by intravenous drug users is not something widely prevalent in Indian society, while the practise that caused HIV to spread in California’s Bay Area in the 1980s is not something depicted even at Khajuraho. Numerous real diseases do afflict Indians – e.g. 11 children died from encephalitis in one UP hospital on a single day in July 2006, while thousands of children suffer from “cleft lip” deformity that can be solved surgically for 20,000 rupees, allowing the child a normal life. Without any objective survey being done of India’s real health needs, Mr Chidamabaram has promised more than Rs 9.6 Billion (Rs 960 crore) to the AIDS cottage industry.
6. “Fiscal consolidation & stabilization has been underway since 1991”. There is extremely little reason to believe this. If you or I borrow Rs. 100,000 for a year, and one year later repay the sum only to borrow the same again along with another Rs 40,000, we would be said to have today a debt of Rs. 140,000 at least. Our Government has been routinely “rolling over” its domestic debt in this manner (in the asset-portfolios of the nationalised banking system) but displaying and highlighting only its new additional borrowing in a year as the “ Fiscal Deficit” (see graph, also “Fiscal Instability”, The Sunday Statesman, 4 February 2007). More than two dozen State Governments have been doing the same though, unlike the Government of India, they have no money-creating powers and their liabilities ultimately accrue to the Union as well. The stock of public debt in India may be Rs 30 trillion (Rs 30 lakh crore) at least, and portends a hyperinflation in the future. Mr Chidambaram’s announcement of a “Debt Management Office” yet to be created is hardly going to suffice to avert macroeconomic turmoil and a possible monetary collapse. The Congress, BJP, CPI-M and all their friends shall be responsible.
Of related interest: Mistaken Macroeconomics,
“The Indian Revolution”, “Against Quackery”, “The Dream Team: A Critique”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Indian Inflation”
Bengal’s Finances
February 25, 2007 — drsubrotoroyBENGAL’S FINANCES
First published in The Sunday Statesman February 25 2007, Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net
There is urgent need for calm, sober thought, not self-delusion. Foreign trade, world politics are not what State Governments are constitutionally permitted to do.
By SUBROTO ROY
Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is fond of saying his hoped for industrialization plans will lead to jobs for “thousands” of unemployed young men and women emerging from West Bengal’s many schools, colleges and universities.
Now ever since JM Keynes’s time, economists have understood the phenomenon of unemployment quite well. Some unemployment is voluntary: where someone declines to accept a job at the prevailing wage or chooses leisure instead, e.g. withdraws from the labour-force in order to go to college or care for children or family or be involved in search for a better job. Some unemployment is seasonal, as in agriculture ~ where there often is “overfull” employment at harvest-time. Some unemployment may be frictional or structural, depending on dynamic unpredictable industrial or technological changes. In none of these cases is any large role defined for government investment using public resources, though there can be smaller roles like providing job-information, advice and training.
Keynes himself was concerned with systematic “involuntary” unemployment, where masses of people are willing but unable to find work at the going wage because there has been a general collapse of the market economy, as arguably happened in the 1930s in the Western countries. There has been no such situation in independent India.
And it is important to remember our labour markets are mostly unrestricted by State boundaries: unlike totalitarian China, we do not have internal passports in the country, and Indians are mostly free to work anywhere they wish to. Talk from CPI-M, Congress, BJP or other politicians of alleged Keynesian “multiplier” effects arising from government expenditure is mostly talk. And as for Sonia Gandhi’s “National Rural Employment Guarantee”, to the extent it was argued for at all by Amartya Sen’s disciples like Jean Drèze, the argument was not on Keynesian grounds but of a purportedly more equitable distribution of government expenditure.
What then is the Bhattacharjee Government supposed to be doing?
Chandrababu Naidu started a trend among Chief Ministers flying off to exotic foreign vistas, addressing international conferences and signing memoranda with foreign businessmen. But world politics, international relations and foreign trade are not what Indian State Governments are permitted by our Constitution to be engaged in doing. Nelson Mandela is a great man of history but Jyoti Basu’s Government had no constitutional right or business to gift him five million American dollars of West Bengal public money after he was released from jail in South Africa in 1990 by De Klerk.
Our Constitution is crystal clear that the legitimate agenda of India’s State Governments is something very mundane and wholly unglamorous: State Governments are supposed to be managing Courts of Law; the Police, Civil Order, Prisons; Water, Sanitation, Health; State Debt Service; Intra-State Infrastructure & Communications; Local Government; Liquor & Other Public Sector Industry; Trade, Local Banking & Finance; Land, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry; Libraries, Museums, Monuments; State Civil Service & Administration. In addition, “concurrent” with the Union Government are Criminal, Civil & Family Law, Contracts & Torts; Forests & Environmental Protection; Unemployment & Refugee Relief; Electricity; Education. It is relative to that explicit agenda that State Government performances around the country must be evaluated.
The finances of the West Bengal Government and those of every other State of the Union appear in a condition of Byzantine confusion. Even so, it is not impossible for any citizen to understand them with a little serious effort. The State receives tax revenues, income from State operations (like bus fares, lottery tickets etc), and grants transferred from the Union. Of the State’s total revenues, more than 80% arise from taxation. Of those taxes, about 30% is collected by the Union on behalf of the State in accordance with the Finance Commission’s formulae; 70% is collected by the State itself, and about 60% of whhat the State collects is Sales Tax. On the expenditure side, more than 60% goes in repaying the State’s debts as well as interest owed on that debt. The remainder gets distributed as summarily shown in the table. (What would be revealed at a higher level of detail is that e.g. Rs. 2.63 Bn is spent in collecting Rs. 9.93 Bn of land revenue!) The wide difference between the State’s income from all sources and its expenditures implies the State must then issue new public debt. That typically has been a larger and larger sum every year, greater than the amount of maturing debt being amortised or extinguished. The potentially grave consequence of this will be obvious to any householder, and makes it imperative that calm, sober thought and objective analysis occur about the State’s financial condition and budget constraint. There is no room for self-delusion, especially on the part of the Bhattacharjee Government. We are still paying interest on the money we borrowed to make Nelson Mandela a gift seventeen years ago.
Govt. of W. Bengal’s Finances 2003-2004
Rs Billion (Hundred Crore)
EXPENDITURE ACTIVITIES:
government & local government 8.68 1.68%
judiciary 1.27 0.25%
police (including home guard etc.) 13.47 2.61%
prisons 0.62 0.12%
bureaucracy 5.69 1.10%
collecting land revenue & taxes 4.32 0.84%
government employee pensions 26.11 5.05%
schools, colleges, universities, institutes 45.06 8.72%
health, nutrition & family welfare 14.70 2.84%
water supply & sanitation 3.53 0.68%
roads, bridges, transport, etc. 8.29 1.60%
electricity (mostly loans to power sector) 31.18 6.03%
irrigation, flood control, environment, ecology 10.78 2.09%
agricultural subsidies, rural development, etc. 7.97 1.54%
industrial subsidies 2.56 0.50%
capital city development 7.29 1.41%
social security, SC, ST, OBC, labour welfare 9.87 1.91%
tourism 0.09 0.02%
arts, archaeology, libraries, museums 0.16 0.03%
miscellaneous 0.52 0.10%
debt amortization & debt servicing 314.77 60.89%
total expenditure 516.92
tax revenue 141.10
operational income 6.06
grants from Union 18.93
loans recovered 0.91
total income 167.00
INCOME SOURCES:
GOVT. BORROWING REQUIREMENT
(total expenditure
minus total income ) 349.93
financed by:
new public debt issued 339.48
use of Trust Funds etc 10.45
349.93
From the author’s research and based on latest available data published by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India
India in World Trade & Payments (2007)
February 12, 2007 — drsubrotoroyOur Trade & Payments
by
SUBROTO ROY
First published in The Sunday Statesman, Feb 11 2007, The Statesman, Feb 12 2007
Editorial Page Special Article
TWO and a half millennia ago, the Greeks described how brightly coloured textiles imported from India were popular among the Persians. Five centuries later, the Roman historian Pliny complained that India every year “took from Italy a hundred million sesterces in return for spices, perfumes and ornaments”. Montesquieu observed in 1748: “All peoples who have traded with India have always taken metals there and brought back commodities. Indians need only our metals, which are the signs of value. In all times those who deal with India will take silver there and bring back none”.
During the British period, India remained a great trading nation. JM Keynes found Britain, the world’s largest exporter in 1913, exporting more to India than anywhere else, and Germany, the world’s fastest growing economy in 1913, receiving 5 percent of its imports from India and sending it 1.5 percent of exports, making India the sixth largest exporter to Germany (after the USA, Russia, Britain, Austria-Hungary, France) and eighth largest importer from it (after Britain, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, the USA, Belgium, Italy). India’s share of world exports during 1870-1914 may have been about 3-4 per cent. As of 1917-1918, India’s balance of payments and fiscal budget appear idyllic: an export surplus of £61.42 million, official reserves of £66.53 million, total claims on the rest of the world of £127.5 million (or 32.85 million troy ozs of gold), and a 1916-1917 budget surplus of £6,594,885.
Even at mid-20th Century, India was still a trading power with 2 percent of world exports and a rank of 16 in the world economy after the USA, Britain, West Germany, France, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Italy, Australia, Sweden, Venezuela, Brazil, Malaya and Switzerland.
Yet during the second half of the 20th Century, the Indian subcontinent collapsed to near insignificance in world trade and payments. The traditional export surplus implied a high “treasure” demand for precious metals on capital account; this was reversed and the new India became a chronic trade-deficit country dependant on foreign borrowings and grants. Of world merchandise exports, the subcontinent’s share today is 0.8 of 1 per cent, and of Asia’s 6 percent (India accounting for two thirds); by contrast, Malaysia alone accounts for 0.9 of 1 percent of world exports and 6.5 percent of Asia’s. Most poignantly, among 11 major developing countries (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Israel, Yugoslavia), India’s share of manufactured exports to the world fell from 65 per cent in 1953 to 51 percent in 1960 to 31 per cent in 1966 to 10 per cent by 1973. Our legendary textiles lost ground steadily. As of 1962-1971, India held an average annual market-share of almost 20 percent of manufactured textile imports into the USA; this fell to 10 percent by 1972-1981 and less than 5 percent by 1982-1991. India’s share of Britain’s imports of textile manufactures fell from 16 per cent in the early 1960s to less than 4 per cent in the 1990s. India and Sri Lanka once dominated world tea exports but lost rapidly to Kenya, Indonesia and Malawi. Of total British tea imports, Sri Lanka’s market-share fell from 11 percent in 1980 to 7 per cent by 1991 while India’s fell from 33 percent in 1980 to 17 per cent by 1991. Today India may not be in the top thirty largest merchandise exporting countries of the world.
Several causes may be identified for our historical collapse in world trade and payments. These include Western protectionism e.g. of domestic textiles between 1965-2005, and emergence of new technologies like synthetic fibres, plastics, tea-bags etc as well as new competitors in the world marketplace willing to use these. Successful commerce depends on intangible quantities like trust, reliable information and contacts between individual contracting parties. Decline in our shares of world exports led to wastage of such informational capital and commercial trust. Foreign importers established new relations with India’s competitors, and for Indian entrepreneurs (now facing lessened foreign protectionism or newly liberalized domestic policies) to win new customers or win back old ones becomes doubly difficult.
But the most important cause of the decline was undoubtedly the political discord and trauma leading to economic disintegration of Old India into modern India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Partly as a result of their conflict, independent India and Pakistan deepened government requisitioning and rationing of foreign exchange purportedly as part of pseudo-socialist “planning”.
Trade policy followed the British pattern of import quotas imposed to conserve hard currency and save shipping space during war. Discretionary controls were in place by 1942 on grounds of “essentiality” and non-availability from indigenous sources. War needs over-rode others, and consumer goods banned ~ favouring their production by domestic business houses. In 1945 consumer goods were placed on open general license, as “the pattern of post-war trade should not be dictated by perpetuation of controls set up for purely war-time purposes”, and in 1946 there was further liberalization in view of India’s enormous sterling balances. But by March 1947 this ended, and import of gold and 200 “luxury” goods were banned. Only a few “essential” goods remained on the open list.
After the British left, political/bureaucratic control of imports and foreign exchange were extended, not removed. Intricate restrictions, subsidies, barriers and import-licensing (based on obsolete war-time “essentiality” and “actual user” criteria) continued, now in name of “import-substitution” and “planning”. Major industries were nationalized, and these became leading consumers of imports obtained by administrative rationing of the foreign exchange earned by export sectors. As consumer goods’ imports were most restricted, Indian businesses predictably diverted to produce these in the large highly protected domestic markets that resulted, causing monopolistic profits and financing of a vast parallel or “black” economy with its thriving hawala sector. Restriction of consumer goods’ and gold imports also caused smuggling and open corruption in Customs. The international price of the rupee was viewed not as reflecting demand for foreign relative to domestic moneys but as just another administered price to be used by politicians and bureaucrats. Foreign exchange earnings of exporters were confiscated in exchange for rupees at the administered rate. Foreign currency thus requisitioned was (and still mostly is) disbursed by rationing in the following order of precedence: first to meet Government debt repayments to international organizations, and Government expenditures abroad like maintenance of embassies and purchase of military imports, plus politicians’ and bureaucrats’ foreign travel etc; secondly, for import of food, fertilizers, petroleum; thirdly, for imported inputs required by Government firms; fourthly, for import demands of those private firms successful in obtaining import licenses; lastly, to satisfy demands of the public at large for purposes like travel or study abroad.
After devaluing with sterling in 1949, the rupee was maintained at the same value for 17 years despite weakening reserve positions and numerous shocks to the economy like the 1962 war with China, 1965 war with Pakistan, and droughts and food crises. Devaluation on June 6 1966 to Rs. 7.50 per US dollar met political opposition and contributed to Congress Party losses in the 1967 elections. The rupee did not respond to sterling’s devaluation in November 1967 and was not adjusted downwards though the economy continued to suffer shocks like the rise in petroleum prices, refugees from the Pakistan civil war, and domestic strikes and political instability. In August 1971, India pegged to the dollar and devalued with the dollar’s depreciation but in December again linked to sterling at Rs 18.97. When sterling depreciated after floating in June 1972, the rupee effectively devalued with it, and until July 1975 there were three small devaluations against sterling. In September 1975, India pegged (within margins) to an undisclosed basket of hard currencies including the dollar, yen and deutschmark, and between 1981-1985, the rupee was slowly managed downwards, without political resistance. From September 1985-July 1991, it followed a more rapid downward course depreciating 40 per cent, while the dollar depreciated as well against major currencies, suggesting the dollar weighed heavily in the basket to which the rupee was pegged.
1991 reforms
Narasimha Rao, P Chidambaram and others received from Rajiv Gandhi in his last months the results of a “perestroika-for-India” project, and started a process of economic liberalisation. Chidambaram said at the time the reforms “were not miraculous” but based on rewriting the Congress manifesto: “We were ready when we came back to power in 1991”.
On July 1 1991, the rupee devalued 9 percent and on July 3 a further 11 percent. The new Government’s March 1 1992 Budget placed the rupee experimentally on a dual rate, implicitly taxing exporters who had to surrender 40 percent of their forex at an officially determined rate and could sell 60 percent in an open market. On March 1 1993, the rupee began to be made convertible for current account transactions, i.e. for import and export of goods and services. Trade reforms included removing many import quotas and some export subsidies. But grave fiscal and monetary problems were not (and have never been) addressed with any seriousness.
Balance of payments
The “balance of payments” sums a country’s current and capital accounts. In Western countries, the capital account consists of net trading in long and short-term securities like private stock and government debt ~ domestic securities being bought and sold freely by foreign residents and foreign securities by domestic residents. Prices determined by competitive trading are very sensitive to interest-rate differences. In India (and Pakistan etc) genuine capital account transactions have not existed since the 1930s, and do so only in highly distorted form even today. The traditional export surplus and positive current account, balanced by net inflow of precious metals, had been wiped out and current account deficits were coupled with overvalued currencies and closed capital markets – along with repressive financial policies causing capital flight of an elite nomenklatura. The inherent risk of unproductive use of funds by borrowers and consumers of forex (mostly Government) were shifted to export and other hard-currency earning sectors.
In particular, a severe trade-deficit had followed petroleum-price rises in the late 1970s, which continues today. There has been some exploration, discovery and extraction of domestic supplies of oil and gas, but no significant move to conserve or find economical alternatives to use of imported energy. (Indeed a coal-exporting petroleum-importing nation with the most heavily used railways in the world made an unprovoked decision to abolish steam-locomotives in favour of diesel and electric. And now, very expensive foreign nuclear plants are planned to be imported on a turnkey basis under a false assumption these will help India’s energy sector.)
India gained from exporting temporary workers to the Gulf since the 1970s but that could hardly finance the increased oil bill. Instead there has been large growth of foreign debt since the 1970s, mostly owed by the Government (and recently by large private businesses) to Western financial markets via brokerage of Western governments and organizations they control. India’s foreign debt amounts to more than $100 being owed by each of our one billion citizens, each of us having to earn five or six dollars every year on average just to meet interest payments due to foreign creditors.
This has been accompanied in the last few years by foreign exchange reserves (the residual in the balance of payments) seeming to grow rapidly, and rising reserves have been perceived as a sign of optimism. Just as bad luck came by way of large oil-price increases, we have seen windfall gains from spread of American “information technology” ~ causing an even larger surplus on services as Indian computer-workers are exported, or new foreign investment is lured by low costs of “business process outsourcing” using our “reserve army” of labour and seemingly cheap real estate.
Rising forex reserves may or may not indicate a better financial position just as rising debt may or may not indicate a weaker financial position. A cash-rich person or company or country may have enough liquid resources to meet an immediate payments’ crisis ~ but may have become cash-rich merely by having borrowed more. A country’s forex reserves may be rising because foreigners have lent it more or have been exploiting arbitrage opportunities presented by multiple exchange-rates or interest-rates or other capital market inefficiencies, or even because reserve-assets have appreciated in world markets due to currency movements.
Similarly, it is not the absolute size of a debt that matters but productivity of the use to which it has been put. At a conference on a “perestroika-for-India” in May 1989 at the University of Hawaii, the late Milton Friedman remarked that one man can be heavily indebted yet have used his debt for investment in capital and hence real growth, while another man can be less heavily indebted but have used borrowed money for debauchery or other wasteful consumption.
For countries too, it is the use to which debt has been put ~ the nature of assets that have been created with the debt ~ that is fundamental. If our foreign debt has been used by Government to create roads and bridges or improve agricultural productivity, fertile capital assets have been invested in, which lead to economic growth and well-being.
If borrowed foreign money has been mostly spent on fancy tanks and bombers (or even passenger aircraft, which mostly earn domestic and not foreign currency) or on foreign trips for politicians and bureaucrats, it has likely gone on sterile consumption goods for the elite. Since Pakistan and India are armed with foreign weapons intended to be used mainly against one another, the arms’ merchants on both sides have been laughing all the way to their Swiss banks for decades. Pakistan and India’s weapons’ imports have been effectively paid by their Governments having borrowed what now constitutes the bulk of their enormous sovereign debts. Requisitioning forex has permitted military generals, politicians, bureaucrats and other lobbies to spend as they wish foreign monies earned by relatively meagre export sectors under conditions of severe international competition.
False convertibility
The RBI is presently engaged in a false convertibility whereby the organised private sector can purchase foreign assets, and the elite can transfer $50,000 annually to their adult children already exported abroad. Truly freeing the rupee today would involve allowing, overnight, any Indian to hold gold, foreign currency and foreign exchange bank accounts freely at his/her local bank (just like those glamorous NRIs). But some 50% or more of public expenditure is being financed by debt compulsorily held by nationalized banks, and this would leave Government with the problem of finding real resources to pay interest and amortisation on the sovereign debt. Moving towards convertibility may induce severe inflation and instability caused by exposure of the weakness of the banks, as their assets (especially Government debt) come to be valued at international prices. Yet without a convertible rupee, proper valuation at world prices is not possible of any paper assets in India (including shares), nor is there any incentive for a responsible fiscal and monetary policy to emerge, even while the nomenklatura continue in capital flight, and India’s masses unknowingly inherit large accumulating rupee and dollar-denominated public debts.
Fiscal Instability
February 4, 2007 — drsubrotoroyFiscal Instabilty
Interest payments quickly suck dry every year’s Budget. And rolling over old public debt means that Government Borrowing in fact much exceeds the Fiscal Deficit
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman,
Editorial Page Special Article, 4 February 2007
While releasing Mr Chidambaram’s book some days ago, our PM said that as Narasimha Rao’s Finance Minister in 1991 he had caused “fiscal stabilization” of the country. Unfortunately, Dr Manmohan Singh may have been believing the flattery of his sycophants, since the facts point differently.
The Fiscal Deficit is new borrowing by Government added for a given year. In 1994-1995 for example, the Union Government’s expenditure net of operational and other income was some Rs 1,295 billion (1 billion = 100 crore). Rs. 674 billion was generated for the Union Government by taxation that year (Rs 184 billion from direct taxes, Rs 653 billion from indirect and miscellaneous taxes, less Rs 163 billion as the States’ share). The difference between Rs 1,295 billion and Rs. 674 billion, that is Rs. 621 billion had to be borrowed by the Government of India in the name of future unborn generations of Indian citizens. That was the “Fiscal Deficit” that year. If the stock of Public Debt already accumulated has been B,this Fiscal Deficit, C, adds to the interest burden that will be faced next year since interest will have to be then paid on B + C.
Interest payments on Government debt have dominated all public finance in recent decades, quickly sucking dry the budgets every year both of the Union and each of our more than two dozen States. Some Rs. 440 billion was paid by the Union Government as interest in 1994-1995, and this had risen to some Rs. 1,281 billion by 2003-2004. As a percentage of tax revenue, interest expenditure by the Government of India on its own debt rose from 40% in 1991 to 68% in 2004 ~ through the Finance Ministerships of Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh.
Financial control of India’s fiscal condition, and hence monetary expansion, vitally requires control of the growth of these kinds of dynamic processes and comprehension of their analytical underpinnings. Yet such understanding and control seem quite absent from all organs of our Government, including establishment economists and the docile financial press.
For example, contrary to the impression created by the Finance Ministry, RBI and Union Cabinet (whether of the UPA or NDA, while the Communists would only be worse), the Fiscal Deficit has been in fact very far from being all that the Government of India borrows from financial markets in a given year. The stock of Public Debt at any given moment consists of numerous debt-instruments of various sorts at different terms. Some fraction of these come to maturity every year and hence their principal amounts (not merely their interest) must be repaid by Government. What our Government has been doing routinely over decades is to roll over these debts, i.e. issue fresh public debt of the same amount as that being extinguished and more. For example, some Rs. 720 billion, Rs. 1,180 billion, Rs.1,330 billion and Rs. 1,390 billion were amounts spent in extinguishing maturing public debt in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996 respectively. No special taxes were raised in those years specifically for that purpose. Instead the Government merely issued additional new debt or “rolled over” or “converted” the old debt in the same amounts and more in the portfolios of the captive nationalized banking system (see graph).
Plainly, the Government of India’s actual “Borrowing Requirement”, as the difference between its Income and Expenditure, when accounted for properly, will be the sum of this rolled over old debt and the Fiscal Deficit (which is merely the additional borrowing required by a single year’s Budget). In other words, the Government’s Borrowing Requirement is the Fiscal Deficit plus the much larger amount required to annually roll over maturing debt. Because the latter expenditure does not appear at all in calculation of the Fiscal Deficit by the subterfuge of having been routinely rolled over every year, the actual difference between Government Expenditure and Income in India has been made to appear much smaller than it really is. Although neglected by the Cabinet, Finance Ministry, RBI and even (almost) the C&AG, the significance of this discrepancy in measurement will not be lost on anyone seriously concerned to address India’s fiscal and monetary problems.
On the expenditure side, Current Expenditure (anachronistically named “Revenue Expenditure” in India as it is supposed to be met by current revenue) meets recurrent liabilities from one budget-date to the next, like salaries of school-staff or coupon payments on Government debt.
Investment Expenditure “of a capital nature” is supposed to increase “concrete assets of a material and permanent character” like spending on a new public library, or reducing “recurring liabilities” by setting aside a sinking fund to reduce Government debt. Some public resources need to be spent to yield benefits or reduce costs not immediately but in the future. Besides roads, bridges and libraries, these may include less tangible investments too like ensuring proper working of law-courts or training police-officers and school-teachers.
Also, there has been large outright direct lending by the Government of India bypassing normal capital markets on the pattern of old Soviet “central planning”, whereby “credit” is disbursed to chosen recipients.
“Current”, “Investment” and “Loan” expenditure decisions of this kind are made on the same activities. For example, in 1994-1995, the Government of India spent Rs. 2.7 billion as “Loans for Power Projects” in addition to Rs. 9.8 billion under Current Expenditure on “Power” and Rs. 15.5 billion as Investment Expenditure on “Power Projects”. By 2003-2004, these had grown to Rs. 50.94 billion, Rs. 31.02 billion, Rs. 28.5 billion respectively. Yet the opaqueness of Government accounts, finances and economic decision-making today is such that nowhere will such data be found in one table giving a full picture of public expenditure on the Power sector as a whole. On the revenue side, Government’s “Current Income” includes direct and indirect taxes, operational income from public utilities (like railways or the post office), and dividends and profits from public assets. There has been a small “Investment Income” too received from sale of public assets like Maruti. Also, since loans are made directly, there has to be a category for their recovery.
“One must not take from the real needs of the people for the imaginary needs of the state”, said Montesquieu; while De Marco in the same vein said “the greatest satisfaction of collective needs” has to be sought by “the least possible waste of private wealth”. Even Mao Zedong reportedly said: “Thrift should be the guiding principle of our government expenditure”. The C&AG requires Government determine “how little money it need take out of the pockets of the taxpayers in order to maintain its necessary activities at the proper standard of efficiency”.
Yet India’s top politicians and bureaucrats spend wildly ~ driven by the organised special interest groups on whom they depend, while ostentatiously consuming public time, space and resources themselves “quite uselessly in the pleasurable business of inflating the ego” (Veblen).
For Government to do what it need not or should not do contributes to its failure to do what it must. Thus we have armies of indolent soldiers, policemen and bureaucrats and piles of rotting supplies in government warehouses while there are queues outside hospitals, schools, courts etc.
Parliament and State Legislatures need to first ask of an annual budget whether it is efficient: “Is expenditure being allocated to enhance the public interest to the greatest extent possible, and if not, how may it be made to do so?” National welfare overall should increase the same whichever public good or service the final million of public rupees has been spent on.
Fundamentally, government finance requires scientific honesty, especially by way of clear rigorous accounting and audit of uses and origins of public resources. That scientific honesty is what we have not had at Union or State level for more than half a century.
India’s Macroeconomics (2007)
January 20, 2007 — drsubrotoroy(NB This is one of a set of articles that include “India in World Trade & Payments”, “Fiscal Instability”, “Fallacious Finance”, “Indian Money & Credit”, “Indian Money & Banking”, “Against Quackery”, “Indian Inflation”, “Monetary Integrity and the Rupee”, “The Dream Team: A Critique” etc., as well as “Mistaken Macroeconomics” etc. See My Recent Works, Interviews etc on India’s Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, Land, etc (an incomplete list) )
India’s Macroeconomics
Real growth has steadily occurred because India has shared the world’s technological progress. But bad fiscal, monetary policies over decades have led to monetary weakness and capital flight
by
Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Special Article
January 20 2007
Anyone wishing to understand India’s macroeconomics today must seek to grasp how Government expenditure and taxing behaviour have become related over decades to Government’s rapid creation of paper-money and bank-deposits. Even those policy-makers who have caused this phenomenon (notably our present PM during his long career as the top economic bureaucrat, as well as his many acolytes and foreign and domestic flatterers) seem to have failed to grasp this. Thus they may be unlikely to identify let alone carry out the key political task facing India today, which is to transform the feeble existing state corroded by corruption and waste into a robust modern one with public institutions of a quality meeting or exceeding world standards.
Government expenditure in a democracy is supposed to be representative of real public needs. But democracy is everywhere imperfect, and spending tends to follow instead the pattern of special interest groups, i.e., who has how much organised lobbying power in the polity. “Whatever can be rescued from useless expenditure is urgently required for useful”, said JS Mill. How can public spending be made more productive (or less unproductive) by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, and instead better alleviate mass ignorance, poverty and destitution? And how can there be reduced chance of a collapse of confidence in public institutions, especially currency and the banks as has happened in other countries at different times? These are central questions for serious macroeconomic policy-making in India today. In fact, it is likely the Indian people are at present both over-taxed and under-taxed: we are over-taxed by the corroded, corrupt wasteful polity that has actually arisen, while we are under-taxed relative to the fiscal and monetary needs of a robust modern democratic polity yet to exist.
India has shared the technological progress the world economy witnessed in the 20th Century. Private ingenuity, enterprise and business acumen at all scales of operation are manifest in countless examples across the country every day. Real economic growth has taken place steadily as a result, and there is no doubt average levels of health, education, and material well-being have improved almost everywhere ~ often despite government action, sometimes thanks to it. Our legendary population has grown mainly due to lowering of mortality rates via better health, nutrition and awareness, causing longer life-spans than ever before. Our village festivals, market-towns and city-streets are filled with bustling shops with busy people and merchandise, while large concrete buildings are being built everywhere by invisible builders. There is no apparent lack of a potential basis for taxation of private resources for public uses in the country.
At the same time, monumental problems of absolute poverty, ignorance, destitution and inequality remain obvious to the naked eye everywhere in India, affecting hundreds of millions of citizens. A rare candid Government study said: “It does not require clever tools of measurement to demonstrate that there are millions of children in India who are totally deprived of any education worth the name. And it is not as if they are invisible, remote, and therefore unreached. They are everywhere in the cities: on the streets, wiping cars at traffic junctions, picking rags in mounds of waste; in the roadside eateries; in small factories, as cheap labour or domestic help; at ‘home’ completing household chores. In the villages again they are everywhere, responding to the contextual demands of family work as well as bonded labour.” (India Education Report, 2002, p. 47). Such and similar children, their parents and kith and kin constitute the hundreds of anonymous millions of India today.
Less than 30 million people are employed in the “organised” sector, about 18 by government and 12 by the “organised private sector”. Even if four dependents are assumed for each, that hardly makes 15% of the whole population of one billion people today. So while there may be some 150 million people in India who in one way or another engage with the “organised sector”, there may be 850 million who do not ~ reminiscent of Disraeli’s “Two Nations” of Dickensian England.
India’s tax-revenues are raised in proportion of about 30% direct to 70% indirect, where the same ratio for an advanced economy like the USA is about 90% direct to 10% indirect. A mere 10 million income-tax returns are received in a given year in all of India. The masses are being taxed, perhaps heavily, though they are mostly unaware of what is being indirectly extracted out of their household budgets through ubiquitous archaic systems of Customs and Excise. From long before the British arrived in India, there was a tax on salt via government monopoly, and long after MK Gandhi’s march to the Arabian Sea to produce salt freely, indirect taxes bear down invisibly upon the masses of democratic India today. Nicholas Kaldor approved the current system in 1956 but by 1959 had retracted and recommended widespread direct taxation instead, which has never happened. Kaldor’s best known Indian student is today PM of the country.
Also, everyone’s holdings of monetary assets in India have been taxed by inflation, without people realising it except for a continual feeling or memory of the dwindling value of the rupee and other paper assets. Government debt, the quantity of money and general price-level of real goods and services (the inverse of the price of money) have been on exponential growth paths, most conspicuously since the compulsory government take-over of banks in the early 1970s, though origins reach back to the start of pseudo-socialist “planning” in the 1950s (see graph).
When transparent visible taxation cannot be proposed and voted for in the “real” economy because it needs too much political effort or insight, governments resort to invisible, undemocratic means of taxing the public’s monetary resources by the subterfuge of inflating currency and bank deposits. Inflation has everywhere raised real resources for governments too weak to administer proper tax systems or resist the onslaught of organised pressure-groups in incurring public expenditure.
Taxation via inflation “does not require detailed legislation, and can be administered very simply. All that it requires is to spend newly created notes. The resulting inflation automatically imposes a tax on cash balances by depreciating the value of money” (Cagan). A routine means of meeting a government’s deficits can become “use of the printing press to manufacture legal tender paper money”, either directly by paying its creditors “with new paper money specially printed for the purpose”, or indirectly by paying its creditors “out of loans to itself from the Central Bank”, issuing money to that amount in exchange for government debt (Dalton). Because public memories are short and economic models and data unavailable to ordinary people, a large scope exists for governments to extract real resources by inflation before “money-illusion” comes to be dispelled. Briefly, such has been how India’s continuous budget-deficits have been financed ever since Independence – made possible with impunity because our rulers have also kept our currency from being internationally convertible (except for themselves).
These quite subtle facts remain practically unknown to the Indian public whose lives and those of future generations are deeply affected by them, though in recent decades elite elements like bureaucrats, academics, military officers, businessmen, politicians etc with better information and access to resources have sensed monetary weakness in the country and exported their adult children and savings abroad expeditiously. The sphere of knowledge and concerns of most people are so close to needs of their own survival that they make easy prey for the machinations of others with better information or access to resources. This may help explain why we, who for more than a century and a half have seen a vast political awakening take place and can take pride in having a free press and the world’s largest electorate, at the same time have had our political life and public institutions wracked by enormous corruption, fraud and venality, enfeebling the political economy by widespread cynicism and loss of confidence, and inducing capital flight abroad on the part of a vapid elite.
On Land-Grabbing
January 14, 2007 — drsubrotoroyON LAND-GRABBING
Dr Singh’s India, Buddhadeb’s Bengal, Modi’s Gujarat have notorious US, Soviet and Chinese examples to follow ~ distracting from the country’s real economic problems
By SUBROTO ROY
First published in The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Jan 14 2007
AT a business meet on 12 January 2005, Dr Manmohan Singh showered fulsome praise on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as “dynamic”, “the Nation’s Best Chief Minister”, whose “wit and wisdom”, “qualities of head and heart”, “courage of conviction and passionate commitment to the cause of the working people of India” he admired, saying “with Buddhadeb Babu at the helm of affairs it appears Bengal is once again forging ahead… If today there is a meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata, it is because the ideas that I and Buddhadebji represent have captured the minds of the people of India. This is the idea of growth with equity and social justice, the idea that economic liberalization and modernization have to be mindful of the needs of the poor and the marginalized.”
With such support of a Congress Prime Minister (as well as proximity to Pranab Mukherjee), Mr Bhattacharjee could hardly have feared the local Congress and Trinamul would pose any threat in the 2006 Assembly Elections despite having more potential voters between them than the CPI-M.
Dr Singh returned to the “needs of the poor and the marginalized” at another business meet on 8 January 2007 promising to “unveil a new Rehabilitation Policy in three months to increase the pace of industrialisation” which would be “more progressive, humane and conducive to the long-term welfare of all stakeholders”, while his businessman host pointedly stated about Singur “land for industry must be made available to move the Indian manufacturing sector ahead”.
The “meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata” seems to be that agriculture allegedly has become a relatively backward slow-growing sector deserving to yield in the purported larger national interest to industry and services: what the PM means by “long-term welfare of all stakeholders” is the same as the new CPI-M party-line that the sons of farmers should not remain farmers (but become automobile technicians or IT workers or restaurant waiters instead).
It is a political viewpoint coinciding with interests of organised capital and industrial labour in India today, as represented by business lobbies like CII, FICCI and Assocham on one hand, and unions like CITU and INTUC on the other. Business Standard succinctly (and ominously) advocated this point of view in its lead editorial of 9 January as follows: “it has to be recognised that the world over capitalism has progressed only with the landed becoming landless and getting absorbed in the industrial/service sector labour force ~ indeed it is obvious that if people don’t get off the land, their incomes will rise only slowly”.
Land is the first and ultimate means of production, and the attack of the powerful on land-holdings or land-rights of the unorganised or powerless has been a worldwide phenomenon ~ across both capitalism and communism.
In the mid-19th Century, white North America decimated hundreds of thousands of natives in the most gargantuan land-grab of history. Defeated, Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux spoke in 1868 for the Apache, Navajo, Comanche, Cheyenne, Iroquois and hundreds of other tribes: “They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept any except one: they promised to take our land, and they took it.”
Half a century later, while the collapse of grain prices contributed to the Great Depression and pauperisation of thousands of small farmers in capitalist America in the same lands that had been taken from the native tribes, Stalin’s Russia embarked on the most infamous state-sponsored land-grab in modern history: “The mass collectivisation of Soviet agriculture (was) probably the most warlike operation ever conducted by a state against its own citizens…. Hundreds of thousands and finally millions of peasants… were deported… desperate revolts in the villages were bloodily suppressed by the army and police, and the country sank into chaos, starvation and misery… The object of destroying the peasants’ independence…was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered… The destruction of the Soviet peasantry, who formed three quarters of the population, was not only an economic but a moral disaster for the entire country. Tens of millions were driven into semi-servitude, and millions more were employed as executants…” (Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism).
Why did Stalin destroy the peasants? Lenin’s wishful “alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry” in reality could lead only to the peasants being pauperised into proletarians. At least five million peasants died and (Stalin told Churchill at Yalta) another ten million in the resultant famine of 1932-1933. “Certainly it involved a struggle ~ but chiefly one between urban Communists and villagers… it enabled the regime to obtain much of the capital desired for industrialization from the defeated village… it was the decisive step in the building of Soviet totalitarianism, for it imposed on the majority of the people a subjection which only force could maintain” (Treadgold, 20th Century Russia).
Mr Bhattacharjee’s CPI-M is fond of extolling Chinese communism, and the current New Delhi establishment have made Beijing and Shanghai holiday destinations of choice. Dr Singh’s Government has been eager to create hundreds of “Special Economic Zones” run by organised capital and unionised labour, and economically privileged by the State. In fact, the Singur and Nandigram experiences of police sealing off villages where protests occur are modelled on creation of “Special Economic Zones” in China in recent years.
For example, Chinese police on 6 December 2005 cracked down on farmers and fishermen in the seaside village of Dongzhou, 125 miles North East of Hong Kong. Thousands of Dongzhou villagers clashed with troops and armed police protesting confiscation of their lands and corruption among officials. The police immediately sealed off the village and arrested protesters. China’s Public Security Ministry admitted the number of riots over land had risen sharply, reaching more than seventy thousand across China in 2004; police usually suppressed peasant riots without resort to firing but in Dongzhou, police firing killed 20 protesters. Such is the reality of the “emergence” of China, a totalitarian police-state since the Communist takeover in 1949, from its period of mad tyranny until Mao’s death in 1976, followed by its ideological confusion ever since.
Modern India’s political economy today remains in the tight grip of metropolitan “Big Business” and “Big Labour”. Ordinary anonymous individual citizens ~ whether housewife, consumer, student, peasant, non-union worker or small businessman ~ have no real voice or representation in Indian politics. We have no normal conservative, liberal or social democratic party in this country, as found in West European democracies where the era of land-grabbing has long-ceased. If our polity had been normal, it would have known that economic development does not require business or government to pauperise the peasantry but instead to define and secure individual property rights and the Rule of Law, and establish proper conditions for the market economy. The Congress and BJP in Delhi and CPI-M in Kolkata would not have been able to distract attention from their macroeconomic misdeeds over the decades ~ indicated, for example, by increasing interest-expenditure paid annually on Government debt as a fraction of tax revenues (see Table). This macroeconomic rot originated with the Indira Gandhi-PN Haksar capriciousness and mismanagement, which coincided with the start of Dr Singh’s career as India’s best known economic bureaucrat.
Hypocrisy of the CPI-M
January 9, 2007 — drsubrotoroyHypocrisy of the CPI-M
Political Collapse In Bengal: A Mid-Term Election/Referendum Is Necessary
First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, January 9 2007,
By Subroto Roy
For the 1991 Assembly elections, I happened to draft the West Bengal Congress’s election manifesto although I was not then or ever a member of that or any other party. There was no Trinamul but its future leader had made her jibe of there being watermelons who were red inside and green outside, aptly in case of a few senior leaders. The manifesto quoted George Orwell’s denunciation of communist ruling classes, and was so hard-hitting that the CPI-M’s Sailen Dasgupta came out with a statement he had never read a Congress manifesto that had been so harsh on them; privately, I took that to be a compliment though the Congress of course lost the election. There is no one in Bengal who does not want to see Bengal prosper, and the most candid vigorous political conversation is necessary to discover what in fact is true and what ought or not to be done.
Democratic norms
The functioning of the Basu-Bhattacharjee CPI-M is quite utterly amazing. It deserves to be called such because of the seamless transfer of power that occurred between the two men in November 2000. The Chief Minister in a parliamentary democracy is supposed to have the confidence of the House, yet when Jyoti Basu stopped being CM and anointed Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to succeed him, not even a perfunctory vote of confidence was asked for in the House ~ a fact I brought to the attention of the-then editor of The Statesman who agreed with me it signified the CPI-M’s contempt for the parliamentary institution they have been ruling over for decades. By contrast, there is already talk in Britain of an early general election as soon as Gordon Brown takes over from Tony Blair.
It is the same contempt for democratic parliamentary norms that Mr Bhattacharjee and company reveal today in pushing through their diabolical plan to acquire farmers’ lands on behalf of their businessmen friends.
All of 37% of those voting in the 2006 Assembly Elections voted for the CPI-M. By contrast, 41.2% voted for Trinamul and Congress together. Add also the 11.4% of those who voted for the Forward Bloc, RSP and CPI all of whom though part of the Left Front have been opposing the CPI-M on this cardinal issue. That constitutes prima facie evidence that a majority of 52.6% vs. 37% of voters may oppose the CPI-M’s present course of action. Mr Bhattacharjee heads a Government that is supposed to act not merely in the interest of members or groups of his own party or those who have flattered or financed it, but everyone in West Bengal including those who voted against the CPI-M as well as those who did not vote at all.
Gerhard Schröder dissolved the German Bundestag in 2005 though his own party held a majority there. He did so merely because his party lost a provincial election and he felt that indicated loss of confidence in it at the federal level also. Such is how genuine modern democracies work. In India to the contrary, we have had notorious misuse of the Constitution when State Governments were dissolved merely because they were ruled by parties opposed to that which had won a Union-level General Election. Even so, India remains a Parliamentary democracy at Union and State levels, and the Government of the day may advise the Head of State to dissolve the House and call for new elections to be held. It may do so even when there is no legal necessity to do so, i.e., even when it is secure with a majority of seats. It may do so because a political necessity has arisen for doing so.
If Mr Bhattacharjee is a genuine democrat, as he wishes to convey an impression of being, he should advise the Governor to dissolve the Assembly because the CPI-M wishes to go to the people to seek a mandate for its plans for the State’s industrialisation and forced acquisition of farm lands towards that end. The Trinamul, Congress, SUCI, Maoists and others including perhaps the CPI, FB, RSP and others will state their opposition, while he, Mr Nirupam Sen and their party will be able to articulate for West Bengal’s voters exactly what they propose to do and why. The CPI-M is adamant its cause is right while the Opposition have been agitating in the streets for months, and miniature civil war conditions now prevail in parts of rural Bengal; worse may be yet to come. There is only one way in a supposedly democratic society like ours to discover what should be done, and that is to dissolve the Assembly and call an election. Both sides will have a chance to articulate their positions to the public, and a vote will be held. There the matter would end. It is the one constructive way forward for the State, and indeed for the nation as a whole. (Alternatively, the Governor could be advised to request the Election Commission to administer India’s first referendum on a single agreed-upon question like “The West Bengal Government’s industrialisation and land-acquisition plan deserves citizens’ support: Yes/No”.)
If an Assembly election comes to be called and the CPI-M falls below a pre-set target of the vote-share, say 33%, or the Left Front below, say, 45%, then Mr Bhattacharjee, even if he commands a majority of seats again, will know he has no mandate and that he must stop and reconsider what he is doing. As I have said in these columns, West Bengal’s main economic problems are financial, having to do with Rs. 92 billion (Rs 9,200 crore) being paid as annual interest on the State Public Debt in 2004, and this may reach Rs 200 billion shortly. Economic development of the State has precious little to do with private businessmen making small cars or motorcycles or putting up buildings for information technology institutes, as Mr Bhattacharjee and his Government have deluded themselves into believing.
CPI-M 2003 statement
Besides its lack of democratic mandate, what surprises most about the modern CPI-M is its sheer hypocrisy. This is a party whose “Central Committee” in June 2003 in Kolkata condemned “non-Left State Governments” for allegedly “giving away thousands of hectares of land either on sale or on lease at throw-away prices to multinational companies and domestic monopolists”, and the Union Government for allegedly issuing “a circular calling for forcible eviction of lakhs of adivasis from the land”. The Basu-Bhattacharjee CPI-M is now clearly hoist with its own petard. Tilak said that what Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow. It was not for nothing that he said it. If the CPI-M refers the land-acquisition question to the people in a free and fair election or referendum today, it will set a positive precedent for other States and parties in the country. If instead it pushes forward its current diabolical plans, the example it will have set will be one of initiating a class war in reverse, where the poor shall become poorer and the rich richer. India’s poorest consist of those rural inhabitants without land, and Government would have deliberately contributed to their numbers swelling.
(Author’s Note March 2007: The original article in its first paragraph referred mistakenly to Promode Dasgupta when Sailen Dasgupta had been meant, an error corrected in the next day’s paper.)
Land, Liberty & Value
December 31, 2006 — drsubrotoroyLAND, LIBERTY & VALUE
Government must act in good faith treating all citizens equally ~ not favouring organised business lobbies and organised labour over an unorganised peasantry
By SUBROTO ROY
First published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Special Article, December 31 2006
EVERY farmer knows that two adjacent plots of land which look identical to the outsider may be very different in character, as different as two siblings of the same family. Adjacent plots may differ in access to groundwater and sunlight, in minerals and salts, in soil, fertilisers, parasites, weeds or a dozen other agronomic factors. Most of all, they will differ in the quality and ingenuity of thought and labour that has gone into their care and cultivation over the years, perhaps over generations.
John Locke said: “Whatsoever that (a man) removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property… For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no one but he can have a right to what that once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others” (Second Treatise of Government). Plots of land are as specific as the families that have “mixed” their labour with them. Locke wrote of labour being something “unquestionably” the labourer’s own property; in the same libertarian vein, Robert Nozick opened Anarchy, State and Utopia saying “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)”.
But as we recognise the universal sanctity of the individual person and his/her private property, we have to start qualifying it. If you purchase a field, forest or estate through which runs a pathway traditionally used by the public to get from one side to the other then even as the new owner you may not have a right to forbid the public’s use of the pathway. By extension, it is clear the State, the community of which you are a citizen, may approach you and demand there should be and will be a public road or thoroughfare through your property in the common interest. Such is the sovereign’s right of “eminent domain” recognised throughout the world, not only in times of war or natural disaster but also in normal times where private property may be taken for public use. The individual’s right to free use of his/her property is circumscribed as a result.
What may be certainly expected though in all matters is that the State will act in good faith, i.e., that it has conducted proper technical surveys and cost-benefit analyses as well as transparent public hearings, and has honestly decided that the road must be constructed using this route and no other. The doctrine of eminent domain implies that while the right to private property may be basic, it is not absolute, as indeed no right is, not even the right to one’s own life. In India, one key difference between the landmark Golaknath (AIR 1967 SC 1643) and Kesavananda Bharati (AIR 1973 SC 1461) rulings had to do precisely with the former recognising the right to property being fundamental as in our original 1950 Constitution, while the latter consented to the Indira Parliament’s denial of this.
When private property is taken, fair compensation must be paid. For example, the American Constitution says “no private property may be taken for public use without just compensation”. What is just compensation? Typically it would be the “fair market value” — but that must be properly adjudged accounting for the best future use of the land, not merely the historical or traditional past use of the land.
Consider, in a mature urban real-estate market, a plot made vacant because a warehouse located on it has accidentally burned down. What is the value of the plot now? Another warehouse could be built, but other bids could come in too for construction of offices or residential flats or a multi-storey garage. The plot’s value would differ depending on which use it is ultimately put to. And this value would be ascertained by calculating the expected cash flows into the future from each of these possibilities, discounted appropriately to account for the fact the future is less valuable than the present, with the highest value alternative being chosen. That is how a mature private real-estate market works in theory, though in practice there would be zoning and environmental restrictions to account for the traditional nature of the neighbourhood as well as possible pollution by effluent waste etc.
In India, Government departments and ministries have inherited prime urban real estate from British times. Amidst the highest value real estate in Kolkata, Bangalore, Delhi etc. will be found a military camp or flats built for military personnel, having nothing whatsoever to do with furtherance of the nation’s defences today. The appalling state of government accounting and audit of our public property and institutions includes the fact that neither the Union nor State Governments and municipalities have the faintest idea of assets, including real estate, that they own. These public assets are frequently open to abuse by managerially uncontrolled government employees.
Fallacies even more curious seem to be currently at work in Indian policy-making, whether by this or that political party. The “eminent domain” doctrine requires a public purpose to exist for acquisition of private property by the State: e.g. construction of a road, bridge, dam, airport or some other traditional public good which is going to be used by the public. In India as elsewhere, “land reform” did involve taking an absentee landlord A’s land and distributing it to B, C, D and E who worked as peasants on it. But nowhere else outside formerly communist China has land been forcibly taken from peasants B, C, D and E and handed over to this or that private capitalist in name of economic development (in a reverse class war)!
Eminent domain doctrine requires good faith on part of the State with respect to its citizens and that implies treating all citizens’ interests equally – not e.g. favouring an organised business lobby or organised industrial labour over the unorganised peasantry uneducated in the wiles of city people.
Also, there is no reason why Government should be interested in a particular product-mix emerging out of a given private factory (such as the so-called inflation-unadjusted “Rs one lakh car” instead of telecom equipment or garments or textiles). Dr Manmohan Singh’s statement last week that he wishes to see “employment-intensive” industries merely added to Government confusion: from Henry Ford to Japanese “lean business” today, everyone knows the direction of change of technology in the automobile industry has been towards robotics, making modern manufacturing less and less manpower-intensive! The Tatas themselves underwent a major downsizing and restructuring in the last decade, hiving off industries not considered part of their “core competence”.
Traditional agriculture of Singur’s sort represents the most labour-intensive employment-generating kind of rural economy. While such rural life may appear unsatisfying to the urban outsider, there is, as Tolstoy, Rabindranath, Gandhi and others knew, subtle happiness, contentment and tranquility there absent in alienated industrial sprawls. “Surplus” labour occurs in agriculture because of technological improvements in quality and delivery of agricultural inputs as well as new education and awareness (Theodore W. Schultz,Transforming Traditional Agriculture). It is mostly seasonal and all hands are used during the harvest when even urban migrants flock back to help. Industry did not leave Bengal in the 1960s and 1970s because of Mamata Banerjee but because of urban unrest, the culture of gheraos and lockouts, and bad regulations of the labour and capital markets associated largely with Ms Banerjee’s Left Front adversaries.
The basic fiction the Union and State Governments have made themselves believe is that their idea of an industrialisation plan is necessary for economic development. It is not. Real economic problems in West Bengal and elsewhere are financial to do with State budgets. “Debt overhang is there” is how the RBI Governor apologetically put it last week. Interest payments on the West Bengal State public debt consume larger and larger fractions of the revenue: these payments were at Rs 13 Bn in 1995 but grew to Rs. 92 Bn by 2004, and may jump to Rs 200 Bn in the next decade. The communists have been in power thirty years and no one but they are responsible. Making the State’s budget healthy would require tackling the gargantuan bureaucracy, slashing ministerial extravagance (foreign trips, VIP security) etc. It is much easier to hobnob with the rich and powerful while tear-gassing the peasants.
What To Tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions
December 15, 2006 — drsubrotoroyWhat to tell Musharraf:
Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions
First published in The Statesman December 15, 2006,
Editorial Page Special Article
by
SUBROTO ROY
In June 1989 a project at an American university involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, and General Musharraf’s current proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department last week, derives from the last paragraph of its editorial introduction: “Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.”
The editors as economists decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had “greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.”
International law
Such words may have been bold in the early 1990s but today, a decade and a half later, they seem incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the contemporary Pakistani state.
Jammu & Kashmir became an entity in international law when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh and the British on March 16 1846. British India itself became an entity in international law much later, possibly as late as June 1919 when it signed the Treaty of Versailles. As for Pakistan, it had no existence in world history or international law until August 14 1947, when the British created it as a new entity out of certain demarcated areas of British India and gave it the status of a Dominion. British India dissolved itself on August 15 1947 and the Dominion of India became its successor-state in international law on that date. As BR Ambedkar pointed out at the time, the new India automatically inherited British India’s suzerainty over any and all remaining “princely” states of so-called “Indian India”. In case of J&K in particular, there never was any question of it being recognised as an independent entity in global international law.
The new Pakistan, by entering a Standstill Agreement with J&K as of August 15 1947, did locally recognise J&K’s sovereignty over its decision whether to join Pakistan or India. But this Pakistani recognition lasted only until the attack on J&K that commenced from Pakistani territory as of October 22 1947, an attack in which Pakistani forces were complicit (something which, in different and mutating senses, has continued ever since). The Dominion of India had indicated it might have consented if J&K’s Ruler had decided to accede to Pakistan in the weeks following the dissolution of British India. But no such thing happened: what did happen was the descent of J&K into a condition of legal anarchy.
Beginning with the Pakistani attack on J&K as of October 22 upto and including the Rape of Baramulla and the British-led Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on one side, and the arrival of Indian forces as well as mobilization by Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad of J&K’s civilians to repel the Pakistani invaders on the other side, the State of Jammu & Kashmir became an ownerless entity in international law. In Roman Law, from which all modern international and municipal law ultimately derives, the ownership of an ownerless entity is open to be determined by “military decision”. The January 1949 Ceasefire Line that came to be renamed the Line of Control after the 1971 Bangladesh War, demarcates the respective territories that the then-Dominions and later Republics of India and Pakistan acquired by “military decision” of the erstwhile State of J&K which had come to cease to exist.
What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. It is only sheer ignorance on the part of General Musharraf’s Indian interviewer the other day which caused it to be said that Pakistan was willing to “give up” its claim on erstwhile J&K State territory which India has held: Pakistan has never had nor even made such a claim in international law. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area.
Accordingly, the lawful solution proposed in these pages a year ago to resolve that matter, serious as it is, has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under Article 370, citizen-by- citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self- appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.
Military de-escalation
Equally significant though in assessing whether General Musharraf’s proposal is an anachronism, is Pakistan’s history since 1947: through Ayub’s 1965 attack, the civil war and secession of Bangladesh, the Afghan war and growth of the ISI, the Kargil incursion, the 1999 coup détat, and, once or twice removed, the 9/11 attacks against America. It is not a history that allows any confidence to arise in Indians that we are not dealing with a country misgoverned by a tiny arrogant exploitative military elite who remain hell-bent on aggression against us. Like the USA and USSR twenty years ago, what we need to negotiate about, and negotiate hard about, is an overall mutual military drawdown and de-escalation appropriate to lack of aggressive intent on both sides. Is General Musharraf willing to discuss that? It would involve reciprocal verifiable assessment of one another’s reasonable military requirements on the assumption that each was not a threatening enemy of the other. That was how the USA-USSR drawdown and de-escalation occurred successfully. If General Musharraf is unwilling to enter such a discussion, there is hardly anything to talk about with him. We should wait for democracy to return.
Milton Friedman: A Man of Reason, 1912-2006
November 22, 2006 — drsubrotoroy
A Man of Reason
Milton Friedman (1912-2006)
First published in The Statesman, Perspective Page Nov 22 2006
Milton Friedman, who died on 16 November 2006 in San Francisco, was without a doubt the greatest economist after John Maynard Keynes. Before Keynes, great 20th century economists included Alfred Marshall and Knut Wicksell, while Keynes’s contemporaries included Irving Fisher, AC Pigou and many others. Keynes was followed by his younger critic FA Hayek, but Hayek is remembered less for his technical economics as for his criticism of “socialist economics” and contributions to politics. Milton Friedman more than anyone else was Keynes’s successor in economics (and in applied macroeconomics in particular), in the same way David Ricardo had been the successor of Adam Smith. Ricardo disagreed with Smith and Friedman disagreed with Keynes, but the impact of each on the direction and course both of economics and of the world in which they lived was similar in size and scope.
Friedman’s impact on the contemporary world may have been largest through his design and advocacy as early as 1953 of the system of floating exchange-rates. In the early 1970s, when the Bretton Woods system of adjustable fixed exchange-rates collapsed and Friedman’s friend and colleague George P. Shultz was US Treasury Secretary in the Nixon Administration, the international monetary system started to become of the kind Friedman had described two decades earlier. Equally large was Friedman’s worldwide impact in re-establishing concern about the frequent cause of macroeconomic inflation being money supply growth rates well above real income growth rates. All contemporary talk of “inflation targeting” among macroeconomic policy-makers since the 1980s has its roots in Friedman’s December 1967 presidential address to the American Economic Association. His main empirical disagreement with Keynes and the Keynesians lay in his belief that people held the intrinsically worthless tokens known as “money” largely in order to expedite their transactions and not as a store of value – hence the “demand for money” was a function mostly of income and not of interest rates, contrary to what Keynes had suggested in his 1930s analysis of “Depression Economics”. It is in this sense that Friedman restored the traditional “quantity theory” as being a specific theory of the demand for money.
Friedman’s main descriptive work lay in the monumental Monetary History of the United States he co-authored with Anna J. Schwartz, which suggested drastic contractions of the money supply had contributed to the Great Depression in America. Friedman made innumerable smaller contributions too, the most prominent and foresighted of which had to do with advocating larger parental choice in the public finance of their children’s school education via the use of “vouchers”. The modern Friedman Foundation has that as its main focus of philanthropy. The emphasis on greater individual choice in school education exemplified Friedman’s commitments both to individual freedom and the notion of investment in human capital.
Friedman had significant influences upon several non-Western countries too, most prominently India and China, besides a grossly misreported episode in Chile. As described in his autobiography with his wife Rose, Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998), Friedman spent six months in India in 1955 at the Government of India’s invitation during the formulation of the Second Five Year Plan. His work done for the Government of India came to be suppressed for the next 34 years. Peter Bauer had told me during my doctoral work at Cambridge in the late 1970s of the existence of a Friedman memorandum, and N. Georgescu-Roegen told me the same in America in 1980, adding that Friedman had been almost insulted publicly by VKRV Rao at the time after giving a lecture to students on his analysis of India’s problems.
When Friedman and I met in 1984, I asked him for the memorandum and he sent me two documents. The main one dated November 1955 I published in Hawaii on 21 May 1989 during a project on a proposed Indian “perestroika” (which contributed to the origins of the 1991 reform through Rajiv Gandhi), and was later published in Delhi in Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, edited by myself and WE James.
The other document on Mahalanobis is published in The Statesman today for the first time, though there has been an Internet copy floating around for a few years. The Friedmans’ autobiography quoted what I said in 1989 about the 1955 memorandum and may be repeated: “The aims of economic policy (in India) were to create conditions for rapid increase in levels of income and consumption for the mass of the people, and these aims were shared by everyone from PC Mahalanobis to Milton Friedman. The means recommended were different. Mahalanobis advocated a leading role for the state and an emphasis on the growth of physical capital. Friedman advocated a necessary but clearly limited role for the state, and placed on the agenda large-scale investment in the stock of human capital, encouragement of domestic competition, steady and predictable monetary growth, and a flexible exchange rate for the rupee as a convertible hard currency, which would have entailed also an open competitive position in the world economy… If such an alternative had been more thoroughly discussed at the time, the optimal role of the state in India today, as well as the optimum complementarity between human capital and physical capital, may have been more easily determined.”
A few months before attending my Hawaii conference on India, Friedman had been in China, and his memorandum to Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and two-hour dialogue of 19 September 1988 with him are now classics republished in the 1998 autobiography. Also republished there are all documents relating to Friedman’s six-day academic visit to Chile in March 1975 and his correspondence with General Pinochet, which speak for themselves and make clear Friedman had nothing to do with that regime other than offer his opinion when asked about how to reduce Chile’s hyperinflation at the time.
My association with Milton has been the zenith of my engagement with academic economics, with e-mails exchanged as recently as September. I was a doctoral student of his bitter enemy yet for over two decades he not only treated me with unfailing courtesy and affection, he supported me in lonely righteous battles: doing for me what he said he had never done before, which was to stand as an expert witness in a United States Federal Court. I will miss him much though I know that he, as a man of reason, would not have wished me to.
Subroto Roy
New Foreign Policy? (8-9 Oct 2006)
October 9, 2006 — drsubrotoroyNEW FOREIGN POLICY? “Kiss Up, Kick Down”?
Seven phases of Indian foreign policy may be identifiable since Nehru; the current phase seems to involve subservience to the strong, jingoism otherwise
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman 8 Oct 2006, The Statesman 9 Oct 2006 Editorial Page Special Article
The outlines of a new tri-partisan Indian foreign policy may be becoming discernible. That it is “new” or that it commands near unanimity among the Congress, BJP and “Left” and their respective friends in the Indian media and political classes, does not make it sound or robust in any way. In fact, its basis in the history, geography and economics of India is wholly inadequate, and it is also entirely divorced from any clearly enunciated new Indian political ethics for the modern world.
The new policy, which may be fairly dubbed the Jaswant-Manmohan policy after the BJP and Congress politicians who have been its putative authors and leading practitioners, is as likely as not to lead to an India that is no longer a free decision-maker in any meaningful way in world affairs by 2047, one hundred years after Independence. Our great grandchildren may well be taught that for some decades in Indian history a sovereign unitary republic actually existed which then came to be effectively lost.
Indeed the new policy may amount to being less a coherent new doctrine of India’s role in international relations than a mere change in attitude on the part of politicians, bureaucrats and their intelligentsia friends: from seeming universally arrogant in the world to becoming pliant and subservient towards those world powers perceived (accurately or inaccurately) as strong, combined with a vainglorious jingoism towards all others. It is an application to international diplomacy and politics of the classic bureaucratic principle of “kiss up, kick down” in an organisation, and may reflect the fact the two main institutions the Mughals and British used to run their empires were the bureaucracy and military ~ both of which have grown and continued to run New Delhi (and Islamabad) afterwards, co-opting whatever domestic political development that has arisen. There is plenty of wishful waffling too about India becoming a “great power” or being a “swing state in the global balance of power”, and about how well the economy is supposedly doing ~ as if what Government spokesmen say about the economy is to be believed at face-value. Indian Leftists and their fellow-travellers ~ as great lovers themselves of bureaucracy, collectivist groupthink and propaganda on the USSR or PRC pattern, and fearful or envious of all individual criticism, creativity and achievement – have taken to the same principle like fish to water.
The first phase of Indian foreign policy was Nehruvian in that it began with Nehru’s Fabian misperception of Stalin’s USSR, and ended with the military debacle he led the country into at the hands of Zhou’s “human wave” armies in the mountains of Ladakh and NEFA.
A second phase was Kashmir-centric, overlapping with the first insofar as it may be traced to Karan Singh’s iniquitous dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah’s first Government, but really beginning after Nehru’s death with the Ayub-Abdullah summit, and being marked by Ayub’s 1965 attack in J&K ~ Shastri’s riposte reaching the Ichogil Canal signalled that no longer would war over J&K be confined to J&K.
A third phase was forced on India by the Pakistani civil war that led to Bangladesh’s creation, and was marked by the Indira/ Haksar alliance with Brezhnev’s USSR, as well as by Pokhran-I.
A fourth phase of Indian foreign policy may be identified in the late 1970s and 1980s, marked by rebellion of the fundamentalist Sikhs whom Indira and Sanjay Gandhi had provoked, which led in due course to her assassination. The turmoil that followed in Punjab and North India was financed by anti-Indian Sikhs from Vancouver,California and Britain, with gleeful help from the Pakistanis, and Indian diplomats had their hands full in trying to counter that phenomenon. It was during this phase of domestic Indian turmoil that New Delhi wholly missed the seismic changes occurring in the USSR, East Europe and international relations generally, and completely failed to predict its consequences for India.
The phase came to end when the Narasimha Rao Government (upon advice of a well-known communist cabal in the IFS and JNU) instantly showered praise on the anti-Yeltsin coup in August 1991. When Yeltsin returned to power, the new anti-communist Russians took their revenge on New Delhi, exacting hard dollars for the soft rouble-trade of friendlier times.
A fifth phase may be seen in retrospect as one of relative success.The main plank of Indian foreign policy in the late 1980s and early 1990s was to get Pakistan designated a “terrorist state” in American eyes, as well as to warn of the dangers of a Pakistani nuclear bomb. It had been prompted by the end of American involvement in the Afghan war, which caused the ISI to shift the jihadis to J&K, and the Indian policy was destined not to succeed. No matter how hard Kanwal Sibal tried in 1992-1993 as Minister-Political in the Washington Embassy to tell the Americans that their Pakistani friends were dangerous, he was destined to fail as the MEA had entirely failed to realise how far ahead the Pakistanis were in their lobbying power in Washington ~ the Pakistani super-elite has been entrenched among the K-Street lobbyists and in expensive real-estate along the Potomac River for more than two generations. Yet after the 9/11 attacks several years later, the Indians were able to look back at that fifth phase and say to the Americans, “We told you so”.
In the late 1990s came a short-lived sixth phase of Pokhran-II and the Lahore bus-trip, which may be credited as Vajpayee successes, and also contained the Kargil War and Kandahar hijacking, which were more dubious. This overlapped with the last and currently continuing seventh phase of Indian foreign policy with Jaswant Singh breaking the ice with the Americans when they had recovered from the fact the CIA’s failures included not foreseeing Pokhran-II; it coincided too with Osama bin Laden’s declarations of jihad against the USA. The Americans enlisting themselves on the side of the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban after 9/11 was beneficial from an Indian standpoint since Afghanistan had been effectively lost to secular Indian influence for two decades, and the Taliban had shown themselves no friends of India during the Kandahar hijacking.
But the BJP’s anti-Muslim thought processes quickly took over, as did its proximity to organised business lobbies. When Iraq was attacked and occupied in 2003, there was hardly a whimper from the BJP leadership, and instead their businessmen friends started to fly to Amman hopeful of “reconstruction” contracts. The Sonia/ Manmohan Congress/Leftist combine has effectively continued and expanded that trend, though now the business lobbies have been much more muted and subtle, especially in their backroom dealings and payoffs with respect to the nuclear deal. There is also an occasional burst of anti-Americanism from leftists though it is hard of course to beg for American foreign investment in Marxist-run areas while also being sincere in quaint street demos or agitprop.
Running through the new foreign policy is a fiction that it is driven by a new economic motivation to improve development and mass well-being in India. The bizarre idea of creating hundreds of so-called “Special Economic Zones” (reminiscent of 17th and 18th Century colonial fortifications) illustrates this. India’s ordinary anonymous masses ~ certainly the 850 million people entirely outside the organised sector ~ have little or nothing to do with any of this. Benefits will accrue only to the ten million Indian nomenclatura controlling or having access to the gaping exit holes to the outside world in the new semi-closed economy with its endless deficit finance paid for by unlimited printing of an inconvertible domestic currency.
It is as fallacious to think private investment from foreign or domestic businessmen will support public “infrastructure” creation as it is to think foreign exchange reserves are like tax revenues in being available for Government expenditure on “infrastructure”. Such fallacies are intellectual products of either those who know no economics at all or those who have forgotten whatever little they might have been once mistaught in their youth. What serious economics does say is that Government should generally have nothing to do with any kind of private business, and instead should focus on properly providing public goods and services, encourage competition in all avenues of economic activity and prevent or regulate monopoly, and see to it all firms pay taxes they are due to pay.
That is it. It is as bad for Government to be pampering organised foreign or domestic business or organised labour with innumerable subsidies, as has been happening in India for decades, as it is to make enterprise difficult with red tape and hurdles. Businessmen are grown ups and should be allowed to freely risk their capital and make their profits or their losses without public intervention.
An economics-based policy would have single-mindedly sought to improve the financial condition of every governmental entity in the country, with the aim of improving the provision of public goods and services to all 1,000 million Indians. If and when budgets of all governmental entities become sound, foreign creditors would automatically line up before them with loans to sell, and ambitious development goals can be accomplished. As long as public budgets (and public accounts) remain in an outrageous shambles, nothing can be in fact achieved and only propaganda, corruption and paper-money creation results instead. Whatever economic growth does occur is due to new enterprise and normal technological progress, and is mostly despite and not because of New Delhi’s bureaucrats (see “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman 6-8 January 2006).
The first aspect of the new Indian foreign policy has been for Government to become wholly ingratiating towards any and all “First World” members visiting India who may deign to consider any kind of collaboration whatsoever. The long line of foreign businessmen and heads of government having photo-ops with the Indian PM began with Vajpayee and has continued with Manmohan, especially when there is a large weapons’ or commercial aircraft or other purchase to be signed. The flip-side has been ministerial and especially Prime Ministerial trips abroad ~ from Vajpayee’s to a Singapore golf-cart immediately after commiserating Gujarat, to Manmohan receiving foreign honorary doctorates while still holding public office.
Subservience to foreign business interests in the name of economic policy extends very easily to Indian naval, military or diplomatic assets being used to provide policing or support services for the great powers as and when they may ask for it. Hence, Indian naval forces may be asked by the Americans to help fight pirates in the Indian Ocean, or escort this vessel or that, or India may be asked to provide refuelling or base facilities, or India may be requested to vote against Iran, Venezuela or whomever here or there. But there would be absolutely no question of India’s role in international politics being anything greater than that of a subaltern or comprador whose response must be an instant “Ji, Huzoor”. The official backing of the Tharoor candidacy was as futile and ridiculous as the quest for UN veto-power or the willingness to attend G-8 summits as an observer.
While subservience towards the First World’s business and military interests is the “kiss up” aspect of the new foreign policy, an aggressive jingoism towards others is the “kick down” aspect. One influential voice among the media friends of the new foreign policy states it as follows: “The search for `equity oil’ has been the single most important new element of Indian economic diplomacy in recent years… Equity oil raises India’s stakes in the stability of regimes or even individuals who preside over these resources… the big question is how far would India go in defence of `regime stability’ elsewhere? And if it’s assets fall into hostile hands, would India be prepared to consider promoting `regime change’?” Just as surely as a pacifist Fabian socialist Nehru misperceived Stalin’s USSR, New Delhi’s new capitalistic jingoists have misperceived the Cheney-Rumsfeld grab for “equity oil” and have even defined Bush-Blair adventurism as being “the side of the angels”. How they must love to want to project Indian military force ~ paratroopers in the Maldives perhaps, though they need to recall what happened with the LTTE too!
Multiple Jallianwalla Bagh massacres may have been occurring in front of us in Iraq, Afghanistan and Balochistan, and there may soon be an attack on Iran too. New Delhi’s new “kiss up, kick down” attitude has rendered India’s once-dignified and sober voice silent, our eyes closed or our face turned away.
The obvious alternative to bureaucratic “kiss up, kick down” would be “kick up, kiss down” loved by all individualists and anti-bureaucrats. In other words, it would be for India to take each case and circumstance in international politics on its merits; be seen to stand up seriously to the powerful in world politics wherever and whenever necessary; seek to protect those who may be vulnerable to international or other brutality in world affairs, while getting on properly with the mundane business of ordinary government and commerce at all other times. That mundane business may call for a gradual withdrawal of India from all or most of the fancy, corrupt international bureaucracies in New York, Washington, Geneva etc, focussing calmly but determinedly instead on improved administration and governance at home. Such was what Rajiv Gandhi was advised in January 1991 (see “Memos to Rajiv,” The Statesman 31 July-2 August 1991; Freedom First October 2001), when for one futile moment he even formed a peaceful bridge between the Americans and Saddam during the first Gulf War. The New Delhi establishment may be too intoxicated with power and insecure intellectually to be able to reflect on such sober alternatives.
India’s Energy Interests
August 28, 2006 — drsubrotoroyOUR ENERGY INTERESTS
Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman, August 27 2006, The Statesman August 28 2006, Editorial Page Special Article
Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters, and expect the same of people they do business with. Caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware”, is the motto they expect those on the other side of the table to be using. Let us not think they are doing us favours in the nuclear deal ~ they are grown-ups looking after their interests and naturally expect we shall look after our own and not expect charity while doing business. Equally, let us not blame the Americans if we find in later years (long after Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have exited from India’s stage) that the deal has been implemented in a bad way for our masses of ordinary people.
That said, there is a remarkable disjoint between India’s national energy interests (nuclear interests in particular), and the manner in which the nuclear deal is being perceived and taken to implementation by the two sides. There may be a fundamental gap between the genuine positive benefits the Government of India says the deal contains, and the motivations American businessmen and through them Indian businessmen have had for lobbying American and Indian politicians to support it. An atmosphere of being at cross-purposes has been created, where for example Manmohan Singh is giving answers to questions different from the questions we may want to be asking Montek Ahluwalia. The fundamental gap between what is being said by our Government and what may be intended by the businessmen is something anyone can grasp, though first we shall need some elementary facts.
In 2004, the International Energy Agency estimated the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will be unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants, which will be in any case replacing existing plants due to be retired. Rational choice between different energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. Out of some 441 civilian reactors worldwide, France has 59 and these generate 78 per cent of its electricity, the rest coming from hydro. Japan has 54 reactors, generating 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20 per cent of its electricity from them, given its vast alternative sources of power like hydro. In India as of 2003, installed power generating capacity was 107,533.3MW, of which 71 per cent came from burning fuels. Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential is hydroelectric, which does not involve burning fuels ~ gravity moves water from the mountains to the oceans, and this force is harnessed for generation. Our hydro potential, mostly in the North and North-East, is some 150,000MW but our total installed hydro capacity with utilities was only 26,910MW (about 18 per cent of potential). Our 14 civilian nuclear reactors produced merely 4 per cent or less of the electricity being consumed in the country. Those 14 plants will come under “international safeguards” by 2014 under the nuclear deal.
It is extremely likely the international restrictions our existing nuclear plants have been under since the 1970s have hindered if not crippled their functioning and efficiency. At the same time, the restrictions may have caused us to be innovative too. Nuclear power arises from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has some 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. Almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium of which there are practically unlimited reserves. Fission of a uranium atom produces 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but potential for cheap nuclear energy seems practically infinite. The uranium in seawater can satisfy mankind’s total electricity needs for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium extractable from conventional ores. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal that may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation. Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.
The plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing the international restrictions will ~ through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc ~ improve functioning of our 14 existing civilian plants. That is a good thing. Essentially, the price being paid for that improvement is our willingness to commit that those 14 plants will not be used for military purposes. Fair enough: even if we might become less innovative as a result, the overall efficiency gains as a result of the deal will add something to India’s productivity. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.
It is a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis from American or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”. (Lalu Yadav has requested a new reactor for Bihar, plus of course Delhi will want one, etc.) The central question over such massive foreign purchases would no longer be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100 per cent under the Manmohan-Montek deal-making, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.
This is where the oddities arise and a disjoint becomes apparent between what the Government of India is saying and what American and Indian businessmen have been doing. A “US-India Business Council” has existed for thirty years in Washington as “the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India”. Before the nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the USIBC insisted we pay up for Dabhol contracted by a previous Congress Government. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board ~ or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India ~ duly paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in “an amicable settlement” of the Dabhol affair. Afterwards, General Electric’s CEO for India was kind enough to say “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.
Also, a new “US-India CEO Forum” then came about. For two Governments to sponsor private business via such a Forum was “unprecedented”, as noted by Washington’s press during Manmohan Singh’s visit in July 2005. America’s foreign ministry announced it saying: “Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…” The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries. Presiding over the Indian side has been Montek Ahluwalia, Manmohan’s trusted aide ~ and let it be remembered too that the Ahluwalias were Manmohan’s strongest backers in his failed South Delhi Lok Sabha bid. (Indeed it is not clear if the Ahluwalias have been US or Indian residents in recent years, and if it is the former, the onus is on them to clear any perception of conflict of interest arising in regard to roles regarding the nuclear deal or any other official Indo-US business.)
Also, before the Manmohan visit, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After the Manmohan visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion (1 bn =100 crore) opportunity in India. Before President Bush’s visit to India in March 2006, Manmohan Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons’ deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. What is going on?
Finally, the main aspect of Manmohan Singh’s address to America’s legislature had to do with agreeing with President Bush “to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology”. What precisely does this mean? If it means the Indo-US nuclear deal will help India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. There may be legitimate business for American and other foreign companies in that cause, which also helps India make the efficiency and productivity gains mentioned. Or has the real motivation for the American businessmen driving the deal (with the help of the “CEO Forum” etc) been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis (in collaboration with private Indian businessmen) at a time when building new nuclear reactors is unprofitable elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices? India’s citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the Manmohan-Montek deal-making is going to cause importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered (relative to e.g. India’s abundant hydroelectric potential) when it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs and lead merely to a worsening of our macroeconomic problems. Both Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have been already among those to preside over the growth of India’s macroeconomic problems through the 1980s and 1990s.
Lastly, an irrelevant distraction should be gotten out of the way. Are we a “nuclear weapons” state? Of course we are, but does it matter to anything but our vanity? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had control over vastly more nuclear weapons and they declared together twenty years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought”, which is how the Cold War started to come to an end. We need to remind ourselves that India and Pakistan are large, populous countries with hundreds of millions of materially poor, ill-informed citizens, weak tax-bases, humongous internal and external public debts (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), non-investment grade credit- ratings in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, inconvertible currencies, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. Discussing nuclear or other weapon-systems to attack one other with is mostly a pastime of our cowardly, irresponsible and yes, corrupt, elites.
India’s Moon Mission (2006)
August 13, 2006 — drsubrotoroy(Author’s Note October 22 2008: Please see also “Complete History of Mankind’s Moon Missions: An Indian Citizen’s Letter to the ISRO Chairman” published elsewhere here today.)
INDIA’S MOON MISSION
Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, August 13, 2006.
If India’s Moon project planned for September 2007 is successful, it will be something for everyone to cheer loudly about. The Moon is Earth’s single important natural satellite, and as planetary moons go, it is unusually large in size compared to Earth. Our five-stage PSLV rocket is planned to place a scientific satellite around it. In token political gestures, NASA and the Europeans may provide scientific payloads too.
The central question is whether the Indian satellite now being built will ever succeed in reaching lunar orbit ~ an immensely complex task which deserves to be urgently reconsidered. It is of the highest national importance to try to ensure beforehand that our mission succeeds if it is going to be tried at all.
Yet neither our much-vaunted scientific establishment nor our political decision-makers have any sense of urgency about it. Let it be clearly said it will be simply not good enough this time for the Government of India’s scientists, bureaucrats and politicians to shrug off failures as they have been prone to do by saying, “Oh, we’ll do better next time”. Wasteful expenditure of public resources (paid for by endless deficit finance in an inconvertible currency) is common across all government departments, but in this most dramatic of missions, the hopes and aspirations of one thousand million Indians, and especially hundreds of millions of wide-eyed children, will become focussed on the launch. It will be a severe blow to national prestige, morale and self-confidence, as well as a display of scientific and technological incompetence, if there is failure at any stage of this difficult enterprise.
Indeed, it would be better to do the job in discrete and successful stages or not do it at all than to fail at it most spectacularly.
All Indians need to and can come to know what is involved. A trip to the Moon requires a spacecraft reach an “escape” velocity of some 40,000 km per hour. At a distance of some 324,000 km, the spacecraft escapes Earth’s gravity and comes to a “standstill” or “neutral” point, a fictional station on the Earth-Moon axis, still some 32,000 km (or about 19 Moon radii) from the Moon. The Moon’s gravity then gradually takes over, drawing the spacecraft faster and faster towards the Moon, to either land on its surface or go into orbit around it ~ though to avoid a fatal impact crashing into the Moon, the spacecraft may require retrorockets to slow itself down.
The numerous sources of possible failure include (a) launch-failure causing the spacecraft to never reach let aside exit from terrestrial space onto a path to the Moon, all through belts of intense heat and radiation; (b) trajectory-failure causing the spacecraft to move wrongly through cislunar and translunar space, miss the Moon and go into solar orbit like everything else; (c) failing to enter lunar orbit, crashing into the Moon instead; (d) failing to transmit intended data. Only if all these and more are avoided, can our Moon mission as presently defined be considered successful.
India’s mission will be mankind’s 85th to the Moon on record. There is a vast amount of knowledge already gained in other countries, almost all of which is publicly available. The era of international competitions in space-research and exploration started between Russia and America half a century ago and it ended after the Cold War. Since the 1980s, the two space superpowers changed emphasis away from the Moon, towards creating re-usable vehicles like the Shuttle and permanent space-stations, unmanned probes to Earth’s planetary neighbours, as well as major space-telescopes which now provide unprecedented visions of the galaxy we inhabit. Now there has been new interest in the Moon again, and there have been successful American, European and Japanese missions recently. Even if our Moon mission succeeds, we will be placed technologically at a point still 40 years behind the world’s leaders in space exploration, and it would be self-delusion to think we lead in space research in any way whatsoever.
Indeed such a realisation is cause for sober reflection and critical questions. Late-starting space missions like the Europeans and Japanese, have all intelligently absorbed the lessons from the Russian and American projects. Has India done so?
Have our space scientists absorbed into their work for the Moon mission next year all the existing lessons available? Are there people at ISRO wholly conversant with what went wrong with every case of launch-failure, trajectory-failure, instrumentation-failure etc causing spacecraft to fail to reach or leave Earth orbit, or to miss the Moon, or fail to communicate etc? If so, have all those lessons been absorbed into our mission’s planning? If not, why not? Can we be assured now that we are not headed to be making the same mistakes as have been already made by others? It is not the cause of nationalism but the cause of unwisdom which shall be served if we repeat the known mistakes of others.
We are fond of saying our space programme is low in costs, and indeed it is when compared internationally. But there are always domestic opportunity costs, and there may be much better and more cost-effective ways of creating a scientifically-minded population in India. E.g., all of astrology assumes a geocentric Ptolomaic solar system — a fierce Government-led all-India campaign against astrology, and promotion instead of the heliocentric Copernican solar system, may do much more for the cause of rationality and basic scientific education in the country today than a failed Moon mission. After all, we still have purported physicists and directors of national technological institutes who are astrology-believers!
The Government of India’s scientists, bureaucrats and politicians must become wholly candid and transparent with the public whose resources they are spending about the exact significance of our Moon project, the risks of failure, and how these are being addressed. So far that has not been done. Little more than a year away from the launch, all we seem to have in the public domain are pious hopes being expressed and a wish-list of what scientific results might be like once the spacecraft is in lunar orbit. The real question is whether our satellite will succeed in reaching lunar orbit at all.
Indeed the present aim may be far too ambitious for 2007, and may need to be broken down into several stages. E.g. improving rocketry first to aim at a “parking orbit” around Earth permitting ground control to better calculate trajectories to the Moon, then to flyby the Moon, then to attempt to go into lunar orbit.
It may be wise to postpone carrying scientific payloads until much more experience has been successfully gained in rocketry through terrestrial, cislunar, translunar and lunar space. We should also bear in mind we have not been major manufacturers of engines, aircraft bodies, computers or communications and imaging equipment ~ all of which are vital to this enterprise.
Furthermore, let all the equations involved in the rocketry, and even whether Newtonian or Einsteinian frames of reference are being used, be released into the public domain for scrutiny by everyone in the country and the world. If someone says this will benefit the Pakistanis, the intelligent political response would be to invite the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Malaysians, Singaporeans Indonesians and our other neighbours to join our mission. Science is universal, and belongs to all mankind. All mundane disputes appear petty when seen from selenocentric space ~ which is the one good reason to want to try to reach it.
Understanding Pakistan
July 31, 2006 — drsubrotoroyUNDERSTANDING PAKISTAN
First published in The Sunday Statesman & The Statesman Editorial Page Special Article
30-31 July, 2006
by
Subroto Roy
Pakistan’s political institutions have failed to develop properly over sixty years. Yet in the last ten years or more, its Government has acquired weapons of mass destruction and in 1998-99 its Foreign Minister half-threatened to use these against India in a first strike. As a religious and cultural phenomenon and as a putative nation-state, Pakistan needs to be sought to be understood in as unbiased and objective a manner as possible, not least by Pakistanis themselves, as well as by Afghans, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Americans,Israelis, Arabs, Iranians etc. besides ourselves in India.
The slogan “Islam in danger” has always had some substance since orthodox Muslims constantly face temptations in the world existing around them from materialism, scepticism, syncretism, pantheism etc. Some responded defensively to the Westernisation/modernisation of India’s Hindus, Parsees and Christians by becoming insular and separatist in outlook, and anti-individualist or communal in behaviour.
“We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride,” declared Wali Allah (1703-1762), a contemporary of Nejd’s founder of Wahhabism. “We must repudiate all those Indian, Persian and Roman customs which are contrary to the Prophet’s teaching”, declared Barelvi (1786-1831), who also initiated the idea of a religious mass migration of North Indian Muslims. His movement saw “jihad as one of the basic tenets of faith… it chose as the venue of jihad the NW Frontier of the subcontinent, where it was directed against the Sikhs. Barelvi temporarily succeeded in carving out a small theocratic principality which collapsed owing to the friction between his Pathan and North Indian followers…” (A. Ahmed, in Basham (ed) Cultural History of India).
Political and psychological tensions between Pakistan’s Pashtun/Baloch tribal people and Punjabi/ Urdu elite continue to this day, even when many of the former have integrated into industries and vocations controlled by the latter. The highlanders were never part of Hindu societies, while the plainsmen, whether they admit it or not, ethnically were converts for the most part from India’s native religions (though here again the religious syncretism of Sindhis, both Muslim and Hindu, may be contrasted with orthodoxy). Barelvi’s theocracy, named Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya, had remnants near Sittana until the First World War, and his followers are still a major component of Pakistan’s most orthodox today.
Muslim separatism in North India would have been futile without British political backing. As early as 1874, the British saw their advantage: “The existence side by side of these hostile creeds (Hindu and Muslim) is one of the strong points in our political position in India. The better classes of Mohammedans are a source of strength to us and not of weakness. They constitute a comparatively small but an energetic minority of the population whose political interests are identical with ours.” When the Agha Khan’s 1906 delegation first pleaded for communal representation, Minto agreed with them, and Minto’s wife wrote in her diary the effect was “nothing less than the pulling back of sixty two millions (of Muslims) from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition.” The slogan “If you are not with us you are against us” was always widely applied by the British in India in the form “If you dare to not be with us, we definitely will be with your adversaries”.
One obscure ideological current of today’s Pakistan came via the enigmatic personage of Inayatullah Mashriqi (1888-1963), who, from being a Cambridge Wrangler, became a friend of Adolf Hitler in 1926, received a Renault as a gift from Hitler (possibly housed in a Lahore museum today) and claimed to have affected Hitler’s ideology. Mashriqi created the Khaksars, modelled on the Nazi SA, and was often jailed for violence.
But the official ideology of today’s Pakistan came from Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. Indeed, “Pakistan” would have been better named “Iqbalistan” and its nationals “Iqbalians”, just as countries like Colombia, the USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia etc. have been named after an individual person. Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Speech to the Muslim League in Allahabad conceptualised the country that exists today: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state…the formation of a consolidated NW Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of NW India… India is the greatest Muslim country in the world. The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… “
Though Kashmiri himself, Iqbal was silent about J&K being any part of this new entity. Nor did he see this Muslim country being theocratic or filled with anti-Hindu bigotry: “A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities…. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and my behaviour; and which has formed me what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its culture,and thereby recreating its whole past, as a living operating factor, in my present consciousness… Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states…. I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.” Iqbal clearly wished to be rid of the same stamp of Arabian Imperialism that Wali Allah had extolled.
In 1937, Iqbal added an economic dimension referring to Shariat in order that “at least the right to subsistence is secured to everybody”. A “free Muslim state or states” was “the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India.”
Iqbal persuaded MA Jinnah (1876-1948), who had settled once again into his London law practice, to return to India in 1934. But when, following the 1935 Government of India Act, India experienced its first democratic elections in 1937, the Muslim League’s ideology promoted by Iqbal and Jinnah failed miserably in the very four provinces that Iqbal had named.
Three days after Hitler’s attack on Poland, the British chose to politically empower Jinnah. Until September 4 1939, the British “had had little time for Jinnah and his League. The Government’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, however, transformed the situation. A large part of the army was Muslim, much of the war effort was likely to rest on the two Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The following day, the Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on an equal footing with Gandhi…. because the British found it convenient to take the League seriously, everyone had to as well” (F. Robinson, in James & Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy). Jinnah himself was amazed: “suddenly there was a change in the attitude towards me. I was treated on the same basis as Mr Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why all of a sudden I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr Gandhi.”
Britain at war was faced too with intransigence from the Congress — Gandhi, for example, rudely dismissing the 1942 Cripps offer as a “post-dated cheque on a failing bank”. It was unsurprising this would contribute to the British tilt towards Congress’s adversary. Suddenly, Rahmat Ali’s acronym “PAKSTAN” , supposedly invented on the top floor of a London bus, was becoming a credible possibility.
By 1946, Muslim electoral opinion had changed drastically in the League’s favour. By 1947, Iqbal’s lofty philosophical vision of a cultured Muslim state had degenerated into irrational street mobs shouting: “Larke lenge Pakistan; Marke lenge Pakistan; Khun se lenge Pakistan; Dena hoga Pakistan”.
Events remote from India’s history and geography, namely, Hitler’s rise and the Second World War, had contributed between 1937 and 1947 to the change of fortune of Jinnah’s League, and hence the fate of all the people of the subcontinent. Even so, thanks to AK Azad’s diplomacy, the May 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan denying Partition and Pakistan did come to be accepted by Jinnah’s Muslim League, and it was doubtless the obduracy and megalomania of Azad’s Congress colleagues which contributed equally to the failure to find a political solution ~ along with the vapid behaviour of a pompous, vacuous Mountbatten who caused infinite uncertainty until June 3 1947, as to what was going to happen to the lives of scores of millions of ordinary people within a few weeks.
In August 1947, the new Pakistani elite hardly felt or even wished to feel free of the British ~ they merely felt independent of what they saw as Congress domination, and had now acquired some power for themselves. Far from any nation-building taking place, Pakistan’s early years were marked by political, legal, constitutional and military chaos and trauma. Both Dominions made a grab for the Raj’s common assets, especially the armed forces.
Indeed, how did the Kashmir problem originate? As much as any other factor, it occurred because of the incompetent partitioning of military assets and hurried decommissioning of British Indian armies ~ causing thousands of Mirpuri soldiers to return to a communally inflamed Punjab/ Jammu region.
The first J&K war started within weeks of Partition and was in all but name a civil war ~ somewhat like the American Civil War. It was a civil war not merely between Kashmir’s National and Muslim Conferences but also between Army regiments who had been jointly fighting Britain’s enemies until very recently.
Pakistan’s leadership vacuum started at once. Jinnah was ill and died shortly. Liaquat Ali Khan was the only politician of any experience left. He faced on one side Pashtuns having no wish to be dominated by a new Karachi/ Rawalpindi elite, and on the other side, the Kashmir conflict. The most basic functions of governance never got started. Taking a Census has been one such function since Roman times, yet Pakistan has never had one. Writing a Constitution is another, but Maududi and others demanded “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”. As a result, Pakistan’s few constitutionalists have been battling impossibly ever since to overcome the ontological mistake made of assuming that any earthly government, no matter how pious, can be in communication with God Almighty as easily as it can be with foreign governments.
The Rule of Law is another basic function. But when Liaquat was himself assassinated in 1951, his assassin was killed on the spot yet the murder remained unsolved. Mashriqi was immediately arrested because of his hostility to the Muslim League, but later released. Because the assassin was Pashtun, Afghanistan was blamed but the Afghan Government proved otherwise. The investigating policeman was killed in an aircrash, and all documents went with him. Final suspicion pointed towards Akbar Khan, the renegade Army general who had led the attack on J&K and was in jail for the Rawalpindi conspiracy. Years later, Liaquat’s widow (the former Irene Pant of Naini Tal) rued the fact no one was ever prosecuted.
After Liaquat’s assassination, the period of Ghulam Mohammad, Nazimuddin, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Chaudhury Mohammad Ali, and most importantly, Iskander Mirza leading up to Ayub Khan’s Martial Law in 1958, was simply appalling in its display of the sheer irresponsibility of Pakistan’s new super-elite. Instead of domestic nation-building or fulfilling the basic functions of governance, close comprador relations came to be established with the US and British Governments ~ exemplified by Mirza’s elder son taking the American Ambassador’s daughter as his (first) wife and moving to a lifelong career with the World Bank in Washington. This comprador relationship between Washington, London and Pakistan’s super-elite flourishes and continues to this day. E.g., the current World Bank head and architect of the 2003 Bush invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, remains in a mentoring relationship with Shaukat Aziz, a former American bank executive, who is General Musharraf’s Prime Minister. For better or worse, Pakistan’s Government will never veer from the side of Anglo-American policy while such comprador relationships remain intact.
Before the 1971 war, West Pakistan was in a frenzy from a propaganda campaign of “Crush India” and “Hang Mujib”. General Niazi’s surrender to General Arora in Dhaka Stadium ~ causing 90,000 PoWs whom India then protected from Bangladeshi revenge ~ shocked Pakistan and shattered the self-image of its Army. ZA Bhutto was the only populist politician of the country ever, and his few years held vanishing promise of a normal political agenda (no matter how economically misguided) finally arising. But Bhutto suppressed the new Baloch revolt with the Shah of Iran’s military help; at the same time he failed to protect his own back against Zia ul Haq’s coup, leading to his judicial murder in 1979. Zia tried to rebuild the Army’s shattered esprit de corps the only way he knew how, which was by indoctrinating the Punjabi officer corps with Sunni dogmatism. This coincided with the Afghan civil war, influx of refugees, and US-Saudi-Chinese plan to defeat the USSR. Pakistan’s super-elite in their comprador role were happy to allow themselves to be used again and be hung out to dry afterwards.
All normal branches of Pakistan’s polity, like the electorate,press, political parties, Legislature and Judiciary, have remained at best in ill-formed inchoate states of being. The economy remains, like India’s, one fed on endless deficit finance paid for by unlimited printing of inconvertible paper money, though Pakistan has had relatively more labour emigration and much less foreign investment and technological progress than India. Both are wracked by corruption, poverty, ignorance and superstition.
Over half a century, the military has acquired vast economic and political interests and agendas, on pretext of protecting Pakistan from India or gaining “Kashmeer” for it. With few and noble exceptions, academics, politicians and journalists have remained timid in face of fascistic State-power with its militarist/Islamist ideology ~ causing a transferance of the people’s anger and frustration onto an easier target, namely ourselves in India. Anti-Indianism (especially over J&K) remains the sole unifying factor of Pakistan’s super-elite, regardless of what history’s objective facts may have to say. Much political courage and understanding will be needed for that to be reversed.
All countries hunger for genuine national heroes who take upon themselves individual risks on behalf of ordinary people. Wali Khan stood up to his father’s jailors, and young Benazir of 1980s vintage to her father’s executioner. But Pakistan has had few such heroes,certainly none among its bemedalled generals. Why AQ Khan is seen as a hero is because he at least took some personal risks, and finally brought Pakistan a kind of respect and independence in the world with his Bomb.
The Politics of Dr Singh (2006)
May 21, 2006 — drsubrotoroyPreface April 25 2009: This article of mine has become a victim of bowdlerization on the Internet by someone who seems to support Dr Singh’s political adversaries. I should say, therefore, as I have said before that there is nothing personal in my critical assessment of Dr Singh’s economics and politics. To the contrary, he has been in decades past a friend or at least a colleague of my father’s, and in the autumn of 1973 visited our then-home in Paris at the request of my father to advise me, then aged 18, before I embarked on my undergraduate studies at the London School of Economics. My assessments in recent years like “The Politics of Dr Singh” or “Assessing Manmohan” etc need to be seen along with my “Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False”, “The Hypocrisy of the CPI-M”, “Against Quackery”, “Our Dismal Politics”, “Political Paralysis” etc. (Also “Mistaken Macroeconomics”, June 2009). Nothing personal is intended in any of these; the purpose at hand has been to contribute to a full and vigorous discussion of the public interest in India.
Postscript 2 Sep 2013: See especially Did Jagdish Bhagwati “originate”, “pioneer”, “intellectually father” India’s 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India’s right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture!
also from 2014: https://independentindian.com/2014/08/07/haksar-manmohan-and-sonia/
THE POLITICS OF DR SINGH
by
Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Special Article, May 21 2006
Manmohan Singh matriculated during Partition, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Punjab University in 1952 and 1954. He then went to Cambridge to read for the BA over two years. The pro-communist Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor were dominant influences in Cambridge economics at the time. Mark Tully reports Dr Singh saying in 2005 he fell under their influence. “At university I first became conscious of the creative role of politics in shaping human affairs, and I owe that mostly to my teachers Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor. Joan Robinson was a brilliant teacher, but she also sought to awaken the inner conscience of her students in a manner that very few others were able to achieve. She questioned me a great deal and made me think the unthinkable. She propounded the left wing interpretation of Keynes, maintaining that the state has to play more of a role if you really want to combine development with social equity. Kaldor influenced me even more; I found him pragmatic, scintillating, stimulating. Joan Robinson was a great admirer of what was going on in China, but Kaldor used the Keynesian analysis to demonstrate that capitalism could be made to work.”
Now, in fact, what was going on in China at that time was the notorious catastrophe caused by Mao Zedong known initially as the “Little Leap Forward” (with a Stalin-like collectivization of agriculture) and then as the “Great Leap Forward”. Mao later apologised to China’s people for his ignorance of microeconomic principles, admitting he “had not realised coal and steel do not move of their own accord but have to be transported”. If what Robinson was extolling to young Indians at Cambridge like Amartya Sen and Manmohan Singh in the mid 1950s was Mao’s China, it was manifest error.
As for Kaldor, the Canadian economist Harry Johnson independently reported that “being a man who rolls with the times fairly fast”, Kaldor “decided early on that capitalism actually was working. So for him the problem was, given that it works, it cannot possibly work because the theory of it is right. It must work for some quite unsuspected reason which only people as intelligent as himself can see.” Like Robinson, Kaldor made a handful of fine contributions to economic theory. But in policy-making he exemplified the worst leftist intellectual vanity and “technocratic” arrogance.
Returning to India, Manmohan Singh was required to spend three years at Chandigarh. In 1960, he left for Nuffield College to work for an Oxford DPhil on the subject of Indian exports. He returned to Chandigarh as required by government rules for another three years, and in 1966 left again until 1969, this time as a bureaucrat at the new UNCTAD in New York run by Raul Prebisch. A book deriving from his doctoral thesis was published by Clarendon Press in 1964.
In 1969, Dr Singh returned to India becoming Professor of International Trade at the Delhi School of Economics. A technical survey of mainstream Indian economic thinking done by his colleagues Jagdish Bhagwati and Sukhamoy Chakravarty published in the American Economic Review of 1969, made footnote references to his book in context of planning and protectionism, but not in the main discussion of Indian exports which at the time had to do with exchange-rate overvaluation.
After Indira Gandhi’s March 1971 election victory, Dr Singh came to the attention of Parameshwar Narain Haksar, who launched his career in bureaucracy after inviting him to write a political paper “What to do with the victory”. Haksar had been an Allahabad lawyer married into the Sapru family. In London as a student he was a protégé of R. Palme Dutt and Krishna Menon, and openly pro-USSR. He was close to the Nehrus, and Jawaharlal placed him in the new Foreign Service. He was four years older than Indira and later knew her husband Feroze Gandhi who died in 1960. By May 1967 Haksar was Indira’s adviser, and became “probably the most influential and powerful person in the Government” until 1974, when there was a conflict with her younger son. But Haksar’s influence continued well into the 1990s. His deeds include nationalization of India’s banks, the Congress split and creation of the Congress(I), and politicisation of the bureaucracy including the intelligence services. High quality independent civil servants became politically committed pro-USSR bureaucrats instead. Professionalism ended and the “courtier culture” and “durbar” politics began.
Haksar and T. N. Kaul were key figures negotiating the August 1971 “Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation” with the USSR, which was to run 25 years except the USSR collapsed before then. Indira had hosted Richard Nixon two years previously, and the Nixon-Kissinger attempt to get close to Zhou En Lai’s China using Pakistan’s Z. A. Bhutto and Yahya Khan (coinciding with Pakistan’s civil war) were undoubtedly factors contributing to India’s Soviet alliance.
As Haksar’s protégé, Dr Singh’s rise in the economic bureaucracy was meteoric. By 1972 he was Chief Economic Adviser and by 1976 Secretary in the Finance Ministry. The newly published history of the Reserve Bank shows him conveying the Ministry’s dictates to the RBI. In 1980-1982 he was at the Planning Commission, and in 1982-1985 he was Reserve Bank Governor (when Pranab Mukherjee was Finance Minister), followed by becoming Planning Commission head, until taking his final post before retirement heading the “South-South Commission” invented by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, from August 1987 until November 1990 in Geneva.
Dr Singh joined Chandrashekhar’s Government on 10 December 1990, when Rajiv Gandhi was Leader of the Opposition yet supporting Chandrashekhar “from the outside”, and left when new elections were announced in March 1991. The first time his name arose in context of contemporary post-Indira Congress Party politics was on 22 March 1991 when M K Rasgotra challenged the present author to answer how Manmohan Singh would respond to proposals being drafted for a planned economic liberalisation of India by the Congress Party authorised by Rajiv since September 1990 (viz., “Memos to Rajiv” The Statesman 31 July-2 August 1991 republished here as “Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi”; “The Dream Team: A Critique” The Statesman 6-8 January 2006 also republished here; see also “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform” published elsewhere here, and in abbreviated form in Freedom First, October 2001).
Rajiv was assassinated on 21 May 1991, resulting in Narasimha Rao (who had been ill and due to retire) becoming PM in June 1991. Dr Singh told Tully: “On the day (Rao) was formulating his cabinet, he sent his Principal Secretary to me saying, `The PM would like you to become the Minister of Finance’. I didn’t take it seriously. He eventually tracked me down the next morning, rather angry, and demanded that I get dressed up and come to Rashtrapati Bhavan for the swearing in. So that’s how I started in politics”. In the same conversation, however, Dr Singh also said he learnt of “the creative role of politics” from Robinson, and hence he must have realised he actually became politically committed when he began to be mentored by Haksar — Indira Gandhi’s most powerful pro-communist bureaucrat. Before 1991, Dr Singh may be fairly described as a statist anti-liberal who travelled comfortably along with the tides of the pro-USSR New Delhi political and academic establishment, following every rule in the bureaucratic book and being obedient in face of arbitrary exercise of political and economic power. There is no evidence whatsoever of him having been a liberal economist before 1991, nor indeed of having originated any liberal economic idea afterwards. The Congress Party itself in May 2002 passed a resolution saying the ideas of India’s liberalisation had originated with neither him nor Narasimha Rao.
Indeed, the 1970s and 1980s saw onset of the worst macroeconomic policies with ruination and politicisation of India’s banking system, origins of the Rs 30 trillion (Rs 30 lakh crore) public debt we have today, and the start of exponential money supply growth and inflation. Along with Pranab Mukherjee, Dr Singh, as the exemplary Haksarian bureaucrat, must accept responsibility for having presided over much of that. If they are to do anything positive for India now, it has to be first of all to undo such grave macroeconomic damage. This would inevitably mean unravelling the post-Indira New Delhi structure of power and privilege by halting deficit finance and corruption, and enforcing clean accounting and audit methods in all government organisations and institutions. Even the BJP’s Vajpayee and Advani lacked courage and understanding to begin to know how to do this, allowing themselves to be nicely co-opted by the system instead. Rajiv might have done things in a second term; but his widow and her coalition government led by Dr Singh, who exemplified India’s political economy of the 1970s and 1980s, appear clueless as to the macroeconomic facts, and more likely to enhance rather than reverse unhealthy fiscal and monetary trends.
Indian Money and Banking
April 23, 2006 — drsubrotoroyON MONEY & BANKING
The deficit-finance of all public institutions flow like rivulets into the swamp that is our Public Debt, managed by the RBI
by
SUBROTO ROY
First published in The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page, Special Article
April 23 2006
THE Reserve Bank of India, like all other public institutions, belongs to all of India’s people. There has been a tendency with every national institution, whether the ONGC or nationalised banks like SBI, or the IITs and IIMs or Air India and Indian Airlines or the Railways, Army, Navy, Air Force, IAS, IFS, Central Secretariat etc, even Parliament and State legislatures, to think that its assets, both tangible and intangible, are to serve the interests mainly of its employees, whether of Class 1, 2, 3, or 4. In fact, the assets of all such national institutions belong to all Indians: all one thousand million of us, from nameless street children and rural mendicants onwards. The body of our whole Indian citizenry own any and all such public institutions, and their employees are merely our “agents”, literally “public servants” who get paid salaries and perquisites out of public revenues. The task of managing and controlling these vast cohorts of public servants is a stupendous one of democratic politics and public administration. As a country we have never been very adept at it, indeed we often have been hopelessly incompetent. Without proper control and management, employees of national institutions have naturally tended to take over control of these assets, shifting liabilities onto the shoulders and budgets of the anonymous diffused body of citizenry who are supposed to be their masters. The public’s servants have tended to become the masters of the public’s assets and resources.
The RBI, as the nation’s Central Bank, has a unique position because its principal task is to establish and maintain the integrity of our money and banking system. The deficit-finance of all public institutions flow like rivulets into the swamp that is our Public Debt, managed by the RBI.
Money as such has no “intrinsic” worth. All the paper rupees, dollars, pounds, euros, yen in the world have less “intrinsic” usefulness than a hairpin or a button or a pair of shoelaces. Hairpins, buttons and shoelaces at least keep your hair, your shirt or your shoes together ~ the paper of paper money can be at best used to roll cigarettes perhaps. Yet paper money comes to be needed and is valued by everyone in every country ~ from street children upwards to Mr Premji, Mr Gates and Mr Mittal. Everyone accepts paper money as wages in exchange for his/her work, and then plans to use that same paper to buy food, shelter, clothing and other necessities with. I.e., we accept paper money for a short time believing we can use it to acquire useful things with. It has no intrinsic worth yet it is universally valued because everyone believes it will be accepted by everyone else in exchange for real goods and services which are in fact useful and conducive to life. The use of paper money depends on a fine and invisible web of collective trust permeating throughout the economy.
Banks arose due to the increasing complexity of modern economies in the last six hundred years. Paper currency was then supplemented in commerce by “deposits”, so that a transaction between two persons need not involve turnover of cash but can come to be accomplished by adjustment in their respective deposits with their banks. This vastly increased the quantum of trust ordinary people placed in the system of normal transactions, since they had to now believe not just in the exchangeability of paper money but also in the viability of the banks where they had placed their deposits. Currency plus Bank Deposits constitute what is called the “Money Supply”, and its controller is the RBI.
Our collective trust in money and banking is in and of itself something with economic value, which commercial banks are in a unique position to exploit. Banks can usually bet that all their customers will not demand their deposits at the same time, and so they are able to lend out as loans a very large fraction of what they have received as deposits from the public. Making such loans in turn causes the recipients of the loans to make new deposits (of what they have borrowed) in yet other banks, and this in turn acts as a signal to the receiving banks to make even more loans. Hence a process of “redeposit” or “deposit multiplication” occurs in any banking system where only a fraction of deposits is legally required to be kept as reserves by the bank. A Central Bank like the RBI then has the duty to see none of this gets out of hand: that while individual banks are acting to make profitable investments on the capital risked by a bank’s owners, they are, as a collective body, creating enough but not excessive credit to meet the needs of business.
In India, most banks came to be nationalised decades ago by Indira Gandhi on advice of P. N. Haksar, the mentor of Dr Manmohan Singh in his career as an economic bureaucrat. Whatever original capital they have had also arises from the public exchequer, and all their employees are effectively “public servants” under the Ministry of Finance. We have not been hearing from the RBI anything about the deleterious effects of this continuing state of affairs.
The RBI’s functions include managing the “Public Debt”, which stands today at perhaps Rs. 30 trillion (1 trillion= 1 lakh crore), on which interest of perhaps Rs 2-3 trillion must be paid by the Union and State Governments every year to those holding the debt (mostly the nationalised banking system under duress from the RBI). Why the stock-market has been doing so “well” is because it has been like an athlete on steroids. A stock market is supposed to be risky while a debt market is supposed to be safe. Our Government’s fiscal and monetary behaviour over decades has caused the formal debt market to yield negative returns, and so the stock-market has become relatively lucrative despite its risky nature.
It is also the RBI’s task to manage the country’s foreign exchange “reserves”, i.e. the residual balance left after all forex outgoings from purchases of imports (like petroleum or weapons) and payments of interest on or repayment of foreign loans have been subtracted from flows of incoming forex arising from export revenues, emigrants’ remittances, and new foreign loans and investments. These “reserves” do not belong to the Government or the nation in the same way tax-revenues belong to the Consolidated Fund of India. It was a shocking conceptual error of the Manmohan Singh Government’s most prominent economic bureaucrat to fail to see this and to suggest forex reserves could be used for “infrastructure” development. For the business press to get excited about forex reserves being at this or that level is also misleading, since high reserves may or may not indicate a better financial position just as a heavily indebted man may or may not be in a bad position depending on what kind of use he has made of his debts.
We have not been hearing of any of these matters from the RBI under Dr Y. V. Reddy. Instead, the one definite number we have received last week is that the RBI, under behest of its master, the Ministry of Finance, has been causing the Money Supply to grow at something like 15%. The Government’s apologists would like us to believe that this gets distributed between real economic growth in the region of 10% and inflation in the region of 5%. But for all that anybody really knows, it may be that real growth is at 5% and inflation is at 10%! Ask yourself if what you bought last year for Rs 1000 costs Rs 1050 or Rs. 1100 this year. Your guess may be as good as the Government’s.
Towards an Energy Policy
April 2, 2006 — drsubrotoroyNote: This article may have initiated the public debate on the economics of the Indo-US nuclear deal. It was published as a Special Article on the Editorial Page of The Sunday Statesman of April 2 2006 but it failed to be uploaded at the website http://www.thestatesman.net because there had been a fire on March 31 2006. The politicians who led the parliamentary debate in 2006 subsequently made reference to it.
See also republished elsewhere here e.g. “India’s Energy Interests”, “India and Energy Security”, “Need for Clarity”/”From Confusion to Clarity”, “Against Quackery”, “Jimmy Carter and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal””, NuksaanFaida Analysis”.
“Towards an Energy Policy”
by Subroto Roy
First published in
The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article 2 April 2006
When was the last time we heard a thorough, well informed debate in Parliament about India’s long-term energy needs and policy-alternatives? The answer is never. Just as Pakistan tends to be run by Islamabad’s generals, we tend to be run by New Delhi’s bureaucrats; both are a legacy of the Raj which was run by small numbers of pompous civil servants and soldiers. Bureaucrats keep as much decision-making information as they can to themselves, give it to Parliament only under duress and then too in garbled opaque form, and share it voluntarily with the public never at all. A bureaucrat of conscience who shares vital information transparently becomes a “whistleblower”, and may risk his/her life and career because assorted mafias invariably surround all government contracting, and, like vampire bats, cannot stand the light of day shed upon them.
The problem with the Manmohan/Montek deal-making with the USA on behalf of India’s people has less to do with rational assessments not having been made of the relative costs and benefits of e.g. nuclear/fossil fuel/renewable energy, as it has to do with the fact it reflects the same lack of transparency (and is accompanied by the same politically correct propaganda) as has existed in other policy-making – like the $12 billion worth of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus bought for our bankrupt nationalized airlines, or spending untold billions of borrowed dollars on new weapons from France, Russia, Britain or whomever to fight unknown enemies in unimagined wars, or throwing newly printed paper-money at every government project that any fool or knave cares to mention.
To be fair, the UPA/Communist dispensation of the public’s largesse is no worse than that of the NDA/RSS. Both are part of New Delhi’s own “Inside-the-Beltway” syndrome, and turn up at the same celebrity wedding-receptions and iftehar parties. Neither minds too much when the other is in power so long as they can keep their government accommodation. Our fundamental political problem may be the absence of any serious party of Left or of Right which is secular, scientific, liberal, nationalist, clean, law-abiding, and fiscally prudent.
Since no national debate on energy-policy has been offered by New Delhi, ordinary citizens will have to create such a debate for themselves. What follows constitutes a few of the barest facts needed to start such an analysis of India’s alternative energy scenarios and their respective costs.
Hydroelectric power does not involve burning any fuels. Instead, the gravitational force of the movement of water from the mountains to the oceans is harnessed to generate electricity. But hydroelectric projects (like the Narmada Dam) can displace people, who must be then compensated and resettled. Burning of organic “fossil fuels” like coal, gas and oil, causes atmospheric oxygen to turn into carbon dioxide, which may affect climate in unknown ways. In 2004, the International Energy Agency’s estimated the new energy capacity worldwide required by rising economic growth in the year 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources (like solar or wind power). On the Agency’s assumptions, gas prices will remain low, making construction of new nuclear plants for electricity uneconomical. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants — which will be replacing existing nuclear plants due to be retired. (Such is the scenario before any new nuclear plants were going to be exported by e.g. USA to India).
Now the fission of an atom of uranium produces perhaps 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but the potential for cheap energy from nuclear sources seems practically infinite. Nuclear power can arise from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has perhaps 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. But almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium, and there are practically unlimited reserves of that. There is so much uranium in sea water that mankind’s total electricity needs can be satisfied for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these sources will become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium possible to be extracted from conventional ores. In 2001, uranium cost about US$20 per kg or so, translating to US$0.0004 per kwh of electricity. The known reserves of uranium that can be profitably sold at $120 per kg are enough for at least a hundred years. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal which may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation.
Natural uranium is 99.3 percent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 percent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 percent to 4 to 5 percent, and that “separation” process is expensive. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90% of U-235). Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In nuclear bombs, the fission occurs in a small space, and the blast that results kills all life for miles around it by sucking up all the atmospheric oxygen, besides causing firestorms, shock waves and radioactivity. In a civilian reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines powering the generation of electricity. However, while there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, which is hard if not impossible to dispose of. Many countries like the USA just bury their nuclear waste in remote thinly populated desert areas.
Rational choice between energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. France has 59 of the 441 or so civilian nuclear reactors in the world, and generates 78% of its electricity from them, 22% from hydroelectricity. Japan has 54 reactors and generates 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20% of its electricity from them, principally because it has vast alternative sources of energy. In India, installed power generating capacity as of 2003 was 107,533.3MW, of which 71% was from burning fossil fuels. Hydroelectric potential is 150,000MWe. In 2003, total installed hydro capacity with utilities was 26,910MWe (about 18% of the potential). More than 70% of India’s hydroelectric potential is in the North and NorthEast regions put together.
India’s 14 nuclear reactors produce less than 4% of the total electricity being consumed in the country. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100% under the Manmohan-Montek deal with the USA, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced. So the first question India’s citizens must ask is why such a fuss has been created about the Manmohan-Montek deal with America. Clearly, the Government of India must come wholly clean with all the facts and analysis it has available on the whole problem of India’s energy future in all its complexity and detail. If and when it does so, we may simply find that the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves. Whether the US-India nuclear deal stands or falls, it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs.
The Dream Team: A Critique (2006)
January 8, 2006 — drsubrotoroyThe Dream Team: A Critique
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman and The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, January 6,7,8, 2006
(Author’s Note: Within a few weeks of this article appearing, the Dream Team’s leaders appointed the so-called Tarapore 2 committee to look into convertibility — which ended up recommending what I have since called the “false convertibility” the RBI is presently engaged in. This article may be most profitably read along with other work republished here: “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”, “Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi”, “”Indian Money & Banking”, “Indian Money & Credit” , “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability”, “Fallacious Finance”, “India’s Trade and Payments”, “Our Policy Process”, “Against Quackery”, “Indian Inflation”, etc)
1. New Delhi’s Consensus: Manmohantekidambaromics
Dr Manmohan Singh has spoken of how pleasantly surprised he was to be made Finance Minister in July 1991 by PV Narasimha Rao. Dr Singh was an academic before becoming a government economic official in the late 1960s, rising to the high office of Reserve Bank Governor in the 1980s. Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia now refers to him as “my boss” and had been his Finance Secretary earlier. Mr Ahluwalia was a notable official in the MacNamara World Bank before being inducted a senior government official in 1984. Mr P Chidambaram was PVNR’s Commerce Minister, and later became Finance Minister in the Deve Gowda and Gujral Governments. Mr Chidamabaram is a Supreme Court advocate with an MBA from Harvard’s Business School. During 1998-2004, Dr Singh and Mr Chidambaram were in Opposition but Mr Ahluwalia was Member-Secretary of the Vajpayee Planning Commission. Since coming together again in Sonia Gandhi’s United Progressive Alliance, they have been flatteringly named the “Dream Team” by India’s pink business newspapers, a term originally referring to some top American basketball players.
Based on pronouncements, publications and positions held, other members or associates of the “Dream Team” include Reserve Bank Governor Dr YV Reddy; his predecessor Dr Bimal Jalan; former PMO official Mr NK Singh, IAS; Chief Economic Advisers Dr Shankar Acharya and Dr Ashok Lahiri; RBI Deputy Governor Dr Rakesh Mohan; and others like Dr Arvind Virmani, Dr Isher Ahluwalia, Dr Parthasarathi Shome, Dr Vijay Khelkar, Dr Ashok Desai, Dr Suman Bery, Dr Surjit Bhalla, Dr Amaresh Bagchi, Dr Govind Rao. Honorary members include Mr Jaswant Singh, Mr Yashwant Sinha, Mr KC Pant and Dr Arun Shourie, all economic ministers during the Vajpayee premiership. Institutional members include industry chambers like CII and FICCI representing “Big Business”, and unionised “Big Labour” represented by the CPI, CPI(M) and prominent academics of JNU. Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar joins the Dream Team with his opinion that a gas pipeline is “necessary for the eradication of poverty in India”. Mr Jairam Ramesh explicitly claimed authoring the 1991 reform with Mr Pranab Mukherjee and both must be members (indeed the latter as Finance Minister once had been Dr Singh’s boss). Dr Arjun Sengupta has claimed Indira Gandhi started the reforms, and he may be a member too. External members include Dr Jagdish Bhagwati, Dr. TN Srinivasan, Dr Meghnad Desai, Dr Vijay Joshi, Mr Ian Little, Dr Anne O. Krueger, Dr John Williamson, IMF Head Dr R Rato, and many foreign bank analysts who deal in Bombay’s markets. Harvard’s Dr Larry Summers joins with his statement while US Treasury Secretary in January 2000 that a 10% economic growth rate for India was feasible. His Harvard colleague Dr Amartya Sen — through disciples like Dr Jean Dreze (adviser to Sonia Gandhi on rural employment) — must be an ex officio member; as an old friend, the Prime Minister launched Dr Sen’s recent book while the latter has marked Dr Singh at 80% as PM. Media associates of the Dream Team include editors like Mr Aroon Purie, Mr Vinod Mehta, Dr Prannoy Roy, Mr TN Ninan, Mr Vir Sanghvi and Mr Shekhar Gupta, as well as the giddy young anchors of what passes for news and financial analysis on cable TV.
This illustrious set of politicians, government officials, economists, journalists and many others have come to define what may be called the “New Delhi Consensus” on contemporary India’s economic policy. While it is unnecessary everyone agree to the same extent on every aspect — indeed on economic policy the differences between the Sonia UPA and Vajpayee NDA have had to do with emphasis on different aspects, each side urging “consensus” upon the other — the main factual and evaluative claims and policy-prescriptions of the New Delhi Consensus may be summarised as follows:
A: “The Narasimha Rao Government in July 1991 found India facing a grave balance of payments crisis with foreign exchange reserves being very low.”
B: “A major cause was the 1990-1991 Gulf War, in its impact as an exogenous shock on Indian migrant workers and oil prices.”
C: “The Dream Team averted a macroeconomic crisis through “structural adjustment” carried out with help of the IMF and World Bank; hence too, India was unaffected by the 1997 ‘Asian crisis'”.
D: “The PVNR, Deve Gowda, Gujral and Vajpayee Governments removed the notorious license-quota-permit Raj.”
E: “India’s measurable real economic growth per capita has been raised from 3% or lower to 7% or more.”
F: “Foreign direct investment has been, relative to earlier times, flooding into India, attracted by lower wages and rents, especially in new industries using information technology.”
G: “Foreign financial investment has been flooding into India too, attracted by India’s increasingly liberalised capital markets, especially a liberalised current account of the balance of payments.”
H: “The apparent boom in Bombay’s stock market and relatively large foreign exchange reserves bear witness to the confidence foreign and domestic investors place in India’s prospects.”
I: “The critical constraint to India’s future prosperity is its “infrastructure” which is far below what foreign investors are used to in other countries elsewhere in Asia.”
J: “It follows that massive, indeed gargantuan, investments in highways, ports, airports, aircraft, city-flyovers, housing-estates, power-projects, energy exploration, gas pipelines, etc, out of government and private resources, domestic and foreign, is necessary to remove remaining “bottlenecks” to further prosperity for India’s masses, and these physical constructions will cause India’s economy to finally ‘take off’.”
K: “India’s savings rate (like China’s) is exceptionally high as is observable from vast expansion of bank-deposits, and these high (presumed) savings, along with foreign savings, will absorb the gargantuan investment in “infrastructure” without inflation.”
L: “Before the gargantuan macroeconomic investments bear the fruits of prosperity, equally large direct transfer payments also must be made from the Government to prevent mass hunger and/or raise nominal incomes across rural India, while existing input or other subsidies to producers, especially farmers, also must continue.”
M: “While private sector participants may increasingly compete via imports or as new entrants in industries where the public sector has been dominant, no bankruptcy or privatisation must be allowed to occur or be seen to occur which does not provide public sector workers and officials with golden parachutes.”
Overall, the New Delhi Consensus paints a picture of India’s economy on an immensely productive trajectory as led by Government partnered by Big Business and Big Labour, with the English-speaking intellectuals of the Dream Team in the vanguard as they fly between exotic conferences and international commercial deals. An endless flow of foreign businessmen and politicians streaming through Bangalore, Hyderabad, five-star hotels or photo-opportunities with the PM, followed by official visits abroad to sign big-ticket purchases like arms or aircraft, reinforce an impression that all is fine economically, and modern India is on the move. Previously rare foreign products have become commonplace in India’s markets, streets and television-channels, and a new materialist spirit, supposedly of capitalism, is captured by the smug slogan yeh dil mange more (this heart craves more) as well as the more plaintive cry pardesi jana nahin, mujhe chhorke (foreigner, please don’t leave me).
2. Money, Convertibility, Inflationary Deficit Financing
India’s Rupee became inconvertible in 1942 when the British imposed exchange controls over the Sterling-Area. After 1947 independent India and Pakistan, in name of “planned” economic development, greatly widened this war-time regime – despite the fact they were at war now only with one another over Jammu & Kashmir and, oddly enough, formed an economic union until 1951 with their currencies remaining freely convertible with each other.
On May 29 1984, the present author’s Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India proposed in London that the Indian Rupee become a convertible hard currency again — the first time liberal economics had been suggested for India since BR Shenoy’s critique of the Second Five Year Plan (a fact attracting an editorial of The Times). The simple litmus test whether believers in the New Delhi Consensus have or have not the courage of their stated convictions – i.e., whether what they have been saying is, in its empirical fundamentals, more signal or noise, more reality or rhetorical propaganda – would be to carry through that proposal made 21 years ago. The Dream Team have had more than enough political power to undertake this, and it remains the one measure necessary for them to demonstrate to India’s people and the world that the exuberant confidence they have been promoting in their model of India’s economy and its prospects is not spurious.
What does convertibility entail? For a decade now, India has had limited ease of availability of foreign exchange for traders, students and tourists. Indeed some senior Government monetary economists believe there is convertibility already except forex dealers are being allowed “one-way” and not “two-way” quotes! That is wrong. The Government since 1942 has requisitioned at the border all foreign exchange earned by exporters or received as loans or investment — allocating these first to pay interest and amortisation on the country’s foreign debt, then to make its own weapons and other purchases abroad, then to release by ration what remains to private traders, students, tourists et al. Current account liberalisation has meant the last of these categories has been relaxed, especially by removal of some import quotas. What a convertible Rupee would mean is far more profound. It would allow any citizen to hold and save an Indian money that was exchangeable freely (i.e. without Government hindrance) into moneys of other countries. Full convertibility would mean all the paper money, bank deposits and rupee-denominated nominal assets held by ordinary people in India becomes, overnight, exchangeable without hindrance into dollars, yens, pounds or euros held anywhere (although not of course at the “one-way” rates quoted today).
Now money is a most peculiar human institution. Paper money is intrinsically worthless but all of India’s 1,000 million people (from street children onwards) have need to hold it temporarily to expedite their individual transactions of buying and selling real goods and services. Money also acts as a repository of value over time and unit of account or measure of economic value. While demand to hold such intrinsically worthless paper is universal, its supply is a Government monopoly. Because Government accepts obligations owed to it in terms of the fiat money it has itself issued, the otherwise worthless paper comes to possess value in exchange. Because Government controls its supply, money also can be abused easily enough as a technique of invisible taxation via inflation.
With convertibility in India, the quantity of currency and other paper assets like public debt instruments representing fiscal decisions of India’s Union and State Governments, will have to start to compete with those produced by other governments. Just as India’s long-jumpers and tennis-players must compete with the world’s best if they are to establish and sustain their athletic reputations, so India’s fiscal and monetary decisions (i.e. about government spending and revenues, interest-rates and money supply growth) will have to start competing in the world’s financial markets with those of the EU, USA, Japan, Switzerland, ASEAN etc.
The average family in rural Madhya Pradesh who may wish, for whatever personal reason, to liquidate rupee-denominated assets and buy instead Canadian, Swiss or Japanese Government debt, or mutual fund shares in New York, Frankfurt or Singapore, would not be hindered by India’s Government from doing so. They would become as free as the swankiest NRI jet-setters have been for years (like many members of the New Delhi Consensus and their grown children abroad). Scores of millions of ordinary Indians unconnected with Big Business or Big Labour, neither among the 18 million people in government nor the 12 million in the organised private sector, would become free to hold any portfolio of assets they chose in global markets (small as any given individual portfolio may be in value). Like all those glamorous NRIs, every Indian would be able to hold dollar or Swiss Franc deposit accounts at the local neighbourhood bank. Hawala operators worldwide would become redundant. Ordinary citizens could choose to hold foreign shares, real-estate or travellers’ cheques as assets just as they now choose jewellery before a wedding. The Indian Rupee, after more than 65 years, would once again become as good as all the proverbial gold in Fort Knox.
When added up, the new demand of India’s anonymous masses to hold foreign rather than Rupee-denominated assets will certainly make the Rupee decline in price in world markets. But — if the implicit model of India’s economy promoted by the Dream Team is based on correctly ascertained empirical facts — foreign and domestic investor confidence should suffice for countervailing tendencies to keep India’s financial and banking system stable under convertibility. Not only would India’s people be able to use and save a currency of integrity, the allocation of real resources would also improve in efficiency as distortions would be reduced in the signalling function of domestic relative prices compared to world relative prices. An honest Rupee freely priced in world markets at, say, 90 per dollar, would cause very different real microeconomic decisions of Government and private producers and consumers (e.g., with respect to weapons’ purchases or domestic transportation, given petroleum and jet fuel imports) than a semi-artificial Rupee at 45 per dollar which forcibly an inconvertible asset in global markets. A fully convertible Rupee will cause economic and political decisions in the country more consistent with word realities.
Why the Rupee is not going to be made convertible in the foreseeable future – or why, in India’s present fiscal circumstances if it was, it would be imprudent to do so – is because, contrary to the immense optimism promoted by the Dream Team about their own deeds since 1991, they have in fact been causing India’s monetary economy to skate on the thinnest of thin ice. Put another way, a house of cards has been constructed whose cornerstone constitutes that most unscientific anti-economic of assumptions, the “free lunch”: that something can be had for nothing, that real growth in average consumption levels of the masses of ordinary households of rural and urban India can meaningfully come about by nominal paper-money creation accompanied by verbal exhortation, hocus-pocus or abracadabra from policy-makers and their friends in Big Business, Big Labour and the media. (Lest half-remembered inanities about “orthodox economics” come to be mouthed, Maynard Keynes’s 1936 book was about specific circumstances in Western economies during the Depression and it is unwise to extend its presumptions to unintended situations.)
3. Rajiv Gandhi and Perestroika Project
On 25 May 2002, India’s newspapers reported “PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh lost their place in Congress history as architects of economic reforms as the Congress High Command sponsored an amendment to a resolution that had laid credit at the duo’s door. The motion was moved by…. Digvijay Singh asserting that the reforms were a brainchild of the late Rajiv Gandhi and that the Rao-Singh combine had simply nudged the process forward.”
Now Rajiv Gandhi was an airline-pilot and knew no economics. But the origins of the 1991 reform did come about because of an encounter he had, as Opposition Leader and Congress President from September 1990 onwards, with a “perestroika” project for India’s political economy occurring at an American university since 1986 (viz., The Statesman Editorial Page July 31-August 2 1991, now republished here; Freedom First October 2001). In being less than candid in acknowledging the origins of the reform, the Dream Team may have failed to describe accurately the main symptoms of illness that afflicted India before 1991, and have consequently failed to diagnose and prescribe for it correctly ever since.
The Government of India, like many others, has been sorely tempted to finance its extravagant expenditures by abusing its monopoly over paper-money creation. The British taught us how to do this, and in 1941-43 caused the highest inflation rates ever seen in India as a result. Fig. 1 shows this, and also that real growth in India follows as expected the trend-rate of technological progress (having little to do with government policy). Independent India has continually financed budget- deficits by money creation in a process similar to what the British and Americans did in wartime. This became most conspicuous after Indira Gandhi’s bank and insurance nationalisations of 1969-1970. Indeed, among current policy-makers, Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh, Arjun Sengupta, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Bimal Jalan, NK Singh, Amaresh Bagchi and Shankar Acharya, were among those governing such macroeconomic processes before 1991 — albeit in absence of the equations that illustrate their nature. Why the Rupee cannot be made an honest, internationally convertible, stable money held with confidence by all Indians today, is because the Dream Team have continued with the same macroeconomics ever since. The personal and political ambitions of the tiniest super-elite that the New Delhi Consensus represent (both personal and political) have depended precisely on gargantuan unending deficit-financing backed by unlimited printing of paper-money, and hence the continuing destruction of the integrity of India’s banking system. A convertible Rupee would allow India’s ordinary people to choose to hold other stores of value available in the world today, like gold or monies issued by foreign governments, and thus force an end to such processes.
Two recent articles in The Statesman (Perspective Page 30 October 2005, Front Page 29 November 2005) outlined India’s financial repression and negative real interest rates (which suffice to explain the present stock market boom the way athletes perform better on steroids), and also how deficits get financed by money creation accompanied by wishful projections of economic growth in an upside down imitation of how macroeconomic policy gets done in the West.
“Narrow Money” consists mostly of hand-to-hand currency. “Broad Money” consists of Narrow Money plus bank-deposits. Modern banking is built on “fractional reserves”, i.e. a system of trust where your bank does not literally hold onto deposits you place there but lends these out again – which causes further deposit expansion because no individual banker can tell whether a new deposit received by it is being caused by the depositor having himself borrowed. As a general rule, bank lending causes further deposit expansion. Why India’s (and China’s) bank deposits have been expanding is not because Indians (or Chinese) are superhuman savers of financial assets in banks but because the Government of India (and China) has for decades compelled (the mostly nationalised) banks to hold vast sums of Government debt on the asset side of their balance-sheets. Thus there has been humongous lending by the banking system to pay for Government expenditures. The Dream Team’s macroeconomics relies entirely on this kind of unending recourse to deficit finance and money creation, causing dry rot to set into banks’ balance sheets (Figs. 2,3, 4). If the Rupee became convertible, those vast holdings of Government debt by banks would become valued at world prices. The crucial question would be how heavily New York, London and Hong Kong financial markets discounted Indian sovereign debt. If upon convertibility, the asset sides of domestic Indian banks get discounted very heavily by world financial markets, their insolvency upon being valued at international prices could trigger catastrophic repercussions throughout India’s economy. Hence the Rupee cannot be made convertible — and all our present inefficiencies and inequities will continue for ever with New Delhi’s rhetorical propaganda alongside. The capital flight of 10 out of 1000 million Indians will continue, leaving everyone else with the internal and foreign public debts to pay.
4. A Different Strategy had Rajiv Not Been Assassinated
Had Rajiv Gandhi not been assassinated and the perestroika project allowed to take its course, a different strategy would have been chosen. Honest money first demands honest Government and political leadership. It would at the outset have been recognised by Government (and through Government by all India’s people) that the asset-liability, income-expenditure and cash-flow positions of every public entity in the country without exception — of the Union Government, every State and local Government, every public undertaking and project – is abysmal. Due to entanglement with government financial loans, labour regulations, subsidies, price controls, protection and favouritism, the same holds for the financial positions of vast numbers of firms in the organised private sector. Superimpose on this dismal scene, the bleak situation of the Rule of Law in the country today – where Courts of Justice from highest to lowest suffer terrible abuse receiving pitiable amounts of public resources despite constituting a third and independent branch of India’s Government (while police forces, despite massive expenditure, remain incompetent, high-handed and brutal). What India has needed ever since 1991 is the Rule of Law, total transparency of public information, and the fiercest enforcement of rigorous accounting and audit standards in every government entity and public institution. It is only when budgets and financial positions become sound that ambitious goals can be achieved.
The Dream Team have instead made a fetish of physical construction of “infrastructure”, in some grandiose make-believe dreamworld which says the people of India wish the country to be a superpower. The Dream Team have failed to properly redefine for India’s masses the appropriate fiscal and monetary relationship between State and citizen – i.e. to demarcate public from private domains, and so enhance citizens’ sense of individual responsibility for their own futures, as well as explain and define what government and public institutions can and cannot do to help people’s lives. Grotesque corruption and inefficiency have thus continued to corrode practically all organs, institutions and undertakings of government. Corruption is the transmutation of publicly owned things into private property, while its mirror image, pollution, is the disposal of private wastes into the public domain. Both become vastly more prevalent where property rights between private and public domains remain ill demarcated. What belongs to the individual citizen and what to sovereign India –their rights and obligations to one another – remains fuzzy. Hence corruption and pollution run amuck. The irrational obsession with “infrastructure” is based on bad economics, and has led to profoundly wrong political and financial directions. The Rupee cannot be made an honest stable money because India’s fiscal and monetary situation remains not merely out of control but beyond New Delhi’s proper comprehension and grasp. If and when the Dream Team choose to wake up to India’s macroeconomic realities, a great deal of serious work will need to be done.
Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False (2005)
November 14, 2005 — drsubrotoroyAssessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False
by
Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman, Nov 13 2005 and The Statesman, Nov 14 2005, Editorial Page Special Article
Atal Behari Vajpayee, mentored by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee himself, became Prime Minister of India for less than a fortnight in 1996, then again in 1998 and again in 1999 and remained so until he was voted out in 2004.
He became PM holding the trust of India’s 120 million Muslims. He was supposed to be the genial, avuncular “good cop” who would keep at bay the harsh forces represented by the unpredictable “bad cop”, his Deputy PM and long-time colleague LK Advani. It was the first time RSS members had come to lead India’s government. How is the Vajpayee-Advani duumvirate to be candidly assessed? The question is important not only for the RSS and BJP engaged in their own introspection and petty politics but for the country as a whole. India needs both a competent Government and a competent Opposition in Parliament, and it is not clear we have ever had either.
Overall, Vajpayee-Advani, as the chief public symbols of the RSS-BJP, earned relatively high marks in office handling India’s strategic and security interests, including the nuclear issue and Pakistan. Equally, they failed badly in their treatment of India’s Muslims and religious minorities in general. This is a paradox that can be explained by the general failure of putative Hindutvadis to acquire an objective understanding of the processes that had led to Independence, Partition, and Pakistan’s creation.
Roughly, their comprehension of these processes has been one which sees all Muslims everywhere as cut from the same communal cloth, regardless of the beliefs or actions of individual Muslims. In such prejudiced eyes, there is no conceptual or ultimate difference between a Jinnah and an Azad, between a Salauddin who attacks India at Kargil and a Lt Hanifuddin who dies for India at Kargil. This is the product of a sloppy and erroneous philosophy of history, which in turn is an outcome of an attitude towards modern science and modes of rigorous reasoning that can only be called backward and retrograde.
It has been signalled most conspicuously by the extremely public adherence of many putative Hindutvadis (and millions of other Indians) to astrology — in apparent ignorance of the fact that all horoscopes assume the Sun rotates around Earth. Astrology, a European invention, came to decline in Europe after the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo became widely understood there.
Like Indian Communists, Hindutvadi ideologues with rare exceptions played no role in the movement that led to Indian independence in 1947 and creation of the modern Indian Republic in 1950. They remained to their credit constantly suspicious of and hostile towards the foreign phenomena that were Bolshevism, Stalinism and Maoism. They remained to their discredit constantly suspicious of and hostile towards Indian Muslims, even at one point seeing virtuous lessons in Hitler’s attitude towards the Jews. They have in their own way subscribed to Ein Reich, Ein Volk but fortunately have always failed to find Ein Fuhrer (on a pattern e.g. of a modern “Netaji”).
Where Nazis saw communists and Jews in conspiracies everywhere, Hindutvadi ideologues have tended to see communists and Muslims, and also Christians and “Macaulayite” Hindus, in conspiracies everywhere. (An equal methodological admiration for Nazism occurred on the part of Muslims in the 1930s led by Rahmat Ali, the Pakistani ideologue — who saw “caste Hindus” as the root of all evil and in conspiracies everywhere.) The paradox of the RSS-BJP success in handling nuclear and security issues quite well and domestic issues of secular governance badly, is explained by this ideology of double hostility towards communism and Muslims.
On the positive side, Vajpayee-Advani advocated a tough clear-headed realpolitik on the issue of Indian’s security. “We should go nuclear and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a nuclear weapons’ state. The whole world will recognise us by our power. We don’t want to be blackmailed and treated as oriental blackies. Nuclear weapons will give us prestige, power, standing. An Indian will talk straight and walk straight when we have the bomb”. That is what the BJP told the New York Times in 1993.
Three years later, the moment Vajpayee first entered office as PM in May 1996, the government’s scientists who had already secretly assembled the bomb for testing, were instructed to stand by for orders to go ahead. Vajpayee did not know if his Government would survive the vote of confidence required of them. When it was pointed out that if he tested the bomb and lost the vote, a successor Government would have to cope with the consequences, Vajpayee, to his credit and reflecting his political experience and maturity, cancelled the test. When he lost the vote, the public demonstration of Indian nuclear weapons capability was also postponed until May 1998, after he had returned as PM a second time. The bomb was a celebration of Hindu, or more generally, Indian independence in the world. India had nominally freed herself from the British but not from Western culture, according to the RSS. Where the Congress had been in the grip of world communism, the RSS-BJP led India to nuclear freedom – such was their propaganda.
In reality, a long line of prime ministers including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh and IK Gujral had authorised India’s bomb, and a long line of scientists starting with Homi Bhabha had developed it over several decades.
Vajpayee’s decision finally flushed out Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear weapons developed with North Korea and China. Pakistan is an overtly Islamist state where liberal democracy shows no signs of starting even 65 years after the Lahore Resolution. Its nuclear bombs remain a far greater threat to the world than anyone else’s. Moreover, while India has renounced first use of such weapons, Pakistan has not only not done so, its Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan boasted in 1998-1999 that the next war would be over in two hours with an Indian surrender.
Such glib talk about nuclear war is beyond contempt in its irresponsibility. A study by medical doctors estimated that a Hiroshima-sized bombing of Mumbai would cause 9 million deaths from blast, firestorms, radiation and fallout. An Indian retaliation would end Pakistan’s existence (though the Pakistani super-elite has long ago fled with its assets to Britain and America). An India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would leave a vast wasteland, finally ending all intellectual controversies about Partition and Jinnah’s theory. In reality, each is hardly able to cope with natural calamities like earthquakes, cyclones and floods, and also has very grave macroeconomic crises brewing because of unending deficit-finance and unlimited printing of paper money. For either to imagine itself a major power is a vain boast regardless of the polite flattery from visiting foreign businessmen. Of course, while each remains the principal enemy of the other, neither is a serious military force in the world.
After the exchange of nuclear tests in 1998, Vajpayee took the bus across the Wagah border to meet Nawaz Sharif in February 1999. He claimed it was a diplomatic and psychological breakthrough as indeed it was for a moment. But it had not been his original idea. AM Khusro, who accompanied him on the bus, had worked with Rajiv Gandhi in 1990-1991 when Rajiv was advised to make such a Sadat-like move. Furthermore, Vajpayee failed to see the significance of the Pakistani military chiefs led by Pervez Musharraf refusing to meet him formally, which would have entailed saluting him when he was their enemy.
Vajpayee also may not have known the Pakistani monument he visited was later “purified” with rose water by orthodox Muslim believers. So much for Indian diplomatic triumphs or Pakistan’s diplomatic niceties towards their kaffir guest. BJP foreign ministers later ingratiated themselves with Ariel Sharon because he was an enemy of Muslims — though again the BJP seemed unaware that “a single hair” shorn from idol-worshipping Hindu women at Tirupathi was enough for orthodox rabbis to declare as “impure” the wigs worn by Jewish women made from such hair. The evil of “untouchability” has not been a “caste Hindu” monopoly.
Kargil war
According to the Sharif-Musharraf plan secretly brewing during Vajpayee’s Pakistan visit, the Kargil infiltration followed. India’s Army and Air Force gamely fought back in the initial weeks suffering relatively severe losses, but the country seemed mesmerised by World Cup cricket and there was no significant political leadership from Vajpayee’s Government until the second week of June 1999. It was only after Brajesh Mishra was provoked by an analysis of how Pakistan might actually succeed (with the possibility of hidden Pakistani plans of a blitzkrieg and missile attacks), that Vajpayee’s Government seemed to wake up from its stupor, mobilised forces rapidly and threatened Pakistan with direst consequences, a threat made credible because it was conveyed by Mishra via the Americans. The Pakistanis backed down, which led soon to Musharraf’s coup détat against Sharif, and the world has had to deal with a Pakistani state synonymous with Musharraf ever since. The Vajpayee-Advani military triumph at Kargil was short-lived, as it was followed within months by an abject surrender to the Taliban’s terrorists at Kandahar airport.
In the meantime, on 23 January 1999, the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were murdered by a savage anti-Christian mob as they slept in their car in rural Orissa. Vajpayee, the agreeable face of the RSS-BJP with allegedly impeccable secular credentials, responded without the moral strength that was necessary from a leader of all of India’s people. It was a model of weakness of political will and comprehension that would be followed in the larger catastrophe to occur in Gujarat.
On 27 February 2002, a train approaching Godhra station had a bunch of travelling rowdies bullying ticketed passengers, ticket-collectors and local tea-vendors. The vendors belonged to a lowly Muslim caste whose members were entrenched around Godhra and the nearby Signal Falia. During an extended stop at Godhra station, the altercations grew fiercer — the rowdies forcing people to shout slogans and roughing them up when they did not. False rumours flew that the rowdies had molested a Muslim woman and her two daughters who had been waiting on the platform. As the train left Godhra, a gang of rioters led by one tea-shop owner and other tea-vendors gathered before Signal Falia, stopped the train and assaulted it with stones and petrol-bombs.
One whole compartment was completely burnt, scores of passengers, including 26 women and 12 children, were incinerated, many of whom remain unidentified. (Some of those supposed to be in the compartment according to Railway lists were later found alive and well, as they had moved due to the rowdyism.) Throughout the day, Godhra District Collector Jayanthi Ravi stated on television and radio that a riot had occurred and appealed for calm. But after 7 pm, the State’s political executive called it a “pre-planned violent act of terrorism”, and an organised pogrom began against Muslims across the State. Over several weeks, thousands were killed and raped and turned into refugees inside their own country.
Political patronage
Gujarat’s chief political executive, a Vajpayee-Advani protégé, should have been immediately held accountable; instead he continued to receive their political patronage. Vajpayee, en route to a planned business trip abroad, made a perfunctory visit to the scene of the civil horror, then proceeded to Singapore, where he was shown moving around on a golf-cart wearing designer goggles. He had clearly failed to grasp the dimensions or the gravity of the nature of the office he held. Vajpayee thus came to lose the trust of India’s Muslims and minorities in general which he had earned by his moderation and maturity over many decades in the Opposition. The RSS-BJP had lost, perhaps permanently, the last opportunity to make their actions tally with their sweet words about a united Indian people living in bliss in a common sacred Motherland.
Vajpayee’s finance and economic planning ministers were as ignorant of the reality of India’s macroeconomics as the Stalinist New Delhi bureaucrats pampered by Congress and its Communist friends. These bureaucrats continued in power under Vajpayee. Plus the RSS’s pseudo-economists were enough to scare away all except a minor econometrician and a shallow economic historian. The latter led the BJP up the garden path in 2003-2004 with talk about India’s economy being on the point of “take off” (based on defunct American theory from the 1960s), which misled them into the “India Shining” campaign and electoral defeat. The BJP finance minister, thus misled, revealed his own ignorance of his job-requirements when he happily spoke on TV of how much he sympathised with businessmen who had told him CBI, CVC and CAG were the initials holding India back from this (bogus) “take off”. Equally innocent of economics, the BJP’s planning chief went about promising vast government subsidies to already-rich Indians abroad to become “venture capitalists” in India! Instead of reversing the woeful Stalinism of the Congress decades overall, Vajpayee’s Government super-imposed a crony capitalism upon it. Budgetary discipline was not even begun to be sought — another BJP finance minister revelling publicly in his ignorance of Maynard Keynes.
The signal of monetary crisis that was the UTI fiasco was papered over with more paper money printing. Privatisation was briefly made a fetish — despite there being sound conservative reasons not to privatise in India until the fiscal and monetary haemorrhaging is stopped. Liquidating real assets prior to a likely massive inflation of paper assets caused by deficit-financing, is not a public good.
RSS members and protégés appointed to government posts and placed in charge of government moneys revealed themselves as corrupt and nepotistic as anyone else. The overall failure of the management of India’s public institutions and organs of State continued under Vajpayee-Advani just as it had done for decades earlier. Vajpayee-Advani evinced no vision of a modern political economy as reformers of other major countries have done, such as Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev-Yeltsin, Adenauer-Erhardt, De Gaulle, even Deng Tsiaoping.
Irrational obsession
The overall explanation of the ideological and practical failure of the putative Hindutvadis must have to do with their irrational obsession over two decades with the masjid-mandir issue. Ramayana and Mahabharata are magnificent mythological epics yet they are incidental aspects of the faith and culture deriving from the Vedas and Upanishads. The motive force of a true Hindutva is already contained in the simple Upanishadic motto of the Indian Republic, Satyameva jayathe (let truth prevail) which is almost all the religion that anyone may need. The search for all truth necessarily requires individual freedom, and taking its first steps would require the RSS-BJP denouncing all their backward pseudo-science and anti-science. Who among them will liberate them from the clutches of astrology, and bring instead the fresh air and light of modern science since Copernicus and Galileo? Without rigorous modern reasoning, the RSS and BJP are condemned to their misunderstanding of themselves and of India, just as surely as their supposed enemies — literalist Muslim believers — are committed to a flat earth and an implacably stern heaven placed above it. Pakistan’s finest academic has reported how his colleagues pass off as physics the measurement of earth receding from heaven if Einstein and The Qúran could be amalgamated. The RSS and BJP need to free themselves from similar irrational backwardness in all fields, including politics and economics. It is plain Vajpayee, Advani or any of their existing political progeny cannot lead themselves, or Indians in general, to that promised land.
Waffle but No Models of Monetary Policy: The RBI and Financial Repression
October 27, 2005 — drsubrotoroyWaffle but No Models of Monetary Policy:
The RBI and Financial Repression (A Stock Market on Steroids)
by
Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman, Perspective Page, October 27 2005
If the average Indian citizen feels flummoxed at hearing all the fancy words from official spokesmen and the talking heads on TV and the expensive pink business newspapers — words like “credit offtake”, “liquidity”, “reverse repo rate” “medium term”, “inflation mandate” etc — there is help at hand. It is as likely as not that the purveyors are as flummoxed themselves even while they bandy these terms about in what has been passing for monetary policy in India in recent years. No one has any reliable economic models backed by time-series data to support all the waffle.
Here is an example.
The Government (and specifically the department of the Finance Ministry known as the RBI) will have us believe that the decline in the value of money that has been occurring in India has been at less than 5% per annum. According to official figures, the average Indian’s purchase of consumable goods and services (food, housing, clothing, transport etc) has been costing more every year by merely 5% at the very most. “What you can buy for Rs. 1000 in one year, you have to pay just Rs 1050 to buy the next year” is what the Government will have us believe. But is anyone’s personal experience of the diminishing value of the domestic currency in India consonant with what official spokesmen say inflation happens to be?
You may well reply that you cannot quite recall what Rs. 1000 bought for you last year. Precisely so. Nor really can anyone else — and that mutual collective loss of memory on the part of the public is something that India’s Government (like many other governments across time and space) has been literally banking on!
Consider a few very simple calculations. Suppose a citizen earns an annual income of Rs. 100,000, and an honest Government told him/her to pay total taxes (from both income and expenditure) of 10%. Clearly Rs. 90,000 would be left for the citizen to spend on his/her various choices of consumption or saving afterwards. If the citizen could assume the value of money was constant (inflation was 0%) then this Rs. 90,000 in one year would buy the same amount of goods and services the next year. But instead we may be living in a political system where the Government officially taxes very lightly, and then dishonestly taxes very heavily by reducing the value of money invisibly, i.e. by inflation. The Government may make the official tax-rate 8% and the actual inflation-rate 15%. The citizen who has Rs. 100,000 will then pay Rs. 8,000 in nominal taxes, but the Rs. 92,000 that is nominally left over for his own consumption and savings, will be made to decline by a further 15% every year.
I.e., a further value of Rs.13,800 (15% of Rs. 92,000) would effectively disappear as an invisible tax from the household budget due to the decline in the value of money, without the household being any wiser. In real terms, the household would have only Rs. 78,200 left.
Where would that extra value disappear to? Clearly, the beneficiary of this invisible extraction of real resources from household budgets would be the only entity that is able to compel the decline in the value of money, namely, the Government, which holds monopoly power to print the pieces of paper (at zero cost) that we call “money” and which we are forced by circumstances to use to expedite our real transactions of goods and services. Roughly speaking, that is how the Government’s own budget deficit gets financed in India.
I.e., the Government of India has its own (massive) expenditures — not merely on things like roads and bridges and military tanks and submarines, but also on ministers and bureaucrats’ wages etc., besides enormous interest payments on past debts incurred by the Government. If the expenditures exceed the visible revenues raised from taxation, as they have done by perhaps 40-50% or more every year for several decades, then the difference gets bridged by printing more paper money over which the Government has had a monopoly.
In India, a total of perhaps 18 million people work in all branches of government and a total of perhaps 12 million people work in the entire organised private sector. That makes 30 million people — with 4 dependants each, that accounts for perhaps 150 million people in the country. That leaves another 850 million people in our population of 1,000 million. Everyone, whether in the 150 million or the 850 million, rich and named or poor and anonymous, has had to use for his/her real transactions of goods and services the paper that the Government produces as money. By causing a decline in the value of this paper every year by x%, everyone who holds this paper, as well as assets denominated in this paper, suffers an invisible taxation of x% without quite realising it. The real revenue the Government of India extracts in this way is what has allowed it to balance its own books.
Furthermore, in the Indian case, what is said to be the inflation-rate and the actual inflation-rate experienced by ordinary people, may well be two different things. The wage-bill of those 18 million people employed by government agencies are linked directly to what official spokesmen say the inflation-rate is, so if the actual rate being experienced was higher and was announced as such, so would have to be that wage-bill and public expenditure! Official spokesmen may tell us the decline in the value of money has been merely 5% or less a year, so what cost Rs. 1000 last year costs Rs. 1050 this year, but as a matter of plain fact, the average citizen’s experience (and memory) may well tell him/her something different – e.g. that what cost Rs. 1000 last year, is in fact costing Rs. 1100 or Rs 1150 or Rs 1200 this year.
So much for the value of money. Now turn to interest-rates.
Here too, the average citizen need not be a rocket-scientist to know that relative to the Western countries, India is labour abundant and is capital scarce. Roughly speaking, that means we have relatively more people and fewer high-rise concrete buildings than the West does. Where then would you expect wages (the price of labour) to be higher, in the West or in India? Clearly in the place where labour is more scarce, namely, the West. And where would you expect interest-rates (the price of capital) to be higher? Clearly, where capital is relatively more scarce, namely India. Such was clearly the case between 1864 and 1926 (Fig. 1). Calcutta bank interest-rates were uniformly higher by about 2-3% than London bank interest-rates (in an era of zero inflation). But something wholly different occurred in the pseudo-socialist India after Independence. E.g., for the years 1975-1992 official Indian interest-rates (adjusted for inflation) were uniformly lower than those in world capital markets represented by the USA (Fig. 2). That remains true today. Not only have the higher wages of the West been attractive to Indians, so seems to be the higher real rates of return on capital! Hence everyone who could fled India – exporting their adult children and their savings abroad , leaving future generations of the anonymous masses with larger public debts to pay the bills in due course. There has been a flight of skilled labour and as well as capital flight from India — are foreigners going to come when they can see the Indian “elite” has fled? Official real interest-rates in India today may well be negative if inflation is properly measured, which would explain the Bombay stock-market boom the same way an athlete can perform better when on steroids.
Of course in the unorganised capital markets, actual real rates of return have always been higher in India than in the West and remain so. Just ask anyone in the unorganised capital markets how much he has to pay to rent machinery on a daily basis e.g. in the building or construction trade in an Indian city or small town or village. He will quote you rates of 2% or 5% or 10% — per day. Hence there is a massive distortion between what is happening in the unorganised capital markets all over the country and the official money markets the RBI believes itself to be presiding over in Bombay. Until the RBI starts to tell us frankly about this phenomenon, which is known to economists as “financial repression” and which has been caused by runaway Government spending programmes in India for decades, the average citizen may discount all the talk about a few basis points changing here and there on this or that nominal rate, in our pale imitation of what we think the US Fed or the European or British central banks do as policy. The truth is the RBI has never been allowed to model itself after those institutions. Instead, India has had nationalised commercial banking whose pampered inefficient management and staff have allowed the holding of massive amounts of government debt as assets in their balance-sheets, all denominated in an inconvertible controlled currency, and all presided over by a “one-tier” central bank patterned on the old Gosbank of the former Soviet Union, completely subservient to the dictates of the runaway spending that this or that particular set of politicians in power may demand. If there are dreams to be dreamt by honest economists in India, it would be for all that to be made to change.
The Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article
October 11, 2005 — drsubrotoroyThe Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman, Oct. 11 2005, Perspective Page
Vasili Mitrokhin’s defection from the former Soviet Union to Britain in 1992 caused a treasure-trove to reach MI-6 and the CIA and FBI, because he exposed many dozens of Soviet agents and their plots and intrigues around the world. But this fact that his material greatly helped Anglo-American counter-intelligence does not per se make it a source of accurate evidence with which a historian’s history book can be created. Rather, what this monumental and extremely informative volume amounts to being is a vast documentation, from an Anglo-American perspective, of what MI-6 and its allies have agreed to make public about what they now know of Soviet foreign policy and KGB practices, and of how Russian diplomacy and the KGB’s successors might function in the future.
That this is not a detached and disinterested history of intelligence is revealed by the three chapters on the subcontinent which have been causing a stir in India for the wrong reasons.
Everyone in the 1970s and through the 1980s knew of the tight grip around New Delhi’s policy-making circles of top bureaucrats, academics, journalists etc who were blatantly and incorrigibly pro-Soviet, some being active communists or fellow- travellers. Some of those complaining today know fully well that a cardinal implicit reason the CPI(M) broke from its parent party had to do precisely with Moscow’s control of the CPI. Moreover, while it might have been newsworthy when the KGB honey-trapped a senior diplomat or a junior cipher clerk in the Indian Embassy now and then, there were also hundreds of public sector bureaucrats, military personnel, journalists, technology professors, writers, artists, dancers et al who were treated most hospitably by the Soviet state – getting freebies flying to Soviet cities, being greeted by singing Young Pioneers, touring L’Hermitage with Intourist, receiving dollar honoraria and splendid gifts, sitting in on “technical training”, even receiving bogus Soviet doctoral degrees to allow themselves to be called “Dr” etc. Purchasing influence in New Delhi or any other capital city has never been merely a crude matter of cash-filled suitcases sloshing around in the middle of the night. Much of what Mitrokhin’s material says about the KGB’s penetration of India should, candidly speaking, generate but a desultory yawn from us –although even this book seems not to know that Narasimha Rao’s infamous, catastrophically damaging remarks in August 1991, in favour of the abortive KGB coup led by Kryuchkov against Gorbachev and Yeltsin, had been prompted by a staunchly pro-Soviet retired Indian diplomat at his side long-associated with the CPI.
Yes there are many titbits in this book that may be of interest from an Indian perspective — such as that Sanjay Gandhi’s entourage contained both a Soviet and an American mole in it (where are they now?). But what may be far more interesting to us today is what can be deduced from what Mitrokhin is silent about. For example, India and the Soviets were close allies in 1971 when Kissinger had teamed up with Yahya Khan and Bhutto to send Nixon to China. It is well known our Army Chief, General Maneckshaw, had demanded and received from Indira Gandhi and Jagjivan Ram enough time to prepare to go to war, and when Maneckshaw finally did move to liberate Bangladesh in December, it surprised Yahya and the Americans. Were the Soviets also quite surprised? If so, it would mean that although the Indian establishment was as porous as a sieve with respect to arms’ deals etc, on a matter of paramount national interest, namely, the just war on our own against Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan’s brutality in East Pakistan condoned by Nixon and Kissinger, India had kept her secrets secure. If, as seems likely, Indira Gandhi and her overtly communistic advisers had kept India’s war plans from not leaking to the KGB between March and December 1971, we may not have been in fact too badly compromised despite the widespread “shallow” penetration that occurred through corruption all around in the bureaucracy, academic institutions, media, political parties, etc.
Mitrokhin’s material describes this kind of shallow corrupt penetration that everyone knew was (and still remains) part of the lobbying process in Delhi. But there is no evidence in the book that the KGB knew of General Maneckshaw’s military preparations or plan of action until the lights went out in a blackout in Delhi on the night of December 2 1971 — that at least is something of which Indians may be slightly proud today. The same goes for the Pokhran nuclear tests. It is well known the CIA was caught by surprise by Pokhran-II in 1998; was the KGB caught by surprise by Pokhran-I in 1974? Probably so. Equally, the book says the KGB had at one point cracked Pakistani codes; did the Soviets share this information with India? Almost certainly not. Our Government’s chummery with the Soviets during the Cold War probably stopped well short of complete incest.
Unfortunately, many questions of interest to India or other countries have simply not been asked in the book. The Soviets (and Harold Wilson) had seemed to broker the India-Pakistan ceasefire in 1965, and Lal Bahadur Shastri died the day after he signed the Tashkent Declaration. What is the inside KGB information on that?
We do not know from this book. What do Soviet archives say about communist influence through the 1940s in Jammu & Kashmir (upon some of the very names who became Indira Gandhi’s inner circle later in Delhi)? Or about the uncritical adoption in the 1950s of Sovietesque economic models by the Planning Commission (and the suppression of Milton Friedman’s November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India, as well as the tarnishing of BR Shenoy as a CIA agent)? The answers are not present in this book because these and analogous questions of interest to India or many other countries simply have not been asked. Mitrokhin’s material has been mined only from an Anglo-American point of view, and until it is thrown open completely to everyone, a detached and disinterested history of permanent and universal interest on the important matters it touches upon is not available.
Several factual and methodological problems result as a consequence, and these need to be identified for purposes of future progress in understanding. For example, the book speaks many times of the KGB having forged or fabricated documents around the world as a technique of spreading disinformation.
Doubtless this was standard operating procedure for intelligence agencies but it is left completely impossible for the average reader to come to any assessment whether a given document mentioned was genuine or forged.
Consider a case in Iran. The book states that in February 1958, the KGB “forged a letter from the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to his ambassador in Tehran belittling the Shah’s ability and implying that the United States was plotting his overthrow. The Teheran residency circulated copies of the letter to influential Iranian parliamentarians and editors in the confident expectation that one would come to the attention of the Shah – which it duly did. According to the KGB files on the operation, the Shah was completely taken in by the fabricated Dulles letter and personally instructed that a copy be sent to the US embassy with a demand for an explanation. Though the embassy dismissed it as a forgery, the Teheran residency reported that its denials were disbelieved. Dulles’s supposedly slighting references to the Shah were said to be a frequent topic of whispered conversation among the Iranian elite.” (p. 171)
It is impossible for anyone who has not seen this document or other supporting evidence to come to any assessment of what actually happened here. Matters are made worse by a note that says the KGB “claimed improbably that the Americans blamed the forgery not on the KGB but the British, who were said to be jealous of the strength of US influence in Iran”.
Was the document genuine or was it forged and if so by whom? If forged, must we believe the KGB was so astute in 1958 in its knowledge of American idiom that it could achieve the tremendous deception of mimicking the greatest of Cold Warriors writing to his own ambassador, enough to fool the Shah of Iran who had been placed in power by the very same Americans? No one can really tell unless the documents are opened up completely.
Another example is of more topical interest, and also reveals that this book must be seen as a contribution to a continuing (if friendly and academic) battle between rival intelligence agencies. Yevgeny Primakov, the former KGB chief and reformist Prime Minister (and Soviet Ambassador to India) is quoted as saying about the American help to the Pakistan-based guerrillas against the Soviets in Afghanistan: “the idea of deploying the Stingers (shoulder-held ground-to- air-missiles) was supplied by Osama bin Laden, who had been cooperating closely with the CIA at the time.” (Russian Crossroads, Yale University Press, 2004.)
Professor Andrew denies this flatly: “There is no support in the Mitrokhin material (or any other reliable source) for the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen. Most were funded through charities and mosques in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and were frequently viewed with suspicion by the Afghan mujahideen.” (p. 579)
It is obvious why this question is important: if Primakov is right and Andrew is wrong the Americans must be acutely embarrassed in having been allies or supporters or financiers not long ago of the very same Bin Laden who has now become their most bitter enemy. The United States Government’s “9/11 Commission” in 2004 made a much weaker statement than Professor Andrew: “Saudi Arabia and the United States supplied billions of dollars worth of secret assistance to rebel groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. This assistance was funnelled through Pakistan: the Pakistani military intelligence (ISID) helped train the rebels and distribute the arms. But Bin Laden and his associates had their own sources of support and training and they received little or no assistance from the United States…. In his memoirs, (Bin Laden’s deputy) Ayman al Zawahiri contemptuously rejects the claim that the Arab mujahideen were financed (even `one penny’) or trained by the United States… CIA officials involved in aiding the Afghan resistance regarded Bin Laden and his `Arab Afghans’ as having been militarily insignificant in the war and recall having little to do with him.”
Bin Laden was a callow youth when he got to Afghanistan shortly after the Soviet invasion in December 1979. Yet his contributions of funds, military effort and religious zealotry made him emerge age 33-34 as the “Emir” of Al Qaeda by the time the Soviets were compelled to withdraw in 1989, having suffered 14,500 dead. The Americans then began to lose interest in the region and in their Pakistani clients, and it was in that atmosphere that Pakistan decided to declare its independence in the world with its clandestine nuclear programme (never having felt part of the nationalist movement which led to Indian independence in 1947). It was in the same period that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda grew to become implacable and formidable enemies of the West, which culminated in the 9/11 mass murders in 2001. The claim that while the CIA certainly supported “Afghan” jihadists, it did not support Arab or African ones like Bin Laden and his friends is highly implausible. The New Yorker and Washington Post reported in 1986 the CIA supplying and training Hekmatyar’s “Hizbe-Islami” in the use of Stinger missiles to bring down Soviet aircraft. It is impossible to imagine the admittedly myopic American policy at the time included checking passports of these trainee- beneficiaries, saying “OK, you’re an Afghan resistance fighter you get a Stinger, you’re an Arab/African terrorist-of-the-future-who-may-attack-New York, you don’t”. Professor Andrew quotes positively the work on Bhutto of Raza Anwar, the Pakistani socialist, but he may have been unaware of Anwar’s The Tragedy of Afghanistan (Verso, 1988) where the precise nature of the American, Chinese and Arab support for the thousands of guerrillas in the dozens of camps in Zia’s Pakistan is quite fully and objectively documented. Foreign jihadists in Jammu & Kashmir came to be known as “Afghans” because they were veterans of the Afghan conflicts, not because they were Afghan nationals. Unlike Britain’s MI-6, the United States Government’s 9/11 Commission has made no bones about the connection between Bin Laden and the Pakistani ISI whose intent has been to attack India: “Pakistan’s rulers found these multitudes of ardent young `Afghans’ a source of potential trouble at home but potentially useful abroad. Those who joined the Taliban movement, espousing a ruthless version of Islamic law, perhaps could bring order in chaotic Afghanistan and make it a cooperative ally. They thus might give Pakistan greater security on one of the several borders where Pakistani military officers hoped for what they called `strategic depth’ (…. Pakistan’s need for a friendly, pliable neighbour on the west due to its hostile relationship with India on the east.)… It is unlikely that Bin Laden could have returned to Afghanistan (in 1996) had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advance knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guesthouses and training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These were part of a larger network used by diverse organisations for recruiting and training fighters for Islamic insurgencies in such places as Tajikistan, Kashmir and Chechnya. Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced Bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near Khowst, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them available for training of Kashmiri militants.”
Regardless of the fondness of the very strong lobby of British apologists (led by a former British High Commissioner to Pakistan) for the ISI and Pakistani Army, no detached history of modern intelligence in our part of the world can be written which whitewashes the misdeeds of Pakistan’s generals over several decades. Aside from what The Mitrokihn Archive II signifies about our region, there is a great amount of invaluable material on other parts of the world too, from Chile and Peru to Cuba and Nicaragua, to South Africa and Egypt and Israel, to China and Korea and Japan.
Indeed the keenest pages have to do with the internecine tensions between communists, like Castro and Gorbachev, or Khrushchev and Mao Zedong, in which no Anglo-American interests were involved. We in India have had our share of academic apologists and fellow travellers for totalitarian communist China, but the roots of the Sino-Soviet split have never come to be aired in Indian discussion. Professor Andrew is a leading member of the vitally important Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, whose website displays new and vitally important data from formerly communist countries (like Mongolia, Russia and East Germany) about how Chinese communists saw and felt about India, Pakistan, Tibet etc, which needs urgent attention from serious Indian observers. The Mitrokhin Archive II gives us a privileged glimpse of some of what happened: “The Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s brought to an acrimonious end the deference from the PRC which Stalin had taken for granted. The first public attack on Moscow was made by Mao’s veteran security chief, Kang Sheng, whose ferocious purges during Mao’s Great Leap Forward were largely modelled on techniques he had learned in Moscow during the Great Terror. On the Soviet side, the ideological dispute with China was compounded by personal loathing for Mao – the `Great Helmsman’ – and a more general dislike of the Chinese population as a whole, Khrushchev `repeatedly’ told a Romanian delegation shortly before his overthrow in 1964 that `Mao Zedong is sick, crazy, that he should be taken to an asylum, etc.” An assessment of Chinese national character circulated to KGB residencies by the Centre twelve years later claimed that the Chinese were `noted for their spitefulness’. What most outraged both the Kremlin and the Centre was Beijing’s impudence in setting itself up as a rival capital of world Communism, attempting to seduce other Communist parties from their rightful allegiance to the Soviet Union. Moscow blamed the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime… on the takeover of the Cambodian Communist Party by `an anti-popular, pro-Beijing clique’.
If nothing else, The Mitrokhin Archives II provides an honest opportunity for India’s Left to come clean with their frank and non-ideological opinions about Soviet, Chinese and other communist histories, and hence to candidly gain self-knowledge. Will they take it? Are there any George Orwells out there?
Kolkata, October 5 2005
Can India Become an Economic Superpower or Will There Be a Monetary Meltdown? (2005)
May 5, 2005 — drsubrotoroyIn 2005, I returned to Britain thanks to an invitation from Professor Patrick Minford of the Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, to deliver a lecture on India’s Money at his Economics Seminar. http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/carbs/research/seminars.html
“Wednesday 13 April 2005 Dr Subroto Roy /India’s Money/ 4.30pm, Room S01 (Economics Seminar Series)
The same lecture was delivered at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, a fortnight later under the title “Can India Become an Economic Superpower or Will There Be a Monetary Meltdown?”. The IEA’s summary of the lecture was as follows
http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?type=news&ID=263
27 April 2005
“Leading Indian economist, Dr. Subroto Roy discusses the prospects of the Indian economy and warns of dangers ahead.
Can India become an economic superpower or will there be a monetary meltdown?
Dr. Roy discussed the prospects for the Indian economy at a lecture at the IEA on 27th April. Below is a synopsis of his lecture, outlining his hopes and concerns.
New technological progress in a myriad of ways, as well as the discovery of new resources, plus a possible peace-dividend arising from reduced regional tensions and conflict, are all important factors contributing to real economic growth in India today.
While the real side of the economy does well, the “nominal” economy, within the Government’s control, displays disconcerting trends. Continual deficit financing for half a century has led to exponential growth of public debt and broad money. The vast growth of time-deposits in banks may have been misinterpreted as indicating a real phenomenon such as unusual savings behaviour when it is more likely to be a nominal phenomenon resulting from increasing amounts of government debt being held by the largely nationalised banking sector. (The same may be true of China).
Twenty-one years ago, the author’s IEA Occasional Paper No. 69, Pricing, planning and politics: a study of economic distortions in India, proposed microeconomic reforms provoking the Times‘ lead editorial of May 29 1984. Some of these came to be implemented following the author’s role as a senior adviser to Rajiv Gandhi in 1990-1991. Now, monetary and fiscal reforms of a classical liberal nature are vitally necessary if a macroeconomic meltdown is to be prevented. Important among these are complete budgetary transparency, fiscal discipline improving the social productivity of all public expenditure, and monetary and financial policies to restore the integrity of the currency at home and abroad. Dr. Roy was Wincott Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Buckingham last year. He is editor of Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution available from the recommended books page of the IEA’s website.”
When I returned to India, I was invited to give the same lecture on May 5 2005 to the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Economics Seminar, chaired by Chief Economist Dr Narendra Jadav; the invitation came thanks to the intervention of Dr S. S. Tarapore. I subsequently informed a few of India’s key monetary policy decision-makers of these lectures, and I was happy to see policy talk emanating from Delhi and Bombay becoming a little less drunken and disorderly than it had been before.
Subroto Roy, April 14 2007
Towards a Highly Transparent Fiscal & Monetary Framework for India’s Union & State Governments (29 April 2000)
April 29, 2000 — drsubrotoroyTowards a Highly Transparent Fiscal & Monetary Framework for India’s Union & State Governments
An address by Dr Subroto Roy to
the Conference of State Finance Secretaries, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai, 29 April 2000.
It is a great privilege to speak to this distinguished gathering of Finance Secretaries and economic policy-makers here at the Reserve Bank today. I should like to begin by thanking the Hon’ble Governor Dr Bimal Jalan and the Hon’ble Deputy Governor Dr YV Reddy for their kind invitation for me to do so. I should also like to record here my gratitude to their eminent predecessor, the Hon’ble Governor of Andhra Pradesh, Dr C Rangarajan, for his encouragement of my thinking on these subjects over several years.
My aim will be to share with you and seek your help with my continuing and very incomplete efforts at trying to comprehend as clearly as possible the major public financial flows taking place between the Union of India and each of its constituent States. I plan to show you by the end of this discussion how all the information presently contained in the budgets of the Union and State Governments of India, may be usefully transformed one-to-one into a fresh modern format consistent with the best international practices of government accounting and public budgeting.
I do not use the term “Central Government”, because it is a somewhat sinister anachronism left over from British times. When we were not a free nation, there was indeed a Central Government in New Delhi which took its orders from London and gave orders to its peripheral Provinces as well as to the British “Residents” parked beside the thrones of those who were called “Indian Princes”.
Free India has been a Union of States. There is a Government of the whole Union and there is a Government of each State. The Union is the sovereign and the sole international power, while the States, as political subdivisions of the Union, also possess certain sub-sovereign powers; as indeed do their own subdivisions like zilla parishads, municipalities and other local bodies in smaller measure.
Our 15 large States, which account for 97% of the population of the country, have an average of something like 61 million citizens each, which is vastly more than most countries of the world. In size of population at least, we are like 15 Frances or 15 Britains put together. The Indian Republic is unique or sui generis in that there has never been in history any attempt at federalism or democracy with such sheer large numbers of people involved.
In such a framework the citizen is supposed to feel a voter and a taxpayer at different levels, owing loyalty and taxes to both the national unit and the subdivisions in which he or she resides. In exchange, government at different levels is expected to provide citizens with public goods and services in appropriate measure. The problem of optimal fiscal decentralisation in India as elsewhere is one of allocating to each level of government the power to tax and responsibility to provide, public goods and services most appropriate to that level of government given the availability of information of resources and citizens’ preferences.
In parallel, a problem of optimal monetary decentralisation may be identified as that of allocating between an autonomous Central Bank and its regional or even State-level affiliates or subsidiaries, the power to finance through money-creation the deficits, if any, of the Union and State Governments respectively. It is not impossible to imagine a world in which individual State deficits did not flow into the Union deficit as a matter of course, but instead were intended to be financed more or less independently of the Union budget from a single-window source. There would be a clear conceptual independence between the Union and State levels of public action in the country. In such a world, the Union Government might approach a constitutionally autonomous national-level Central Bank to finance its deficit, while individual State Governments did something analogous with respect to autonomous regional or even State-level Central Banks which would be affiliates or subsidiaries of the national Central Bank.
This is similar to the intended model of the United States Federal Reserve System when it started 90 years ago, though it has not worked like that, in part because of the rapid rise to domination by the New York Federal Reserve relative to the other 11 regional Federal Reserve Banks.
A more radical monetary step would be to contemplate a “Reverse Euro” model by which a national currency issued by the national-level Central Bank acts in parallel with a number of regional or State-level currencies with full convertibility and floating exchange-rates guaranteed between all of them in a world of unhindered mobility of goods and factors.
However, these are very incomplete and theoretical thoughts which perhaps deserve to be shelved for the time being.[1] What necessitates this kind of discussion is after all not something theoretical but rather the practical ground realities of our country’s fiscal and monetary position, something of which this audience will be far better aware than am I.
Economic and political analysis suggests that managing a process of public financial decision-making requires a coincidence of the people who have the best information with the people who have the authority to act. In other words, decision-makers need to have relevant, reliable and timely information made available to them, and then they need to be considered accountable for the decisions made on that basis.
In a democracy like ours, the locus of economic policy decision-making must be Parliament and the State legislatures. Academics, civil servants, journalists, special interest groups, this or that business or industrial lobbyist or foreign management consultant can all have their say — but consensus on the direction and nature of economic policy, if it is to be genuine, has to ultimately emerge out of the legislative process on the basis of reasonable, well-informed discussion and debate, given full relevant timely information. The proper source of all economic policy decisions and initiatives is Parliament, the State legislatures and local government bodies — not this or that lobby or interest-group which may be vocal or powerful enough to be heard at a given time in New Delhi or some State capital-city.
Our 1950 Constitution was a marvellous document in its time and it has worked tolerably well. It defined the functions of government in India in accordance with the main parameters of normative public finance.
Economics ascribed a quite extensive traditional role to Government, the most important functions being collective and individual security, followed by all activities which in the words of Adam Smith,
“though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it, therefore, cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.” (Wealth of Nations, V.i.c., 1776)
Our 1950 Constitution defined the Union’s responsibilities to be
External Security;
Foreign Relations & Trade;
Supreme Court & Domestic Security;
Debt Service, Foreign & Domestic;
National Infrastructure;
Communications & Broadcasting;
Atomic Energy;
Public Sector Industries;
Banking; Currency & Finance;
Archives; Surveys & National Institutions;
National Universities;
National Civil Services & Administration.
Each State’s responsibilities were
High Courts & Lower Judiciary;
Police; Civil Order; Prisons;
Water; Sanitation; Health;
State Debt Service;
Intra-State Infrastructure & Communications;
Local Government;
Liquor & Other Public Sector Industries; Trade; Local Banking & Finance;
Land; Agriculture; Animal Husbandry;
Libraries, Museums, Monuments;
State Civil Service & Administration.
Some duties were supposed to be shared by the Union with each State, including
Criminal Law;
Civil & Family Law, Contracts & Torts;
Forests & Environmental Protection;
Unemployment & Refugee Relief;
Electricity;
Education.
But the authors of the 1950 Constitution could not have envisaged the nature of present problems, or foreseen in those early years what we would have become like today. Our fiscal system has become such that a few clauses may have led to an impossibly complex centralization of fiscal power and information. Not only did the 1950 Constitution identify agendas of the Union and State Governments, it also dictated the procedure of decision-making and it is this which may have become intractable over 50 years. Under Article 280, a Finance Commission is appointed every five years whose task is to try to efficiently and equitably allot tax revenues collected by the Union downwards to the States and laterally between the States. Members of Finance Commissions have been elder statesmen of high reputation and integrity, yet the practical impossibility of their task has made their actions seem to all observers to be clouded in mystery and perhaps muddle. As one recent member, Justice Qureshi, has candidly stated
“it is humanly impossible for a person to understand the problems of the Centre and the 25 States and take a decision thereon within such a short time” (Ninth Finance Commission, Issues and Recommendations, p.350).
No matter how competent or well-meaning a Finance Commission’s members may be, their purpose may be stymied by the overload of information and overcentralisation of authority that has come to take place. As a result, it may have been inevitable that Government has ended up doing what it need not have done at the expense concomitantly of failing to do what only Government could or must have done.
The present situation is such that, despite the best efforts of the Reserve Bank and other Government agencies, there may be a gross lack of timely, relevant and reliable information reaching all decision-makers including the ordinary citizen, who as voter and taxpayer is the cornerstone of the fiscal system. My own inquiry started when Mr. Hubert Neiss, then Central Asia Director at the IMF, hired me as a consultant in December 1992. He told me the IMF was naturally concerned about India’s national budget deficit, but no one seemed to quite know how this related precisely to the budgets of the different States whose deficits seemed to be flowing into it. By its terms of reference, the IMF could not inquire into India’s States’ budgets and I did not do so in my work with them, but the import of his question remained in my thinking. Later I found similar questions being asked at the World Bank. I do not think it a great secret to state that there may be a great deal of simple puzzlement about the workings of our fiscal and monetary system on the part of observers and decision-makers who may be concerned about India’s fiscal position.
Among both public decision-makers and ordinary citizens right across the length and breadth of our country, a severe and widespread lack of information about and comprehension of India’s basic fiscal and monetary facts seems to exist. This in itself may be a cause of fiscal problems as citizens may not be adequately aware of the link between making their demands for public goods and services on the one hand, and the necessity of finding the resources to fund these goods and services on the other.
In any ultimate analysis, resources for public goods and services in an economy can be found only by diverting the real resources of individual citizens towards public uses. Other than printing fiat money, a national Government can only either tax those citizens who are present today in the population, or, borrow from the capital stock on behalf of unborn generations of future citizens.
West Europe and America are heirs to a long history of political development; yet even there, as Professor James Buchanan has often observed, the idea until has not been grasped until recently that benefits from use of public goods and services are supposed to accrue to citizens from whom resources have been raised. Until the 19th Century,
“government outlay was frequently considered “unproductive”, and there was, by implicit assumption, no return of services to the citizens who were taxed. In a political regime that devotes the bulk of government outlay to the maintenance expenses of a single sovereign, or even of an elite, there is no demonstrable return flow of services to the taxpayers…. Tax principles were discussed as if, once collected, revenues were removed forever from the economy; taxpayers, both individually and in the aggregate, were held to suffer real income loss” (James M. Buchanan, The Demand and Supply of Public Goods, Rand 1968, p. 167).
According to Buchanan, such an undemocratic fiscal model was transformed in the work of the great Swedish economist Knut Wicksell and others by introducing the key assumption of fiscal democracy, namely, that
“those who bear the costs of public services are also the beneficiaries in democratic structures”
Conversely, we may say those who demand public goods and services in a fiscal democracy should also expect to pay for them in real resources. If citizens are aware of taxes only as a burden and come to feel they receive little or nothing from Governments in return, there is a loss of incentive to pay taxes or to stand up and be counted as proud citizens of the country. There is an incentive instead to evade taxes or to flee the country or to cynically believe everything to be corrupt. On the other hand, if citizens demand public goods and services without expecting to contribute resources for their production, this amounts to being no more than a demand to be a free-rider on the general budget.
In our country, we may have been seeing both phenomena. On one hand, there is, rightly or wrongly, a tremendous public cynicism present almost everywhere with respect to expecting effective provision of public goods and services. On the other hand, the idea that the beneficiaries of public goods and services must also, sooner or later, come to bear the costs in terms of taxed resources is far from established so our politics come to often be unreasonable and irresponsible.
Reliable and comprehensible information about the system as a whole and about the contents of public budgets is thus vital for a fiscal democracy to function. In ancient Athens it was said:
“Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the State as well; even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics — this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who has no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.” Pericles (Funeral Oration, Thucydides, The Pelopennesian War)
That was the criterion that Pericles defined for ancient Athenian democracy, and I see no reason why in the 21st Century it cannot be met in modern India’s democracy.
This finally brings me to the positive contribution I have promised to make. The aim my attempt to redesign the Union and State’s budgets utilising precisely the same data as available has been to make the fiscal position of all public entities accessible to any interested citizen.
We do not have to say that every Indian citizen, or even every literate and numerate citizen of our country, has to be able to understand the intricacies of the public budgets of his or her State and the Union. But if information is available such that anyone who understands the finances of his own family or his own business enterprise is also reasonably able to understand the public budget then a standard of maximum feasible transparency would have been defined and met.
I have relied on the international normative model developed by our own countryman, Mr. A. Premchand, who retired from the IMF a few years ago, as described in his outstanding book Effective Government Accounting (IMF 1995), where he showed applications for e.g. the USA, New Zealand and Switzerland. What I have done – or rather did in 1997/1998, with the help of a research assistant and a student – is apply that to all of our States and the Union too.[2] What will be seen by way of differences with the present methodology is that there is essentially an Operating Statement, a Financial Statement and a Cash Flow Statement offered for each State and the Union. The financial position and gross fiscal deficit definition emerge rather neatly from this – while there the rather confusing “Development/Non-development” and “Planning/Non-Planning” distinctions have been done away with.
The exercise points to the foundations of a new and fresh federal framework for our Republic. A central new fact of modern India is that many, perhaps most, of our States have developed what is effectively a bipolar division in their legislatures. Voters have also increasingly started to judge Governments not by the personalities they contain but rather by their performance on the job, and, at election-time, have begun to frequently enough shown one side the door in the hope the other side may do better. In such circumstances, there seems no reason in principle why an entity as large as the average State of modern India today cannot be entrusted to legislate and administer a modern tax-system, based especially on the income-tax, and especially taxing income from all sources including agriculture. In a fresh and modern federalism, an elected State Government would have appropriate economic powers to run its own affairs, and be mainly accountable to the legislature whose confidence it requires, and ultimately to voters below.
From an efficiency standpoint, we should want a framework in which repercussions of political turmoil or bad financial management by a State Government to not spill into other States or flow into the Union Government’s own problems of deficit financing. With free mobility of goods and factors throughout the Union, citizens faced with a poorly performing State Government could seek to vote it out of office, or may of course “vote with their feet” by moving their capital or resources to another part of the country. In short, State Governments will be held responsible by their electorates for their expenditures on public goods and services, while having the main powers of domestic taxation in the economy, especially taxes on income from all sources including agriculture.
At the same time, diverse as India is, we are not 15 or 25 separate republics federated together but rather one country all of whose peoples are united by a common geography and a common experience of history. From an equity and indeed national standpoint, we may also want a system which also firmly established that the National Parliament would have to determine how much each citizen should be taxed for the Union to provide public goods and services for the country as a whole, as well as what transfers ought to be made between the States via the Union in the interests of equity given differences in initial resource-endowments between them.
Here again an American example may be useful. As is well-known, the 50 United States each have their own Constitutions governing most intra-State political matters, yet all being inferior in authority to the 1789 Constitution of the United States as duly amended. In India, an author as early as 1888 recommended popular Constitutions for India’s States on the grounds
“where there are no popular constitutions, the personal character of the ruler becomes a most important factor in the government… evils are inherent in every government where autocracy is not tempered by a free constitution.”[3]
We could ask if a better institutional arrangement may occur by each State of India electing its own Constitutional Convention subject naturally to the supervision of the National Parliament and the obvious provision that all State Constitutions be inferior in authority to the Constitution of the Union of India.[4] These documents would then furnish the major sets of rules to govern intra-State political and fiscal decision-making more efficiently. An additional modern reason can be given from the work of Professor James M. Buchanan, namely, that fiscal constitutionalism, and perhaps only fiscal constitutionalism, allows over-riding to take place of the interests of competing power-groups.[5]
State-level Constitutional Conventions in India would provide an opportunity for a realistic assessment to be made by State-level legislators and citizens of the fiscal positions of their own States. Greater recognition and understanding of the plain facts and the desired relationships between income and expenditures, public benefits and public costs, would likely improve the quality of public decision-making at State-levels, sending public resources from destinations which are socially worthless towards destinations which are socially worthwhile. It bears repeating the average size of a large State of India is 61 million people, and almost all existing political Constitutions around the globe furnish rules for far smaller populations than that.
Thank you for your patience. Jai Hind.
[1] Monetary Federalism at Work: F. A. Hayek more than anyone else taught us that relative prices are signals or guides to economic activity — summarizing in a single statistic information about the resources, constraints, expectations and ambitions of market participants. An exchange-rate between two currencies is also a relative price, conveying information about relative market opinions regarding the issuers of the two currencies. Suppose we had two States of India in the fresh kind of federal framework outlined above, which were identical in all respects except one had a larger deficit and so a larger nominal money supply growth. Would that mean the first currency must depreciate relative to the second? Not necessarily; it is not the size of indebtedness that matters but rather the quality of public investment decisions, to which borrowed money has been put. Thus we come to the crux: Suppose we have two States which are identical in all respects except one: State X is found to have an efficient Government, i.e. one which has made relatively good quality public investment decisions, and State Y is found to have one which has made relatively bad quality public investment decisions. In the present amalgamated model of Indian federal finance, no objective distinction can be made between the two, and efficient State Governments are surreptitiously compelled to end up subsidising inefficient ones. In a differentiated federal framework for India, as the different information about the two State Governments comes to be discovered, the X currency will tend to appreciate as resources move towards it while the Y will tend to depreciate as resources move away from it. In an amalgamated model, efficient State Governments lose incentives to remain efficient, while in a differentiated model, inefficient State Governments will gain an incentive not to be inefficient. The present amalgamated situation is such that inefficient States – and this may include not only the State Government but also the State Legislature and the State electorate itself – receive no fiscal incentive to improve themselves. In a differentiated framework, the same inefficient State would face a tangible, visible loss of reserves or depreciation of its currency relative to other States on account of its inefficiency, and thereby have some incentive to mend its ways. I call the proposal given here a “Reverse Euro” model because Europe appears to be moving from differentiated currencies and money supplies to an amalgamated currency and money supply, while the argument given here for India is in the opposite direction. Professor Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, has had the kindness, at the age of 88, to send me a brilliant and forceful critique of my Reverse Euro idea for India when I requested his comment. Since he is the founder of the flexible exchange-rate system and he has found it too radical, I have shelved it for the time being.
[2] The assistance of Dola Dasgupta and K. Shanmugam is recorded with gratitude.
[3] Surendranath Roy, A History of the Native States of India, Vol I. Gwalior, Calcutta & London: Thacker 1888.
[4] Large amounts of legal and constitutional precedent have built up on issues of a regional or local nature: whether a State legislature should be unicameral or bicameral, what should be its procedures, what days should be State holidays but need not be national holidays, on tenancy, rent control, school standards, health standards and so on ad infinitum. All this body of explicit and implicit local rules and conventions may be duly collected and placed in State-level Constitutions.
[5] James M. Buchanan, Limits to Liberty, Texas, 1978.
A major expansion and reorganization of the judiciary would have to accompany the sort of basic constitutional reform outlined above. Union and State judiciaries would need to be more clearly demarcated, and rules established for review of State-level decisions by Union courts of law. It is common knowledge the judiciary in India is in a state of organizational overload at the point of collapse and dysfunction. An expansion and reorganization of the judiciary to match new Union-State constitutional relations will likely improve efficiency, and therefore welfare levels of citizens.
Economic Assessment of India-USA Merchandise Trade 1962-1992
July 27, 1993 — drsubrotoroy
Author’s Note July 2007: This was a study done by me 14 years ago when I was an economic consultant in Washington DC, USA. It emerged from but was independent of the work on India’s exports and exchange-rates I had done as a consultant at the International Monetary Fund. It has not been published before though a few pages were published in an ICRIER study in 1994.
An Economic Assessment of India-United States Merchandise Trade
by Subroto Roy1]/
July 1993
1. Introduction
The aim of this study will be to give an economic assessment of the long-run trends in merchandise trade between the United States and India over the period 1962-1992.
Two basic facts have governed the long-run path and pattern of India-United States merchandise trade. One has to do with the relative decline and growth of the Indian and American economies respectively since the Second World War. The other has to do with the trade-regimes which have prevailed in each country.
On the American side, the market-based principles which are supposed to govern the United States economy have been in practice egregiously compromised by American protectionism of the domestic textiles and clothing industries — key sectors in which India and other countries of the subcontinent have held some traditional comparative advantage as exporters in the world economy. On the Indian side, the Indian economy has been egregiously distorted for decades by what can be characterized only as failed economic policies ever since the Second Five Year Plan.
Sections 2-4 briefly describe aspects of this historical and institutional background to the merchandise transactions between the two countries. Section 2 indicates the asymmetry which has come about in the relative positions of India and the United States in the world economy. Section 3 outlines the main features of American protectionism with respect to textiles and clothing. Section 4 outlines the main distortions of the trade and payments regime which has prevailed in India with respect to exports from the United States and other countries.
Sections 5 and 6 then examine the major trends in American imports from India and the major trends in Indian imports from the United States respectively. Section 7 summarizes the findings and raises some questions for policy-discussion.
Tables in the text and the Appendix give the data supporting the thesis of the study. Table 2.1. indicates the local and global sizes of the Indian and other subcontinental economies. Tables 5.1 and 5.2, reproduced from Safadi & Yeats (1993), describe the destination of the subcontinent’s exports and product composition to North America specifically. Table 5.3. describes the nominal and real changes in major Indian exports to the USA from 1962-1991. Table 5.4 and Chart 5.1. describe the changing market-share of India and Pakistan in certain key import-markets in the USA and Britain between 1962-1991. Table 5.5. indicates real growth of the subcontinent’s exports of clothing to major industrial countries in recent years. Tables 6.1-6.3 describe the major trends in American exports to India between 1962-1991 at current prices, while Table 6.4. describes the nominal and real changes in major American exports to India during the period.
Finally, for purposes of future research, Tables A.1 and A.2 in the Appendix give detailed United States Commerce Department data of all India-United States merchandise trade in the current period 1989-1992.[2]/
2. Relative Decline and Growth
Since the Second World War, India has drastically declined from moderate to insignificant size as a trading power in the world economy, while the United States has grown to become the predominant national economy in world trade and payments.
India’s precipitous decline can be indicated by a few examples.
In the era 1757-1947 “India was unquestionably one of the great trading nations of Asia”[3]/, indeed of the world economy as a whole. While precise calculations cannot be made of the costs and benefits of British influence in India during this time, it is clear that the Indian economy both gained from British activity in promoting new products, manufactures, investment and infrastructure in the country, as well as lost from iniquitous commercial policies, taxation and imperial charges imposed by the British Government.
Britain was the world’s largest economy and India is reported to have been the single largest destination of British exports.[4]/ Germany, the world’s fastest growing economy, received as much as 5 percent of its total imports from India in 1913, and sent 1.5 percent of its exports to India, making India the sixth largest exporter to Germany (after the USA, Russia, Britain, Austria-Hungary and France) and the eighth largest importer from it (after Britain, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, the USA, Belgium and Italy.)[5]/ Throughout this era, the Indian economy generally showed an export surplus on merchandise account, and an excess demand only for precious metals on capital account.
India’s share of world exports were an estimated 2.5 per cent in 1867/68, 3.4 percent in 1880, 4.1 percent in 1890, 3.7 percent in 1897 and 4 per cent in 1913.[6]/ As late as the mid-1950s, just before the onset of the Government of India’s Second Five Year Plan, India could have been still considered a significant trading power with a share of 2 percent of world exports and a rank of 16 in the world economy (following the USA, Britain, West Germany, France, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Italy, Australia, Sweden, Venezuela, Brazil, Malaya and Switzerland).[7]/
Today the combined shares of India and all other countries of the subcontinent together amount to about 0.8 of 1 percent of world exports, India’s share being 0.54 of 1 percent. As can be seen from Table 2.1, the subcontinent accounts for just 6 percent of Asia’s total exports to the world, of which the Indian economy accounts for about two thirds. By way of comparison, Malaysia on its own accounts for 6.5 percent of Asia’s total exports and almost 0.9 of 1 percent of world exports. More poignant perhaps has been India’s loss of share of manufactured exports relative to other developing countries. Of 11 major developing countries (including Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Israel and Yugoslavia), India’s share of the total manufactured exports of these countries fell from a dominant 65 percent in 1953 to 51 percent in 1960 to 31 percent in 1966 to 10 percent by 1973.[8]/
Other indicators of India’s loss of export competitiveness appear in the decline of traditional exports like textile manufactures and tea. India’s textile manufactures were legendary for centuries but have lost ground steadily. As late as 1962-1971, India held an average annual market-share of almost 20 percent of all manufactured textile imports into the United States. This fell to 10 percent in 1972-1981 and to less than 5 percent in 1982-1991. India’s share of Britain’s imports of textile manufactures has fallen from 16 percent in the early 1960s to less than 4 percent in the 1990s. This decline has been due in part to American and European protectionism of domestic textiles, and in part to Indian economic trade and exchange-rate policies.
In case of tea, India and Sri Lanka once dominated world exports but have both lost competitiveness rapidly to other exporting countries, especially Kenya, Indonesia and Malawi. Sri Lanka’s market-share of total British tea imports fell from 11 percent in 1980 to 7 percent in 1991 while India’s share of the same market has fallen even more drastically from 33 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 1991.
Altogether, India, with the world’s second largest population, has now become the 31st largest exporting country in the world economy. Total Indian exports of $18 billion in 1990 were lower in absolute terms than the exports of China and every newly industrializing country in East and South East Asia; Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and every country in West Europe and North America except Portugal, Greece and Iceland.[9]/ In proportion to India’s great size, the ranking would be far more adverse.
The basic asymmetry in analyzing India-United States trade is indicated by the fact that during the same period as India’s precipitous decline, the United States has grown to become the single largest national economy in the world.
The shares of the United States (and Britain respectively) in world exports were 12 percent (20 percent) in 1880; 14 percent (16 percent) in 1900; 13 percent (15 percent) in 1913; and 12 percent (18 percent) in 1937.[10]/ After the Second World War and the decline of the British economy, the United States unambiguously became the world’s predominant national economy. The United States was the keystone of the international monetary system following the Bretton Woods Conference in December 1945. At the same time, American exports accounted for as much as 20 percent of world exports in the 1950s, decreasing to 12 percent by the 1990s following the recoveries of Germany and Japan and the high performances of some East and South East Asian economies.[11]/
The growing asymmetry in the positions of India and the United States as exporting economies may be summarized by their respective shares in world exports. The ratio of India’s share in world exports to the U. S. share of world exports was 1:3 as of 1913, which became 1:10 as of 1955, and has become 1:24 as of 1990. Such an asymmetry may be expected to be an implicit factor explaining the course of bilateral economic discussions between the Governments of the two countries, as well as transactions between private parties.
3. American Protectionism in Textiles and Clothing
The second basic fact governing the path and pattern of India-United States trade has had to do with the administration of economic policy in each country.
According to the market-based principles which are supposed to govern the United States economy, American demand for Indian imports would have been driven solely by private sector demand conditions in the U. S. economy. The United States Government would not have been expected to intervene in limiting the value of the potential contracts made between private American importers and private Indian exporters. The main factors affecting American demand-decisions for Indian exports would then have been identified as relative costs, and the preferences and income-levels of American consumers.
That is, by textbook economic principles, the main factors affecting demand-decisions regarding American imports from India would have been identified as:
(a) the cost and quality of an Indian product relative to similar products from alternative suppliers including domestic producers;
(b) the exchange-rate of the Indian rupee with respect to the United States dollar;
(c) the macroeconomic condition of the United States economy.
In practice, volume restrictions imposed by the United States Government to protect domestic producers have been critical factors determining the pattern of exports from India and other developing countries to the United States. This has hit hardest via the so-called “Multi-Fibre Arrangement” (MFA) affecting textiles and clothing, the two key export sectors of India and other countries in the subcontinent.
The roots of this aspect of American protectionism are to be found in the early 1960s, in what was supposed to be a temporary short-term measure to protect the United States textile and clothing industry. Instead of imposing global protective quotas under the GATT with respect to all textile and clothing exporters, the United States (and European Community) chose to discriminate in a country-specific manner against imports of particular products from particular countries. A possible explanation of why global quotas were not used is that while the United States (and Europe) did not want to invite trade conflicts with major trading partners, no similar reluctance was called for with respect to smaller trading partners in the developing world.
Exporters like India and the other countries of subcontinent have had little alternative but “sheer capitulation to far stronger parties in world trade”[12]/. The MFA as administered in practice by importing countries has been so complicated and lacking in transparency that it has made “precise identification of the ex ante effective quotas virtually impossible”.[13]/ Divisiveness among the exporting countries has been inevitable, as each exporter has effectively faced in bilateral negotiations something like a large discriminating monopsonist.
The distortions caused by the MFA have been well-recorded as follows:
“The most efficient suppliers always make best use of the prevailing market conditions. The irony of discriminatory protectionism [like the MFA restrictions] is that good performance is punished. When a supplier shows a potential in a market, its most promising products are covered by quotas. Emerging suppliers usually start with a low coverage ratio and utilization rate… If they perform as expected, they soon hit the quota ceilings in those limited goods. They can move into new products, although these will also become subject to restrictions. Growth of quota ceilings do not catch up with the expansion of successful suppliers’ shipments, and product diversification is more than compensated by imposition of restrictions on the merging products. The moral of the story is that it is not only the exporters of the established suppliers who come under binding constraints. The newcomers, who might to some extent benefit from restrictions on the major suppliers, so find themselves pressed; the more successful they are, the faster and tighter they are embraced by the MFA.”[14]/
From the point of view of reforming the system, what may be more significant is that protective volume restrictions imposed by the MFA damage economic efficiency and welfare in the importing country.
The domestic United States textile industry produces very high quality goods, and has the advantage of close integration with domestic sources of raw materials and the domestic market. Free competition with foreign imports would have reduced costs and achieved even higher standards of quality for the benefit of the American consumer. Restrictions on foreign imports in the form of selective quotas have effectively reduced competition and tended to lower quality and raise costs for the American consumer.[15]/
In short, although the ultimate sources of demand-decisions for Indian products are private businesses and households in the United States economy, the protection of textiles and clothing has transferred potential benefits from the American consumer in the direction of powerful domestic producer lobbies, and in the process reduced the potential value of imports from India and other countries to the American market.
4. Distortions of India’s Trade and Payments
On the Indian side, Indian demands for the world’s exports have been, until the 1990s, completely determined by the centralized economic regime of the Government, which made only indirect reference to the Indian public. Until the start of the current reforms in 1991, Indian commercial and exchange-rate policy was fundamentally based on the official confiscation of foreign exchange earnings of export and hard currency earning sectors, official licensing of imports, and rationing of foreign exchange disbursements according to official priorities.
The roots of this system are to be found in the import quotas imposed on the Indian economy by the British Government in 1940 to conserve foreign exchange and save shipping space on behalf of Britain’s effort in the Second World War, while control of hard currency expenditures were implemented over the whole Sterling Area. All imports were under direct quantitative control by 1942 on the basis of “essentiality” and non-availability from indigenous sources. War needs over-ruled others, and consumer goods were heavily discriminated against, hence favouring domestic production. In 1945, the British Government took a liberalizing step of placing consumer goods imported from Britain into India on open general license. The Government accepted that “the pattern of post-war trade should not be dictated by perpetuation of controls set up for purely war-time purposes”. In 1946 there was pressure for further liberalization of consumer goods in view of large foreign exchange balances accumulated due to India’s war contributions, and foods and consumer goods were placed on universal open general license. Within months, however, by March 1947, there was an end to liberalized imports, and the importation of gold and 200 “luxury” goods were banned. Only a few “essential” goods remained on the open list.[16]/
This experience set the pattern which was followed by the independent governments in India and elsewhere in the subcontinent. Quantitative restrictions on imports and the resulting quantitative exchange-control became primary instruments of Indian commercial policy. Instead of relying on the subtleties of decentralized market flows guided by price-measures like tariffs or exchange-rate changes, economic policy-makers in India and neighbouring countries tended to prefer quantitative actions which could be imposed, reduced or removed by administrative fiat.
With respect to foreign-exchange, from 1940 until when the Indian rupee moved towards market-determination and convertibility on current account in 1992/1993, the general tendency of Indian economic policy-makers was to view the exchange-rate not as an implicit price of the demand for foreign monies relative to domestic money, but as one among a number of administered prices open to be utilized by the Government for its purposes. Foreign exchange earnings of export and other hard-currency earning sectors were confiscated in exchange for Indian rupees at the administered rate, contributing to the thriving parallel foreign exchange market which has been the external trade and payments sector of the large parallel or “black” economy. Gross overvaluation of the rupee may have occurred during this period, contributing to long-term damage to India’s export competitiveness in the world economy.
Foreign exchange obtained from the earnings of exporters were then disbursed by rationing in the following order of precedence: first, to meet the Government’s debt repayments to international organizations and the Government’s expenditures abroad in conduct of its foreign policy like maintenance of embassies and purchase of defence sector imports; secondly, to pay for imports of food, fertilizers and petroleum; thirdly, to pay for imported inputs required by Government-owned firms; fourthly, to pay for import demands of those private firms which had been successful in obtaining import licenses; lastly, to satisfy demands of the public at large for purposes like travel abroad.
For the entire period until the 1990s, India and other countries of the subcontinent have had trade and payments regimes characterized by extensive controls, subsidies, barriers and licensing. Intricate systems of import-licensing based on “essentiality” and “actual user” criteria have been in place in pursuit of generalized import-substitution. In accordance with apparent goals of national economic planning, major industries were nationalized, and these have been leading consumers of imports obtained via administrative rationing of foreign exchange earnings obtained from export sectors. As consumer goods’ imports have been restricted most severely, the predicted consequence has been diversion of the domestic private sector towards production of consumer goods in the large highly protected domestic markets that have resulted, leading to quasi-monopolistic profits and finance of the parallel or “black” economy with its thriving foreign exchange sector. The restriction of consumer goods imports and gold imports has also caused profitable smuggling sectors as well as noticeable corruption in the integrity of customs services.[17]/ In sum, the patterns which have emerged of Indian exports to the USA and American exports to India have been determined by decisions made in quite different institutional contexts of the two economies:
— While American demand-decisions for Indian exports have tended to be decentralized and guided by usual factors affecting market demand, these decisions have been egregiously distorted by the protection of the domestic American textile and clothing industries.
— Indian demand-decisions for American exports have been mostly centralized within the agencies and departments of the Government of India, with only indirect reference made to the Indian public.
5. Analysis of United States Imports from India
The traditional exports of the Indian subcontinent were cotton and cotton goods, foodgrains, jute and jute manufactures, leather and tea, with destinations in Europe, Japan, the United States and China.[18]/ Today the main export markets for India and the neighbouring economies are the European Community, North America and Japan. Among the main exports have been clothing, textiles, leather goods and agricultural materials. Polished diamonds and petroleum have also become major export sectors in India since the 1980s. Tables 5.1. describes the destination and value of the exports from India and neighbouring economies to the rest of the world. Table 5.2. describes the product composition of exports from India and neighbouring economies to North America specifically.[19]/
Focusing on Indian exports to the United States in particular, Tables 5.3.1-5.3.4 describe the nominal and real changes of the four major Indian exports to the United States over the entire period 1962-1991.
In the first ten-year period under consideration, 1962-1971, the dominant Indian export to the United States was textile yarn and fabric (SITC 65). The remaining exports were mainly agricultural products, namely, tea, coffee & spices (SITC 07), fruit and vegetables (SITC 05), sugars (SITC 06), fish and preparations (SITC 03), and crude agricultural matter (SITC 29).
In the next ten years, 1972-1981, this mix was transformed by growth of exports of polished diamonds (SITC 66) and clothing (SITC 84), which along with textile manufactures have dominated Indian exports to the United States ever since. In the most recent decade 1982-1991, the same mix has continued to dominate with the significant addition of petroleum and products (SITC 33), petroleum being the single largest import from India reported by the United States to the U.N. data-base in each year between 1982 and 1985.[20]/
Textile manufactures (SITC 65) were the dominant export until 1978 and have been in the top four throughout the period. But there has been steady decline in real terms. The decline has been from an annual average, in constant 1990 U. S. dollars, of $740 million (c.i.f) in 1962-71, to $406 million in 1972-1981, to $285 million in 1982-1991. As indicated by Table 5.4 and Chart 5.1, India has steadily lost market-share in total textile imports into the United States, dominating the market with an average annual market-share of 20 percent in 1962-1971, reduced to 10 percent in 1972-1981, reduced further to less than 5 percent in 1982-1991. The imposition of American quotas has undoubtedly affected this loss in part.
Clothing (SITC 84) during the same period has shown high real growth, going from an annual average, in constant 1990 U. S. dollars, of $7 million in 1962-1971 to $178 million in 1972-1981, to $538 million in 1982-1991. Average annual market-share of total U. S. imports of clothing has gone from 0.10 percent in 1962-1971, to 2.11 percent in 1972-1981, to 2.34 percent in 1982-1991. While this has been small growth from the point of view of the U. S. market, the movement has been large relative to initial conditions from the point of view of Indian exporters. As shown in Table 5.5, there has been large-scale real growth of clothing from all countries of the subcontinent to the major industrial countries especially in the decade 1982-1991. Not only has there been remarkable growth in real terms of clothing exports from the entire region, but there has been relatively higher growth in Pakistan compared to India, and higher growth in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh compared to Pakistan. It is likely that some of the growth from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh has been derived from Indian capital investment in those countries to make use of their allocated quotas in U. S. protectionism. It is possible also that there has been substitution on the part of Indian exporters from textiles towards clothing in response to non-tariff barriers.
Overall, the story of Indian exports to the United States may be summarized by saying that while the long-run product composition has changed over thirty years, it has not done so in ways that had been expected or hoped for by India’s national economic plans. India has not become a major industrial power or even a significant small exporter of industrial goods in the world economy, as had been wished for by the framers of the Second Five Year Plan in the 1950s.[21]/
Textile manufactures, clothing, polished diamonds and petroleum account for approximately 70 percent of Indian exports to the United States.
Traditional exports like textiles and tea have seen drastic declines. While it is not clear whether clothing is traditional or non-traditional, there has been remarkable growth in that sector in the 1980s. Petroleum exports were not anticipated in India’s national plans yet dominated the short export boom which seems to have been registered in the early 1980s. Polished diamonds have shown spectacular growth as a result of Indian entrepreneurship at its best; however, value-added is significantly lower in view of the high import value of uncut diamonds imported via Belgium from South Africa. Although these are classified as “gems and jewelry”, to the extent the uses of diamonds have been industrial in the metal-working industries of the main importing countries of the USA, Germany and Japan, future growth of this sector may be affected by, for example, large expected sales of industrial diamonds by the United States Defense Department from strategic reserves held during the Cold War.
6. Analysis of Indian Imports from the United States
We turn next to examine India-United States merchandise trade from the other side.
In view of India’s commercial and exchange-rate policies described in Section 2, diverse factors appear to have affected the Government of India’s demand for American exports, including agricultural fluctuations, the Green Revolution and the state of international political relations.
Tables 6.1-6.3 describe the main trends to be detected in Indian imports from the United States. In the first ten-year period under consideration, 1962-1971, a dominant place in American exports to India was taken by food imports, mainly cereals like wheat, rice and corn (SITC 04). American institutions especially the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations played key roles in the mid 1960s in persuading India’s Food and Agricultural Minister, C. S. Subramaniam, to promote adoption of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in selected areas of the country. This went against the advice of most Indian economists at the time[22]/, and in fact against the interests of America’s own farm lobbies as well.
Two direct results of this decision can be noticed in the trade-data reported in Tables 6.1-6.3. As is well-known, India was able to increase domestic food production spectacularly, permitting the reduction of cereal imports from the United States. Instead, India began since the mid-1960s to make large imports from the United States of manufactured fertilizers (SITC 56.2), which remain the single largest American export to India today at three-level SITC. American advice and assistance in stimulating the Green Revolution in India has certainly been a signal achievement of India-United States economic cooperation in the past.
The decline in Indian imports of American cereal in nominal and real terms can be seen in Table 6.4. In constant 1990 US dollars, average annual cereal imports have declined from $630 million in 1962-1971, to $295 million in 1972-1981, to an estimated $160 million in 1982-1991. Although the trend in Indian cereal output has been towards greater self-sufficiency, a random element still appears depending on the vagaries of the monsoon and the Government’s management of the country’s food-stocks. This is indicated by the large surges in cereal imports of 1975, 1976, 1983 and as recently as 1988.
Other than foods, a large component of American exports to India has been machinery and transport equipment, including aircraft and aircraft parts. Table 6.4. indicates that during the 1970s when India-United States political relations were not at their best, a distinct fall in real terms can be discerned of Indian imports of American machinery and transport equipment. Indian quotas for textile imports into the United States also likely suffered from weak political relations at the time.
Since the 1980s, American manufactured exports have started to climb again. In constant 1990 U. S. dollars, average annual imports of American machinery and transport into India was $717 million in 1962-1971, down to $456 million in 1972-1981, rising again to an estimated $673 million in 1982-1991.
The sporadic aspect to some of the Indian demand for American exports may be noticed also in case of the sudden large increases in imports of fixed vegetable oil (SITC 42) between 1977 and 1980, and in imports of cotton fibres (SITC 26) in 1977 and 1979.[23]/
In the period 1982-1991, the composition of Indian imports from the United States has seen some change with the growth of scrap iron ore and waste (SITC 28.2); precision instruments (SITC 87.4); pulp and waste paper (SITC 25); crude fertilizers (SITC 27); chemical elements and compounds (SITC 51), and plastics (SITC 58). Along with manufactured fertilizers and machinery and aircraft, these presently dominate United States exports to India.
As reported by the United States Commerce Department, India’s restrictive trade barriers in the past led to many American companies identifying potential export items but simply giving up in the face of quantitative restrictions and steep tariffs. Following the start of the economic reform process in July 1991, the United States has expressed the expectation that greater openness and transparency in the Indian trade-regime will lead to a significant increase in trade and investment. Lower Indian tariff barriers are expected to benefit a number of American exporters who presently face the tariff levels indicated: fertilizers (60 percent); wood products (110 percent); ferrous waste and scrap (85 percent); computers, office machinery and spares (95 percent); soda ash (over 50 percent); heavy equipment spares (80 percent); medical equipment components (40 percent); copper waste and scrap (50 percent); and agricultural products (135 percent).
7. Prospect
Economics, when candidly treated, is indeed the dismal science, and any candid assessment of India-United States merchandise trade may have to conclude that there is no compelling reason at present to expect large movement away from past trends.
In the opinion of the author, sources of significant new growth in Indian exports to the United States, and indeed to the rest of the world, do not seem to be easily identifiable.[24]/ While small advances may well be made in new sectors by Indian exporters, the great bulk of Indian export earnings from the United States market will continue to be accounted for by textile manufactures (SITC 65), clothing (SITC 84), polished diamonds (SITC 66) and petroleum and products (SITC 33).
Of these, diamonds and petroleum may be expected to face fluctuating demand conditions, while textiles and clothing will continue to face high non-tariff barriers. Given the political strength of the domestic textile and clothing industry in the United States, such a situation may be nearly permanent, or at least no change can be expected in the near future. The fact that the United States remains the single largest trading partner for India, while India in 1992 was the USA’s 36th largest export market (down from 25th in 1986) accounting for less than 1 percent of total American trade and barely 3 percent of American trade with all of Asia, makes it inevitable that a disparity of economic power will affect the course of bilateral economic relations.
Successful commerce depends on intangible quantities like trust, reliable information and contacts between individual contracting parties. The declines in real terms which seem to have occurred in India-United States commerce in the past have led to wastage of this kind of informational capital and commercial trust. American importers and exporters have established new relations with others among India’s competitors in East Asia and Latin America. For Indian entrepreneurship to win back old customers and investors or win new ones will be extremely difficult. The radical changes in Indian economic policy of the last few years have at least reduced Government-imposed barriers towards this — vindicating the tiny minority of critics, starting with Shenoy, who had more or less correctly diagnosed the folly of India’s economic policies now abandoned. As in Kalidasa’s story of the man cutting the branch of the tree on which he sits, the cutting at least appears to have ceased for the time being.
From the point of view of American exporters to India, prospects may seem more promising in view of the breakthrough which has been achieved in Indian economic policy-thinking in the last few years. The large potential scope for expansion of India-United States trade depends squarely on (a) the deepening of Indian reforms; and (b) removal of the egregious American protectionism in textiles and clothing.
American exports to an enormous market-based Indian economy founded on principles of private property and free exchange, with democratic political institutions and an open society (and assuming political stability), will come to depend eventually on the price and quality of American products and the income-levels of Indian importers. But these ultimate factors can only be improved by the growth of Indian exports in turn. Large-scale real growth of exports from India are necessary not only if the Indian market is to generate effective demand for foreign imports, but even to finance the large external borrowings on capital account on which the entire adjustment depends. It is in such a context that the constraints on Indian textiles and clothing exports imposed by powerful domestic producer interests in the importing economies have to be seen.
The most promising source of export earnings for India may be in fact via a multilateral forum if there could be a successful completion of the Uruguay Round trade talks. It has been estimated that with a 30 percent reduction in tariffs and non-tariff barriers in the USA, Europe and Japan, India’s exports to these markets would grow by more than $1.8 billion over the actual 1991 exports of $5.6 billion. With a 50 percent liberalization, the growth would be almost $3 billion more than the actual 1991 figure.[25]/
Although completion of the Uruguay Round itself may be a subject of wishful thinking, Indian external economic policy would be well-advised to base itself on the principle of increased world trade and access to markets, including reduction of barriers to movement of capital and labour.
References
Balassa, Bela (1978), “Export Incentives and Export Performance in Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis”, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 114.
Balassa, Bela (1980), The Process of Industrial Development and Alternative Development Strategies Princeton Essays in International Finance 141.
Bhagwati, Jagdish & Padma Desai (1970) India: Planning for Industrialization, OECD, Paris.
Bhagwati, Jagdish & T. N. Srinivasan (1975) Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development: India National Bureau of Economic Research, New York.
Chaudhuri, K. N. (1982) “Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments 1757-1947” in The Cambridge Economic History of India edited by Dharma Kumar, Cambridge University Press.
Cline, W. (1987) The Future of World Trade in Textiles & Apparel, Inst. for Int. Economics, Washington D. C.
Desai, Ashok (1991), “Output and Employment Effects of Recent Changes in Policy”, in Social Dimensions of Structural Adjustment in India, ILO, New Delhi 1991.
Erzan, Refik, Junichi Goto & Paula Holmes (1989) “Effects of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement on Developing Countries’ Trade”, World Bank International Economics Department WPS 297.
Friedman, Milton (1992) “A Memorandum to the Government of India 1955”, in Subroto Roy & William E. James (eds), Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, Sage.
Hamilton, C. B. (1988), “Restrictiveness and International Transmission of the New Protectionism”, in R. Baldwin, C. B. Hamilton and A. Sapir (eds), Issues in US-EC Trade Relations, University of Chicago Press.
Hopper, David (1978) “Distortions of Agricultural Development Resulting from Government Prohibitions” in T. W. Schultz (ed.) Distortions in Agricultural Incentives, Indiana University Press.
Hufbauer, Gary, D. Berliner and K. Elliott (1986) Trade Protection in the United States: 31 Case Studies, Institute for International Economics, Washington D. C.
International Monetary Fund (1992) International Financial Statistics.
Keynes, John Maynard (1920) The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Harcourt, New York.
Primo Braga, C. & Alexander Yeats (1992) “How Minilateral Trading Arrangements May Affect the Post-Uruguay Round World”, World Bank International Economics Department WPS 974.
Roy, Subroto (1984) Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India, Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
Roy, Subroto (1990) “Draft Memorandum on India’s Agenda 1990-2000: Notes on Policy for the First 18+ Months of a 5-Year Term”, a confidential memorandum to Rajiv Gandhi, October 26 1990. (Published versions have appeared as “A Memo to Rajiv, I, II, III”, The Statesman July 31-August 2 1991).
Roy, Subroto (1993) “Exchange Rate Policies in South Asia”, unpublished study, International Monetary Fund.
Safadi, Raed and Alexander Yeats (1993) “NAFTA: Its Effect on South Asia”, World Bank International Economics Department Working Paper.
Shenoy, B. R. (1955) “A Note of Dissent”, Papers Relating to the Formulation of the Second Five Year Plan, Government of India Planning Commission, New Delhi.
Sims, Holly (1988), Political Regimes, Public Policy & Economic Development: Agricultural Performance and Rural Change in Two Punjabs Sage.
Srinivasan, T. N. (1992) “Planning and Foreign Trade Reconsidered”, in Foundations of India’s Political Economy edited by Subroto Roy & William E. James, Sage.
Tarr, D. and M. Morkre (1984) Aggregate Cost to the United States of Tariffs and Quotas on Imports, United States Federal Trade Commission.
Tomlinson, B. R. (1992) “Historical Roots of Economic Policy” in Foundations of India’s Political Economy edited by Subroto Roy & William E. James, Sage.
United Nations (1955) Yearbook of International Trade Statistics.
World Bank (1992) Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries, Washington D. C.
[1]/ …..The author is a consultant economist in the Washington area. His publications include Philosophy of Economics (Routledge 1989), and (co-edited with W. E. James), Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s and Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s (Delhi & Karachi: Sage & OUP 1992). Correspondence may be addressed to…. Va. 22209.
[2]/ This data is made available by the kind courtesy of John Simmons of the United States Commerce Department.
[5]/ Keynes (1920 p.197), table on German trade by value, origin and destination.
[8]/ Balassa (1978 p. 39), Balassa (1980 p.16).
[11]/ John Maynard Keynes’s description of the Versailles Conference is perhaps the most graphic picture of America’s rise to predominance over Europe since the end of the First World War: “[T]he realities of power were in [President Woodrow Wilson’s] hands. The American armies were at the height of their numbers, discipline, and equipment. Europe was in complete dependence on the food supplies of the United States; and financially she was even more absolutely at her mercy. Europe not only already owed the United States more than she could pay; but only a large measure of further assistance could save her from starvation and bankruptcy.” Keynes (1920, p.38).
[12]/ Erzan et al. (1989) p.38.
[13]/ Erzan et al (1989), p.1.
[14]/ Erzan et al (1989, p.17)
[15]/ On the economic costs incurred by importing countries from protecting their domestic textile sectors from import competition, see for example Erzan et al (1989), Cline (1987), Hamilton (1988), Hufbauer et al (1986), and Tarr & Morkre (1984).
[17]/ The multiple distortions of domestic and external sectors of the economy caused by these procedures have been documented and analyzed by a number of observers. Early advocacy of liberal economic policies and a market-determined rate for the rupee came from Shenoy (1955) and Friedman (1992). The treatment of B. R. Shenoy, as a result of his prescient and singular critique of conventional majority-views at the time, remains a permanent disgrace upon the Indian economics profession. Friedman’s statement was similarly neglected, and remained unpublished and undiscussed among Indian economists from 1955 to 1992. Later advocates of similar positions include Bhagwati & Desai (1970); Bhagwati & Srinivasan (1975) and Roy (1984). See also Desai (1991), Srinivasan (1992), and Roy (1993).
[18]/ Chaudhuri (1982). Britain (23.5 per cent of total value), Japan (10.8 per cent), the United States (9.4 per cent), Germany (6.5 per cent), China (6.0 per cent) and France (5.0 per cent). The value composition of exports was: raw cotton (21.0 percent), cotton goods (1.6 percent), foodgrains (13.5 percent), raw jute (5.8 per cent), manufactured jute goods (14.5 per cent), hides and skins (8.1 per cent) and tea (10.7 per cent). All figures for 1930-1931.
[19]/ Tables 5.1 and 5.2 are reproduced from Safadi & Yeats (1993) with the kind permission of the authors.
[20]/ A discrepancy exists in the data as Indian data to the UN do not report any exports of petroleum to the USA or France in these years, when both the USA and France report receiving such imports as the top import from India. It is possible for an exporter to export without knowing the final destination of a product.
The author has not been able to determine if India’s petroleum exports were of crude oil, e.g. because of lack of refining capacity in India; or of non-crude classified as SITC 33.4. The United States Embassy in New Delhi in the mid 1980s suggested the former; latest U. S. Department of Commerce data suggest the latter.
[21]/ Developing countries among the world’s 25 largest exporters of high-tech manufactured goods as of 1988, with their share of world high-tech exports and value of high-tech exports were: Taiwan (3.2 percent, $16.6 million); Korea (2.9 percent, $14.7 million.); Singapore (2.4 percent, $12.5 million.); Hong Kong (1.6 percent, $8.4 million.); Mexico (1.4 percent, $7 million.); Malaysia (1.2 percent, $6 million.); China (1.1 percent, $5.4 million.); Brazil (0.6 percent; $3 million.); Thailand (0.4 percent; $1.9 million.); from Braga & Yeats (1992, p.29).
[22]/ See Hopper (1978) for an eyewitness account of how Subramaniam was prevailed upon to go against the advice of his advisers, which he did, leading to the largest seed transfer in history of 18,000 tons from Mexico to India. Also Sims (1988, p. 38).
[23]/ India buying cotton fibres from the world market and Pakistan selling cotton fibres to the world market is one of the ironies of the economic division of the subcontinent.
[24]/ The prediction made in Roy (1990) of an export boom following economic reforms has proven to be erroneous, in spite of the progress made in changing the broad direction of Indian economic policy. This was a memorandum dated October 26 1990 written at the invitation of the late Rajiv Gandhi then Leader of the Opposition, which contributed to the Congress Party’s economic manifesto in 1991. Mr. P. Chidambaram, former Commerce Minister in the Narasimha Rao Government, received the memorandum in hand from Mr. Gandhi in late October 1990. He has recently said that the economic reform program “was not miraculous” but was in fact based on the rewriting of the Congress manifesto when the Congress Party was in Opposition. “We were ready when we came back to power in 1991”. News India April 30 1993, p. 33.
[25]/ World Bank (1992, Appendix C2, p.52). Safadi & Yeats (1993) estimate that India may have lower exports to North America by up to $17 million dollars from trade-diversion towards Mexico as a result of the North American Free Trade Association. They affirm the overwhelming importance for India of the gains from the Uruguay Round in response to regionalism.
Path of the Indian Rupee 1947-1993
June 1, 1993 — drsubrotoroyPrefatory Note: This was part of a 1993 study I did as a Consultant at the International Monetary Fund in Washington in a project on exchange-rates and exports of “South Asian” countries for Hubert Neiss. The IMF is not responsible for its content. It was included in “India in World Trade & Payments”, first published in The Statesman, Feb 11-12 2007. See also
1) Monetary Integrity and the Rupee
2) My article “India’s Money” in *Cayman Financial Review*
3) My 3 Dec IIC Delhi talk “Towards Making the Indian Rupee a Hard Currency of the World Economy: An analysis from British times until the present day” & its coverage in Asian Age/Deccan Herald, GDI Impuls Zurich, Lok Sabha TV & Sunday Guardian
4) Did Jagdish Bhagwati “originate”, “pioneer”, “intellectually father” India’s 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India’s right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture!
5) No magic wand, Professor Rajan? Oh but there is…
and indeed https://independentindian.com/2013/11/23/coverage-of-my-delhi-talk-on-3-dec-2012/
Path of the Indian Rupee 1947-1993
by Subroto Roy
Washington June 1993
“Following the initial devaluation with sterling in 1949, the Indian rupee was pegged to sterling and maintained at the same par-value for the next 16 years. This was in spite of weakening reserve positions and numerous severe shocks to the economy including a 1963 war with China and a 1965 war with Pakistan, as well as severe droughts and food crises.
Devaluation on June 6 1966 by 57.5 percent to Rs. 7.50 per United States dollar met with enormous resistance on non-economic grounds, and indirectly contributed to the Congress Party’s losses in the elections of 1967. This experience may have contributed to a distinct reluctance to even consider using the exchange-rate for economic policy, or to even attempt to find a realistic price for the rupee.
India did not respond to sterling’s devaluation in November 1967, leading to a bilateral appreciation. While the Indian economy continued to suffer egregious shocks throughout the late 1960s and 1970s — including food crises, the rise in petroleum prices, refugees from the Pakistan civil war and the 1971 war creating Bangladesh, as well as domestic turmoil of various kinds such as the Railway Strike and the political Emergency and later political instability — the rupee was not adjusted downwards. The closing of the “gold window” and breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in August 1971 led India to maintain the same bilateral exchange-rate with the United States dollar, thereby devaluing with the dollar’s depreciation and delinking from sterling, though sterling remained the intervention currency. After the Smithsonian Agreement in December 1971, the rupee was again linked to sterling at Rs. 18.97, which implicitly meant a 5.4 percent devaluation against sterling. When sterling floated in June 1972 the rupee’s peg was maintained, thus effectively devaluing the rupee along with sterling’s depreciation. Three small devaluations occurred against sterling by a total of 2 percent between June 1972 and July 1975.
In September 1975, India delinked from sterling and pegged — within 2.25 percent until January 30 1980 and then within 5 percent margins — to an undisclosed basket of hard currencies which included the United States dollar, Japanese yen and Deutschmark.
Between 1981 and 1991, the Indian rupee was actively managed downwards by the authorities, remarkably with no political resistance unlike the 1966 episode in a world of fixed rates. Discrete downward changes occurred by 6.4 percent at the end of 1981, 4.3 percent at the end of 1982, and 4.5 percent at the end of 1983. These changes in the first half of the 1980s are relatively small compared to the depreciation of other major currencies against the United States dollar in that period. From September 1985 to July 1991, the rupee followed a more rapid downward course, depreciating by some 40 percent in nominal terms, during which time the United States dollar also depreciated against the other major currencies. What this may suggest is that the dollar weighed relatively heavily in the basket with which the rupee seemed to be pegged.
In July 1991, the incoming government was able to initiate significant economic reforms with surprising ease, especially the abolishment of import quotas and removal of export subsidies. On July 1 1991, the rupee was devalued by 9 percent and then on July 3 by a further 11 percent in the context of a determined effort to change the course of Indian economic policy-making towards one required by an outward-orientation.
The first budget of the Narasimha Rao Government on March 1 1992 partially floated the rupee in a context of removal of import licensing and export subsidies, and a general domestic and external liberalization. Between March 1 1992 and the budget of March 1 1993, the rupee was on a dual rate which implicitly taxed exporters who had to surrender 40 percent of their foreign exchange earnings at an officially determined rate and could sell 60 percent in an open market. On March 1 1993, the Indian rupee was begun to be made convertible for purposes of current account transactions. With these changes, a breakthrough in thinking may have been achieved, insofar as Indian economic policy-making may have been partially freed of the belief, held since the 1940s, that the exchange-rate of the rupee must necessarily be seen as an administered price and not a market-determined price.”
30 August 2013: Here is a graph showing interest in this article at my blog… It might correlate that with the currency’s recent volatility…
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Manufactured Exports to Major Countries
May 18, 1993 — drsubrotoroyAuthor’s Note May 2007: Between January 1993 and about May 1993 I was a Consultant to the International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. The IMF does not usually hire consultants, and I was hired thanks to a recommendation by Gopi Arora to Hubert Neiss. At the request of Saudi IMF Executive Director Mohammad Al-Jasser, I did an interdepartmental comparative study — the only one until that time and perhaps since — of exchange-rates and exports of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. What follows is a part of that relating to exports. A little of it was published in an ICRIER study in New Delhi the following year, on India-United States trade.
EXPORTS FROM THE SUBCONTINENT
This study reports the main results of a study of exports from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to their largest world markets in the period 1962-1991.
Method
Panels of two-level Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) data were gathered as reported to the United Nations Statistical Office, Geneva in its Trade Analysis and Reporting System. These gave original data of all imports from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as reported by each of the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany and France (G-5 countries) over the 30-year period 1962-1991 in c.i.f. terms. These countries constitute almost 75 percent of the subcontinent’s total export market, and possibly more if indirect exports via third countries like Hong Kong and Singapore are accounted for.
The import-demand data reported by each of these countries provide the most reliable and uniform data source available.
To detect any possible trends in real growth or decline, the nominal data reported over this 30 year period were deflated to constant 1990 prices, using price-series obtained from the World Bank’s Quarterly Review of Commodity Markets December 1992. This source provides a manufactured goods unit value index for the G-5 countries, as well as individual price series for petroleum and commodities excluding energy. The latter is divided into foods (divided into beverages, cereals, fats & oils, and other), non-food agricultural, timber, and metals & minerals. It is considered the most reliable price-series data of its kind available. All figures given below are in constant 1990 U. S. dollars.
Overall, one firm regionwide fact to emerge about the subcontinent’s exports to the major industrial countries has to do with the enormous real growth of clothing, especially in the decade 1982-1991. Not only has there been remarkable growth in real terms of clothing exports from the entire region, but there has been relatively higher growth in Pakistan compared to India, and higher growth in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh compared to Pakistan.
India to the United States
India’s main exports to the United States have changed in product composition over the period 1962-1991, though not in ways predicted or hoped for by national economic plans. Between 1962-1971, the main exports other than textile manufactures (SITC 65) were agricultural: tea, coffee & spices (SITC 07), fruit and vegetables (SITC 05), sugars (SITC 06), fish and preparations (SITC 03), and crude matter(SITC 29). Between 1972-1981, the mix was transformed by growth of exports of polished diamonds (SITC 66) and clothing (SITC 84), which together with textile manufactures have dominated Indian exports to the United States since.
Between 1982-1991, the same mix continued to dominate with the significant addition of petroleum and products (SITC 33) which was the single largest export from India to the United States in each year between 1982 and 1985.[1] Textile manufactures were the dominant export until 1978 and have been in the top four throughout the period. But there has been steady decline in real terms. The decline has been from annual averages of $740 million (c.i.f.) in 1962-71, to $406 million in 1972-1981, to $285 million in 1982-1991. India has also steadily lost market-share in total textile imports into the United States, dominating the market with an average annual market-share of 19.5 percent in 1962-1971, reduced to 10.1 percent in 1972-1981, reduced further to 4.84 percent in 1982-1991.
Clothing during the same period has shown high real growth, going from an annual average of $7 million in 1962-1971 to $178 million in 1972-1981, to $538 million in 1982-1991. Average annual market-share of total U.S. imports has gone from 0.10 percent in 1962-1971, to 2.11 percent in 1972-1981, to 2.34 percent in 1982-1991. While this has been small growth from the point of view of the United States market, the movement has been large relative to initial conditions from the point of view of Indian exporters. It is not apparent whether the decline in textile manufactures has been independent of the growth of clothing or whether there has been value-increasing substitution from textile manufactures into clothing. Comparative experience with Germany suggests there has not been such substitution.
India to Britain
India’s exports to Britain are marked by textile manufactures (SITC 65) and tea, coffee & spices (SITC 07), being among the top five exports throughout the entire period 1962-1991.
However, both of these traditional exports have declined in real terms. Annual average imports into Britain of textile manufactures from India were $253 million (c.i.f.) in 1962-1971 down to $179 million in 1972-1981 and $161 million in 1982-1991. India’s share of Britain’s imports of textile manufactures fell from 15.5 percent and 16.0 percent in 1962 and 1963 to 3.4 percent and 4.0 percent in 1990 and 1991.
Annual average imports into Britain of tea, coffee & spices from India were $269 million in 1962-1971 down to $87 million in 1972-1981 and $66 million in 1982-1991. Clothing (SITC 84) exports to Britain have shown high real growth, from annual averages of $4 million in 1962-1971 to $86 million in 1972-1981 to $200 million in 1982-1991. Of remaining exports to Britain, in the period 1962-1971 agricultural outputs like animal feed (SITC 08), tobacco (SITC 12) and crude matter (SITC 29) as well as leather goods (SITC 61) were the main product groups.
The next period 1972-1981 saw the growth of clothing (SITC 84) to a position of dominance among all Indian exports to Britain, and some growth in non-ferrous metals (SITC 68) mainly copper and aluminium alloys. The latest period 1982-1991 has seen some growth of non-traditional engineering exports to the top ranks, mainly transport equipment (SITC 73), metal manufactures (SITC 69) and non-electrical machinery (SITC 71). Clothing and textiles, however, continued to dominate more than 44 percent of all exports.
India to Japan
The main feature of India’s exports to Japan over the entire period 1962-1991 is the dominance of iron ore (SITC 28) throughout. Annual average imports of iron ore into Japan from India were $401 million in 1962-1971, rising to $556 million in 1972-1981, and $572 million in 1982-1991.
The period 1962-1971 saw, in addition to iron ore, export of raw cotton and jute fibres (SITC 26), crude agricultural matter (SITC 29), crude fertilizer (SITC 27), animal feed (SITC 08), sugar (SITC 06), ferrous alloys (SITC 67), and fish and preparations (SITC 03). The period 1972-1981 saw very high growth of exports of fish and preparations (SITC 03) and polished diamonds (SITC 66), as well as some growth of textile manufactures (SITC 65). Starting from almost zero, India’s market-share of Japanese imports of fish grew to an annual average of 7.31 percent during the period 1969-1985, before falling back to 2.7 percent in the 1990s. The latest period 1982-1991 has seen the dominance of polished diamonds equalling that of iron ore, as well as significant growth in clothing (SITC 84) and petroleum (SITC 33). The main exports of India to Japan are at present polished diamonds, iron ore, fish, ferrous-alloys and clothing. It seems plausible that India’s pattern of exports to Japan has been related to the high growth transformation of Japan’s economy during this time.
India to Germany and France
As with Japan, India’s exports to the Federal Republic of Germany show unique aspects related in all likelihood to the high growth transformation of the German economy during this period. Remarkably, textile yarn and fabric (SITC 65) from India to Germany has shown large real growth during 1962-1990. German imports of Indian textile manufactures were at an annual average of just $55 million for 1962-1971; this increased to an annual average of $163 million for 1972-1981 and to $255 million for 1982-1990. Although this has not been enough to offset the large declines of Indian textiles in the United States and British markets, it may suggest that rapid domestic growth in one large importing market can reduce the impact of loss of competitiveness in a different market. Clothing (SITC 84) has shown extremely high real growth relative to initial conditions. German imports of clothing from India were at an annual average of under $4 million in 1962-1971, rising to annual averages of $96 million in 1972-1981 and $282 million in 1982-1990. The simultaneous growth of textile manufacture and clothing exports from India to Germany may suggest that there has not been value-adding substitution from the former to the latter. Other than clothing, the product composition of Indian exports to Germany has not seen much drastic change.
In 1962-1965, iron ore (SITC 28) was the single largest export only to become abruptly insignificant, possibly implying new sources had been found by importers. Besides textile manufactures, three other traditional exports — leather goods (SITC 61), tea, coffee & spices (SITC 07), and crude matter (SITC 29) — have been among the top Indian exports to Germany throughout the period 1962-1990. Of these, leather goods have shown real growth from annual averages of $34 million in 1962-1971, to $55 million in 1972-1981, to $86 million in 1982-1990. Polished diamonds (SITC 66) also have been a major export to Germany since as early as 1964, with significant growth in the latest period 1982-1990.
India’s exports to France show certain similarities with the pattern to Germany on a smaller scale. Textile yarn and fabric (SITC 65) has shown growth in real terms from annual averages of $18 million in 1962-1971, to $51 million in 1972-1981 to $63 million in 1982-1991. (The growth of textile exports to Germany and France together have not offset the declines to the United States and Britain — average annual exports to the four countries totalling $1.07 billion for 1962-1971, $0.80 billion for 1972-1981, and $0.76 billion for 1982-1991.) Clothing exports to France have shown enormous growth relative to initial conditions, moving from annual averages of under $3 million in 1962-1971, to $57 million in 1972-1981 to $108 million in 1982-1991. Besides textile and clothing, Indian exports to France have included leather goods (SITC 61), crude matter (SITC 29), polished diamonds (SITC 66) and animal feed (SITC 07). In 1982 and 1985, France also reported petroleum imports as the single largest product from India.
Pakistan to the United States and Britain
In the period prior to 1972, Pakistan’s exports to traditional markets in the United States and Britain were dominated by raw jute and cotton fibres (SITC 26) and cotton and jute manufactures (SITC 65).
Since 1972, cotton manufactures (SITC 65) have shown remarkable real growth, and along with clothing (SITC 84) have dominated Pakistan’s exports to these markets. Annual average imports of cotton manufactures from Pakistan into the United States and Britain were $87 million and $76 million respectively in 1973-1981, rising to $182 million and $117 million respectively in 1982-1991.
Pakistan’s share of total textile imports rose from an annual average of 2.3 percent in 1973-1981 to 2.9 percent in 1982-1991 in the United States market, and from 1.8 percent to 1.9 percent in the British market. This contrasts with India’s declining textile exports to the same markets in the same period.
Average annual clothing imports from Pakistan into the United States and Britain were $22 million and $11 million respectively during 1973-1981, rising to $164 million and $62 million respectively during 1982-1991. During the period, Pakistan’s market-share of clothing imports has risen from 0.2 percent to 1.0 percent in case of the United States, and from 0.3 percent to 1.9 percent in case of Britain. Again, these are small changes for the importing markets but large changes from the point of view of exporters relative to initial conditions.
Other than textiles and clothing, significant movement in Pakistan’s exports to the United States and Britain is found in instruments, watches and clocks (SITC 86) to the United States, which went from an annual average of $10 million during 1973-1981 to $26 million in 1982-1991.
Pakistan to Japan, Germany and France
Pakistan’s exports to Japan have been dominated by cotton yarn and fabric (SITC 65) and cotton fibres (SITC 26), both showing strong real growth. The first has gone from an annual average of $79 million in 1973-1981 to $304 million in 1982-1991, the second from $48 million to $75 million in the same time period. Other exports to Japan include fish (SITC 03), leather goods (SITC 61), and petroleum and products (SITC 33).
Pakistan’s exports to Germany and France have been dominated by clothing (SITC 84) and cotton yarn and fabric (SITC 65). Average annual exports of clothing have grown from $19 million in 1973-1982 to $86 million in 1982-1991 in case of Germany, and from $8 million in 1973-1981 to $55 million in 1982-1991 in case of France. In the same periods, average annual exports of cotton yarn and fabric went up from $34 million to $66 million in case of France, and went down from $107 million to $99 million in case of Germany.
Other exports from Pakistan to Germany and France have included leather goods (SITC 61), cotton fibres (SITC 26), sugar (SITC 06) and petroleum and products (SITC 33).
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s exports to the major industrial countries are marked by drastic decline in exports of tea (SITC 07) and rapid growth of exports of clothing (SITC 84).
Sri Lankan tea exports were at an annual average of $175 million to Britain and $49 million to the United States during 1962-1971, reduced to $38 million and $24 million respectively in 1972-1981, reduced to $23 million and $16 million respectively in 1982-1991. Between 1980 and 1991, Sri Lanka’s market-share of total British tea imports fell from 11 percent in 1980 to 7 percent in 1991. Evidently this loss of market-share was not India’s gain, as India’s share of the same market fell even more drastically, from 33 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 1991. India and Sri Lanka traditionally dominated the world market for tea. Major competitors since then have been China, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi.
Sri Lanka’s exports of clothing to the United States, Germany, Britain and France have grown very rapidly, making clothing the dominant export of Sri Lanka in the last decade. Average annual exports of clothing rose from $39 million in 1972-1981 to $361 million in 1982-1991 in case of the United States; from $10 million to $70 million in case of Germany; from $3 million to $27 million in case of Britain; from $2 million to $20 million in case of France. Although rates of value-added growth will be lower in view of Sri Lankan imports of raw materials (from India and Pakistan), clothing has clearly shown phenomenal growth relative to initial conditions.
Besides tea and clothing, significant movement in Sri Lanka’s exports over the long run appears in polished diamonds (SITC 66). Sri Lankan exports amounted to annual averages of $5 million and $4 million to Japan and the United States respectively in 1962-1971; $32 million and $17 million respectively in 1972-1981; and $38 million and $32 million respectively in 1982-1991. Value-added may be considerably lower given imports of rough diamonds via Belgium and India.
Bangladesh
Like India and Pakistan, Bangladesh’s exports to the United States have been dominated by clothing (SITC 84) and textile yarn and fabric (SITC 65). As with India, textile manufactures have fallen drastically in real terms while clothing has shown enormous growth relative to initial conditions. While it is possible again that there has been value-increasing substitution from one towards the other, this appears unlikely as Bangladesh’s textile manufactures are mainly jute products. Average annual exports of textile manufactures from Bangladesh to the United States fell from $130 million in 1972-1981 to $75 million in 1982-1991, while clothing exports rose from near zero in 1972-1981 to an annual average of $249 million in 1982-1991. Unofficial (smuggled) trade across the India-Bangladesh border is reported to be high, and it is possible Indian exporters have sought to sidestep United States quotas by going through Bangladesh which does not face quotas.
The remaining significant movement in Bangladesh’s exports to the United States has been in fish (SITC 03), which has risen from an annual average of $8 million in 1972-1981 to $35 million in 1982-1991.
Bangladesh’s main exports to Britain have included jute fibres (SITC 26), textile manufactures (SITC 65) and fish (SITC 03). Average annual exports of jute fibres went from $19 million in 1973-1981 to $8 million in 1982-1991; textile manufactures went from $20 million in 1973-1982 to $21 million in 1982-1991; and fish went from $3 million in 1973-1981 to $18 million in 1982-1991. The remaining significant movement in Bangladesh’s exports to Britain include the appearance of transport equipment (SITC 73) as the top export at an average annual amount of $121 million in each year 1978-1980, followed by its equally sudden disappearance. And clothing exports have shown rapid growth from near zero to average annual exports of $50 million in the period 1988-1991.
Bangladesh’s exports to Japan have been dominated by fish and preparations (SITC 03), with average annual exports growing rapidly from $11 million in 1973-1982 to $54 million in 1982-1991. Other exports to Japan have included textile manufactures (SITC 65), petroleum and products (SITC 33), leather goods (SITC 61) and raw jute (SITC 26).
Bangladesh’s exports to Germany and France are marked by the rapid recent growth of clothing from negligible amounts to an annual average of $60 million in case of Germany and $52 million in case of France in 1987-1991. Other exports to Germany and France have included fish (SITC 03), textile manufactures (SITC 65), and leather goods (SITC 61).
[1]Some discrepancy exists in the data as India does not report any exports of petroleum to either the USA or France in these years.
Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-1991
February 15, 1991 — drsubrotoroyTHREE MEMORANDA TO RAJIV GANDHI 1990-1991
I. PAKISTAN, SECULARISM AND HINDU COMMUNALISM
II. FOREIGN POLICY
III. ECONOMIC POLICY
by
SUBROTO ROY
Author’s Note, April 2007: As told elsewhere here, in September 1990 I was appointed by Rajiv Gandhi to advise on the long-term agenda for the country. These advisory memoranda were first written by me in that capacity. The Economic Policy Memo was written in September-October 1990; the Foreign Policy Memo was written in February 1991 (during and after the Gulf War); the one on Secularism was a compendium of several smaller ones written in late 1990. These were confidential at the time though were based on the work of the perestroika projects on India and Pakistan that I had been leading since 1986 at the University of Hawaii. As has been told elsewhere, I warned against Rajiv’s vulnerability to assassination. My warnings went in vain. When he was killed, I published these documents in The Statesman Editorial Pages of July 31, August 1, August 2 1991. The published subtitles were “Stronger Secular Middle”, “Saving India’s Prestige”, and “Salvation in Penny Capitalism” respectively. Needless to say, I do not today at age 52 agree with everything I wrote in these documents some 16 years ago at age 35-36, and my perspectives on the economy, Pakistan etc have matured further as may be seen from my current writings; but I am pleased to find I am today not embarrassed more than very slightly by any statement I made back then. My most recent writings relevant to the change in my thought since these documents include “What to tell Musharraf”, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice and J&K”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability” and “India’s Trade and Payments”.
I. PAKISTAN, SECULARISM, AND HINDU COMMUNALISM (“Stronger Secular Middle”)
The world political order has seen immense structural changes recently. The most important of these are the result of the collapse of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and its replacement there by free and self-critical thought and debate, with all the risks and responsibilities that these carry. As a result, the world economy too is on the verge of major change. There may well be by 2000 a pact led by people of European descent from Australia via the Americas and Europe to Siberia, and a smaller pact of East Asian peoples from the Sea of Japan to the Straights of Malacca. Competition between the powers in such a world will be for new markets and cheap sources of labour, energy and natural resources. Given the fragmentation of the Islamic world and the overall weakness of Africa, it is China and our subcontinent which may be the only significant counterweights in this new balance of power. Both have long histories, resilient cultures, and vast populations, which make others apprehensive. But the future of China is far from clear to anyone. The collapse of totalitarianism seems certain after the passing of the present gerontocracy, but what will follow is anybody’s guess. At best, it may be the emergence after a power struggle of a Chinese Gorbachev who will free the domestic economy, restore political freedom, and restore Tibet’s self-governance. At worst, it may be a civil war between the remnants of the communists and some new Kuomingtang nationalists backed by Taiwan and Hong Kong. The one thing certain about China’s near term future is the oncoming uncertainty. This leaves our subcontinent, and here the key is India-Pakistan relations.
There is little doubt that the post-Partition configuration of India, Pakistan, and a divided and disputed Kashmir has been extremely detrimental to the welfare of all the people of the subcontinent, and has impoverished the general budgets and distorted the economies of both countries. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses. So long as the arms-race and elite-rivalry continues, the economies of both countries are likely to remain severely distorted, and there is little genuine prospect of improvements in mass welfare or the large-scale economic development of either country.
It seems hard to remember that little more than a generation or two ago, there was no problem of Kashmir on the subcontinent, or that, for the most part, the Muslims and Hindus lived in amity in undivided India. Partition came about because of the failure of the political dialogue between the Congress and Jinnah. This dialogue failed for three sets of reasons: the British role in the middle, the specific international context at the time, and the fact Congress and Jinnah were more often at cross-purposes than addressing the same issues. The proof they were largely at cross-purposes is indicated by the fact that Kashmir was never on the agenda of any serious discussion before Partition, yet ever since it has come to precisely symbolize the crisis over national identity in both India and Pakistan.
Now, in general, a country cannot have large land and naval forces at the same time. If it is assumed Pakistan and India must remain the perpetual military enemy of one another, both may have today more than adequate land and naval forces. But if that assumption is mistaken, then the real military weakness of the subcontinent taken as a whole becomes immediately apparent. This is made clear by the recent Gulf War, which is a defining event of the last half-century, and even perhaps of the whole century. If India and Pakistan are to protect themselves adequately in the modern world, they must do so by combined forces.
From a practical point of view, this cannot happen so long as each has its army trained at the other and calling it the “dushman”. On the other hand, the combination of both forces would immediately make the resulting force one of significant power, even though there would have to be further transition towards naval forces while infantries are transformed towards amphibious, airborne, reserve, and civil duties.
In the modern age, the defence of our subcontinent as a whole has to be naval and strategic, and such a defence cannot be made adequately so long as there are instead large rival armies facing one another in anger across a disputed border in Kashmir. The lesson of the Gulf War for the people of the subcontinent is that our bitter problems must be resolved, and resolved completely and permanently, in the way the bitter problems between France and Germany came to be resolved by De Gaulle and Adenauer.
Eventually, Kashmir (with or without Jammu and Ladakh) has to be united and demilitarized by both countries. But Kashmir cannot be independent any more than Punjab, Sind or Assam. Nor can a united Kashmir “go” to either India or Pakistan without further needless bloodshed. So the solution must be to try to mutually re-define the foundational basis of the sovereign states of our subcontinent after Partition. Indians and Pakistanis are free peoples who can voluntarily agree together to alter in their own interests the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act of 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of British or American definitions of who we are or might be.
For such a redefinition to take place, there has to be recognition that the configuration which occurred after Partition was a monumental mistake, which even Jinnah — the chain-smoking secular-minded Muslim nationalist — had not wanted at the time. (Jinnah’s cheerless speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan is, incidentally, as secular a document as any.) The solution must be to reopen the dialogue where it failed almost fifty years ago, and to work towards a major constitutional revision for a new and stable configuration to emerge in all of our subcontinent. Fifty years is, after all, not a long time in the history of our peoples. This kind of a solution is further implied by an understanding of the nature of the three nationalist forces on the subcontinent: secular nationalism as is supposed to be represented by the Congress and its offshoots; Muslim nationalism as represented today by Pakistan; and Hindu nationalism as represented today by the BJP. For the whole of the present century, these have been the three permanent political forces on the subcontinent. Congress has been the most important and central force. But the fact Congress was started mostly by Hindus was enough for a Muslim political force in the form of the Muslim League to get created on one side of it. Muslim politicization had its own reaction of an explicitly Hindu politicization in the form of the Hindu Mahasabha on the other side of Congress. It is not long ago, relative to the length of our history, that the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha were just factions of the Congress in its struggle for independence, and many people like Jinnah had joint membership of both a communal and a secular organization.
The fact these three forces are permanent fixtures of our politics is of the highest importance. Each has changed in name, form and strength from time to time. The Muslim force went into the hands of Jinnah who, in course of bluffing his way with Congress and the British in the hope of gaining maximum advantage for his constituents, inadvertently created a moth-eaten Pakistan, which soon collapsed into military rule, foreign domination, civil war and secession. The Hindu political force became associated in the public mind with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, was eclipsed for a short while, then re-emerged in the form of the RSS, the Jana Sangha and now the BJP. Congress has stayed more or less in the middle. But with a frequent policy of expediency instead of a clear and convincing national philosophy, during decades of extreme economic and political crisis, Congress has been experiencing continuous factionalism and splintering into various disunited and opportunistic groups.
Nevertheless, a permanent configuration of political forces on the subcontinent can be identified of a secular middle, with Hindu and Muslim communal interests on either side of it. Each force is of such a size and importance that it must be respected and cannot be ignored. None of the three can be destroyed or converted by any one or combination of the other two. Congress and the BJP cannot destroy Muslim communalism as represented today by Pakistan. Congress and the Muslims cannot destroy Hindu communalism as represented today by the BJP. And the BJP and Pakistan will destroy one another and the whole of our subcontinent with them before they destroy secularism. Much as they might like to, neither can the RSS impose universal Hindu domination nor can the Pakistani ulema impose Islamic law over all parts of the subcontinent. Nor, for that matter, can Congress and its offshoots expect to spread secularism everywhere on the subcontinent.
These are the fundamental facts of political life on the subcontinent. They have not changed for 100 years, and, come what may, they are not likely to change for the next 50 years. If the forces are not recognised correctly and accomodated and reconciled properly, all that will happen is that the real and emotional resources of all sides will be drained against each other, until such a time as there is perhaps a break-up of the subcontinent and a repeat of the 18th century, with elites panicking and fleeing abroad if they can, mass blood-letting, while foreigners roam the country competitively in search of aluminium, manganese, coal, iron ore, oil, women, cheap labour, quick profits or whatever. Both the national movement for Independence from European rule and Jinnah’s desire to preserve the cultural identity of Indian Muslims will have become ghastly long-term failures. So long as the conflict between the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent continues, with secular forces caught in the middle, it is certain that the people of our subcontinent will not experience genuine mass economic improvement or be able to take their proper position in the world. Instead, we shall be completely vulnerable and defenceless with respect to predaory foreign powers in the post-Cold War world.
A genuine reconciliation between Pakistan and Hindu communalism is possible only via the revitalised leadership of a secular centre, with a clear-headed understanding of the facts and the way forward. It will require courage and calm statesmanship of a high order, of the kind shown by Willy Brandt, Sadat and Gorbachev in recent years. (Postscript: Rajiv Gandhi may have been able to show such statesmanship in his second term.)
II. FOREIGN POLICY (“Saving India’s Prestige”)
A key principle by which to guide the foreign policy of a large and potentially great nation like ours can be stated simply as follows:
An action of the Government of India outside the territory of India, i.e., an act of foreign policy, should be undertaken if and only if it protects or promotes Indian interests outside the territory of India.
Indian interests outside India encompass the private interests of Indian businessmen, Indian migrant workers and their descendants, Indian pilgrims, Indian students, Indian tourists etc, as well as the public interests of the Indian Republic such as the defence of the territory and property of India and the promotion overseas of the culture, languages and values of India.
It is a fact that Indian prestige on the world-stage has declined steadily since Independence. India’s share of world trade and finance used to be large in the 1750s, considerable in the 1850s, small but significant in the 1950s. It is close to insignificant today as we approach 2000. Accurately or not, we are perceived by those who think about us at all as a complex mess of a society, rife with caste, class and religious conflicts; moralistic and hypocritical beggars and braggarts on the world stage; very weak relative to our potential and our pretensions; with all talk and little ability. True or false, whether we like it or not, that is how we are perceived by many people outside India.
Repercussions of this view that the world has of us today are felt everywhere. A cynical Pakistani foreign minister once said about Non-Alignment: “Zero plus zero equals zero”. He was wrong then but would be right today. In public international circles, the Government of India is mostly ignored, and not even humoured or flattered the way some are because of their oil. Many Indians outside India face harrassment, hostility and discrimination of various degrees. This is related not only to the fact they are often competent and successful relative to local populations, but also to the perception that India is a weak and flabby country unable to protect her citizens abroad or offer them a proper life at home. If we are to formulate a new and effective foreign policy for India, we have to be first candid and realistic in our assessment of the facts and circumstances of the world situation and our present place in it.
Ideally, the foreign policy and defence of the subcontinent should be common. Differences between private Indians, Pakistanis, etc tend to disappear outside the subcontinent in face of common opportunities and adversities. If we are not able to persuade our neighbours about this in the short run, we may nevertheless act as far as possible as if we have a common policy, hoping to thereby persuade our neighbours by our example of the gains from such a policy. With this in mind, the broad aims of a new foreign policy may be formulated as follows:
A. Independence from so-called “foreign aid”. We do not ask for or accept public foreign aid from foreign Governments or international organizations at “concessional” terms. Requiring annual foreign aid is an indication of economic maladjustment, having to do with the structure of imports and exports and the international price of the Indian rupee. Receiving the so-called aid of others, e.g. the so-called Aid-India Consortium or the soft-loans of the World Bank, diminishes us drastically in the eyes of the donors, who naturally push their own agendas and gain leverage in the country in various ways in return. Self-reliance from so-called foreign aid would require making certain economic adjustments in commercial and exchange-rate policies, as well as austerity in foreign-exchange spending by the Government. Emergency aid from abroad (e.g. for disaster relief) or private voluntary aid need not be affected.
B. Promotion of amity and demilitarisation on the subcontinent. The idea would be to aim towards a more or less common foreign and military policy on the pattern of Western Europe within five or ten years. This will require some outstanding statesmanship and domestic political courage vis-a-vis Pakistan on the lines suggested in the previous memorandum.
C. Resolving the border-dispute with China by treaty. This too will require some clear-thinking statesmanship. The general trade-off between sectors may be a commonsensical way of breaking the impasse. Prima facie at least, Arunachal which we already have is probably more valuable to us than Aksai Chin which they already have, unless there are defence reasons to the contrary. A sound settlement should allow us to take a firm if quiet stand with them on Tibet. What they do at Tiannanmen may be not be our affair but what they do in Tibet is. Our position on Tibet has not been an altogether honourable one in the last 40 years. Also we should seek to protect those of Indian descent in Hong Kong from the chaos that is likely to occur in 1997.
D. Promotion of emigration and reverse migration to and from e.g. North America, Hong Kong, Africa etc. On the one hand, we should export our most exportable product, which is inexpensive good quality labour skills. At the same time, any Indian or descendant of an Indian living abroad should be encouraged to return at will. This is important for economic reasons, in effect adding value to the stock of human capital in the country. It is even more important for political reasons, as it will undercut to some extent the overseas financing of domestic terrorism. Nationality laws have to be amended giving Indian nationality to as many people as possible of Indian descent. Every Indian abroad who has taken a foreign passport but wishes to retain or re-acquire Indian nationality at the same time should be encouraged by us to do so. This may go to isolate extremist opinion, as thousands of moderate emigrants in Britain and North America will presumably prefer to maintain or freely re-acquire Indian nationality alongside their new nationalities. Many may rediscover patriotism for their homeland, where they now feel rootless in alien cultures which is what subconsciously motivates the demand for an abstract separatism.
E. Promotion of commerce, finance and investment abroad — exports, imports, capital flows in and out, tourism, contacts and exchanges. This is of fundamental importance for economic reasons. It will entail establishing as quickly as possible conditions favourable for the freeing of the rupee, as will be described in the next memorandum.
F. Achievement of tolerable standards in sports, music, and the arts. Our sporting prowess has become laughable. This contributes to our dismal image in the outside world. The present system is utterly hopeless, because of the heavy and completely unnecessary Government involvement in sports. Sports can be and must be privatized as completely as possible. Let commercial advertising and private sponsorship help our athletic development with minimum Government involvement. For example, Government can give tax breaks to sponsors who finance athletes for competitive international sport. There is plenty of black money in the economy which can be induced to come out to support sports in the country. To a lesser extent, the state of music and the arts and the culture in general have also become hopeless due to the unnecessary Government involvement.
For these six new objectives of an effective Indian foreign policy to be achieved, there must be a clear-headed and consistently formulated long-term view. The basic means would be to make a major and distinct move away from multilateralism towards bilateralism in international affairs. This would begin with Pakistan, on the lines discussed in the previous memorandum. Our most active foreign policy must be on the subcontinent, followed by South East Asia to where we once exported Buddhism, Islam, Sanskrit and Hinduism. South East Asia is today thriving economically and is quite stable politically. We have to learn what we can from them and offer whatever we have in exchange. Then there are the major powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, Britain and France. Then there is the Islamic crescent from Morocco to Indonesia. Then there are the countries where Indians have gone or can still go as emigrants or where there are significant Indian interests. These include Australia, Canada, South Africa, East Africa, Fiji and the West Indies. Then there are continental powers like Brazil, Argentina, Egypt and Nigeria. Then there are regional groups like the European Community and Scandinavia as collectivities.
On the subcontinent, the relationship should be made domestic and familiar with the aim of identifying common interests and forging a common policy as soon as possible. With the others, a rational bilateralism would involve starting with a thorough assessment of bilateral relations country-by-country. What are the principal components of imports and exports and their rates of expansion or contraction? What are Indian assets and liabilities in each of these countries and how liquid are these? How significant are private Indian interests in each — immigrants, tourists, students, businesses, etc.? What is the scope for expansion of ties in view of our objectives? Etc. Long-term foreign policy requires a constant stock of reliable information and also a continuous flow into and out of that stock. This may require overhauling some of the civil services. For good foreign policy to be made and implemented, there should be easy flow between the IFS and IAS, academia and the military and intelligence services. The aim would be to have a pool of highly qualified people voluntarily pursuing foreign languages and research of national importance with respect to the different countries of the world. The dozens of unthinking think-tanks in Delhi may have to be drastically overhauled to actually produce something useful after all.
Having determined what are the priorities and what are not, a reallocation of the foreign exchange resources of the Government of India will be called for to achieve stated foreign policy objectives. This has to accompany the process of economic reform, as well as the vigourous pursuit of reasonable solutions to the subcontinent’s continuing political problems. Obtaining a broad national consensus on the objectives is very important. Once the thinking has been clarified and the pieces put in place, this may not be so hard to achieve.
III. ECONOMIC POLICY (“Salvation in Penny Capitalism”)
Our economic problems have to do with the misdefinition which has occurred since Independence of the role of government in the economy. Partly under the influence of numerous domestic and foreign economists and pseudo-economists, our Government since the 1950s has frequently done things which need not or should not be done by government at the expense of things which have to be done or can only be done by government. The prime indicator of economic mismanagement today is not the annual deficit, but rather the vast public debt today of more than Rs. 273,000 crores. Our Government has borrowed something like Rs. 3500/- on behalf of each man, woman and child in the country — and spent it. A pile of rupee coins adding up to the public debt of India would stretch 4.55 million km into the sky, or be as long as six trips to the moon and back. That is the size of the problem.
Commonsense says that for the individual family or business or the nation as a whole, if you borrow funds for productive purposes which repay their worth, the size of the debt incurred is immaterial. If you borrow on the credit of the Government of India and then add to the country’s capital stock (whether human capital via better health and education or physical capital like roads and bridges), then the size of the debt does not matter, as long as the payments of interest on the debt are matched by increases in the capital stock. But if Government spends borrowed funds recklessly without a thought to rates of return, no capital gets created and instead the economy approaches technical bankruptcy at which time foreign creditors come knocking at the door.
The roots of the crisis may be traced to the following:
(A) Politicians in democratic systems make competitive soft promises of cash and immediate benefits, without thinking of where the revenue is going to come from. It is recognition of this which this has led to the turnaround in the Western economies since 1979, and made politics there much more sober from an economic point of view.
(B) Our closed economy with a captive Reserve Bank and credit market has caused any amount of the currency to be debased internally. To correct the problem at the roots, these two factors have to be faced squarely.
Short Run Policy (0-6 months) All political parties, national or regional, whether they have been in power or not, are mutually responsible for the crisis. It has been one of the unintended side-effects of the democratic system we have chosen. Therefore, all parties have a responsibility to set things right, and the way to do so was thoughtfully placed in the Constitution by its framers in Article 360: in a situation in which the “financial stability or credit” of India is threatened, the President is entitled to declare a financial emergency. This would permit freezing all levels and increases in Government spending outside essential functions (defence, law and order, roads, transport and comunications, basic education and health), initiate cost-cutting in all non-essential parts of the Government, and create the appropriate mood of seriousness in the country.
Next there will have to be an increase in revenue without increasing taxes. Can this be done? (Bush had once called this Reagan/Thatcher idea “voodoo economics”.) In our economy it may be possible via the appropriate use of two facts — the vast black economy of undeclared income of perhaps Rs. 43,000 crores, and the vast Government-owned industrial and services sector plus any amount of Government-owned land and capital. The black economy has made our businessmen waste their enterprise in trying to cheat or buy out the Government. The Government-owned sector has led our workers to waste their skills and learning abilities in overmanned and unproductive occupations. Any reform-minded Government must be prepared to tackle corrupt or lazy businessmen, union bosses and Government employees, while creating a system which rewards initiative, honesty, enterprise and effort on the part of business, labour and the bureaucracy.
As part of the financial emergency, every Government department can be instructed to reduce costs by 10-25% every year for the next five years. Much of this may be possible without layoffs but by internal economies and tough administration — freezing wages and benefits, saving office-space, more clatter and less chatter, etc.
More crucially, there must be an absolute moratorium on strikes in the public sector. Only if an industry is vital to the national interest should it be in the public sector, e.g. space research, defence production or oil. Strikes in such industries damage the whole country and not just the individual employer. Therefore, either there are no strikes, or the industry is not vital to the nation and can be safely placed in the private sector.
This will set the example for more fundamental changes in industrial relations. Labour laws have to be applied or amended to ensure unions are run for the benefit of their members and not of union bosses or political parties. Unions are vital in industrial society to protect individual workers from exploitation, discrimimation and safety hazards. They are not supposed to be empires for unelected union bosses, arenas for party politics, or excuses for overmanning. Our productivity is shockingly low relative to international standards, and without crucial improvements in it we shall be wiped out if and when the economy is opened as it will have to be for other reasons.
Increasing productivity per head throughout the economy is therefore a vital preparatory step, and must be tackled in the first few months. The device of a strike has to be made a last resort. Workers have to be free to elect their leaders by secret ballot without fear or intimidation. Political parties have to be removed from the workplace. The power of toughs and vandals has to be broken by the ballot box.
At the same time, employment can be made to increase by leaps and bounds by freeing all domestic enterprise from licensing, controls and permits. Freeing domestic enterprise from retrograde Central and State laws may be again most easily done via the Constitution. Subject only to local laws of safety, morality and environmental protection, all trade, commerce and enterprise throughout the territory of India should be made free from Government interference or restriction. That was what was envisioned by Articles 19 and 301 of the Constitution.
The increase may be incalculable in employment, wages and income, and hence the consumption of the masses of our people. Important side-benefits will be that urban discontent, political vandalism and communalism will be reduced. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop — with increased employment via enterprise, there will be less time and inclination for political or communal crimes.
Special notice has to be given to banking policy, as banks affect all other enterprises. Our nationalised banks are in disastrous shape. Private banks are responsible to their share-holders; if bad loans are made or bad risks taken, or if costs are too high or service poor, then managements get replaced by the power of share-holders. In public sector banks this does not happen. Costs are very high, profit rates low or negative, loans are not repaid or should not have been made in the first place, and service is appalling. Small depositors place their confidence in them because they have no other place to put their meagre savings, and because they believe the Government knows best and is not itself bankrupt. If a serious opening of the economy is to be planned in the medium and long-term, there has to be adequate preparation of the monetary system, else there may be a run on the banks and a collapse in public confidence in the currency.
It becomes essential that costs in the public sector banks are slashed, loans get repaid, loan melas stop, and banks are run as banks and not as public charities or employment agencies. At the same time, the Reserve Bank has to be made independent of the Ministry of Finance and of parliamentary pressure, and preferably made constitutionally independent like the UPSC or the Auditor-General. The task of any central bank is to maintain a currency in which the domestic public can have confidence in making their economic transactions, and to reflect a realistic price on international currency markets. The Reserve Bank’s role has been severely distorted by it being forced practically at gunpoint to hold massive amounts of the Government’s debt, and to finance this by printing more and more paper money. Instead, the currency has to reflect real economic transactions, and the Reserve Bank can be instructed (as its own 1985 report said) to follow a non-inflationary monetary rule of expanding the money-supply only relative to the rate of growth of real income and output in the economy.
Similarly, markets for insurance and life-insurance have to be rescued from the bankruptcy of nationalisation. Insurance is a highly complicated industry involving the correct assessment and sharing of business and personal risks. The present industry is in a shambles and will probably have to learn the modern business almost from scratch. Yet reforming it is vital to a new and invigorated economy, and also to laying the basis for heath-insurance for the masses.
Medium-Run Policy (6-18 months) Next, a concerted effort will have to be made to raise revenue without raising taxes. To the contrary, tax rates have to be simplified and reduced if possible, and especially the system of invisible indirect excise taxes (which tend to hurt the poor most heavily) gradually changed as far as possible to visible direct income and wealth taxes. If revenues are to be raised without increasing taxes, it is black money and the public sector which must be made to come to the rescue of the country. The public sector belongs to the public — not to the IAS, not to the public sector unions and certainly not to local politicians. Ideally, the most efficient and equitable means of share-holding of the public sector would be for every Indian adult to receive at the address of his or her domicile (or voter registration), upon a simple application and a processing fee, oe share-certificate in each enterprise being run by the Government of India. (An even better model would be to have a poverty-citerion, and give the shares to the poorest of the poor villages or village panchayats.) The shares would become tradeable; markets of penny-capitalism would spread throughout the villages of India, as each penny-capitalist decided whether to hold or sell the share-certificates thus received, and the Government would have safely handed over the ownership of the public sector to its rightful owners.
It would be a historic move for the distribution of national wealth, as scores perhaps hundreds of millions of new shareholders are created. The hidden hoards of black money would come out and become distributed equitably. Of course the shares of some public sector enterprises will not be worth much, but they will not be worth less than nothing. Nor would anyone be obliged to sell until it was privately profitable to do so. Future entrepreneurs (domestic or foreign) who wished to take over or turn around the fortunes of a bankrupt public sector firm would have to solicit the shares from a vast population of penny-capitalists.
Long-Run Policy (18+ months) Thus the key objective would be to control wasteful Government spending in order to place the Government in a position to redirect public resources towards the fundamental sources of economic growth for the common people of India. One further step would be necessary. This would be to make the rupee a hard currency of the world.
This will have to be done with utmost care and proper preparation of economic and political expectations. It will mean making every Indian — high or lowly, rich or poor — free to hold his or her assets, small as these may be, in any currency or precious metal of choice without Government intervention. Government would use its own reserves of foreign exchange and gold for its own purchases and obligations abroad — e.g. defence, diplomacy, or emergency reserves. Success or failure will depend squarely on the credibility and resolve of the Government that there will be no U-turn. If the Government is steadfast and is believed, the rupee will fall some distance for some months and then turn upwards and rise some lesser distance, at which point it would have become a hard currency. The initial fall will bring out black money and pent-up demand, and may reduce the present (October 26 1990) artificial price of Rs. 20 to the dollar to even Rs. 40 or Rs 50 to the dollar. The import bill will become enormous, and immediate relief will have to be given by cutting back on import duties and excise taxes on petroleum equivalently, leading to a fall in revenue from these sources. Export incentives should be immediately withdrawn, as Indian exporters will face an unprecedented boom as the dollar prices of their goods tumble, and goods which were previously high-cost and unexportable become very exportable. The export boom may be so huge as to be inflationary in the short term, requiring the same steady monetary policy plus corrective action by release of food and other stocks. The critical burden will fall on expansion of supply and production — it is here that the importance of first establishing domestic free enterprise and cooperative industrial relations is seen, as domestic enterprise must be in a position to respond to an export boom when the rupee becomes a hard currency. The rupee would become a hard currency the moment its initial fall comes to an end and it starts upwards at a new and steady equilibrium value. At this value, our credit-worthiness in the world would be firm, our export-led boom would have begun, capital owned by Indians abroad would have begun to flow freely in, and the Government would be in a position to embark on fundamental changes for long term economic growth and welfare of the masses — specifically, village-based economic development and school-based village development. Most important, as people gain more control over their own individual futures, the mood and momentum should make the position one of strong confidence.
Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform
September 18, 1990 — drsubrotoroyRajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform
Subroto Roy
Author’s Note May 2008: The family of Rajiv Gandhi received a copy of this when it was first written in July 2005. An earlier abbreviated version “Encounter with Rajiv Gandhi: On the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform” was published in October 2001 in Freedom First, Bombay, a journal founded by the late Minoo Masani and now edited by S V Raju. A copy of that article was received by all Congress MPs of the 13th Lok Sabha. In May 2002, the Congress Party passed an official resolution stating Rajiv Gandhi and not Narasimha Rao or Manmohan Singh was to be credited with having originated the 1991 economic reforms. This article has now been published in print in The Statesman Festival Volume, October 2007. It may be profitably followed by “The Dream Team: A Critique”, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “What to tell Musharraf”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability”, “India’s Trade and Payments”, “Fallacious Finance”, “Against Quackery”, etc. My original advisory memoranda to Rajiv in 1990-1991 were published in The Statesman’s Editorial Pages July 31-August 2 1991, and now have been republished elsewhere here as well. See too https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-e/ https://independentindian.com/2014/08/07/haksar-manmohan-and-sonia/
I met Rajiv Gandhi for the first time on 18th September 1990 thanks to an introduction by S. S. Ray (see “I’m on my way out”: Siddhartha Shankar Ray (1920-2010)… | Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy) We met a half dozen or so times until his assassination in May 1991. Yet our encounter was intense and consequential, and resulted directly in the change of the Congress Party’s economic thinking prior to the 1991 elections. I had with me results of an interdisciplinary “perestroika-for-India” project I had led at the University of Hawaii since 1986. This manuscript (later published by Sage as Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by myself and W. E. James) was given by me to Rajiv, then Leader of the Opposition, and was instrumental in the change of thinking that took place. In interests of fairness, I tried to get the work to V. P. Singh too because he was Prime Minister, but a key aide of his showed no interest in receiving it.
The Hawaii project manuscript contained inter alia a memorandum by Milton Friedman done at the request of the Government of India in November 1955, which had been suppressed for 34 years until I published it in May 1989. Milton and Rose Friedman refer to this in their memoirs Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998). Peter Bauer had told me of the existence of Friedman’s document during my doctoral work at Cambridge under Frank Hahn in the late 1970s, as did N. Georgescu-Roegen in America. Those were years in which Brezhnev still ruled in the Kremlin, Gorbachev was yet to emerge, Indira Gandhi and her pro-Moscow advisers were ensconced in New Delhi, and not even the CIA had imagined the Berlin Wall would fall and the Cold War would be over within a decade. It was academic suicide at the time to argue in favour of classical liberal economics even in the West. As a 22-year-old Visiting Assistant Professor at the Delhi School of Economics in 1977, I was greeted with uproarious laughter of senior professors when I spoke of a possible free market in foreign exchange. Cambridge was a place where Indian economists went to study the exploitation of peasants in Indian agriculture before returning to their friends in the well-known bastions of such matters in Delhi and Calcutta. It was not a place where Indian (let alone Bengali) doctoral students in economics mentioned the unmentionable names of Hayek or Friedman or Buchanan, and insisted upon giving their works a hearing.
My original doctoral topic in 1976 “A monetary theory for India” had to be altered not only due to paucity of monetary data at the time but because the problems of India’s political economy and allocation of resources in the real economy were far more pressing. The thesis that emerged in 1982 “On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India” was a full frontal assault from the point of view of microeconomic theory on the “development planning” to which everyone routinely declared their fidelity, from New Delhi’s bureaucrats and Oxford’s “development” school to McNamara’s World Bank with its Indian staffers.
Frank Hahn protected my inchoate liberal arguments for India; and when no internal examiner could be found, Cambridge showed its greatness by appointing two externals, Bliss at Oxford and Hutchison at Birmingham, both Cambridge men. “Economic Theory and Development Economics” was presented to the American Economic Association in December 1982 in company of Solow, Chenery and other eminences, and then Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India published by London’s Institute of Economic Affairs, provoking the lead editorial of The Times on May 29 1984. The Indian High Commission sent the editorial to the Finance Ministry where it caused a stir as the first classical liberal attack on post-Mahalonobis Indian economic thought since B. R. Shenoy’s original criticism decades earlier. The “perestroika-for-India” project was to follow at Hawaii starting in 1986. New Delhi was represented at the project’s conference held between May 22-27 1989 by the accredited Ambassador of India to the USA, the accredited Consul General of India to San Francisco, and by the founder-director of ICRIER (see photo).
All this I brought into that first meeting with Rajiv Gandhi on September 18 1990. That first day he came to the door to greet me. He was a handsome tall man with the most charming smile and manner, seemed pleased to see me and put me at ease at once. I gave him my books as well as the manuscript of the “perestroika for India” project. He gave me a celebratory volume that had just been published to mark his grandfather’s centenary. He began by talking about how important he felt panchayati raj was, and said he had been on the verge of passing major legislation on it but then lost the election. He asked me if I could spend some time thinking about it, and that he would get the papers sent to me. I said I would and remarked panchayati raj might be seen as decentralized provision of public goods, and gave the economist’s definition of public goods as those essential for the functioning of the market economy, like the Rule of Law, roads, fresh water, and sanitation, but which were unlikely to appear through competitive forces.
I distinguished between federal, state and local levels and said many of the most significant public goods were best provided locally. Rajiv had not heard the term “public goods” before, and he beamed a smile and his eyes lit up as he voiced the words slowly, seeming to like the concept immensely. It occurred to me he had been by choice a pilot of commercial aircraft. Now he seemed intrigued to find there could be systematic ways of thinking about navigating a country’s governance by common pursuit of reasonable judgement. I said the public sector’s wastefulness had drained scarce resources that should have gone instead to provide public goods. Since the public sector was owned by the public, it could be privatised by giving away its shares to the public, preferably to panchayats of the poorest villages. The shares would become tradable, drawing out black money, and inducing a historic redistribution of wealth while at the same time achieving greater efficiency by transferring the public sector to private hands. Rajiv seemed to like that idea too, and said he tried to follow a maxim of Indira Gandhi’s that every policy should be seen in terms of how it affected the common man. I wryly said the common man often spent away his money on alcohol, to which he said at once it might be better to think of the common woman instead. (This remark of Rajiv’s may have influenced the “aam admi” slogan of the 2004 election, as all Congress Lok Sabha MPs of the previous Parliament came to receive a previous version of the present narrative.)
Our project had identified the Congress’s lack of internal elections as a problem; when I raised it, Rajiv spoke of how he, as Congress President, had been trying to tackle the issue of bogus electoral rolls. I said the judiciary seemed to be in a mess due to the backlog of cases; many of which seemed related to land or rent control, and it may be risky to move towards a free economy without a properly functioning judicial system or at least a viable system of contractual enforcement. I said a lot of problems which should be handled by the law in the courts in India were instead getting politicised and decided on the streets. Rajiv had seen the problems of the judiciary and said he had good relations with the Chief Justice’s office, which could be put to use to improve the working of the judiciary.
The project had worked on Pakistan as well, and I went on to say we should solve the problem with Pakistan in a definitive manner. Rajiv spoke of how close his government had been in 1988 to a mutual withdrawal from Siachen. But Zia-ul-Haq was then killed and it became more difficult to implement the same thing with Benazir Bhutto, because, he said, as a democrat, she was playing to anti-Indian sentiments while he had found it somewhat easier to deal with the military. I pressed him on the long-term future relationship between the countries and he agreed a common market was the only real long-term solution. I wondered if he could find himself in a position to make a bold move like offering to go to Pakistan and addressing their Parliament to break the impasse. He did not say anything but seemed to think about the idea. Rajiv mentioned a recent Time magazine cover of Indian naval potential, which had caused an excessive stir in Delhi. He then talked about his visit to China, which seemed to him an important step towards normalization. He said he had not seen (or been shown) any absolute poverty in China of the sort we have in India. He talked about the Gulf situation, saying he did not disagree with the embargo of Iraq except he wished the ships enforcing the embargo had been under the U.N. flag. The meeting seemed to go on and on, and I was embarrassed at perhaps having taken too much time and that he was being too polite to get me to go. V. George had interrupted with news that Sheila Dixit (as I recall) had just been arrested by the U. P. Government, and there were evidently people waiting. Just before we finally stood up I expressed a hope that he was looking to the future of India with an eye to a modern political and economic agenda for the next election, rather than getting bogged down with domestic political events of the moment. That was the kind of hopefulness that had attracted many of my generation in 1985. I said I would happily work in any way to help define a long-term agenda. His eyes lit up and as we shook hands to say goodbye, he said he would be in touch with me again.
The next day I was called and asked to stay in Delhi for a few days, as Mr. Gandhi wanted me to meet some people. I was not told whom I was to meet but that there would be a meeting on Monday, 24th September. On Saturday, the Monday meeting was postponed to Tuesday because one of the persons had not been able to get a flight into Delhi. I pressed to know what was going on, and was told I was to meet former army chief K.V. Krishna Rao, former foreign secretary M. K. Rasgotra, V. Krishnamurty and Sam Pitroda.
The group met for the first time on September 25 in the afternoon. Rasgotra did not arrive. Krishna Rao, Pitroda, Krishnamurty and I gathered in the waiting room next to George’s office. The three of them knew each other but none knew me and I was happy enough to be ignored. It seemed mysterious while we were gathering, especially when the tall well-dressed General arrived, since none of us knew why we had been called by Rajiv, and the General remarked to the others he had responded at once to the call to his home but could not get a flight into Delhi for a day.
Rajiv’s residence as Leader of the Opposition had a vast splendid meeting room, lined with high bookshelves on one or two walls, a large handsome desk on one side, two spacious comfortable sofa sets arranged in squares, and a long conference table with leather chairs occupying most of the rest of the room. The entrance to it was via a small 10 ft by 10 ft air-conditioned anteroom, where George sat, with a fax machine, typewriters and a shredding machine, plus several telephones, and a used copy of parliamentary procedures on the shelf. Getting to George’s office was the final step before reaching Rajiv. There were several chairs facing George, and almost every prospective interviewee, no matter how senior or self-important, had to move from one chair to the next, while making small talk with George, as the appointment with Rajiv drew near. Opening into George’s office was a larger and shabbier waiting room, which is where we sat, which was not air-conditioned, and which opened to the outside of the building where a plainclothes policeman sometimes stood around with a walkie-talkie. There were large photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and Indira Gandhi on the wall, and a modern print also hung incongruously. A dozen or more plastic chairs lined the walls. There were faded torn issues of a few old magazines on the plastic coffee-table, and on one occasion there was a television playing the new sporadic domestic cable news and weather information for the entertainment of the many visitors waiting. Via this waiting room went the vast majority of people who were to meet Rajiv in his office. To reach the waiting room, one had to walk a hundred yards along a path lined by splendid high hedges from the initial reception desk at the rear-gate, manned by Congress Seva Dal volunteers in khadi wearing Gandhi-caps. These persons were in touch with George’s office by telephone, and would check with George or his assistant Balasubramaniam before sending a visitor along. The visitor would then pass through a metal-detector manned by a couple of policemen. If someone’s face came to be known and had been cleared once, or if someone acted to the policemen like a sufficiently important political personage, such a person seemed to be waved through. Outside, the front-entrance of the premises were closed unless extremely important people were entering or exiting, while at the rear-entrance there were usually two or three jeeps and several plainclothes policemen, who might or might not challenge the prospective visitor with a kind of “Who goes there?” attitude before the visitor reached the Seva Dal reception desk. The whole arrangement struck me from the first as insecure and inefficient, open to penetration by professional assassins or a terrorist squad, let aside insiders in the way Indira Gandhi had been assassinated. I could not imagine counter-terrorist commandos would suddenly appear from the high hedges in the event of an emergency.
On that Tuesday when Rajiv finally called in our group, we entered hesitantly not knowing quite what the meeting was going to be about. Rajiv introduced me to the others and then spoke of why he had gathered us together. He wanted us to come up with proposals and recommendations for the direction the country should take on an assumption the Congress Party was returned to power in the near future. He said it would help him to have an outside view from specialists who were not party functionaries, though the others obviously had been closely involved with Congress governments before. Rajiv said we were being asked to write a draft of what may enter the manifesto for the next election, which we should assume to be forthcoming by April 1991. I asked what might have become of the “perestroika” manuscript I had given him at our previous meeting. He said he had gotten it copied and bound, and that along with my 1984 monograph, it had been circulated among a few of his party colleagues who included P. Chidambaram and Mani Shankar Aiyar.
The initial meeting left us breathless and excited. Yet within a few days, the others became extremely tied up for personal causes, and I found myself alone in getting on with doing what we had been explicitly asked to do. I felt I should get done what I could in the time I had while keeping the others informed. Rajiv had said to me at our first meeting that he felt the Congress was ready for elections. This did not seem to me to be really the case. He actually seemed very isolated in his office, with George seeming to be his conduit to the outside world. I decided to start by trying to write a definite set of general principles that could guide and inform thought about the direction of policy. I spent the evening of October 26 in the offices at Rajiv’s residence, preparing an economic policy memorandum on a portable Toshiba computer of his, the first laptop I ever used. After Rajiv’s assassination, this was part of what was published in The Statesmen’s center pages July 31-August 2, 1991.
Rajiv read the work and met me on October 30 or 31, even though he was down badly with a sore throat after his sadbhavana travels around the country; he looked odd clad in khadi with a muffler and gym shoes. He said he liked very much what I had written and had given it to be read by younger Congress leaders who would discuss it for the manifesto, for an election he again said, he expected early in 1991. I said I was grateful for his kind words and inquired whom he had shown the work to. This time he said Chidambaram and also mentioned another name that made me wince. In December 1990, I was back in Hawaii when I was called on the phone to ask whether I could come to Delhi. With the rise of Chandrashekhar as Prime Minister, Rajiv had called a meeting of the group. But I could not go.
In January 1991, the Gulf War brought an odd twist to my interaction with Rajiv. On January 15, the UN deadline for the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait passed without Iraqi compliance, and American-led forces started the heavy aerial bombardment of Iraq. The American media had built up the impending war as one of utter devastation and mass killing, especially when the American infantry became engaged. Estimated casualties on the American side alone were being wildly exaggerated by the number of “body-bags” being ordered by the Pentagon. An even larger conflagration was being imagined if Israel entered the fighting, while Saddam Hussein had vowed to set fire to Kuwait’s oil-fields before retreating. I like everyone else erroneously believed the media’s hyperbole about the impending regional catastrophe. On January 16, just after the bombing of Iraq had begun, I called an American family friend who had retired from a senior foreign policy role and who had known me from when I was an infant. In informal conversation, I mentioned to him that since other channels had by then become closed, an informal channel might be attempted via India, specifically via Rajiv who was still Leader of the Opposition but on whom the Chandrashekhar Government depended. The sole aim would be to compel an immediate Iraqi withdrawal without further loss of life. What transpired over the next few days was that a proposal to that effect was communicated at Rajiv’s decision to a high level of the Iraqis on the one hand, and evidently received their assent, while at the same time, it was mentioned to the authorities on the American side. But nothing came of it. Rajiv initiated a correspondence with Chandrashekhar beginning January 19, demanding a coherent formulation of Indian policy in the Gulf war, and faxed me copies of this. By February 8, the Times of India led by saying Rajiv’s stand “on the Gulf War demonstrates both his experience and perspicacity … in consonance with an enlightened vision of national interest”, and urged Rajiv to “give the nation some respite from [the] non-government” of Chandrashekhar. I taped my phone conversations with Rajiv during the Gulf War because notes could not be taken at the necessary speed; in late December 1991, I was to give his widow a copy of the tape for her personal record.
I returned to Delhi on Monday, March 18, 1991 as new elections had been announced. Rasgotra said I should be in touch with Krishna Rao, and the next day March 19 Krishna Rao met me for several hours. I told him what I thought were the roots and results of the Gulf war. He in turn generously told me what had happened while I had been away. He said the group had met Rajiv in December with the proposal that Rajiv better organize his time by having an “office manager” of larger political stature than George. The name of a UP Congressman of integrity had been put forward, but nothing had come of it. Rajiv had been advised to keep Chandrashekhar in power through the autumn of 1991, as Chandrashekhar was doing Rajiv’s work for him of sidelining V. P. Singh. The idea was to cooperate with Chandrashekhar until he could be pushed up to the Presidency when that fell vacant. Rajiv had been advised not to work in a Chandrashekhar cabinet, though in my opinion, had we been like the Scandinavians, it was not impossible for a former prime minister to enter another cabinet on the right terms in the national interest of providing stable government, which was imperative at the time. Things seem to have slipped out of control when Chandrashekhar resigned. At that point, Rajiv called the group together and instructed them to write a draft of the manifesto for the impending elections. I had advised readiness back in September but the lack of organization had prevented much tangible progress at the time. Our group was to now report to a political manifesto-committee of three senior party leaders who would report to Rajiv. They were Narasimha Rao, Pranab Mukherjee and Madhavsingh Solanki. Krishna Rao liased with Narasimha Rao, Krishnamurty with Mukherjee, Pitroda with Solanki. While Rajiv would obviously lead a new Congress Government, Mukherjee was the presumptive Finance Minister, while Narasimha Rao and Solanki would have major portfolios though Narasimha Rao was expected to retire before too long.
Krishna Rao said I should be in touch with Krishnamurty who was preparing the economic chapters of the draft of the manifesto. Krishnamurty told me he had brought in A. M. Khusro to the group, and there would be a 5 p.m. meeting at Khusro’s office at the Aga Khan Foundation. I arrived early and was delighted to meet Khusro, and he seemed pleased to meet me. Khusro seemed excited by my view that India and Pakistan were spending excessively on defence against each other, which resonated with his own ideas, and he remarked the fiscal disarray in India and Pakistan could start to be set right by mutually agreed cuts in military spending. (Khusro was eventually to accompany Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore in 1999).
Krishnamurty had prepared a draft dated March 18 of several pages of the economic aspects of the manifesto. After our discussions, Krishnamurty was hospitable enough to open the draft to improvement. That evening, the 19th, I worked through the night and the next morning to get by noon copies of a revised version with all the members of the group. At 4 p.m. on the 20th there was a meeting at Andhra Bhavan of the whole group except Pitroda, which went on until the night. The next day the 21st , Krishnamurty, Khusro and I met again at Andhra Bhavan for a few hours on the economic aspects of the draft. Then in mid-afternoon I went to Rasgotra’s home to work with him and Krishna Rao. They wanted me to produce the economic draft which they could then integrate as they wished into the material they were dictating to a typist. I offered instead to absorb their material directly on to my laptop computer where the economic draft was. Rasgotra was reluctant to let go control, and eventually I gave in and said I would get them a hard copy of the economic draft, which they then planned to re-draft via a stenographer on a typewriter. At this, Rasgotra gave in and agreed to my solution. So the work began and the three of us continued until late.
That night Krishna Rao dropped me at Tughlak Road where I used to stay with friends. In the car I told him, as he was a military man with heavy security cover for himself as a former Governor of J&K, that it seemed to me Rajiv’s security was being unprofessionally handled, that he was vulnerable to a professional assassin. Krishna Rao asked me if I had seen anything specific by way of vulnerability. With John Kennedy and De Gaulle in mind, I said I feared Rajiv was open to a long-distance sniper, especially when he was on his campaign trips around the country.
This was one of several attempts I made since October 1990 to convey my clear impression to whomever I thought might have an effect that Rajiv seemed to me extremely vulnerable. Rajiv had been on sadhbhavana journeys, back and forth into and out of Delhi. I had heard he was fed up with his security apparatus, and I was not surprised given it seemed at the time rather bureaucratized. It would not have been appropriate for me to tell him directly that he seemed to me to be vulnerable, since I was a newcomer and a complete amateur about security issues, and besides if he agreed he might seem to himself to be cowardly or have to get even closer to his security apparatus. Instead I pressed the subject relentlessly with whomever I could. I suggested specifically two things: (a) that the system in place at Rajiv’s residence and on his itineraries be tested, preferably by some internationally recognized specialists in counter-terrorism; (b) that Rajiv be encouraged to announce a shadow-cabinet. The first would increase the cost of terrorism, the second would reduce the potential political benefit expected by terrorists out to kill him. On the former, it was pleaded that security was a matter being run by the V. P. Singh and then Chandrashekhar Governments at the time. On the latter, it was said that appointing a shadow cabinet might give the appointees the wrong idea, and lead to a challenge to Rajiv’s leadership. This seemed to me wrong, as there was nothing to fear from healthy internal contests for power so long as they were conducted in a structured democratic framework. I pressed to know how public Rajiv’s itinerary was when he travelled. I was told it was known to everyone and that was the only way it could be since Rajiv wanted to be close to the people waiting to see him and had been criticized for being too aloof. This seemed to me totally wrong and I suggested that if Rajiv wanted to be seen as meeting the crowds waiting for him then that should be done by planning to make random stops on the road that his entourage would take. This would at least add some confusion to the planning of potential terrorists out to kill him. When I pressed relentlessly, it was said I should probably speak to “Madame”, i.e. to Mrs. Rajiv Gandhi. That seemed to me highly inappropriate, as I could not be said to be known to her and I should not want to unduly concern her in the event it was I who was completely wrong in my assessment of the danger. The response that it was not in Congress’s hands, that it was the responsibility of the V. P. Singh and later the Chandrashekhar Governments, seemed to me completely irrelevant since Congress in its own interests had a grave responsibility to protect Rajiv Gandhi irrespective of what the Government’s security people were doing or not doing. Rajiv was at the apex of the power structure of the party, and a key symbol of secularism and progress for the entire country. Losing him would be quite irreparable to the party and the country. It shocked me that the assumption was not being made that there were almost certainly professional killers actively out to kill Rajiv Gandhi — this loving family man and hapless pilot of India’s ship of state who did not seem to have wished to make enemies among India’s terrorists but whom the fates had conspired to make a target. The most bizarre and frustrating response I got from several respondents was that I should not mention the matter at all as otherwise the threat would become enlarged and the prospect made more likely! This I later realized was a primitive superstitious response of the same sort as wearing amulets and believing in Ptolemaic astrological charts that assume the Sun goes around the Earth — centuries after Kepler and Copernicus. Perhaps the entry of scientific causality and rationality is where we must begin in the reform of India’s governance and economy. What was especially repugnant after Rajiv’s assassination was to hear it said by his enemies that it marked an end to “dynastic” politics in India. This struck me as being devoid of all sense because the unanswerable reason for protecting Rajiv Gandhi was that we in India, if we are to have any pretensions at all to being a civilized and open democratic society, cannot tolerate terrorism and assassination as means of political change. Either we are constitutional democrats willing to fight for the privileges of a liberal social order, or ours is truly a primitive and savage anarchy concealed beneath a veneer of fake Westernization.
The next day, Friday March 22, I worked from dawn to get the penultimate draft to Krishna Rao before noon as planned the night before. Rasgotra arrived shortly, and the three of us worked until evening to finish the job. I left for an hour to print out copies for a meeting of the entire group, where the draft we were going to submit would come to be decided. When I got back I found Rasgotra had launched an extended and quite unexpected attack on what had been written on economic policy. Would someone like Manmohan Singh, Rasgotra wanted to know, agree with all this talk we were putting in about liberalization and industrial efficiency? I replied I did not know what Manmohan Singh’s response would be but I knew he had been in Africa heading something called the South-South Commission for Julius Nyrere of Tanzania. I said what was needed was a clear forceful statement designed to restore India’s credit-worthiness, and the confidence of international markets. I said that the sort of thing we should aim for was to make clear, e.g. to the IMF’s man in Delhi when that person read the manifesto, that the Congress Party at least knew its economics and was planning to make bold new steps in the direction of progress. I had argued the night before with Rasgotra that on foreign policy we should “go bilateral” with good strong ties with individual countries, and drop all the multilateral hogwash. But I did not wish to enter into a fight on foreign policy which he was writing, so long as the economic policy was left the way we said. Krishnamurty, Khusro and Pitroda came to my defence saying the draft we had done greatly improved on the March 18 draft. For a bare half hour or so with all of us present, the draft was agreed upon. Later that night at Andhra Bhavan, I gave Krishna Rao the final copy of the draft manifesto which he was going to give Narasimha Rao the next day, and sent a copy to Krishnamurty who was liaising with Pranab Mukherjee. Pitroda got a copy on a floppy disc the next day for Solanki.
In its constructive aspects, the March 22 1991 draft of the Congress manifesto went as follows with regard to economic policy: “CHAPTER V AGENDA FOR ECONOMIC ACTION 1. Control of Inflation …. The Congress believes the inflation and price-rise of essential commodities… is a grave macroeconomic problem facing the country today. It has hit worst the poorest and weakest sections of our people and those with fixed incomes like pensioners. The Congress will give highest priority to maintaining the prices of essential commodities, increasing their production and supply using all appropriate economic instruments. 2. Macroeconomic Policy Framework To control inflation of the general price-level, the Congress will provide a predictable long-term policy framework. The average Indian household and business will not have their lives and plans disrupted by sudden changes in economic policy. Coherent monetary policy measures will be defined as called for by the Report of Experts of the Reserve Bank of India in 1985. The Long-Term Fiscal Policy introduced by the Congress Government of 1984-1989 will be revived. Medium and long-term export-import policies will be defined. The basis for a strong India must be a strong economy. The Congress believes a high rate of real growth is essential for securing a strong national defence, social justice and equity, and a civilized standard of living for all. As the party of self-reliance, Congress believes resources for growth must be generated from within our own economy. This means all wasteful and unproductive Government spending has to be cut, and resources transferred from areas of low priority to areas of high national priority. Subsidies have to be rationalized and reduced, and productivity of investments already made has to be improved. The widening gap between revenue receipts and revenue expenditure must be corrected through fiscal discipline, and the growing national debt brought under control as a matter of high priority. These policies in a consistent framework will create the environment for the freeing of the rupee in due course, making it a hard currency of the world of which our nation can be proud. Public resources are not unlimited. These have to be allocated to high priority areas like essential public services, poverty-reduction, strategic sectors, and protection of the interests of the weaker sections of society. Government has to leave to the initiative and enterprise of the people what can be best done by themselves. Government can now progressively vacate some areas of activity to the private, cooperative and non-government sectors. Black money in the parallel economy has become the plague of our economic and political system. This endangers the social and moral fabric of our nation. Artificial price controls, excessive licensing, capacity restrictions, outmoded laws on rent control and urban ceiling, and many other outdated rules and regulations have contributed to pushing many honest citizens into dishonest practices. The Congress will tackle the problem of black money at its roots by attacking all outmoded and retrograde controls, and simplifying procedures in all economic spheres. At the same time, the tax-base of the economy must be increased via simplification and rationalization of tax-rates and coverage, user-fees for public goods, and reduction of taxes wherever possible to improve incentives and stimulate growth. 3. Panchayati Raj India’s farmers and khet mazdoors are the backbone of our economy. Economic development is meaningless until their villages provide them a wholesome rural life. The Congress will revitalize Panchayat Raj institutions to decentralize decision-making, so development can truly benefit local people most effectively. 4. Rural Development Basic economic infrastructure like roads, communications, fresh drinking water, and primary health and education for our children must reach all our villages. The Congress believes such a policy will also relieve pressures from migration on our towns and cities…… Through the Green Revolution which the Congress pioneered over 25 years, our farmers have prospered. Now our larger farmers must volunteer to contribute more to the national endeavour, and hence to greater equity and overall economic development. Equity demands land revenue should be mildly graduated so that small farmers holding less than one acre pay less land revenue per acre…. 9. Education and Health The long-run prosperity of our nation depends on the general state of education, health and well-being of our people. Small families give themselves more choice and control over their own lives. Improving female literacy, promoting the welfare of nursing mothers and reducing infant mortality will have a direct bearing on reducing the birth-rate and improving the health and quality of all our people. Primary and secondary education has high social returns and is the best way in the long-run for achievement of real equality. Efforts will be made to reduce the cost of education for the needy through concessional supply of books and other study materials, scholarships and assistance for transportation and residential facilities. The Congress Party pledges to dedicate itself to promoting education, especially in rural areas and especially for girls and the weaker sections of society. The next Congress Government will prepare and launch a 10-year programme for introduction of free and compulsory primary education for all children of school age. It will continue to emphasize vocational bias in education, integrating it closely with employment opportunities…. 11. Industrial Efficiency Our industrial base in the private and public sectors are the core of our economy. What we have achieved until today has been creditable, and we are self-reliant in many areas. Now the time has come for industry to provide more efficiency and better service and product-quality for the Indian consumer. The public sector has helped the Indian economy since Independence and many national goals have been achieved. Now it has become imperative that the management of public sector units is made effective, and their productivity increased. Major steps must be taken for greater accountability and market-orientation. Failure to do this will make our country lose more and more in the international economy. Budgetary support will be given only for public sector units in the core and infrastructure sectors. Emphasis will be on improving performance and productivity of existing investments, not on creating added organizations or over manning. Units not in the core sector will be privatised gradually. Even in core sectors like Telecommunications, Power, Steel and Coal, incremental needs can be taken care of by the private sector. The Government-Enterprise interface must be properly defined in a White Paper. The Congress believes privatisation must distribute the profits equitably among the people of India. In order to make our public enterprises truly public, it is essential that the shares of many such enterprises are widely held by the members of the general public and workers. Congress pledges to allot a proportion of such shares to the rural Panchayats and Nagarpalikas. This will enhance their asset-base and yield income for their development activities, as well as improve income-distribution. 12. Investment and Trade Indian industry, Government and professional managers are now experienced enough to deal with foreign companies on an equal footing, and channel direct foreign investment in desired directions. Foreign companies often bring access to advanced technological know-how, without which the nation cannot advance. The Congress Government will formulate a pragmatic policy channelling foreign investment into areas important to the national interest. Every effort must be made also to encourage Indians who are outside India to invest in the industry, trade and real estate of their homeland. Because of the protected and inflationary domestic market, Indian industry has become complacent and the incentive for industrial exports has been weakened. When all production is comfortably absorbed at home, Indian industry makes the effort to venture into exports only as a last resort. This must change. A Congress Government will liberalize and deregulate industry to make it competitive and export-oriented, keeping in mind always the interests of the Indian consumer in commercial policy. Export-oriented and predictable commercial policies will be encouraged. Existing procedural constraints and bottlenecks will be removed. Quotas and tariffs will be rationalized. Thrust areas for export-development will be identified and monitored. Efforts will be made to develop a South Asian Community. Trade and economic cooperation among South Asian countries must be increased and simplified.”
This March 22 1991 draft of the Congress’s intended economic policies got circulated and discussed, and from it rumours and opinions appeared that Congress was planning to launch a major economic reform in India. Economic Times said the manifesto “is especially notable for its economic agenda” and Business Standard said “if party manifestos decide election battles” Congress must be “considered home and dry”. A senior IMF official told me three years later the manifesto had indeed seemed a radical and bold move in the direction of progress, which had been exactly our intended effect. When I met Manmohan Singh at the residence of S. S. Ray in September 1993 in Washington, Ray told him and his senior aides the Congress manifesto had been written on my computer. Manmohan Singh smiled and said that when Arjun Singh and other senior members of the Congress had challenged him in the cabinet, he had pointed to the manifesto. Yet, oddly enough, while the March 22 draft got discussed and circulated, and the Indian economic reform since July 1991 corresponded in fundamental ways to its contents as reproduced above, the actual published Congress manifesto in April 1991 was as tepid and rhetorical as usual, as if some party hack had before publication put in the usual nonsense about e.g. bringing down inflation via price-controls. Certainly the published manifesto was wholly undistinguished in its economic aspects, and had nothing in it to correspond to the bold change of attitude towards economic policy that actually came to be signalled by the 1991 Government.
On March 23, our group was to meet Rajiv at noon. There was to be an event in the inner lawns of Rajiv’s residence in the morning, where he would launch Krishna Rao’s book on India’s security. Krishna Rao had expressly asked me to come but I had to wait outside the building patiently, not knowing if it was a mistake or if it was deliberate. This was politics after all, and I had ruffled feathers during my short time there. While I waited, Rajiv was speaking to a farmers’ rally being held at grounds adjoining his residence, and there appeared to be thousands of country folk who had gathered to hear him. When it was over, Rajiv, smiling nervously and looking extremely uncomfortable, was hoisted atop people’s shoulders and carried back to the residence by his audience. As I watched, my spine ran cold at the thought that any killer could have assassinated him with ease in that boisterous crowd, right there in the middle of Delhi outside his own residence. It was as if plans for his security had been drawn up without any strategic thinking underlying them.
Krishna Rao arrived and graciously took me inside for his book launch. The event was attended by the Congress’s top brass, including Narasimha Rao whom I met for the first time, as well as foreign military attaches and officers of the Indian armed forces. The attaché of one great power went about shaking hands and handing out his business card to everyone. I stood aside and watched. Delhi felt to me that day like a sieve, as if little could be done without knowledge of the embassies. One side wanted to sell arms, aircraft or ships, while the other wanted trips abroad or jobs or green cards or whatever for their children. And I thought Islamabad would be worse — could India and Pakistan make peace in this fetid ether?
Proceedings began when Rajiv arrived. This elite audience mobbed him just as the farmers had mobbed him earlier. He saw me and beamed a smile in recognition, and I smiled back but made no attempt to draw near him in the crush. He gave a short very apt speech on the role the United Nations might have in the new post-Gulf War world. Then he launched the book, and left for an investiture at Rashtrapati Bhavan. We waited for our meeting with him, which finally happened in the afternoon. Rajiv was plainly at the point of exhaustion and still hard-pressed for time. He seemed pleased to see me and apologized for not talking in the morning. Regarding the March 22 draft, he said he had not read it but that he would be doing so. He said he expected the central focus of the manifesto to be on economic reform, and an economic point of view in foreign policy, and in addition an emphasis on justice and the law courts. I remembered our September 18 conversation and had tried to put in justice and the courts into our draft but had been over-ruled by others. I now said the social returns of investment in the judiciary were high but was drowned out again. Rajiv was clearly agitated that day by the BJP and blurted out he did not really feel he understood what on earth they were on about. He said about his own family, “We’re not religious or anything like that, we don’t pray every day.” I felt again what I had felt before, that here was a tragic hero of India who had not really wished to be more than a happy family man until he reluctantly was made into a national leader against his will. We were with him for an hour or so. As we were leaving, he said quickly at the end of the meeting he wished to see me on my own and would be arranging a meeting. One of our group was staying back to ask him a favour. Just before we left, I managed to say to him what I felt was imperative: “The Iraq situation isn’t as it seems, it’s a lot deeper than it’s been made out to be.” He looked at me with a serious look and said “Yes I know, I know.” It was decided Pitroda would be in touch with each of us in the next 24 hours. During this time Narasimha Rao’s manifesto committee would read the draft and any questions they had would be sent to us. We were supposed to be on call for 24 hours. The call never came. Given the near total lack of system and organization I had seen over the months, I was not surprised. Krishna Rao and I waited another 48 hours, and then each of us left Delhi. Before going I dropped by to see Krishnamurty, and we talked at length. He talked especially about the lack of the idea of teamwork in India. Krishnamurty said he had read everything I had written for the group and learned a lot. I said that managing the economic reform would be a critical job and the difference between success and failure was thin.
I got the afternoon train to Calcutta and before long left for America to bring my son home for his summer holidays with me. In Singapore, the news suddenly said Rajiv Gandhi had been killed. All India wept. What killed him was not merely a singular act of criminal terrorism, but the system of humbug, incompetence and sycophancy that surrounds politics in India and elsewhere. I was numbed by rage and sorrow, and did not return to Delhi. Eleven years later, on 25 May 2002, press reports said “P. V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh lost their place in Congress history as architects of economic reforms as the Congress High command sponsored an amendment to a resolution that had laid credit at the duo’s door. The motion was moved by…. Digvijay Singh asserting that the reforms were a brainchild of the late Rajiv Gandhi and that the Rao-Singh combine had simply nudged the process forward.” Rajiv’s years in Government, like those of Indira Gandhi, were in fact marked by profligacy and the resource cost of poor macroeconomic policy since bank-nationalisation may be as high as Rs. 125 trillion measured in 1994 rupees. Certainly though it was Rajiv Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition in his last months who was the principal architect of the economic reform that came to begin after his passing.
Milton Friedman’s extempore comments at the 1989 Hawaii conference: on India, Israel, Palestine, the USA, Debt and its uses, Erhardt abolishing exchange controls, Etc
May 21, 1989 — drsubrotoroy
Preface by Subroto Roy October 31, 2008:
As recorded elsewhere here, I met Professor Milton Friedman for the first time at the Mont Pelerin Society meetings at Cambridge in the autumn of 1984. I there asked him for his November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India, which had been suppressed since then; when he returned to Stanford, he had the original document sent to me in Blacksburg. In January 1989, I invited him to the University of Hawaii conference on India’s modern political economy due to be held in May. I was determined to see publication of his 1955 memorandum and did so (despite opposition from “senior” Leftist professors). Milton agreed to come for two days, and what follows are his extempore comments on May 22 1989 as recorded on tape.
Milton Friedman’s extempore comments at the 1989 Hawaii conference: on India, Israel, Palestine, the USA, Debt and its uses, Erhardt abolishing exchange controls, Etc
“I don’t believe the term GNP ought to be used unless it is supplemented by a different statistic: the rate of growth of the average consumption basket consumed by the ordinary individual in the country. I think GNP rates of growth can give very misleading information. For example, you have rapid rates of growth of GNP in the Soviet Union with a declining standard of life for the people. Because GNP includes monuments and includes also other things. I’m not saying that that is the case with India; I’m just saying I would like to see the two figures together.
I have wondered about the following question for decades. What would have happened if the initial decision had been to make English the official language, and the Government had made no official statement about any of the other languages, had just allowed, as it were, free language competition? The reason I raise that is because many years ago when I was in India originally it seemed to me, that a lot of conflicts would have been eliminated, because everybody could have been opposed to English. You would have had a common opposition to it, and yet it was, in fact, the operating language of the country. If in time Hindi or any of the others had spread, they could have taken over the function. But it wouldn’t have been the subject of a political fight from then on. That may be wholly wrong, it’s just an off-hand impression. I am curious about what answer you would give the counterfactual question.
I’m just going to support Brass on the question of whether the modes of organization of the economy had anything to do with the political difficulties that were arising. I want to emphasize how important that is as an issue to be investigated, and I am not going to illustrate it with India which I don’t know enough about; I am going to give you a different even more dramatic example. I have no doubt whatsoever that a major part of the present difficulties between the occupied states in Palestine, the Palestinian organization and the Israeli government, derive from the structure of Israeli economic policies, from the socialist structure. When the occupied areas were first taken over, the generals were very wise in treating them in a completely laissez-faire manner, and they didn’t have many troubles. As you started to impose in those areas the same socialist techniques of the Israeli state, you get increasing conflict, and those conflicts have arisen until today. I think that this may be relevant to the study of political conflicts of the kind of you’re describing. Many of these difficulties arose because you were adopting economic policies which created them.
I think you have to distinguish sharply between a redistributive state and a regulatory state. I give you Sweden, which is a very highly redistributive state, but is not a highly regulatory state. As I understand it, the original Constitution of India called for a redistributive state. The ethos called for a regulatory state, and they turned out to be both very different and I would say ultimately incompatible.
I was interested in some of Dattachaudhuri’s remarks about the situation at the time of Independence and particularly about his summary of what he regarded as traditional economic development theory. I think there was an enormously important point that needs to be added to those you mentioned. That was the almost universal acceptance at that time of the view that there was a sort of technologically fixed capital output ratio. That if you wanted to develop, you just had to figure out how much capital you needed, used as a statistical technological capital output ratio, and by God the next day you could immediately tell what output you were going to achieve. That was a large part of the motivation behind some of the measures that were taken then. Secondly, you are quite right that one of the things that India inherited was a good civil service. I came back from India on my first trip there saying that in my experience, I had never met a class of civil servants who were as able as the Indian Civil Service. However, they weren’t in accord with the principles that were going to be followed. Many of them, particularly Mr HM Patel, would not have gone along, I suspect he would not have been an enthusiastic participant of the Mahalanobis Plan. I don’t know….you tell me. Am I wrong? There were people at the time who recognized fully what the consequences were going to be, the most notable example is BR Shenoy in his dissenting view on the committee of experts examining the Second Five Year Plan.
Essentially, your paper was in this great tradition of the hero theory of history versus the deterministic theory of history. Does a great man make a difference? Do personalities make a difference? Either extreme is untenable. In the particular case of India, I would say that in the early days, I have no doubt that personalities made an enormous difference. If Mr Mahalanobis for example had had a slightly different background, had been persuaded to slightly different things, you might have had a different result. You don’t have to look at the whole structure.
In my opinion, the most serious problem of India in the economic sphere can be pinned down very quickly. It has to do with the pegging of the exchange rate and the existence of change controls. My view on this is based not only on India alone; it is based on country after country. There is no other measure which opens itself so much to corruption than to spreading from one regulation to another. In some ways, if you could pull that pin out, much of the rest of the superstructure would collapse. On that particular issue, it was initially an open issue in India.
Now I agreed completely that in order to make reforms, you have to establish a base of support. You have to get a political basis to support you. But one mustn’t take that to mean that this is the best of all possible worlds and you can’t do anything about it. Let’s be clear about what our role is. Our role as economists and intellectuals is not to figure out what is politically feasible and then recommend it. Our role as economists and political scientists, in my opinion, is to look at what could be. Given the background, given the institutional limitations. It’s wrong to go to utopian solutions, but we ought to lay out what are alternative possible changes in the circumstances, whether we think at the moment or not that there is any possibility of getting backing for it. What you find in history time and again is that major changes almost never come except when you have a crisis. And when you have a crisis, things become feasible that you would have dismissed in advance as not feasible. I think you’re much too unadventuresome in your willingness to conceive of rather radical departures.
I don’t believe floating exchange rates will solve all the problems, far from it. But I do believe that exchange control is a particularly pernicious and widespread form of control.
I might be mistaken about this but I think the exchange control was ended in 1950 when they adopted the Dodge Plan for monetary reconstruction, and their recent progress might be traced from that date. Yet over and over, in country after country, you find that exchange control is the answering wedge for widening controls. I believe that the most important thing China could do right now would be to end exchange control.
The other point is that it’s an open invitation to corruption.
I want to comment on both papers also.
With respect to the debt, a balance sheet has two sides. One side is the assets and one side is the liability. A consideration of a debt problem that considers only one side is bound to be incomplete. The question of whether a high debt ratio is good, bad, or indifferent depends on what the debt was accumulated for. It is no different for a nation than it is for an individual. If I go out and borrow in order to maintain a stable of mistresses, I’m going to get into trouble. I’m a little old for that, but think of a younger person. On the other hand, if a man goes out and borrows in order to build a plant which is going to be very productive, he is not in trouble at all.
Similarly for a nation. The talk in the U.S. about the U.S. being a foreign debtor is a bunch of nonsense, because we have always had net private savings, and the debt isn’t debt, anyway, it’s acquisition of assets in the U.S. by foreigners. That acquisition has been of productive assets, and thus has increased our total capital. Similarly, if we go back to India, the question of whether the debt ratio is too high or too low is a question of what assets there are that have been created in the process of accumulating the debt, and what income they generate. We don’t ask in the U.S. or anywhere else what the private debt ratio of a country is without asking what is the private asset ratio. You don’t look at a particular individual company and say what’s the ratio of debt, you look at debt to assets. Similarly, therefore, it seems to me your paper needs to be (this really ties very much into what Seiji Naya said before about inefficient public enterprises.) If the debt was accumulated in order to finance public enterprises….I don’t like the word public; let me be precise….government enterprises….(Stanford University is a public university, but it’s not a government university.)… If debt was created to build government enterprises which were yielding a net income, the debt would be no burden at all. It would be a source of strength. It would provide the government with additional funds for other purposes. The plain fact is, of course (and I shouldn’t be saying this because I’m not up to date on the situation in India) but my impression is that the plain fact is that most government enterprises are a drain on the budget rather than contributing to it. Therefore, the debt is a real problem regardless of whether it’s 10 percent of the GNP or 60 percent of the GNP. Not because it’s 60 percent or 10 percent, but because you have to look at the other side of the balance sheet and see whether it’s been created for productive or nonproductive uses.
On a very different subject that you touched in your comment, I share completely with you the outrage at the picture of extraordinary ostentation in the midst of extraordinary poverty. I venture to predict that if you ask where the money comes from that finances that ostentation, you will find in almost every single case it comes from government favour. It is created by the present system of planning. The idea that the present system of planning is directed at egalitarianism is, I think, an absurd idea… I remember an incident which I think is very amusing. I once was in Hong Kong ten years ago, and I was entertained at the home of a very wealthy Hong Kong Indian businessman. He’s the person who owns the Hilton, Hare Nina. It was at his home. This is a man who has 50 people to dinner every night. One of the people who was present there was an Indian capitalist who would be an absolutely perfect image for a New Yorker cartoon of a bloated capitalist sitting on a pile of money. He was big, fat and just looked the image.
We ended up the evening with a vigorous argument between him and me, me defending capitalism and him defending socialism, and for understandable reasons. He was fat because of socialism. If you really want to attack that unproductive ostentation, and improve the lot of the individual people, there’s only one way that’s ever been proved to do it. That’s by setting those people free, to use their own resources as they see fit and not having around them the kind of controls that are involved in the Indian planning process. We have to separate objectives from means.
I want to go back for a moment about two comments about T.N.’s. One is, there are certain words which are red lights to fallacies. One of those words is “need”. I do not know any sentence that anybody ever uses with “need” which doesn’t turn out to have a fallacy embedded in it. The word that leads me to is not need but “essential”. “Essential import”. Every economist knows that if you have adjusted your resources properly, every item you buy is essential at the margin. It is a distinction between marginal and average. The word “essential” is a meaningless word, and any place you see it used, you can be sure there is a fallacy. The same thing with the word “shortage”. I noticed that when T.N. came to the word shortage, shortage of foreign exchange, he hesitated. He said an “alleged shortage”. Economists may not know much, but there is one thing we know very well. That is how to create shortages and surpluses. Tell us what you want a shortage in, and we’ll create it. The only thing you have to do is set a maximum price that is below the market price, and you’ll have a shortage. If you want a surplus, we’ll produce that, too. We’ll give you a case in which we’ll offer a price higher than the market price. We’ve got a surplus of wheat for that reason in the United States, and we’ve got a shortage of housing in New York for that reason. The talk about a shortage of foreign exchange is always an evasion of a problem. Some how or other, economists ought to get into the practice of never using the word shortage without accompanying it by at what price.”
One more point and I’ll be through. You say that you want to dismantle the exchange rates over a ten year period. I think you’re wrong. There are some things you want to do immediately overnight and some things you want to drag out. There are two aphorisms that bring out the point. One is: don’t cut a dog’s tail off by inches, and the other is haste makes waste. They’re the opposite of one another, but each is right in some occasions. It seems to me as a generalization with respect to any price control that it should be done instantly. You should cut the dog’s tail off at once. If you’re going to abolish exchange control, it ought to be announced on a Friday or Saturday night to be done on Sunday morning. Just as Ludwig Erhardt in the German reform announced overnight, over a weekend, he did it on Sunday because the American and British control offices were closed and so they couldn’t countermand his order. That is why he did it on a Sunday. He did it at one full stroke, all price controls abolished. Margaret Thatcher abolished exchange control in Britain overnight. Exchange control, it seems to me, is one of those things you have to abolish overnight. If you stretch it out, you will never abolish it.
With power, the product is sold. Power is something that can be provided by the private sector, it is sold, you are not giving it away. It may be infrastructure, but it’s the kind of infrastructure which ought to pay its way.
I don’t think we ought to get involved in words, and I don’t mind if we drop the word socialism. I would say that a system of detailed controls or whatever you call it, is a system which generates inequality. The private ownership of property is not enough. Some of the main beneficiaries from your controls are private enterprises and moreover as I cited in my example, they also support the system of controls and regulation. What I say is that the combinations of controls and regulations, whatever you call it, produces inequality, and chief among them is the foreign exchange control. If you could eliminate the foreign exchange control, you will eliminate a good bit of the harm which is currently being done by all your regulations.
If I might say, I have enormous sympathy with this view that it’s the same old story. It is! Exactly, and that’s what’s distressing about it. It’s a shame that in 40 years, there been no real major change in the structural characteristics of the Indian economy. That’s the real tragedy.”
A note on the welfare economics of regional cooperation (1988)
April 22, 1988 — drsubrotoroyA note on the welfare economics of regional cooperation
Subroto Roy
April 22 1988
(Statement at a conference on regional cooperation in Asia and Latin America held at the East West Centre, Honolulu, April 1988)
How should we evaluate the success of efforts at regional cooperation? When we look at different attempts at cooperation around the world, what general principles and observations might we bring to bear from within the discipline of economics? I propose to try to answer this broad normative question, and at the same time to report on certain aspects of the interesting and informative papers given by Dr. Ffrench-Davis, Dr. Wong, and Dr. Bhuyan on Latin America, ASEAN, and South Asia respectively.
It may be helpful to remind ourselves at the outset of the textbook classification of forms of economic cooperation. This usually traces a route from the least orderly and least integrated to the most orderly and most integrated — from the free-trade area to the customs union to the common market to the economic union. The free-trade area has no intra-area tariffs and therefore has a free flow of goods, although each member can have what tariffs it pleases with the rest of the world. The customs union maintains the free flow of goods of a free-trade area and in addition has a common tarriff barrier with the rest of the world. The common market is a customs union and in addition has free flow of factors like labour and capital. The economic union is a common market which in addition has a common currency and a uniform monetary and fiscal policy, and which probably must have a common federal government as well.
Now we learn about one thing through comparison and contrast with other things. Thus efforts at cooperation in South Asia and Latin America and ASEAN are fittingly compared and contrasted both with one another as well as with efforts, say, in post-War Europe. It has been generally believed too that more integration is a good thing. So for instance, while the European Community still remains something between a customs union and a common market, the European experiment as a whole has been motivated by a desire (or perhaps by wishful thinking) to form an economic union like that of the United States. And it is the U. S. — whose Constitution in 1789 started with the words: “We the people…, in order to form a more perfect union….” — which surely remains the best example the world has yet seen of an effective economic and political union. Yet even in the U. S. the process took a hundred years and a lot of bloodshed. In many places in the south today, the Civil War between 1861 and 1865 is still referred to as the “War between the States”. A lesson from the American experience may be that an important and yet intangible benefit of attempts at integration, regardless of how much integration it actually leads to, may be the prevention of unnecessary war. No matter how far the European Community is from its explicit goal of an economic and political union, or how wishful such a goal might be, or how much is wasted in resources by the bureaucracy in Brussells, if European cooperation has helped to reduce to zero the probability of a third European war in the twentieth century, it may have contributed to the economic welfare of Europe.
Now the prospect of pointless war within the European Community has become ludicrous but this may not be so elsewhere. Neither Dr. Ffrench-Davis nor Dr. Wong has found it necessary to say anything about military tensions, so it is possible that the prospect of needless wars within Latin America or within ASEAN has become as ludicrous as in Europe, and it is possible that regional institutions have helped towards that. If so, that should be registered on the credit-side of the balance sheet when we are evaluating the success of LAFTA or ASEAN or the Andean Pact. But certainly the same cannot be said in South Asia, where military tensions between India and Pakistan have seldom been far from the surface.
In fact the South Asian case is interestingly seen from another angle as well. For consider the basic fact that the main economic point of regional cooperation is to improve mass welfare via increasing trade. Yet Dr. Bhuyan reports that trade has yet to be put on the SAARC agenda in any serious way. The leaders of the SAARC nations have been talking about meteorology and drug abuse and the rights of children and science policy and solar technology and all kinds of other worthy issues, but they have not been talking about abolishing quotas and reducing tariffs on one another’s goods. In terms of the textbook classification, regional cooperation in South Asia in the late 1980s has not yet reached even the starting point of discussing a free-trade area. Yet paradoxically just about forty years ago, the same nations which today find it so difficult even to talk about improving trade, were completely united and integrated from an economic point of view — not merely in a free-trade area or customs union or a common market but in a full-fledged economic union. The departure of Britain from the subcontinent and the political partition between India and Pakistan did not logically entail that the economic union which South Asia had been for numerous centuries had to be completely destroyed. Yet that is what happened. The welfare costs of the lack of foresight on all sides at the time have not yet been calculated.
Drawing these thoughts together then, my first general observation is quite an obvious one. Efforts at regional cooperation can lead to more and better contacts, information, and channels of communication – between heads of governments, finance ministers, businessmen, private citizens, and so on. There is, in short, an increase in trust. Or to put it in economists’ language, there is a reduction in transactions costs or an increase in the stock of what may be called the “informational capital” available to traders and potential traders. Regardless of whether tariffs do in fact come to be reduced and trade increased, the stock of trust or informational capital is valuable. The maintenance of this stock may require expenditures on bureaucracies, conferences etc. (expenditures which Dr. Wong reports to be small in case of ASEAN). But if these expenditures have quietly reduced or are reducing the probability of needless wars between the member-states of LAFTA or ASEAN or SAARC (and here we might recall just how many needless wars were fought in European history between countries at the same so-called “stage of development” as those now in Asia and Latin America) then the expected utility of the bureaucracies may be certainly positive and perhaps rising.
Military conflicts or civil wars destroy not only physical and human capital but this kind of informational capital as well. It is this stock of informational capital which was destroyed with the breakup of the economic union in South Asia forty years ago, and which the South Asian nations are now finding so hard to rebuild. The same can be said perhaps of China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, and so on.
Next, I would like to return to the basic rationale of regional cooperation being to increase welfare via increasing trade via lowering tariffs, probably reciprocally but perhaps even unilaterally. It is to encourage as much improved efficiency in production and hence in consumption as possible; or in Jacob Viner’s terms to have as much “trade creation” and as little “trade diversion” as possible. Such a purpose would or should take as axiomatic Adam Smith’s remark: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” (Wealth of Nations, IV.viii.49). Yet, at the same time, the fact of the matter is that it is national governments, and not business firms let aside ordinary households and consumers, who are involved in attempts at regional cooperation. Stated in terms of a principal-agent problem, it is governments who are the agents while the mass of individual taxpayer/consumers are the principals.
The situation is such that the agents can probably get away quite well without attending to the interests of their principals in matters of mutual tariff-reduction. But if they do want to attend to the interests of their principals, what Smith’s remark does is give them a simple rule of thumb to apply: does such-and-such a policy proposal have a reasonable chance of helping the ordinary consumer? That is to say, will it enlarge the budget-set of the average household? Or in other words, will it reduce the average household’s expenditures and/or increase the average household’s income?
Improving trade necessarily implies exploiting comparative advantages better, and hence it implies increasing specialization. So if the basic purpose of regional cooperation is indeed to improve economic welfare via more trade, and if this purpose is indeed to be seriously served, then the process of obtaining the greater specialization will necessarily imply the decline of some industries and the rise of other industries in each participating economy.
If country A and country B are both involved in import-substitution, and country A’s industry 1 is relatively less inefficient than country B’s industry 1, then the economic integration of A and B will imply that country A’s industry 1 will rise and country B’s industry 1 will decline, while country B’s industry 2 will rise and country A’s industry 2 will decline.
Again I am saying something which is obvious from an economist’s standpoint. I do so for the following reason. It is clear from Dr.Wong’s paper that the leaders of ASEAN seem to be relatively serious about tariff-reduction. They may not have succeeded as much as they would have liked but they see and understand the fundamental purpose of regional cooperation. The spirit is willing but the body is weak. It would seem from Dr. Ffrench-Davis’s paper too that mutual tariff-reduction has also been a central part of the discussion surrounding Latin American cooperation, and Dr. Ffrench-Davis himself has decried the slowing down of reciprocal trade in the 1980s. However Dr. Bhuyan’s report suggests that, with trade off the SAARC agenda and all kinds of other activities on it instead, SAARC is in danger of becoming merely another vehicle for the ever-expanding role of the State in South Asia. If I might generalize on a remark Sven Arndt made yesterday: if the domestic policies of individual countries are an unsound basis for economic development, then no amount of regional cooperation will have any significant beneficial effect. Indeed it might even worsen things by distracting attention from fundamental problems, increasing centralization and politicization of economic decisions, and so on.
A few small points to end with.
1. Dr. Ffrench-Davis refers, I think in a neutral way but I am not sure, to “regional investment planning” in the Andean Pact. Dr. Bhuyan refers, I think with approval, to “balanced regional industrialization through agreed specialization… the idea is to allot particular industries to particular countries in which they have special interest” (p. 17). I have not been able to see how the increasingly centralised allocation of resources entailed by such a policy is conducive to the basic purposes of regional cooperation. Greater specialization is indeed a natural corollary of economic integration. But the forces of trade, and not the SAARC headquarters in Kathmandu, surely need to be allowed to determine its direction.
2. Both Dr. Ffrench-Davis and Dr. Bhuyan refer to stronger and weaker, or bigger and smaller, members of a regional grouping. And Dr. Bhuyan suggests “that a straightforward liberalization of trade by dismantling all trade barriers may benefit the larger countries more than the smaller ones” (p. 12). I am not at all sure that this is right. For example, in the Heckscher-Ohlin model the scale of an economy is not relevant to the gains from trade — one country may have absolutely greater amounts of every single factor than another, and yet trade may benefit both because they have relatively different amounts of the factors. (Similarly in the Ricardian model, one country may have an absolute advantage in the production of both goods, and yet trade may still be beneficial because the countries differ in the relative advantage of the production of each good.)
Thus, in conclusion, all three reports we have been given of efforts at regional cooperation in Asia and Latin America are interesting and informative. Once again it would seem ASEAN has been leading the way in getting the basic economics as right as possible given what is politically feasible. And here again we have to think not of ASEAN’s absolute success, but its success relative to other attempts, including I would say the European Community). Latin America does not seem to have been very far behind in the matter of getting the basic economics right. While South Asia, which not long ago was in fact the most closely integrated economy of all, sadly seems to lag far behind both in thinking and in achievements.
My review of Sukhamoy Chakravarty’s *Development Planning* 1987
November 5, 1987 — drsubrotoroyPreface August 2008 : In the summer of 1977, I had run out of money completely after my first year as a Research Student at Cambridge; I was offered a job to teach at a renowned girls’ school at Cambridge (the Perse School for Girls) but when I returned to India, I was offered a Junior Research Fellowship at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, by Professor VK Chetty (author of some excellent work on Indian monetary economics) which I accepted for a few months.
(It was all vegetarian by way of cuisine at ISI so I used to cycle to the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus for some non-vegetarian food — only to encounter at the restaurant there some of those who run the CPI-M party today! They did not quite know what to make of a libertarian!)
From the ISI, I moved for most of 1977-78 to the Delhi School of Economics as Visiting Assistant Professor, thanks to an invitation from Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri and Dharma Kumar, where I was given the office of Sukhamoy Chakravarty as he was on sabbatical leave. Professor Chakravarty and I met and talked for the first time then; ten years later on July 14 1987 at his Planning Commission offices, he signed and gifted me his last personal copy of the famous Reserve Bank report by the committee he had chaired. I tried strenuously without success to invite him to the perestroika-for-India project I had been leading at the University of Hawaii , Manoa, but he could not come due to ill health
(see https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-e/ https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/ )
This review of his 1987 book Development Planning was written at Manoa on November 5 1987 for the journal “Economic Affairs” in London, and must have been published sometime in 1988.
“A Review of Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Development Planning, The Indian Experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, First published in Economic Affairs, London, 1988.
by
Subroto Roy
Readers of Economic Affairs may know that this reviewer has been far from sympathetic towards the thinking behind the process of economic planning in India. In a recent IEA publication, (Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India, Occasional Paper 69, 1984), it was argued that the feasible role of the State has been fundamentally misconceived and misdescribed in independent India, with tragic consequences for both economy and polity. Without mitigating the force of that conclusion, it is possible to recommend the slim volume under review as indispensable to anyone seriously interested in the complexities of economic policy in India.
Sukhamoy Chakravarty is perhaps the foremost economist in India today. He has been a principal student of the theory of development planning as well as instrumental in the formulation of economic policy in the country. The work under review derives from his Radhakrishnan Memorial Lectures given at All Souls College, Oxford, in 1985. It is a critical and yet sympathetic assessment of Indian experience, which offers critics of planning a more formidable foil than has been available thus far.
The key decisions which have shaped the present state of India’s economy and polity were taken in the mid 1950s by Jawaharlal Nehru on the advice of PC Mahalanobis. Both had been impressed with what they supposed to be Soviet experience and disillusioned with what they supposed to be the experience of the relatively decentralized market economies of the West. The decisions taken entailed, among other things, widespread and detailed regulation of private industry, large-scale industrial investments by the government, widespread and detailed control of foreign trade and payments, an assumption of inflows of foreign aid, and a neglect of agriculture.
Chakravarty suggests these decisions may have been rational at the time. In other words, whatever we might think of them now, given the circumstances and the state of knowledge then, India did what India should have done.
The present reviewer disagrees. The grounds for disagreement briefly are (a) a liberal alternative had been clearly expressed in India even in the 1950s (by B.R. Shenoy, Milton Friedman and Peter Bauer) but was for all practical purposes forcibly silenced; (b) this alternative has had at least as strong a claim, if not a much stronger claim, to economic reasoning and evidence than what came to be accepted.
Be this as it may, Chakravarty is a serious, scholarly, and undogmatic planner, and it so happens that several of his strongest opinions in the book are ones with which the liberal critic will have no disagreement at all. For example, he stresses the great importance of providing infrastructure in agriculture, and of “the need to upgrade the quality of human agents through appropriate investment in health, education and nutrition” (p. 75). T. W. Schultz of the University of Chicago has argued precisely the same for several decades now, and in fact received the Nobel Prize in recognition of it. So had Milton Friedman in a Memorandum to the Government of India in 1955. Then Chakravarty decries mere stimulation of monetary demand through what is called deficit financing, which amounts to little more than printing money” (p. 76), and points further to the government monopoly over the banking system, which gives it “command over financial savings of the community at largely negative real rates of interest” (p. 79). Here Chakravarty draws upon his experience as chairman of a very important commission of the Reserve Bank of India, which, in an excellent report, made a candid assessment of the politicization of the money supply in India (Report of the Committee to Review the Working of the Monetary System, Bombay: Reserve Bank of India, 1985).
Then Chakravarty speaks of the “level of efficiency in the operation and maintenance of the public sector”, and says “the type of managerial culture that is needed to realize a higher level of productivity of capital and labour cannot be reached with the present style of running public enterprises” (p. 79).
Critics of development planning can hardly be in disagreement with such statements. They might add perhaps that a major way to improve competitiveness and raise revenues which could then go towards provision of public goods and investment in agriculture draw out the huge volumes of black money in the underground economy would be to sell most if not all of the non-defence public sector. Combined with optimal provision of public goods, the deregulation of private industry and the encouragement of competition in all spheres, such a policy would go far towards a commonsensical approach at home, even while the economy remained relatively closed to the outside or opened only slowly.
Chakravarty expresses a considerable scepticism with respect to current beliefs in India that the importation of the latest industrial technologies will somehow swiftly turn the economy outward to export-led growth (pp.72-73). His argument is sobering, as when he points to balance of payments problems in a transition and also to possible external constraints on the growth of exports. This too the critic of Indian planning may find plausible. And besides, if shallow liberalization fails, then there is danger that the real thing will never come to be tried.
In general, Chakravarty advocates a method of careful and undogmatic assessment of facts and given circumstances, followed by measured and incremental responses. His splendid essays will be useful to friends and critics of development planning alike.”
My response to The Times’ editorial of May 29 1984
June 16, 1984 — drsubrotoroy
In August 1980, I went to Blacksburg in Virginia from Cambridge to work with James M. Buchanan’s Center for Study of Public Choice and to be Visiting Assistant Professor and later Assistant Professor at the Economics Department. When The Times editorial appeared in London on May 29 1984, I did not come to know of it for several days until foreign newspapers reached the Virginia Tech library and a friend phoned me with having seen it there. The Times (then under the editorship of Charles Douglas-Home) had been laudatory but also inaccurate as to what I did or did not have to say. My letter dated June 16 1984 corrected what was said about my work. The editorial is republished elsewhere here.
Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India (1984)
May 29, 1984 — drsubrotoroyPricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India Subroto Roy
First published on May 29 1984 as Occasional Paper No. 69 of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London
Preface March 2007
A quarter century has passed since my 1982 doctoral thesis at Cambridge University under Frank Hahn, examined by Christopher Bliss and Terence Hutchison, and titled “On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India.” I wrote what follows shortly afterwards in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Ithaca, New York, and it was published on May 29 1984 in London by the Institute of Economic Affairs as Occasional Paper No. 69, ISBN: 0-255 36169-6. The day it was published it turned out to be the subject of the main editorial of The Times, then London’s leading newspaper. (I learnt later this had been due to Peter Bauer, and also that 700 copies sold in the first month, a record for the publisher.) The Times editorial though laudatory was misleading, and I had to clarify the contents of the monograph in a letter published on June 16 1984; both documents are available elsewhere at this site.
This work was the first explicit critique of post-Mahalanobis Indian economic thought from a classical liberal perspective since B. R. Shenoy’s initial criticism decades previously. I was 29 when it was published, I am 52 now. I do not agree with everything I wrote back then and find the tone a little puffed up as young men tend to be; it was five years before publication of my main “theoretical” work Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry (Routledge: London & New York, 1989, also now republished here). My experience of life in the years since has also made me far less sanguine both about human nature and about America than I was then. But I am glad to find I am not embarrassed by what I said as a young man, indeed I am pleased I said what I did in favour of classical liberalism and against statism and totalitarianism well before it became popular to do so after the Berlin Wall fell. (In India as elsewhere, former communist apparatchiks and fellow-travellers became pseudo-liberals overnight.)
The famous November 1955 Milton Friedman memorandum is referred to herein for the first time as “unpublished” in note 1; I was to meet Milton and Rose Friedman at the Mont Pelerin Society meetings held at Cambridge later that year, where I gave them a copy of this monograph; when Milton returned to Stanford he sent to me in Blacksburg his original 1955-56 documents on Indian planning. I published the 1955 document for the first time in May 1989 during the University of Hawaii perestroika-for-India project that I was then leading, it appeared later in the 1992 volume Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, edited by myself and WE James. The results of the Hawaii project reached Rajiv Gandhi through my hand in September 1990, as told elsewhere in “Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform”. The 1956 document was published in November 2006 on the front page of The Statesman, on the same day my obituary of Milton appeared in the inside pages (both are republished here too).
It is apparent from this monograph that I knew almost nothing then about Pakistan or Islam; that has changed as may be seen especially from the other book I created with WE James at the University of Hawaii, Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, as well as my more recent work on Pakistan and Islam. It is of course impossible to understand India without understanding Pakistan and vice versa.
In general, this monograph had to do with India’s microeconomics and theory of value and resource allocation while my latest work – “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability”, “India’s Trade and Payments”, “Our Policy Process”, “Fallacious Finance”, “The Dream Team: A Critique” . “Against Quackery”, “Growth & Government Delusion” etc – has to do with India’s macroeconomics and monetary and fiscal theory and policy. Part of the criticism of “distorted incentives” prevailing in Indira Gandhi’s India may still be relevant to India today, while the discussion of ethnic problems, agriculture, the “public choice” factors that stymie Indian progress, misgovernance etc will almost certainly be found so.
Pricing, Planning and Politics:
A Study of Economic Distortions in India
First published on May 29 1984 as Occasional Paper No. 69 of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London
“The economic laws which operate in India are the same as in other countries of the world; the causes which lead to wealth among other nations lead to prosperity in India; the causes which impoverish other nations impoverish the people of India. Therefore, the line of enquiry which the economist will pursue in respect of India is the same which he adopts in inquiring into the wealth or poverty of other nations.” Romesh Chunder Dutt, 1906, The Economic History of India
“Satyameva Jayathe” (“Let truth be victorious”), Motto of the Indian Republic
I. INTRODUCTION
IN THE last 15 years, considerable evidence has accumulated to suggest that the most important policies pursued by successive governments of independent India have not been conducive to economic development, and have indeed gone against some of the most basic lessons that political economy has to offer. Forewarnings of the present predicament of India had come from a few economists in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but their arguments were either ignored or maligned as dogmatic and motivated by`ideology’.[1] My thesis in this Occasional Paper will be that, if the basic and commonsensical lessons of political economy had been acknowledged early on in the history of the Indian Republic, we might have found today a much more prosperous economy and a much healthier body politic than is the case.
To argue this, it is first necessary to describe an economy where the pursuit of the individual good by rational agents is conducted within some set of orderly political institutions which is conducive to both civil peace and sustained mass prosperity. Accordingly, Part I of this short Paper begins by describing the broad and familiar features of what may be called a neo-classical or liberal model, and then proceeds briefly to contrast it with a model in which individual incentives and public institutions have been distorted from their efficient characterizations.
The practical question that arises is: Where in practice have independent India’s policies led most conspicuously to distorted incentives and institutions? This will be the subject of Part III. Part II places the discussion in context by briefly describing a few relevant aspects of the political history of the Indian Republic.
I have argued elsewhere that every normative proposal for action is, in principle, open to question and criticism on the logical and factual grounds upon which it is founded. Whenever two people disagree about what ought to be done, it will be found either that at least one of them has made a mistake of logic or that they are also in disagreement about the facts of the case.[2] In Part IV, a tentative manifesto for political and economic reform in India is proposed, and I hope these proposals too will be subjected to critical scrutiny on the positive grounds upon which I shall seek to establish them.
Part I: Theory
2. EFFICIENT INCENTIVES AND INSTITUTIONS
A `FACT’ may be understood as the opposite of that which could have been the case but is not. A basic fact of the study of men and society – one which was acknowledged first by Aristotle and then, very importantly, by Adam Smith, and which has been emphasized in modern times by Friedrich Hayek – is that, while we are able to study and speak of the nature of human decision and action in general terms, we do not and cannot have a knowledge of how particular actions are moved by particular causes and circumstances.[3]
We might certainly know, for instance, that every household in an economy views some horizons, wants to fulfill some aspirations, and faces some constraints. But if we were asked to specify what all these characteristics happened to be as a matter of fact at any one moment, we would certainly not be able to do so. Men are concerned almost wholly with (and are experts at) living their own lives as best they can – foraging for food, shelter and work, celebrating weddings and births, rearing children, and mourning deaths. For the most part, they are neither interested in, nor competent at judging, what others happen to be doing in their private lives. Neither benevolence nor envy extends much beyond a man’s immediate vicinity, and, certainly, neither can extend to people he does not know or come to know of in the course of a lifetime.
This fact is also acknowledged in modern microeconomics, when it is said that, for the individual agent to be able to make decisions and act upon them, it is sufficient for him to know (besides his own desires, abilities and constraints) only of the relative prices prevailing locally of the goods and skills he wishes to trade.`Efficient incentive’ defined We might then provisionally define an `efficient incentive’ as a set of relative prices and wages such that, when economic agents act upon them, three conditions are fulfilled:(i) the difference between the total demand for and the total supply of every good and skill is zero; (ii) every consumer succeeds in trading the amounts of different goods that he desires, and so obtains the highest utility he can within the constraint of his budget; (iii) every private enterprise maximizes the difference between its total revenues and total costs, that is, its profits. [4]
Rational action, however, occurs within a particular institutional context. Which action is rational and which is not will depend on what institutions there are and how well or poorly they function. As both classical liberals and Marxists argue, the neo-Walrasian tradition in modern economics – as exemplified by the Arrow-Debreu model – is practically devoid of any explicit institutional description, and so may best be regarded as a useful but grossly incomplete metaphor in the economist’s inquiry.
The institutions most relevant to economic activity are those of government. We might therefore add a fourth condition to characterize an efficient economy, namely, that government institutions work in such a way as to allocate tax revenues towards providing public goods in the amounts desired by citizens. This must be an institutional assumption implicit in the general equilibrium construction, without which it would be impossible to see the sense of that model.
The question that follows is how we are to ascertain the composition of the set of public goods to be provided. As is commonly known, this seems to confront the economist with numerous conceptual and practical problems. I propose here to circumvent all the typical difficulties of how to discover and combine individual preferences for public goods, or how to prevent free-riders, and to take a somewhat different route.
Functions of civil government: protection, public goods, education
To answer the question `What should be public goods first and foremost? I suggest we look for the kind of answer Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham or J. S. Mill might have given to a related but different question : `What should be the functions of government in a large civil society, regardless of whether or not it is constituted democratically?’ This was the relevant question before the modern era of mass democracy. And it is still interesting because, first, it probably remains the appropriate question for the many countries today which either do not have democratic governments or do not have long histories of democracy, and, secondly, because the kinds of answer given by classical authors were very similar to those we might expect from individual citizens in modern democracies as well.
The most important practical functions of civil government include defence against external aggression, the dispensing of civil and criminal justice, the protection of life, property and trade – broadly, the Rule of Law – and the pursuit of a judicious foreign policy. All are different aspects of the same broad objective of ensuring the survival of the community and the security of individual life.
Yet no pretext has been more common than that an imminent danger to the security of the community requires the government to take despotic measures. The guarantee by a civil government of the freedom of inquiry, discourse, criticism, and historical research should take precedence, therefore, even over ensuring security and survival, for it is probably the only final check there can be on whether what a government says is or is not in fact the case. Where this freedom is forcibly denied, or where it exists but people are too apathetic, ignorant or busy with their daily lives to exercise it, public life soon becomes self deceptive and absurd, with propaganda taking the place of discourse, and pretensions and appearances diverging more and more from attainments and reality. Wherever the questions `What is true?’ or `What is the case?’ are not asked frequently enough, there will be fewer and fewer correct answers as to what the case happens to be.[5]
After collective and individual security, the functions of government include the building of dams, embankments, bridges and canals, the provision of roads and fresh water, and so on – activities which, as Adam Smith put it, “. . . though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it, therefore, cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.” [6]
Each may be more or less a “pure” public good in the modern sense :“that each individual’s consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual’s consumption of that good”.[7]
Such a list could be extended to include activities as diverse as: the prevention of soil erosion; the public finance of school education, and’ of measures of basic public health such as vaccinations against contagious diseases; the issuing of currency; sewage disposal; population censuses; the standardization of weights and measures; and so on. It is unnecessary to be more specific here since some people will find even this list controversial. Dogmatists will deny the need for free inquiry; pacifists will dispute that defence is a public good; communists will protest against the public protection of private property; `anarcho-capitalists’ will contest the public dispensation of justice; and so on. To these critics, I would offer merely the following short and incomplete reply.
First, a sound argument can be made that what functions civil government should have can be ascertained, without prejudice, by reasonable citizens, though which particular functions these are may well vary according to circumstances. Secondly, if we could spend time in thoughtful and leisured conversation with every citizen of a large community, it might be predicted – as a matter of cold, empirical fact – that practically everyone would agree with the suggestion that the first destinations of tax revenues should indeed be activities like defence, civil protection and the Rule of Law, the provision of roads, and so on. If such a prediction is correct, my thesis is plainly much more democratic than it might appear to modern economists, though I shall later claim that an objective defence of democratic institutions can be made on quite different grounds as well.
If there is a clear family resemblance between classical liberal authors – from Smith and Mill through to Hayek, Robbins, Friedman, Buchanan, Bauer and many others – it has to do, not so much with the denunciation of government activity in the market-place, as with the recognition of the existence of certain duties of government outside it, the fulfillment of which are indispensable to civil life, let alone the pursuit of economic prosperity. Their protest is at the high opportunity cost of the alternatives foregone.
This raises the question of how we might tell whether government is working well or badly in a particular country at a particular time, or, generally, how we might tell whether different public goods are provided in too small or large amounts. For present purposes it will again be sufficient to suggest a very rough and common sense way of proceeding: let us look first, and think second.
For example, the Iran-Iraq war has clearly been a perfect public bad as far as the ordinary citizenry in either country are concerned. Similarly, if there happen to be millions of cases queuing outside the courts waiting to be heard, or if crime is rampant and police protection ineffective, that may constitute prima facie evidence that too few public resources have been devoted to civil order and justice. Or, if heavy rainfall annually causes landslides in the hills and floods in the plains, devastating crops and leaving innumerable citizens destitute, that also might prompt us to ask whether sufficient public resources have gone towards precautions against such havoc. And so on.[8]
Which goods happen to be public goods depends on the circumstances and the level of government being discussed. For similar circumstances and levels, similar goods will most likely be public goods in different countries. The state ordinarily consists not only of the national government but also of several provincial governments and a myriad of local governments. In particular, a premise of the liberal state would be that public goods should in fact be provided by various levels of government, financed through taxes paid respectively at those levels. The citizen is a taxpayer at a variety of levels, and accordingly public goods are due to be provided at a variety of levels. Just as the national government may not usurp the power to tax for, or spend money on, a public good which is best provided by a provincial government to the citizens of a province, so a provincial government may not tax for, or spend on, a public good best provided by a local government to the citizens of a locality.
The broad principle involved has two aspects: first, a recognition that knowledge of particular circumstances – and hence the ability to act – is infinitesimally dispersed within a population; and, secondly, as direct and visible a matching as possible of the benefits a citizen receives from a particular public good with the taxes he pays towards it, thereby perhaps reducing his incentive to be a free rider on the contributions of others.8Uncertainty and ignoranceProvisionally, therefore, efficient incentives may be thought to consist of a set of market-clearing relative prices and wages, occurring within an institutional context in which the basic and indispensable functions of government have been adequately performed at a variety of appropriate levels.
Such a definition would still be seriously incomplete in one major respect. For we must now recognise: (i) that history is unique and irretrievable, that the present consists only of the fleeting moment, and that the future, by its very nature, cannot be fully known; (ii) that such a thing as human freedom exists; and (iii) that, as a consequence, uncertainty and ignorance are ubiquitous.
Some of the uncertainty derives from the unfolding of natural events (like the rains) over which man has little or no control. The rest derives from the fact that the individual is a free agent who is affected by the actions of others but who cannot predict those actions completely because they too are free agents like himself. Game theory would have had no appeal for the economist if the existence of human freedom had not been a fact. It is this which makes it impossible to read everything in another person’s mind and thus makes it impossible to predict everything he might do. The lasting contribution of Keynesian economics could be its emphasis that such uncertainty and ignorance are important to the economist’s inquiry.
Mathematical economists have been saying for several years that what is required if we are to be realistic are models which reflect the sequential character of actual decision-making and account for the past being immutable and the future uncertain.[9] However, they have proceeded to write even more complex mathematics than we already have – disregarding Aristotle’s advice not to seek more precision from the subject of an inquiry than it may be capable of yielding.[10] My question is the more mundane one of what becomes of the classical liberals’ concept of efficient incentives and institutions in a dynamic world. I shall answer it too in a pedestrian way.
The single overwhelming reason why uncertainty and ignorance are relevant to the economist’s descriptions is that they make real the possibility of mistakes by economic agents. To extend the previous discussion to a dynamic context, what we can do is to ask which institutions are most likely to reduce or mitigate the social consequences of mistaken decisions, whether made by private agents or by those in public office. And it is here that the classical liberals advocate two important institutional features: competition and the decentralisation of decision-making.
The major value of democratic institutions over authoritarian ones is that they encourage these two principles to be put into effect. Because, in a large economy, particular knowledge is infinitesimally dispersed, it may be better for adjustments to a multitude of variables to be made continuously in response to changing circumstances by a vast number of small economic agents, rather than for adjustments to a few variables to be made at political intervals by a small group of very powerful agents. The concentration of power to make major decisions among a few fallible men is a much more ominous prospect than the distribution of power in small amounts among a large number of fallible men. It is much more dangerous for a monopoly of ideas to be claimed about where the political good of a country lies than for there to be free and open competition among such ideas at the bar of reason.
D. H. Robertson put it well when he warned “that all the eggs should not be in the same basket – that in this highly uncertain world the fortunes of a whole trade, or a whole area, should not depend on the foresight and judgement of a single centre of decision”.[11] The presumption in favour of democratic institutions is that they reduce the potential damage from wrong political decisions damage which can be rationally expected in an uncertain world.[12] Elections, in the liberal understanding, are then not so much the means to promote the interests of one’s confederates as to remove from office without bloodshed rulers who fail to do what they are entrusted with, and to replace them by those from whom better is expected. Economic efficiency in an uncertain worldThe economic notion of efficient incentives is also modified by uncertainty and ignorance. In the theory, a set of prices is market clearing only relative to unchanging preferences, resources and technologies. In a dynamic world, however, demand and supply functions are themselves changing and the notion of efficient incentives must accordingly be adapted to one in which relative prices move in the direction of the excess demand: that is, if the parameters change so that the total demand for a good or skill comes to exceed the total supply, we should want to see its relative price rising (and, conversely, if total supply exceeds total demand, we should want to see its relative price falling). During such a process of adjustment, many people may suffer very considerable hardship – something which reasonable Keynesians do well to emphasise.
If changing preferences, resources or technologies cause the demand for a product to diminish, we should want to see the firms which manufacture it either entering different markets, or improving its quality by technological innovation, or lowering prices. Similarly, we should want to see workers in these firms whether blue- or white-collar – who have skills specific to a product whose price is falling either increasing their productivity or retraining themselves in different skills more specific to the manufacture of goods whose prices are rising. Numerous enterprises can go bankrupt, and numerous workers can find themselves unable to sell the skills they possess, if they fail to adapt quickly enough to changing market conditions. The more specialised the product and the more specific the skill, the more hardship there may be. There could well be orthodox Keynesian consequences whereby laid-off workers reduce their consumption expenditures and firms on the verge of bankruptcy reduce their investment expenditures, leading to lower incomes for others, and thus to lower expenditures by them too, and so on. An anti-Keynesian who denied the existence of such hardship would be closed to the facts. He might also not be doing his own theory justice: for it is not unreasonable to argue that, while adjustments are inevitable in an uncertain world, the classical response of prices moving in the direction of excess demand probably minimises the hardship in the transition from one equilibrium to the next.
In a dynamic world, therefore, in which supply and demand functions are shifting continually and unpredictably (though probably incrementally, and not drastically), efficient incentives are better thought of as relative prices which are not stagnant but which are moving – and moving quickly – in the direction of excess demand. It should, in general, be continually profitable at the margin for firms and workers to be innovating technologically and improving productivity. As everyone knows from experience, the principle goad to such activity is fair and free competition. If a job or contract is sought badly enough, and if better quality or lower price are known to be the only criteria of selection, the expected outcome is a differentiation and improvement by competitors of the individual quality or price of what is sold.
In broad summary, the liberal understanding of how material well-being can be improved rests on the assumption that the basic functions of civil government are performed satisfactorily. Government provides the backdrop of civil order and protection necessary for private citizens freely and fairly to conduct their own lives and their transactions with one another. It is a theory which acknowledges a fundamental fact in the study of society, namely, that the individual household : (a) most commonly defines its own horizons; (b) knows the particular opportunities available to it to produce, trade and consume; (c) recognises the particular constraints which prevent it from doing all that it may desire; and(d) perceives how these opportunities and constraints may be changing. Where, as in the liberal picture, there are large numbers of producers and consumers, sellers and buyers – each family acting more or less independently – the efforts of one family do not directly make for other than its own success, while at the same time the repercussions of its mistakes are felt by itself and do not reverberate throughout the whole community. Such has been, as I see it, the American secret to mass prosperity.
3. DISTORTED INCENTIVES AND INSTITUTIONS
DISTORTED INCENTIVES are the logical opposites of efficient ones. Relative prices and wages send distorted signals to individual economic agents when they do not move in the direction of excess demand, so that there is no general tendency for markets to clear. A long-run or endemic excess demand for a good reveals itself in rationing, queueing and black markets. The price at which trade nominally takes place is too low and shows no tendency to move upwards.
Conversely, in a product market, a long-run or endemic excess supply reveals itself in surpluses and spoilages. In a labour market, it reveals itself, on the one hand, in armies of tenured employees who have no incentive to improve productivity, and, on the other hand, in lines of involuntarily or disguised unemployed who cannot sell all the skill they possess and have to settle for selling their less-specialised ones. The price at which trade nominally takes place is too high and shows no tendency to move downwards. In practical terms, firms do not find it profitable to be continually entering new markets or improving quality or enhancing technology or reducing price in order to attract and retain customers. Farmers in particular may face output and input prices which make technological improvements unprofitable.
In politics, distorted incentives are ones which make it profitable for politicians and government officials to be corruptible and taxpayers to be evasive. Because corruption is not penalised and honesty not rewarded, the pursuit of private interest may make it rational to be corrupt and irrational to be honest.
Individualism and statism
A neo-classical economic model like the one outlined above presupposes among citizens a political attitude of individualism. This may be defined as a condition in which citizens have the idea (a) that it is the individual household itself which is principally responsible for improvements in its own well-being, and (b) that government merely “is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people …”, and that government officials are merely the citizens’ “trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.” [13]
Its logical opposite may be called an attitude of statism – defined as prevailing when various classes of citizens have the idea that it is government which is and should be principally responsible for improvements in individual and public well-being. A good sense in which `power’ can be defined in political and economic contexts is as “the capacity to restrict the choices open to other men”.[14] An attitude of statism entails a willingness, or at least an acquiescence, on the part of citizens to relinquish to those in government, with little or no questioning, the power to make decisions which may affect their lives intimately. At the same time, responsibility for relapses or lack of progress in individual well-being is also thought to be the consequence of governmental and not private decision-making. Whereas individualism is a self-assertive attitude, statism is a self abnegating one. For those in government to have a statist mentality is the same as saying they are paternalistic, that is, making the presumption that the citizen is often incapable of judging for himself what is for his own good.
The suggestion that government should have the principal responsibility for improvements in individual and collective economic well-being – in the sense that the collectivity can and should satisfy the material aspirations of every individual – appears straightaway to be self contradictory. An individual can have enough difficulty trying to articulate his own horizons, aspirations and constraints, let alone trying to do the same for others. For a politician (or economist) to claim (or imply) not only that he knows(or can know) the relevant characteristics of everyone at once, but also that he knows how to ameliorate the condition of humanity at a stroke, as if by magic, would have been considered ridiculous in more candid times than ours. If we understand `collective effort’ to mean the sum of individual labours engaged in a common pursuit or endeavour, then for the collectivity to try materially to satisfy every individual would amount to imposing a duty on everyone to try materially to satisfy everyone else – an absurd state of affairs, flying in the face of the fact that most people most of the time do not wish to, or cannot, cope with much else except their private lives.
Exhorting government directly to improve the material wellbeing of `the people’ cannot mean what it seems to because it cannot refer to literally all the people but only to some of them perhaps only a majority, or only the well-organised. That the state is endogenous to the polity implies that no government has resources of its own out of which to disburse the amounts a politician may promise or an economist recommend. To fulfil new promises, given an initial condition of budgetary equilibrium, a government is only able either to print more fiat money or to tax the resources of individual citizens more heavily. Leaving aside the first alternative, fulfillment of the exhortation amounts to using public institutions to transfer resources from some people in order to keep promises made to others.
When the attitude spreads that, in politics, one man’s gain is another man’s loss, and where political control is to be had by winning majorities in elections, the citizen comes to face a perverse incentive to try to coalesce with more and more others in the hope of capturing the public revenues in his favour – instead of thinking critically about the nature of the political good as the institutions of democracy require him to. Political power becomes less dispersed, and the size of the polity diminishes in the sense that it comes to have fewer and fewer constituent agents, each of which is a larger and larger coalition of like-minded confederates intent on acquiring control for its own benefit.
Perhaps the worst consequence of a general attitude of statism, however, is that the basic, commonsensical functions of government are obscured, ignored, and neglected. Instead of requiring politicians and government officials to fulfill these functions, a citizenry allows its public agents to become brokers and entrepreneurs – trading not only in the products of government controlled industries but also in an array of positions of power and privilege, all in the name of directing a common endeavour to help the poor. The state places itself at every profitable opportunity between private citizens who might otherwise have conducted their transactions themselves perfectly well. The result is that governments do, or try to do, what either does not need to be done or ought not to be done by government, while they neglect that which only governments can do and which therefore they ought to be doing.
Part II: History
4. INDIVIDUALISM AND STATISM IN INDIA
AN ATTITUDE of statism has probably been present in India since Mughal times at least. If anything, it spread during the British period since the raison d’être of British rule in India would have vanished without paternalism (as in the course of time it did) and the existence of British rule was the raison d’être of the nationalist movement. Paternalism towards India was espoused even by those Englishmen known for their liberal views at home. Thomas Macaulay, for instance, declared to the House of Commons in 1833: “It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government; that having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future stage, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.”[15]
Less than a hundred years later, in 1930-31, the Indian National Congress – to the considerable chagrin of the British Government – resolved to bring about an independent India in which every citizen would have the right to free speech, to profess and practise his faith freely, and to move and practise his profession anywhere in the country. There would be universal adult suffrage and no-one would be unjustly deprived of his liberty or have his property entered, sequestered or confiscated. In particular, all citizens in the future republic would be `equal before the law, irrespective of religion, caste, creed or sex’, and no disability would attach`to any citizen by reason of his or her religion, caste, creed or sex, in regard to public employment, office of power or honour, and in the exercise of any trade or calling’.[16]
These resolutions were made in the thick of the battle for independence, and underscored the fundamental argument of the nationalists that, in spite of the infinitely diverse characteristics of the inhabitants of the sub-continent, a free and secular India was possible in which all would be ruled by a common law. That argument had been in contradistinction to the frequent taunt from British Conservatives that an
India without Britain would disintegrate in internecine bloodshed, and also to the later `two nations’ theory of the Muslim League which led eventually to the creation of
Pakistan. With the departure of the British and the Pakistanis, in 1950 the Constitution of the first Indian Republic was finally able to bring into force the idea of secularity which had inspired the nationalist cause. Thus, among the Fundamental Rights established by the Constitution, Article 14 provided that the state `shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of
India’. Articles 15.1, 15.2, 16.1, 16.2 and 29.2 went on to prohibit discrimination on the arbitrary grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth in matters of public employment or access to publicly-funded education.
The century between Macaulay and the resolutions for independence was by far the most important to the country’s intellectual history since earliest antiquity. While it took its turbulent course, long severed since the time of the early Greeks – came to be re-established. The common interest and the common contribution became one of admiring and learning from Europe and from India’s own past what there was to be admired and learnt, whilst forsaking and resisting what was self contradictory or base. The maxim for a century might have been : learn the good and let the evil be buried in history. As Tagore wrote :`The lamp of Europe is still burning; we must rekindle our old and extinguished lamp at that flame and start again on the road of time. We must fulfill the purpose of our connection with the English. This is the task we face in the building up of a great India.’[17]
The ideal aspired to was swaraj, or `self rule’. It literally meant not only a government of India by Indians accountable to Indians, but also the governance of the individual by himself. Not only was the country to be sovereign vis-à-vis other states; its individual citizens were to be free vis-à-vis each other and equal before its laws. Swaraj meant, in other words, a condition of political autonomy where the citizen constrained his own free actions so as not to harm others, and where the Rule of Law would protect him when he acted autonomously and resist him when he did not. Given a backdrop of civil order, the infinite number of ways to individual happiness and prosperity in an infinitely diverse sub-continent could then be pursued. Statism all pervading
An attitude of statism, however, has pervaded all public discourse in independent India, and has been reinforced by the social and economic policies pursued by successive governments.
In the first place, a ghost from earlier controversies with the British was to remain in the 1950 Constitution. Immediately after the provisions establishing equality before the law and equality of opportunity in public employment and publicly funded education, the following caveats appeared. Article 15.3 said that the state could make “any special provision for women and children”; and then, of more significance, Article 15.4 allowed the state to make “any special provisions for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes”.
Article 16.4 allowed it to make “any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in the services under the State.” Lastly, Article 335 said that “the claims of the members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes shall be taken into consideration, consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration, in the making of appointments to services and posts [under the State] . . .” Who was to decide who was `backward’ and who was not, or which group was to be `scheduled’ and which not? Article 341.1 said that `The President may . . . by public notification specify the castes, races or tribes which shall for the purposes of this Constitution be deemed to be Scheduled Castes’, and Article 341.2 added that `Parliament may by law include in or exclude from the list of Scheduled Castes specified under 341.1 any caste, race or tribe or part of or any group within any caste, race or tribe . . .’ Articles 342.1 and 342.2 said the same for the Scheduled Tribes.
Subsequently, two Presidential Orders named no fewer than 1,181 different groups in the country as `Scheduled Castes’ and more than 583 other groups as `Scheduled Tribes’. Roughly a sixth of the population thus came to be termed `backward’ by executive decree and were segregated by statute from the rest of the citizenry.
The direct precursor of these provisions was the `Communal Award’ by the British Government in 1932, who had taken it to be their duty “to safeguard what we believe to be the right of Depressed Classes to a fair proportion in Legislatures ”.[18] (`Depressed Classes’ was the official name for those misleadingly called `untouchables’ outside the Hindu fold.)
The complex customs of the Hindus call for endogamy and commensality among members of the same caste, thus making anyone outside a caste somewhat `untouchable’ for its members. In marriage and dining habits, many orthodox Hindus would hold foreigners, Muslims, and even Hindus of other castes at the same distance as those formally classified as `Depressed Classes’. Indeed, non-Hindus in India -including the British often maintained social protocols that were equally as strict.
No serious Indian historian would doubt that members of the `Depressed Classes’ had been oppressed and had suffered countless indignities throughout Indian history at the hands of so-called`caste Hindus’. At various times, persecution had led to mass conversions to the more secular faiths. But the ancient wrongs of the Hindu practices had to do not so much with the lack of physical contact in personal life which the word `untouchability’ connotes for Indian society has always consisted of a myriad of voluntarily segregated groups – but rather with open and obvious inequities such as the denial of equal access to temples, public wells, baths and schools.
Gandhi, who by his personal example probably did more for the cause of the `Depressed Classes’ than anyone else, protested against the Communal Award with one of his most famous fasts. Privately, he suspected that `…the communal question [was] being brought deliberately to the forefront and magnified by the government because they did not intend to part with power’.[19] Publicly, he argued that the pernicious consequence would be a further exacerbation of the apartheid under which the `Depressed Classes’ had suffered for so long, when the important thing was for their right to be within the Hindu fold to be acknowledged by `caste’ Hindus.[20]
The Fundamental Rights in the 1950 Constitution establishing the equality of all citizens before the law evidently had the 1930-31 resolutions as their precursors; while Article17 – which specifically declared `untouchability’ to be `abolished’ and its practice `forbidden’ – was part of Gandhi’s legacy, placing those who had for centuries been denigrated and persecuted on exactly the same footing in the eyes of the laws of the Republic as their denigrators and persecutors. The subsequent clauses authorizing the state to discriminate in favour of `Scheduled Castes’, and allowing it to define by executive decree who was to be so called, were evidently the remnants of the Communal Award of 1932. Discrimination by the state was initially to last for a period of 10 years only. It has, however, been extended three times -for another 10 years on each occasion – and so continues to the present day. We shall examine a few of the consequences in Part III.‘A socialistic pattern of society’As for economic policy, while the original 1950 Constitution had ambiguously stated certain ends – such as that government was `to strive to promote the welfare of the people’ – it made no mention at all of any specific economic institutions, statist or liberal, which the new Republic was to nurture as means towards those ends. In spite of this omission, successive governments have explicitly avowed their espousal of` socialism’ as the means to the good and prosperous society.
For instance, a “socialistic pattern of society where the principal means of production are under social ownership or control” was declared to be a national objective at the ruling Congress Party’s convention in 1955; and, in 1976, the notorious 42nd Amendment purported to change the very description of the country in the preamble to the original Constitution from the sober `Sovereign, Democratic Republic’ to the awkward `Sovereign, Secular, Socialist Democratic Republic’. It is an open and important issue of constitutional practice whether a temporary majoritarian government can change the legal description of a republic so fundamentally that it necessarily begs every question now and in the future about the efficacy of socialism as the route to mass prosperity.[21]
Even so, `socialism’ is a vague and equivocal word, meaning different things to different people. Briefly, what happened in the Indian context seems to have been that the Nationalist Government explicitly took upon itself the responsibility of becoming the prime mover of the economic growth of the country. This was in addition to its other fundamental and urgent political responsibilities at the time, namely, to establish peace and civil order in the aftermath of a bloody partition, re-settle several million destitute refugees, integrate into the Republic the numerous principalities and fiefdoms run by the princes and potentates, re-draw provincial boundaries on a sensible linguistic criterion, and generally educate people about their rights and responsibilities as individual citizens in a new and democratic republic.
In a poor country which had just ended a long period of alien rule, it was understandable, if in advisable, that a nationalist government led by cultured, educated men among unlettered masses should take upon itself the responsibility for economic growth. Part of the nationalists’ critique of British rule had been precisely that it had worked to the considerable detriment of the Indian economy. And, certainly, whatever the exact calculation of the benefits and costs of the British presence in India, while there had been obvious benefits, there had also been obvious costs such as iniquitous taxes and overt racial discrimination in employment. [22]Thus, when the nationalists practically swore themselves to provide better government for the economy, it was certainly a very praiseworthy aim; 1947 would indeed be the year of India’s `tryst with destiny’.
Better government not necessarily more government
What the Nehru Government came to believe, however, was that better government for the economy necessarily meant more government activity in the economy. A similar nationalist government led by cultured, educated men among an unlettered public had chosen differently in 1776 at Philadelphia, but the times and circumstances were very different. The Indian nationalists, and most especially Prime Minister Nehru, had just witnessed what they took to be, on the one hand, the collapse of the market economy in the Great Depression and, on the other, the rapid growth to greatness of Bolshevik Russia. In his presidential address to the Congress in 1936, for instance, Nehru spoke of the immediate past in these terms: `Everywhere conflicts grew, and a great depression overwhelmed the world and there was a progressive deterioration, everywhere except in the wide flung Soviet territories of the USSR, where, in marked contrast with the rest of the world, astonishing progress was made in every direction . . .’ Thus, it seemed to him, there was`. . . no way of ending the poverty, the vast unemployment, the degradation, and the subjection of the Indian people except through Socialism”. Socialism meant, inter alia, ` the ending of private property, except in a restricted sense, and ttte repla emenr of the ,private profit system by a higher ideal of co-operative service. It means ultimately a change in our instincts and habits and desires. In short, it means a new civilisation, radically different from the present capitalist order. Some glimpse we can have of this new civilisation in the territories of the USSR. Much has happened there which has pained me greatly and with which I disagree, but I look upon that great and fascinating unfolding of anew order and a new civilisation as the most promising feature of our dismal age. If the future is full of hope it is largely because of Soviet Russia and what it has done, and I am convinced that, if some world catastrophe does not intervene, this new civilisation will spread to other lands and put an end to the wars and conflicts on which capitalism feeds’.[23]
Equally as certain and deep as his admiration for the liberal values of the West was Nehru’s evident misunderstanding of the causes and consequences of Stalin’s Russia. The political and economic history of India in the past 30 years cannot be understood without regard to her most powerful leader’s ambivalence about the nature of the political and economic good.
By the mid-1950s, many of India’s other prominent statesmen had died or retired from public life, and there was hardly a public figure of’ stature left (with the exception of Rajagopalachari) to challenge Nehru’s socialist vision of the country’s future. Moreover, men who were ostensibly `expert economists’, but whose writings revealed no knowledge of prices or markets or the concept of feasibility, were encouraged to endorse and embellish this vision, which they did without hesitation in the secure knowledge that they were shielded from critics by the intellectual patronage of a charismatic and elected leader.[24]
The choice between alternative models of mass economic prosperity must have seemed quite clear at the time. The cold fact did not, however, vanish that one of the oldest objective lessons of political economy has been that more government is not necessarily better government. It is to the consequences of ignoring this lesson that we now turn.
Part III: Practice
ECONOMIC POLICIES IN INDEPENDENT INDIA
INDIA TODAY is a bizarre maze of distorted incentives, which I (and no doubt others) have found very difficult to untangle and understand. I shall, however, list and discuss the most significant of them as methodically as I can.
(i) Industry
The Indian Government has declared a large `public sector’ in commerce and industry to be a national objective. Towards this end, it has therefore progressively acquired numerous enterprises, large and small, so that it now has either a full monopoly in an industry or is one of a few oligopolists. These industries range from banking, insurance, railways, airlines, cement, steel, chemicals, fertilisers and ship-building to making beer, soft drinks, telephones and wrist-watches. There are no explicit penalties for indefinite loss-making; indeed, bankrupt private enterprises have often been nationalised to serve politicians’ ends. And, certainly, there has been no general rule of marginal-cost pricing. In public utilities, like electricity generation and distribution or city buses and trams, prices appear to be well below marginal cost, leading to severe rationing and queueing. Sudden stoppages of electricity for hours at a time and monumental congestion on buses and trams have become endemic facts of life for millions of urban Indians.
At the same time, private industry in India has been made to face labyrinthine controls. The government has continually exhorted private firms to work in the `national interest’ – which means accepting the constraints of centralised planning. It has left no doubt that, while there is a `role’ for the min the growth of the economy, they exist at the sufferance of government and had better realise it, otherwise the dark forces of revolution which have so far been kept at bay will inevitably sweep them away altogether, as happened in Russia and China.
The constraints imposed on the operation of a private business are legion, and would make a businessman from the West or Far East reach for a psychiatrist or a pistol. An entrepreneur may not enter numerous industries without government approval of the `technical’ viability of his project; once it is approved, he cannot find credit except from a government bank; and he cannot buy raw materials and machinery of the highest quality at the lowest price since, if they are produced in India, he will be denied a licence to import better and/or cheaper foreign substitutes. The onus is on him to satisfy the government that no production occurs within India of the input he requires; only then will an import licence conceivably be granted, subject to periodic review by the government. He may be compelled to export a specified proportion of his output as a condition for the renewal of his import licence, which therefore places him at a disadvantage with foreign buyers who, of course, are aware of this restraint. He may be unable to compete internationally because the rupee is priced above its likely equilibrium and some of the inputs he uses are high-cost, low-quality domestic substitutes. As a result, he may be compelled practically to dump his output abroad at whatever price it will fetch.
The entrepreneur’s factory may be subject to random cuts in electricity for hours at a time. He may require government approval before he can increase his fixed capacity, modernise his plant, change a product-line, or even change the number of labour shifts. He may face minimum-wage and stringent unfair dismissal laws on the one hand, and price controls on the other. If he fails to meet credit obligations to the nationalised banks, he may be penalised by the appointment of one or more government directors to his board – a form of `creeping’ nationalisation. Further, he may be subjected to a constant threat of full nationalisation as and when the government decides that his industry should be in the public sector in the interests of national planning.[25]
The consequence of all these controls has been a monumental distortion of incentives away from encouraging private firms to try to attract customers by improving technology and quality or reducing prices towards encouraging them to concentrate on `rent-seeking’, in the term made familiar by Professors Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan.[26]
As Anne Krueger says in her excellent study of the automobile ancillary industry, the very notion of entrepreneurial efficiency changes in such circumstances: `Under conditions in India, the most important problem confronting entrepreneurs is that of assuring that production will continue. The combined effects of import licensing and investment licensing give virtually every firm a monopoly or quasi-monopoly position. The entrepreneur who is most successful in getting licences of greater value and/or in getting licences more quickly than his fellow producers will have higher profits. `The producer who does not compete successfully for licences cannot produce at all, no matter how skilled he is in achieving engineering efficiency, unless he enters the “open market” and pays a premium to the successful licence applicant for some materials . . . Successful entrepreneurs are therefore those who are best at obtaining the greatest number of licences most expeditiously . . .’ [27]
Moreover, firms which are low-cost and efficient (in the free market sense) and which are successful at rent-seeking as high-cost, inefficient firms may still not be able to compete the latter out of business because government will not usually allow a particular firm to expand – regardless of its efficiency – if there is excess capacity in the industry of which it is a part. High-cost firms can thereby rationally count on staying in business simply by maintaining significant excess capacity.
(ii) Foreign trade
The Government of India has always claimed that foreign exchange is a `scarce’ resource which must be rationed by fiat in the national interest. The total foreign-exchange revenue (at an exchange rate which was fixed until 1971 and has since been on a managed `peg’) has been allocated in the following order of priorities: first, to meet foreign debt repayments and government expenditures in the conduct of foreign policy, such as the maintenance of embassies (G1); secondly, to pay for imports of defence equipment, food, fertilisers and petroleum (G2); thirdly, to meet ear-marked payments for the imported inputs of public sector industries so that they may achieve projected production targets (G3); fourthly, to pay for the imported inputs of private sector firms which are
successful in obtaining import licences (P1); and, lastly, to satisfy the demands of the public at large for purposes such as travel abroad (P2).
Foreign exchange is `scarce’ in India, or elsewhere, in precisely the same sense that rice or petrol or cloth is scarce. Just as there exists some positive price for rice, petrol or cloth which, at any moment, will match total supplies with total demands, so there exists some positive price for rupees relative to dollars which, at any moment, will match the transaction and asset demands of Indians for dollars with the transaction and asset demands of foreigners for rupees. Underlying that market-clearing price would be (a) the demands of Indians for foreign goods whose f.o.b. prices were lower than those of domestic substitutes, and, similarly, the demands of foreigners for goods in which India has had a comparative advantage; and (b) the expectations of Indians and foreigners about the future purchasing power of the rupee relative to the dollar, using as a proxy, say, the difference between interest rates in India and abroad.
A free market in foreign exchange would first have encouraged India’s traditional exports, like jute manufactures and textiles, and then (if the positive theory of international trade is broadly correct)progressively encouraged the export of other non traditional goods which used India’s relatively inexpensive labour relatively intensively and thereby enabled Indian entrepreneurs to compete successfully in foreign markets. At the same time, capital flows into and out of India would have given the monetary authorities an incentive to keep domestic interest rates in line with the real opportunity cost of forgoing consumption in favour of savings.
Thus, the case against a free market in foreign exchange has always been, to say the least, far from obvious.[28] But even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the presumed superiority of rationing, the elementary theory of optimisation which underlies the so-called theory of `planning’ dictates that the government should allocate dollars between alternative uses such that the marginal dollar yields the same increase in social utility in any use. The Indian Government, however, appears to have allocated foreign exchange simply on the basis of giving a higher priority to its own foreign expenditures (categories Gl, G2 and G3) than to private foreign expenditures (categories Pl and P2). That is to say, regardless of how much social utility might have been derived from a particular increase in private-sector imports, it would not be considered until after the government had met all its own expenditures abroad.[29]
Jagdish Bhagwati and T. N. Srinivasan put it as follows : `The allocation of foreign exchange among alternative claimants and users in a direct control system . . .would presumably be with reference to a well-defined set of principles and criteria based on a system of priorities. In point of fact, however, there seem to have been few such criteria, if any, followed in practice.’[30]
With respect to imported inputs for private- and public-sector industries, a rule of `essentiality’ (that is, the input must be technically `essential’ to the production process) and a rule of `indigenous availability’(that is, there must be absolutely no domestically-produced physical substitutes, regardless of cost and quality)seem to have been followed. But, as Bhagwati and Srinivasan report, `. . . the sheer weight of numbers made any meaningful listing of priorities extremely difficult. The problem was Orwellian: all industries had priority and how was each sponsoring authority to argue that some industries had more priority than others? It is not surprising, therefore, that the agencies involved in determining allocations by industry fell back on vague notions of “fairness”, implying pro rata allocations with reference to capacity installed or employment, or shares defined by past import allocations or similar rules of thumb’. [31]
Clearly, in abjuring the free market and claiming a monopoly over foreign-exchange transactions, government planners have accepted certain premises as unquestionable: (a) that government sponsored industrialisation is the best means to mass prosperity; (b) that a policy of indefinite import-substitution is the best means to industrialisation; and (c) that such a policy requires all foreign expenditures by government to take precedence over all private foreign expenditures. The trade and foreign-exchange policies pursued cannot be understood except by reference to domestic economic policies and, in particular, to the view held about the proper functions of government in and out of the market-place.
In addition to a plethora of controls, tariffs and outright bans on imports, there have been erratic policies, subsidising the export of `new’, non-traditional manufactures like engineering goods, and taxing- and even banning – the export of goods in which India has traditionally enjoyed a comparative advantage.[32]
Moreover, the rupee has been continuously over-valued. From 1949 to 1959, the official exchange rate of Rs. 4.76 to the US dollar was, on average, 12..3 percent above the black-market rate, a figure which rose to 61 per cent between 1960 and 1965. From 1966 to 1970, the devalued official rate of Rs. 7.50 to the dollar was above the black-market rate by an average of 47.6 per cent, while from 1971 onwards the managed-peg rate has been above the black-market rate by an average of 24.3 per cent.[33]
Simple economics suggests that a free-market equilibrium rate would be somewhere between the black-market and official rates. An official exchange rate for the rupee fixed above that warranted by underlying relative demands for Indian and foreign goods, as well as by relative degrees of confidence in the rupee and the dollar, subsidises imports at the expense of exports. By discriminating in favour of its own foreign expenditures and against those of the private sector, the government has been the principal beneficiary of an over-valued rupee. If capital-intensive goods are the main imports and labour-intensive ones the main exports, an over-valued rupee further distorts incentives so as to favour the use of capital-intensive production processes over labour intensive ones – in a country with a demonstrable abundance of relatively inexpensive labour!
With an eye to India, Krueger has argued the general issue in these terms:`Subsidies can make any industry an export industry, even one that would not produce at all in an efficient allocation. Similarly, taxes can be levied on an industry that has comparative advantage which will penalize it enough to render domestic production entirely unprofitable. When taxes and subsidies are used, therefore, it is possible not only to distort the structure of production, but to distort it so much that the “wrong” commodities are exported.”[34]
The Indian Government’s planners have had the idea of forcibly effecting a reversal in the comparative advantage of the country, as if by magic overnight. The hope might have been that a forced pace of industrialisation would somehow allow economies of scale to be reaped and thus soon make Indian industrial goods competitive enough in international markets to be the country’s principal source of foreign exchange, displacing traditional manufactures like jute and textiles. In practice, however, as the evidence given by Bela Balassa
and other economists demonstrates, such a policy has not succeeded to date and is most unlikely ever to do so.
India’s import bill has risen continuously, most drastically after the 1973-74 quadrupling of petroleum prices; non-traditional manufactures have hardly been able to compete successfully in foreign markets; and the traditional exports of jute and textiles have suffered very severe setbacks. Balassa contrasts the consequences of the freer, outward-looking trade policies of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan with those of the inward-looking, controlled regime of India as part of a study of 11 countries(including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Israel and Yugoslavia) which, along with Hong Kong, account for most of the manufactured exports of developing countries. India’s share of the total manufactured exports of these countries has fallen steadily from 65.4 per cent in 1953 to 50.7 per cent in1960, to 31.2 per
cent in 1966 and to a mere 10.3 per cent in 1973. The proportion exported of India’s total manufactured output fell from 9.7 per cent in 1960 to 9.4 per cent in 1966 and to 8.6 per cent in1973. In contrast, during the same two periods, the proportion of manufactured output exported rose from1 to 14 to 41 per cent in South Korea, from 11 to 20 to 43 per cent in Singapore, and from 9 to 19 to 50 per cent in Taiwan.[35]
Balassa cogently argues that the adverse effects of a sudden change in external factors, such as the quadrupling of petroleum prices in 1973-74 or the 1974-75 Western recession, were absorbed much more easily by developing countries with large foreign-trade sectors than by those like India with relatively small ones: `Outward orientation is associated with high export and import shares that permit reduction in non-essential imports without serious adverse effects on the functioning of the economy. By contrast, continued inward orientation involves limiting imports to an unavoidable minimum, so that any further reduction will impose a considerable cost in terms of growth. Furthermore, the greater flexibility of the national economies of countries pursuing an outward-oriented strategy, under which firms learn to live with foreign competition, makes it possible to change the product composition of exports in response to changes in world market conditions, whereas inward orientation entails establishing a more rigid economic structure.’[36]
In other words, if imports are both high in total value and diverse in composition, a rise in the relative price of a particular import for which home demand is relatively inelastic (like petroleum and its products) can be accommodated by a substitution of expenditure towards it and away from inessential imports for which demand is relatively elastic. A similar argument had typically been advanced by advocates of import-substitution when they maintained that the exports of a small country should be diverse and not concentrated on only a few goods since a decline in world prices would otherwise lead to serious falls in export revenues. This suggests that both critics and advocates of import substitution might agree that, for a country which is a price-taker in world markets, the encouragement of a large foreign-trade sector is a way of diversifying the risk of adverse effects from changes in world prices. The question remains as to whether the positive theory of trade is correct in saying that the encouragement of comparative advantage is superior to import-substitution as a means of achieving a large foreign sector. From the contrasting experiences of, say, South Korea on the one hand and India on the other, the answer seems overwhelmingly to be that it is.
(iii) Agriculture
The Indian Government has instituted a multiple-pricing system for the major food-grains, especially rice and wheat. Farmers are compelled to sell a specified fraction of their output to the government, at a price fixed by the government which is significantly lower than that warranted by underlying supply and demand conditions. Farmers may sell the remainder of their output freely. The quantities the government acquires in this way, plus any it imports (imports being subsidised by the over-valuation of the exchange rate), are sold by ration at lower than free-market prices in the so-called `fair-price’ shops – which happen to be mainly in urban areas. Urban consumers may purchase part of their requirements from such shops and the remainder on the open market at higher prices. Astute middle-class urban housewives know that rationed grain is often of poorer quality than that sold on the open market. Accordingly, the former often constitutes part of the wages of the domestic servants of the urban household, while the family consumes the latter. Insofar as this is true, it suggests that farmers distinguish quality much better than do government officials, and that they use this advantage somewhat to partition their output into low- and high-quality, selling the first under compulsion to the government and the second on the open market.
While such is the general food policy of India, the compulsory procurement of grains and their distribution to the ration-shops is implemented by individual State governments and not by the Union Government. There have usually been numerous restrictions on inter-State movements of grain, so the States do not form a full customs union; instead, the Union Government tries to be a central clearing-house, matching the desired imports of one State with the desired exports of another.[37]
Economic effects of ban on futures contracts
Furthermore, futures contracts in grains have been banned by law, in the belief that futures trading is conducive to speculation and that speculation is undesirable. A futures contract in grain consists simply of a promise by a seller to deliver an amount of grain to a buyer at some specified date in the future in return for payment at a price agreed today. The seller’s incentive to enter into the contract is the guarantee of a certain sale, and the availability of funds now; the buyer’s incentive is the guarantee of a certain price for future deliveries. The contract may be entered into because buyer and seller have different expectations about what the spot price will be in the future. The buyer minimises his expected costs and the seller maximises his expected revenues; both are able to balance their budgets inter-temporally. Even if they have the same expectations about future spot prices, buyer and seller may still find it mutually profitable to enter into a futures contract as a way of insuring against risk. Forbidding such contracts by decree thus forces more risk onto both buyer and seller than they would normally be prepared to carry, and also induces them to balance their accounts in each period rather than it inter-temporally. Alternative kinds of credit markets become it relatively more lucrative, with the potential seller and buyer of futures wheat respectively borrowing and lending more than they would otherwise have done.[38]
The government has also expressed its determination to keep prices in ration-shops low. It has accordingly stockpiled large inventories of grain, apparently regardless of the costs of storage and spoilage or the alternative of holding larger foreign-exchange reserves to permit increased imports when necessary.
The ostensible, declared objective of all such policies has been to ensure that the poor do not suffer severe adverse income effects from sudden rises in the price of food resulting (it has been thought) from the contingencies of rainfall and the actions of speculative traders. It is, however, an open secret that the policies have really been a means of (a) taxing farmers, who pay a smaller percentage of their income in direct and indirect taxes than do urban dwellers, and (b) subsidising urban consumers, who broadly comprise the industrial working class and the middle in classes.
At the same time, however, the government and its advisers — after the considerable hesitation recorded by David Hopper [39]- have also accepted that the best long-run prospects for increasing agricultural productivity lie in modernising traditional farming techniques. Given the outstanding results of the Green Revolution in wheat, they could hardly have arrived at any other conclusion. The problem from the government’s point of view has been, as a sympathetic economist puts it “…how to procure a sufficient quantity of food grains at reasonable prices without jeopardising the farmers’ incentives to produce more”.[40]
Thus, while taxing farmers de facto on their output, on the one hand, the government has tried, on the other, to promote the use of modern inputs by subsidizing them both directly and through low-interest loans from the banks for such investment.
Distortions of incentives in agriculture
The distortions of efficient incentives caused by such policies are not difficult to see. First, the low output prices of wheat and rice have, in effect, been discriminatory taxes on wheat. As Edward Schuh remarks, these discourage the production of `. . . the very crops that policy-makers believe the vulnerable groups should have greater access to . . .’[41]
Vasant Sukhatme and Theodore Schultz have argued that, even between wheat and rice, there has been severe discrimination in favour of the former. At the official over-valued exchange rate, the price of domestic wheat has been significantly higher than imported, while at open-market rates for the rupee, the domestic price approximated the import price. For rice, however, the domestic price has been consistently below the import price. Sukhatme estimated that the dead weight loss in welfare from the under pricing of rice amounted to 8.5 per cent of total agricultural income in 1967-68 and to 2.2 per cent in 1970-71. He also calculated effective rates of protection, which were strongly negative for rice whether at official or open-market exchange rates and positive for wheat at the official exchange rate. Both he and Schultz conclude that the discrimination against rice has been a major factor in explaining the absence of a Green Revolution in rice on the scale of that in wheat.[42]
Secondly, the main beneficiaries of government subsidies for modern inputs have evidently been not the many small farmers but the fewer relatively large ones. As Gilbert Brown reports :`Large-scale farmers buy most subsidised inputs. Poorer farmers usually lack the money to buy adequate amounts of fertiliser and pesticides, and are commonly unable to get credit except at near-prohibitive rates of often 60% to 100% per year. Even in countries with subsidised bank credit for agriculture, rich farmers get most of the credit because of legal or administrative restrictions and/ or through open or disguised bribery. Credit and subsidy programmes for tractors, tube wells and other fixed investments also go mostly to the largest and richest farmers . . .Water is also a subsidised input . . . The farmers who receive this subsidised water generally have substantially higher incomes (because of the water) than farmers without access to public irrigation. Thus, claims that water should be subsidised to help small farmers misses the point that most farmers with irrigation have higher incomes than those who do not.’[43]
Brown argues that subsidies for inputs have been made necessary only to offset the forced depression of output prices. Moreover, the social benefit from subsidising inputs is limited to when the input is first introduced: ‘Once the benefits and technique of using the input are widely known, however, the continuation of such subsidies serves largely to increase the benefit-cost ratio of using the input . . .’.
Whether it is better to continue with artificially low input and output prices or to adjust towards a free market in both must take into account that the subsidies have encouraged more capital-intensity in production, and also that the `. . . low prices of certain inputs, particularly water, are often associated with widespread waste and inefficient use of the resource’.[44]
Thirdly, the farmer who is too small to find investment in storage facilities profitable may also consider it not worth his while to hold any of his output for sale on the open market. He will then sell it all to the government – at a below-market price.
A general conclusion would seem to be that, if the combined effect of input subsidies and forced grain sales to government has been a net subsidy to agriculture, then it has been a progressive subsidy; whereas if the combined effect has been a net tax on agriculture, then it has been a regressive tax. The Marxists may be quite right to protest that what gains there have been in agriculture have accrued to the relatively larger farmers, while smaller peasants and farmers are becoming landless labourers in growing numbers as a result of bankruptcy (that is, there has been increasing `rural proletarianisation’, to use the Marxists’ picturesque phrase). But if this is true, the cause can be traced unambiguously to the Indian Government’s belief – vociferously shared by the Marxists – that the way towards the declared objective of helping the poor is by extensive interference in the price system. Besides, the industrial working class demonstrably benefits from low food prices, so the honest Marxist must face up to being torn by divided loyalties between the rural and the urban proletariats.
Srinivasan put it as follows in a 1974 survey article :`The public distribution system with respect to foodgrains . . . operated to the benefit of all those living in metropolitan cities and other large urban concentrations while all others, including rich and poor in relatively small urban and almost all rural areas, did not benefit at all. When one recalls that the rural population includes the most abject among the poor, namely landless workers, the inequity of the system becomes glaring. And in urban areas, the existence of the system and the fact that the ration is often inadequate provides incentives for a household to falsify the data on its size and age composition given to the rationing authorities, as well as to create bogus or ghost ration-cards, not to speak of the corruption of the personnel manning the rationing administration.’[45]
The history of the extensive control of agriculture – which has included a partial government monopsony, forcibly-depressed output prices, inter-State restrictions on grain movements, and urban ration-shops – can be traced to the last years of British rule, as an attempt to bolster the popularity of the imperial regime. [46] The continuation and reinforcement of statism in agriculture in independent India has evidently rested on certain premises, namely, that the private market would be grossly inefficient and would be dominated by a few traders continually reaping large speculative profits, with both the small farmer and the ordinary consumer suffering in consequence.
Uma Lele’s fine study of the private grain trade, however, shows the real picture to be quite different. She found that the trade was highly competitive, that individual traders were rational agents (given the constraints of technology and government policy), that location price differences closely reflected transport costs, and that temporal price differences closely reflected storage costs. She argued that, while there was considerable scope for government activity, it should be in the form, not of interfering in the competitive market, but rather of encouraging the market to work – by, for example, disseminating relevant information such as crop forecasts, standardising weights and measures, constructing or improving roads and encouraging efficiency in the market for the transport of grain, etc.[47]
The evident neglect of such findings as these, and the continued application of policies inimical to competition and the free market, suggest that successive governments of independent India have been hardly more concerned for the rural poor – whether as farmer or consumer – and hardly less concerned with bolstering their popularity in the urban areas than were the British.
(iv) Employment
An obvious consequence of the economic policies described above has been the distortion of the individual citizen’s calculation of the expected benefits and costs of living and working in urban areas compared with the rural countryside. The forced depression of output prices in agriculture and the plethora of foreign-trade policies which discriminate against agriculture certainly seem to have artificially depressed the expected incomes of farmers. At the same time, a large `public sector’ in industry, plus the array of foreign-trade policies which have protected private industry, plus the indirect subsidisation of food sold in urban ration-shops certainly seem to have artificially raised expected urban incomes. Predictably, the reaction has been a vast and continuing net migration from the villages to the towns and cities, even after adjusting for the seasonal nature of agriculture. This drift has been the subject of much inquiry and discussion by development economists.[48] I propose to set it aside and examine instead a different aspect of employment policy which has not received nearly as much attention, namely, the consequences of putting into effect the clauses in the 1950 Indian Constitution mentioned above which authorised discrimination in employment and public education in favour of the `Scheduled’ castes and tribes, as well as other policies which discriminate on grounds of ethnic origin.
The consequences have been similar in several respects to those in America of `affirmative action’ towards so-called `racial minorities’, and it will be useful to draw out the analogy a little. As Thomas Sowell has cogently argued in recent years, the racial composition of contemporary American society is a complex mosaic, and no-one can say with certainty how it has come to be what it is today. In such circumstances, for the government to try to isolate a single contingent characteristic like `race’, partition society on the basis of census data according to this characteristic, and then construct public policies accordingly, is to introduce an enormous arbitrariness into economic life. By merely defining a group by reference to a single contingent characteristic, which all its members seem to possess, the intrinsic complexity of the individual person is lost or overlooked. Two members of the same race may be very different from each other in every relevant characteristic (income, education, political preference, and so on), and indeed resemble members of other races more closely in them. A policy which introduces a citizen’s race as a relevant factor in the assignment of jobs or college places partitions the citizenry into vague groups : members of groups who are very different from members of other groups in characteristics other than race rarely competing with each other anyway, while the burden and beneficence of the state’s policies fall on members of groups who are not very different from members of other groups in characteristics other than race: `. . . costs are borne disproportionately by those members of the general population who meet those standards with the least margin and are therefore most likely to be the ones displaced to make room for minority applicants. Those who meet the standards by the widest margin are not directly affected – that is, pay no costs. They are hired, admitted or promoted as if blacks did not exist. People from families with the most general ability to pay also have the most ability to pay for the kind of education and training that makes such performance possible. The costs of special standards are paid by those who do not. Among the black population, those most likely to benefit from the lower standards are those closest to meeting the normal standards. It is essentially an implicit transfer of wealth among people least different in non-racial characteristics. For the white population it is a regressively graduated tax in kind, imposed on those who are rising but not on those already on top.’[49]
At the same time, there is, in effect, a progressively graduated subsidy for members of the `minority’ group in favour of those who are already closest to meeting the general standards. Those in the mainstream of each group are largely unaffected; it is at the margins of competition that the bitterness caused by such policies will be felt and will manifest itself. It would seem that the situation in India – where the racial mosaic is if anything more complex than in America – is somewhat analogous. In recent years there has been civil tension and violence in the streets as poor Muslims, `caste’ Hindus, Sikhs and others have protested at being edged out of jobs and promotions by equally poor, or wealthier, members of the `Scheduled Castes’. In March-April 1981, for instance, there was widespread civil tension and violence in Gujarat over the reservation of places in the State’s medical colleges. A quarter of these places were statutorily reserved for members of the `Scheduled Castes’, with any not taken up by qualified candidates from these groups accruing to them in the future, thereby rapidly excluding from general competition as many as half the total number of places.[50]
The cruel paradox is that, while the position of many members (perhaps the vast majority) of the `Scheduled Castes’ vis-à-vis `caste’ Hindus remains one of degradation and persecution – quite regardless of the constitutional guarantees of equality in the eyes of the law – the relatively few who have succeeded in taking advantage of the discriminatory statutes have aroused the indignation of those who have not -causing even more animosity towards the `Scheduled Castes’ in general. One commentator observes the emergence of a `new elite’ among the `Scheduled Castes’ which `ceases to identify with its caste brethren’; while, at the same time, the law on equality `is so widely flouted precisely because the Scheduled Castes have not the means or courage to seek its protection . . .’ He concludes :`Contrived gestures such as are now popular will either not benefit [the Scheduled Castes] . . . or will do so only by further lowering already deplorable academic and administrative standards’. [51]
Moreover, when all government posts are advertised with a caveat that 10 or 15 per cent of themare reserved for members of the `Scheduled Castes’ and `Scheduled Tribes’, there is a considerable incentive for people to persuade Parliament to declare them as being such. And that also has happened. Discrimination in employment on the ground of caste has not been the only kind of discrimination practised by the Indian state. In what may be the most thorough study currently available on the origins, consequences and legal history of official discrimination in India, Weiner, Katzenstein and Rao have described the plethora of policies pursued by the central and state governments which have used not caste but ethnic origin as a criterion for public employment (with the private sector also often being `encouraged’ to follow suit) :`Preferences are given to those who belong to the “local” community, with “local” understood as referring to the numerically dominant linguistic group in the locality.’ [52] The authors conclude that what is emerging in India is`. . . a government-regulated labour market in which various ethnic groups are given a reserved share of that market. Competition for employment is thus not among all Indians, but within specified linguistic, caste, and tribal groups.`. . . various ethnic groups, therefore, fight politically for a share of that labour market. The major political struggles are often over who should get reservations, how the boundaries of the ethnic groups should be defined, and how large their share should be. There are also political struggles over whether there should be reservations in both education and employment, in private as well as in public employment, and in promotions as well as hiring. The preferential policies themselves have thus stimulated various ethnic groups to assert their “rights” to reservations.’[53]
It is not difficult to understand the general economic argument against discrimination on grounds such as caste or ethnic origin. If a private employer indulges a personal preference to hire only people of an kind A when there are more able or better qualified candidates of other ethnic kinds B, C, D, . . . ,available, and if the product of his firm is subject to competition in the market from other enterprises which do not discriminate on criteria which are irrelevant to economic efficiency, we may confidently expect the discriminating employer’s product to become uncompetitive and his profits to fall. The best and most obvious example of this would be in the professional sports industry in the USA : a `whites-only’ basketball or football team would be immediately vanquished on the games-field into bankruptcy. If government pursues employment policies which discriminate according to economically irrational criteria such as caste or ethnic origin, or if it forces all private firms to do likewise, there will certainly be inefficiency resulting in a loss of real aggregate output in the economy. In the terms of modern economics, a vector of total outputs which would be feasible given the parameters of the economy, and which would leave everyone either better off or at least no worse off, would not be achieved. In sum, the consequence of direct and widespread government interference in the labour market in India appears to have been, not only a disregard for the principle of equality before the law for every citizen (in a nascent republic of immensely diverse peoples), but also a loss of real output and an enormous `politicisation’ of economic life whereby individual success becomes increasingly tied to political power and increasingly removed from personal merit, enterprise and effort. In addition, the composition of occupations in the economy has been indirectly distorted by the set of industrial, agricultural and foreign-trade policies pursued by successive governments.
6. THE MALFUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT
IT MIGHT be thought that a large and flabby `public sector’ in industry and commerce, labyrinthine controls on private industry, a government monopoly of foreign-exchange dealings, the overvaluation of the currency, indefinite import-substitution, forcibly depressed output and input prices in agriculture, enormous politicization of the labour market, disregard for equality before the law, and distortion of the composition of occupations would constitute a sufficient catalogue of symptoms of grave illness in the political economy of a nation. Sadly, however, there are in modern India other symptoms too which I can mention only briefly here.
An opinion frequently encountered among urban Indians (as well as among the majority of Western development economists) is that government control over the size of the population is a necessary condition for economic development, and indeed that it is the failure of government to do this that has dissipated the economic growth that would otherwise have resulted from the economic policies pursued. The urban Indian witnesses the hovels and shanty-towns inhabited by migrant families from the countryside attracted by the policies discussed previously, and he experiences the resulting congestion. So does the Western development economist when he ventures out of his hotel into the city streets. Very often, that is his only personal experience of the legendary `poor masses’ of India. It is understandable that such princely discomfiture should lead him to the opinion that the poor are mindless in their breeding habits and that they must be persuaded, bullied or compelled to change. If this opinion were true, it would seem to point to a neat and simple solution to many of the woes of poor countries, and India in particular. But if the opinion is false and yet widely believed, it would cause governments to be, as it were, barking up the wrong tree.
It is, however, far from established, and certainly not at all obvious, that demographic control is either necessary or desirable in India or elsewhere. In the first place, when the rate of infant mortality is known and experienced by rural people to be high, there will be mare births than there would have been otherwise. Secondly, it is perfectly clear that children are an investment good in traditional societies such as those of rural India. Even young children are a source of family income, either directly by working outside the home or indirectly by working at domestic chores and thereby releasing adult members of the family for outside work. For a child to be absent from primary school or to drop out within a few years is not necessarily truancy; it may be the outcome of a rational economic calculation about where his time may be better spent towards increasing the household’s income. Furthermore, in traditional societies adult children are the principal source of support for elderly and retired parents.
To know of the existence of artificial measures of contraception certainly enlarges the alternatives open to a couple. Assuming that such knowledge is not in itself a cause of unhappiness (as it can be if there are conflicting religious commitments), a couple may certainly be better off with that knowledge because of their ability to control the number and timing of their children. The couple might also have fewer children – though there is no necessary or causal connection between a knowledge of contraception and the number of children born to a couple. Rational calculation may produce the same number of children as the caprice of nature, the implication being that in general there is no causal connection between the availability of contraceptives and the rate of growth of the population. The value of a public policy which encourages the use of artificial contraception is not so much that it reduces the number of births as that it may allow couples more control over their own lives. Whether or not artificial contraception should be publicly subsidised is quite another question.
The Indian Government has expended considerable resources in propagating and subsidizing artificial birth control. The results appear to have been, at best, indifferent (coupled as birth control has been with indirect incentives for large families and, at worst, cruel – as when frenetic zeal spilled over into demands for, and the implementation of, compulsory sterilisation. For this author, however, the important consideration would seem to be not so much the exact costs and benefits of the demographic policies pursued as the critical acknowledgement that they have little or nothing to do with the fundamental causes of mass economic development.[54]
It remains a stark paradox that, with a general literacy rate of perhaps 30 per cent [NB: In 2007, this has grown to 73% for males and 48% for females] India still produces the third largest absolute number of science and engineering graduates in the world. This reflects the lopsidedness of the educational system, continued from British times, in which higher education is enormously subsidised relative to primary education. In addition, entry into the civil services requires a college or university education, which in turn requires a good private secondary school education, which in turn requires a good preparatory school education. Strenuously competing to enter prep. school, with the help of outside tutoring, is the unhappy fate of many a five- or six-year-old in the towns and cities, followed by strenuous competition in secondary school, college and university, and finally at the doorstep of government (or a foreign university).
A job in government – any job in government – has carried prestige since Mughal times. In addition to the prestige and the obvious benefits of tenure where ether `decent’ jobs are scarce, there has been in recent times the inner satisfaction from a belief that a person can truly do his best for his country only by being in government. Tens of thousands of youths spend significant personal resources (such as whole years in cramming schools) to compete for a few annual openings in government. It is only to be expected that the competent, ambitious, patriotic youth who succeeds will mature into a respected mandarin with an unshakeable conviction in the good his government has done for the masses, and in the further good yet in prospect.
Failure to anticipate monsoon damage and disarray of the judicial system
The most serious examples of the malfunctioning of civil government in India are probably the failure to take feasible public precautions against the monsoons and the disarray of the judicial system. Official estimates, for instance, of the damage caused by flooding to homes, crops and public utilities in a few weeks of July-August 1981 alone amounted to over Rs 1 billion, with 10.8 million people `affected’, 35,000 head of cattle lost, and 195,000 homes damaged. The full magnitude of the devastation which annually visits vast areas can be understood perhaps only by those in rural India, although the towns and cities also regularly suffer considerable chaos. [55] [NB 2007: Monsoon prediction appears far better today than it was when these words were written.]
As for the disarray of the judicial system, The Statesman lamented in July 1980:`The simplest matter takes an inordinate amount of time, remedies seldom being available to those without means or influence. Of the more than 16,000 cases pending in the Supreme Court, about 5,000 were introduced more than five years ago; while nearly 16,000 of the backlog of more than 600,000 cases in our high courts have been hanging fire for over a decade. Allahabad is the worst offender but there are about 75,000 uncleared cases in the Calcutta High Court in addition to well over a million in West Bengal’s lower courts.”[56] Such a state of affairs has been caused not only by lazy and corrupt policemen, court clerks and lawyers, but also by the paucity of judges and magistrates. In addition, however,`. . . a vast volume of laws provokes endless litigation as much because of poor drafting which leads to disputes over interpretation as because they appear to violate particular rights and privileges. Land legislation offers an example of radical zeal running away with legal good sense, giving rise to thousands of suits against the Government . . .’ [57] When governments determinedly do what they need not or should not do, it may be expected that they will fail to do what civil government positively should be doing. In a sentence, that has been the tragedy of modern India.
Part IV : Reform
A LIBERAL AGENDA
IT WILL by now have become evident to the reader from the descriptions and arguments given above that, in the judgement of the present author, only a set of radical changes in policy can put the Indian economy on a path to higher mass prosperity within a free and healthy body politic. I shall therefore put forward a tentative manifesto for reform, adding some predictions about which classes of citizens would be most likely to support or oppose a particular proposal. The scope and intention of such a manifesto should be made clear at the outset. As Aristotle taught, a set of actions which are the means towards certain ends may themselves be the ends towards which other prior means have to be taken.[58]
The ultimate ends of economic advice in India are to seek to bring about mass prosperity under conditions of individual freedom. The proposals I which follow are to be construed as means towards those ultimate ends. But they also constitute a set of intermediate ends, and their implementation would require further judgement about the best means towards achieving them. In economic policy, for instance, a firm but gradual phasing-in over a period of three or four years may be the best way to minimise the hardships entailed by the adjustment. For reasons which will become clear, however, I shall not here try to answer the question as to how the proposals might best be implemented.
(a) Effects of foreign policy on the domestic economy
It will be useful to begin with a short and very incomplete consideration of foreign policy insofar as it may bear upon domestic economic policies. It is a settled fact of international politics that, while there is no obvious connection between a nation’s economic and political institutions and the choice of strategic allies it faces, people’s subjective perceptions and opinions of the social arrangements in a foreign country can be deeply influenced by whether that country is seen as a potential ally or adversary. A related and equally settled fact is that war, or the fear of war, can make for the most incongruous of bed-fellows. In contemporary India, it is quite evident that the antipathy and pessimism towards market institutions found among the urban public, and the sympathy and optimism to be found for collectivist or statist ones, has been caused to a very significant extent by the perception that the United States is relatively hostile towards India while the Soviet Union is relatively friendly. This was not always so. The official affection between the United States and India in the early years of the Republic was grounded in sincerity and goodwill. The roots of its demise are probably to be found in the split between the Soviet Union and China in the late 1950s which, in a short period of time, made the latter a valuable strategically for the United States against the former. By the early 1970s, the spectre of a joint military threat to India from a totalitarian China and a militarist Pakistan – and especially a threat which it was perceived democratic America would do little or nothing to thwart – made it prudent for democratic India to become the virtual ally of totalitarian Russia.
Such a configuration on the international chess-board need not have been detrimental to India’s economic development. It is possible to imagine a liberal state allied to a totalitarian one for strategic reasons, yet maintaining liberal economic policies domestically and internationally. In practice[58], however, the extent of `economic collaboration’, bilateral trading arrangements, `joint ventures’, barter agreements, `cultural exchanges’, and the like into which the Indian Government has entered with the Soviet bloc, appears significantly to exceed what it has achieved with the Western powers. In particular, Soviet arms have in recent years been purchased more often and then manufactured under licence. This too need not have been economically detrimental if the Soviet products had in practice been competitive on international markets in terms of price and quality. As is common knowledge, however, this is often not so. It therefore appears that part of the price India has had to pay for the strategic support of the Soviet Union has been the foisting on her of low-quality, high-priced Soviet goods, whether arms or steel mills or technical know-how. At the same time, for reasons which are partly historical and partly related to these considerations, direct foreign investment by private Western firms has been treated with, at best, coolness and, at worst, open hostility.
A change in India’s foreign policy
If the economic liberalisation that will be proposed here for India is to be effective, a truly independent yet prudent foreign policy may be required to accompany it. A change in the present strategic configuration – in which the United States is perceived in India to be virtually the ally of both China and Pakistan, while India is perceived in the United States to be virtually the ally of the Soviet Union – is unlikely until and unless the United States finds it in her best interests in the region to distance herself from China and Pakistan, which is unlikely to happen without a rapprochement between the Soviet Union and China. A drastic alternative way for India to reduce her dependence upon the Soviet Union would be the kind of divorce Egypt effected some years ago, followed by an alliance with the Western powers. This might, however, undermine once more the independence of foreign policy and be perceived in India as a move from the devil to the deep sea. The prudent remaining alternative would appear to be an earnest and vigorous pursuit of serious no-war pacts with Pakistan and China, combined with an appropriately small independent nuclear deterrent. It seems to the author that the reasons which commend this course are closely analogous to those offered by the present American and British governments for pursuing serious no-war negotiations with the Soviet bloc whilst simultaneously improving the Western nuclear deterrent.
(b) Liberalisation of foreign trade
Not only would the truly independent foreign policy proposed in the preceding paragraph allow India to distance herself from the Soviet Union; it would probably also prompt the Western powers to end the intergovernmental transfers which go by the name of `foreign aid’. For reasons that Peter Bauer has emphasised over many years, an end to such transfers might be a boon in disguise for India.[59] In particular, it would require the government to seek to balance the foreign-exchange accounts without becoming obligated to the Western powers, and this in turn would require a major economic transformation from a closed and protectionist economy to an open one which harnessed India’s comparative advantages.
An initial liberalisation of foreign trade, involving a transition from quotas to tariffs, would probably be supported by private industry as a whole. It would, however, be opposed by incumbent politicians and government officials since it would dissipate the rents they receive under the closed regime. A subsequent reduction in tariffs, a withdrawal of export subsidies, and the free floating of the rupee would be opposed by those private firms (and their labour unions) which would be uncompetitive internationally – probably those in `non-traditional’ industries. The measures would, however, be supported by ordinary consumers, by private firms in traditional industries like jute manufactures and textiles, and particularly by farmers.
Once private industry became subject to the strict discipline of international competition again, there would be no reason whatsoever for government-imposed internal controls which were not conducive to free and fair competition among firms for the consumer’s rupee. The repeal of the plethora of licensing policies would dissipate the large rents attached to the controls under the present regime. Since these rents are paid by private industry and received, directly or indirectly, by incumbent politicians and government officials, the former could be expected to welcome repeal and the latter to oppose it vigorously.
(c) Privatisation of `public-sector’ industries
At the same time, for the so-called `public-sector’ industries to face international competition, when they are currently monopolists or oligopolists, would demand such an improvement in economic discipline as probably to require the shares of most of them to be sold on the open market, with marginal-cost pricing imposed on the remainder. There is no economic reason why the Government of India shouldbe engaged in commercial or merchant banking and insurance, or in industries from steel, machine-tools, ship-building and fertilisers to wrist-watches, hotels and beer. Nor is there any cogent reason why it should be a major producer, let alone a monopolist, in the road, rail, air and sea transport industries. Large-scale privatisation would be supported by private citizens in general, and would also draw out the reputedly vast private funds which circulate in the untaxable underground economy. But such measures would probably be opposed vigorously by the government officials who currently manage these industries, aswell as by the public-sector labour unions.
(d) Free-market pricing in agriculture
With the repudiation of the mistaken premise that government sponsored industrialisation is the best means to mass economic development, the free-market pricing of agricultural outputs and the removal of all controls that are not conducive to free competition among farmers should follow. This would be welcomed by all farmers and perhaps by the rural population in general. It could also be expected to provide much encouragement to the technological transformation of traditional agriculture. The abolition of ration-shops in urban areas would be opposed by the industrial working class, by the urban middle classes in general, and by government officials and employees engaged in the present regime of public distribution. Further, farmers, especially relatively large ones, might be expected to oppose the concomitant free-market pricing of agricultural inputs, including credit and fertilisers, as would those government employees presently charged with distributing these inputs.
The ending of the distortions in agricultural output and input prices would establish a conclusive case for uniform systems of taxation in the economy, and especially for income from agriculture to be treated on a par with income from other occupations. These systems could locally include direct subsidies to those (whether in rural or urban areas) who are unable to provide any income for themselves, such as the insane and the severely disabled – all of whom are currently cared for, if at all, by private charity, and none of whom, strangely enough, appears to enter the moral calculations of socialist and Marxist economists.
(e) Tax revenues for public goods
The first and most important destination of tax revenues, whether raised centrally, provincially or locally, must be the provision of public goods – central, provincial and local. In an earlier section, we have seen what kinds of goods these should be. Among the most urgent in India are more effective precautions against the monsoons and improvements in the efficiency of the systems of civil and criminal justice. The former might include measures to prevent soil erosion and the building of better dams, embankments, canals and roads. Such programmes would be likely to command practically unanimous support in the localities in which they were implemented.
Reforms of the judicial system might include raising the salaries of judges and policemen, as well as the penalties for their misconduct; improving the training and morale of the police, with the object of increasing public confidence in them (especially in the villages); and expanding the number of courts, at least temporarily until the monumental backlog of cases has been reduced and brought under control. A general reduction in the political and administrative direction of economic life would lead to fewer lawsuits being brought against the government itself, and thus provide further relief for the judiciary. Widespread prison reform may also be required if the reports are true that a large proportion of those held prisoner for a number of years have yet to be brought to trial, and that potential prosecution witnesses, if they are poor and uneducated, are themselves sometimes kept in jail until a case comes to court. Such reforms would command the support of everyone except criminals, capricious litigants and corrupt or incompetent members of the police and judiciary, none of which groups, it must be supposed, comprises apolitical constituency.
Together with improvements in the system of justice, the principle of equality before the law would have to be taken seriously. This would require the dispensation of justice by the state to be, as it were, a process blind to the infinitely diverse caste and ethnic characteristics of the citizenry, which in turn would imply the repeal of all laws – whether central, provincial or local – permitting governmental authorities to discriminate in favour of a particular politically-specified caste or ethnic group. Merely to have written `equality before the law’ into the Constitution without really believing it either possible or desirable is to allow the mutual caste and ethnic bigotry of private citizens to be exploited for political ends. That innumerable members of a caste, or religious or ethnic community have suffered at the hands of another, and that members of the `Scheduled Castes’ in particular have been victims of enormous cruelty, should not prevent acknowledgement of the sober fact that the past is irretrievable, or that it is similar cruelty in the present and future against any citizen at the hands of any other, or the state, that the declaration of Fundamental Rights was intended to prevent.
(f) Other reforms
Other proposals could also be suggested : the introduction of vouchers for primary and secondary education; a serious assessment of the benefits from and costs of subsidies to higher education; an end to the government monopoly of radio and television; a revision of government pay-scales to make them competitive with the private sector, together with equivalent reductions in non pecuniary benefits; a decentralisation of public spending decisions from New Delhi to the State capitals and from there to the districts; and so on. However, it is hardly necessary to go further, since even a limited liberal agenda would appear doomed to be still-born.
Incumbent politicians, government officials, and the public sector unions in general would vigorously oppose any reduction in government intervention in the economy for fear of losing the rents and sinecures of the status quo. Indeed, professional politicians in general could be expected to be averse to any lessening of the politicisation of economic life.
In other countries, a political party proposing such a reduction in government intervention would usually enjoy the backing of private industry. In India, however, private industry in general would probably see it in its own interest to support only the reduction of internal controls, whilst vigorously opposing reductions in the neo-mercantilist external controls. In July 1981, for example, I asked a prominent industrialist to imagine first a free-market regime at home : `That would be very welcome indeed’, he replied enthusiastically. I then asked him to imagine a policy of free trade : `That would wipe us out’, he replied gravely. His answers indicate very well what is perhaps the single most important feature of the equilibrium that has emerged in India: by accepting without significant protest the constraints and costs imposed upon it by the government and its `planners’, the private corporate sector has traded the freedom of enterprise for mercantilist monopoly profits in the home market.
When Indian Marxists rail about collusion between the `national bourgeoisie’ (that is, the governmental class) and the `comprador bourgeoisie’ (that is, the private sector), they make a cogent point as old as Adam Smith’s critique of mercantilism.[60] But, again, they fail to see that the fortunes of the industrial working-class have also risen with those of the private and public industries that have gained from the present regime. Moreover, a large proportion of industrial workers and blue-collar government employees are migrants with families left behind in rural areas; these rural families might also oppose reductions in the transfers currently received by their migrant relatives. Finally, while joining other farmers in welcoming a free market in grain, the politically influential larger farmers could be expected to oppose the direct taxation of agricultural incomes and the elimination of subsidies for inputs.
Who is left who would gain from the kinds of reforms proposed here? Only the ordinary citizen qua consumer, the rural poor and the residuum of severely disabled citizens unable to create any income for themselves. None of these has been or is likely to become an effective political force.
India’s `unhappy equilibrium’
The economy of the first Indian Republic has tended towards a broad and increasingly unhappy equilibrium. Distortions of efficient relative prices and wages lead to both substitution and income effects. Those who lose from one distortion rationally seek another from which they may gain; those who lose from the second seek a third; and so on ad infinitum until a maze of distorted incentives are in place and a60Adam Smith, host of income transfers are in progress – sometimes offsetting losses, sometimes not. Tullock has emphasised that the problem is not only that there are dead-weight losses in welfare, but also that people are led `. . . to employ resources in attempting to obtain or prevent such transfers.’[61] In modern India, the waste of productive resources put to the pursuit of such transfers has been incalculable. The reforms pro-posed here would cut through the maze of distorted incentives and institutions all at once – for which very reason it seems unlikely they can come to be implemented.
The economic significance of a political attitude of individualism is that it clearly recognises the relationship between individual effort and reward, and the relationship between cause and consequence generally. An attitude of statism obscures or obliterates this relationship. In republican India, statism has pervaded all public discourse and prompted most public policy. Successive groups of politicians and government officials seem never to have recognised the fundamental nature of those functions of government which are the indispensable prerequisites of civil peace and mass prosperity. Nor have they understood that it is no part of government’s agenda to be the driving force to mass prosperity, and that this can come (if it will) only from innumerable individual efforts in the pursuit of private rewards. This is not at all to say that those in government have been ill-intentioned. On the contrary, they may have sincerely sought the public good whilst introducing a Leviathan government into the market-place and neglecting the proper duties of government outside it. As Bauer has remarked in a related context :`Their financial benefits may appear to be fortuitous, as if Adam Smith’s invisible hand were to work in reverse, so that those who sought the public good achieve what was no part of their intention, namely personal prosperity.’[62] It is indeed possible that the basic fact of human nature that individual households every where ordinarily know most about, and are only concerned with, their own well-being has never been acknowledged in modern India. The simple secret of a stable and prosperous polity is to create institutions which harness the universal pursuit of individual self interest, and not ones which pretend that men are selfless saints. A polity where this fact is acknowledged would not have to depend for the viability of its institutions on mere exhortation, as the institutions of the Indian Republic seem perpetually fated to do, even while the competitive pursuit of self interest is everywhere manifest.
The logic of economic reasoning and the adducement of economic evidence have in the past had little effect in India because the distribution of gains and losses from the policies pursued has been closely matched by the distribution of effective political power. This distribution seems most likely to continue, and so the prospects of significant and sustained endogenous reform seem, to this author at least, very small. Changes in external constraints seem to be the only likely source of a major disturbance to the equilibrium, and there can be no guarantee that the results will be for the better. This is a sad and troubling conclusion to come to, for a citizen of India or anyone else who has loved the country. It places this author in the paradoxical position of believing his arguments to be broadly correct – while hoping they are not.
ENDNOTES (The original monograph in 1984 had footnotes, which have had to be transformed since pages, in this new HTML age, no longer have to be linear as in a book nor have to be turned in order to be read).
[1] The early studies notably include: B. R. Shenoy, `A note of dissent’, Papers relating to the formulation of the Second Five-Year Plan, Government of India Planning Commission, Delhi, 1955; Indian Planning and Economic Development, Asia Publishing, Bombay, 1963, especially pp. 17-53; P. T. Bauer, Indian Economic Policy and Development, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1961; M. Friedman, unpublished memorandum to the Government of India, November 1955 (referred to in Bauer, op. cit., p. 59 ff.); and, some years later, Sudha Shenoy, India : Progress or Poverty?, Research Monograph 27, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1971. Some of the most relevant contemporary studies are: B. Balassa, `Reforming the system of incentives in World Development, 3 (1975), pp. 365-82; `Export incentives and export performance in developing countries: a comparative analysis’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 114 (1978), pp. 24-61; The process of industrial development and alternative development strategies, Essays in International Finance No. 141, Princeton University, 1980; J. N. Bhagwati & P. Desai, India: Planning for Industrialisation, OECD, Paris : Oxford University Press, 1970; `Socialism and Indian Economic Policy’, World Development, 3 (1975), pp. 213-21; J. N. Bhagwati & T. N. Srinivasan, Foreign-trade Regimes and Economic Development: India, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 1975; Anne O. Krueger, `Indian planning experience’, in T. Morgan et al. (eds.), Readings in Economic Development, Wadsworth, California, 1963, pp. 403-20; `The political economy of the rent-American Economic Review, 64 (June 1974); The Benefits and Costs of Import-Substitution in India : a Microeconomic Study, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1975; Growth, distortions and patterns of trade among many countries, Studies in International Finance, Princeton University, 1977; Uma Lele, Food grain marketing in India : private performance and public policy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1971; T. W. Schultz (ed.), Distortions in agricultural incentives, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1978; V. Sukhatme, “The utilization of high-yielding rice and wheat varieties in India: an economic assessment”, University of Chicago PhD thesis, 1977.
[2] S. Roy, “On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”, University of Cambridge PhD thesis, 1982a, Chapters I and II; “Knowledge and freedom in economic theory: Parts I and II”, Centre for Study of Public Choice, Virginia Tech, working papers, 1982b. My epistemological arguments have closely followed those of Renford Bambrough, Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979.
[3] Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, in Richard McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle, Random House, New York, 1941. We read: `. . . the whole account of matters of conduct must be given in outline and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning that the accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject matter; matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The general account being of this nature, this account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they do not fall under any art or precept but the agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation.’ (1,104a2-a9.)`. . . we do not deliberate even about all human affairs; for instance, no Spartan deliberates about the best constitution for the Scythians. For none of these things can be brought about by our own efforts. We deliberate about things that are in our power and can be done.’ (1,112a28-30.) Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations(1776), eds. R. H. Campbell et al., Liberty Classics, Indianapolis, 1981. We read: `What is the species of domestick industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in hislocal situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him.’ (Book IV. ii. 10, p. 456.) In modern times, Friedrich Hayek has always kept this fact in the foreground of his thinking. In his Individualism and Economic Order, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1949, we read, for example, of `. . . the constitutional limitation of man’s knowledge and interests, the fact the he cannot know more than a tiny part of the whole of society and that therefore all that can enter into his motives are the immediate effects which his actions will have in the sphere he knows . . .’ (p. 14.) The individual agent has a `special knowledge of circumstances of the; thus `. . . practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active co-operation.’ (p. 80.)
[4] The mathematical economist will recognise these three conditions as the characteristics which define a multi-market general equilibrium in the Arrow-Debreu model: Gerard Debreu, Theory of Value, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1959; K. J. Arrow and F. H. Hahn, General Competitive Analysis, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1971.
[5] This argument is discussed further in Roy (1982a), pp. 96-107, pp. 133-43.
[6] Adam Smith, op. cit., Book V. i. c., p. 723.
[7] P. A. Samuelson, `A pure theory of public expenditures’, Review of Economics & Statistics, 36, 1954,reprinted in K. J. Arrow & T. Scitovsky (eds.), Readings in Welfare Economics, R. D. Irwin, Homewood, Ill., 1969.
[8] The idea I have in the background is of some implicit public goods function endorsed more or less unanimously by citizens – but not necessarily by those with political power – with commonsense dictating the elements it should contain. Thus Let U = U (π1, π2 , …, πn) be such a function with δU/δπi > 0, δ2U/δπi2 < 0 i=1,2,…,n, where πi = 1,2,…n, is a lateral index of a public good or service like defence, civil protection, roads, dams, or the finance of basic education. Each of these is “produced” by an expenditure of public resources: πi = πi (τi ), δπi/δτi > 0, δ2πi /δτi2 < 0 i=1,2,…,k, Σ i=1,2,…,n τi = τ* where τ* is the total level of public resources available (whether by taxation or borrowing). An efficient condition, i.e., one in which given public resources are efficiently allocated among alternative public goods or services, would be δU/δπi/ δπi/δτi = δU/δπj / δπj/δτj for every i,j = 1,2,. .,n. So, if the marginal tax-rupee was put towards the production of any public good, the increase in social utility should be the same; otherwise we would find an excess supply of some public goods (e.g. bureaucrats) and an excess demand for others (e.g. courts, dams, police protection, etc.).
[9] Two examples are F. H. Hahn, On the notion of equilibrium in economics : an inaugural lecture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973, and J. M. Grandmont, “Temporary general equilibrium theory : a survey”, Econometrica, vol. 46, 1977.
[10] Aristotle, op. cit., 1,094b12-1,094b27
[11] D. H. Robertson, `The Economic Outlook’, in his Utility and All That, Allen & Unwin, London, 1952, pp.51-52.
[12] Karl Popper made a similar point in The Open Society and its Enemies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1950, when he suggested that Plato’s question `who should rule?’ should be discarded for the question:`How can we so organise political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too muchdamage?’ (p. 120). There is relevant discussion by Renford Bambrough in `Plato’s modern friends and enemies’, Philosophy, 37, 1962, reprinted in R.Bambrough (ed.), Plato, Popper and Politics : some contributions to a modern controversy, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1967. I have discussed the relationship of expertise to democracy in Roy (1982a), pp 80-95.
[13] Virginia Bill of Rights, 1776, in The Constitution of the United States, ed. E. C. Smith, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1979, p. 21.
[14] P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1971, p. 72, n. 2. The term `statism’ suggested itself to the author after he read M. R. Masani, “Post-Sanjay outlook: where salvation does not lie” The Statesman, 9 July 1980.
[15]G. M. Young (ed.), Macaulay: Prose and Poetry, London: Macmillan, 1952, p. 718. Some 20 years later, in Considerations on Representative Government, ed. H. B. Acton (London: J. M. Dent), J. S. Mill claimed that rule by`a superior people . . . is often of the greatest advantage to a people, carrying them rapidly through several stages of progress’ (Ch. IV, p. 224). Ironically, a few years ago a distinguished retired member of the Indian civil service (who happens to be a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize) used very similar words in a newspaper article – in defence of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan!
[16] Resolution of the Indian National Congress, August 1931, reprinted in B. N. Pandey (ed.), The IndianNationalist Movement : 1885-1947, Macmillan, London, 1979, p. 67.
[17] S. Radhakrishnan, The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore, Macmillan, London, 1918, p. 232. For an excellent account of the intercourse between ancient India and ancient Greece, H. G. Rawlinson, `Early contacts between India and Europe’, in A. L. Basham (ed.), A Cultural History of India, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975. For excellent accounts of the growth of liberalism in India in the l9th and carly 20th centuries : Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism : Competition and Collaboration in the later l9th Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971, Chs. 1, 3-6; J. R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1977; Gordon Johnson, Provincial Politicsand Indian Nationalism,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973, Ch. 1.
[18] Ramsay Macdonald’s letter to M. K. Gandhi, 8 September 1932, reprinted in Pandey (ed.), op. cit., p. 74.
[19] Devdas Gandhi’s letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, 2 October 1931, reprinted in Pandey (ed.), op. cit., p. 71
[20] Gandhi’s protest succeeded to the extent that the Award itself was superseded; and in unusual, euphoric displays of fraternity, `caste’ Hindus threw open temples to members of the `Depressed Classes’ and embraced them with
garlands. The compromise Pact which replaced the Communal Award removed separate electorates but still guaranteed special political representation for some years following the agreement. For an account of Gandhi’ s position on the Communal Award, Judith M. Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977, pp. 313-21.
[21] For an eminent lawyer’s commentary, N. A. Palkhivala, The Light of the Constitution, Forum of Free Enterprise, Bombay, 1976.
[22] There is reason to think the Mughals before the British had done no better and had probably done much worse. T. Raychaudhuri, `The State and the Economy: the Mughal Empire’, in T. Raychaudhuri & I. Habib (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. I, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982.
[23] V. B. Singh (ed.), Nehru on Socialism, Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications Division, Delhi, 1977, pp. 56-57, 67.
[24] `Draft recommendations for the formulation of the Second Five Year Mahalanobis;`The Second Five-Year Plan – A tentative framework’, drafted by the economic ministries; and a `Memorandum’ written by a panel of prominent Indian economists – all contained in Papers relating to the formulation of the SecondFive Year Plan, Government of India: Planning Commission, 1955 – were the principal influences on the actual Second Plan. No significant understanding of markets, prices or the concept of feasibility is evident on the part of any of the authors. Shenoy’s lonely dissent has already been noted (note 1).
[25] The best descriptions of Indian industrial policy are still to be found in Bhagwati and Desai (1970), op. cit. Also C. Wadhwa, `New Industrial Licensing Policy: An Appraisal’, in C. Wadhwa (ed.), Some problems of India’seconomic policy, Tata-McGraw Hill, Delhi, 1977, pp. 290-324.
[26] Gordon Tullock is generally credited with introducing the notion of rent-seeking in `The welfare costs of tariffs, monopolies and theft’, Western Economic, Journal, 5 (June 1967), while Krueger (1974), op. cit., introduced the term itself. The collection edited by J. M. Buchanan et al., Toward a theory of the rent-seeking society, Texas A&M Press, College Station, 1980, contains reprints of both papers as well as other studies.
[27] Krueger (1975), op. cit., p. 108 ff.
[28] The classic argument for a free market is in M. Friedman, `The case for flexible exchange rates’, in his Essays in Positive Economics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1953, pp. 157-203. Also V. S. Vartikar,Commercial policy and economic development in India, Praeger, New York, 1969, based on his PhD at Wayne State University; and D. Lal, A liberal international economic order : the international monetary system and economic development, Essays in International Finance No. 139, Princeton University, October 1980.
[29] An additive sub-utility function might be defined within each set of categories UG= ∑ ai vi (Gi) a1 ≥ a2 ≥ a3, ∑ ai= 1UP= ∑ bj wj (Pj) b1 ≥ b2 ∑ bj= 1where the vi (.) and the wj (.) are further sub-utility functions defined on each category, etc. None of these has ever been spelt out by the Indian Government and certainly no amount of UP has seemed substitutable for an iota of UG.
[30] Bhagwati and Srinivasan, op. cit., p. 38.
[31] Ibid.,p. 38
[32] In 1980, for example, exports of pig-iron and of sheep- and goat-meat were banned; an export duty on jute manufactures was imposed on 18 February and lifted on 8 September. (Annual Report on Exchange Controls, International Monetary Fund, 1981, pp. 205-13.) The Import and Export Policy (April 1982, March 1983)announced by the Commerce Ministry reported the banning of exports of cane, paraffin wax, mustard and rape-seedoil, and `certain
wild-life items’, including lizards and robins. An embargo on the export of CTC (cut, tear and curl) tea was announced by the Ministry of Commerce on 24December 1983. CTC is high-quality tea which accounts for about three-quarters of India’s tea exports. The ban followed a doubling of domestic prices over the previous year, compulsory registration of tea dealers holding more than 1,000 kg. to prevent hoarding, and agreement by manufacturers to reduce their profit margins and cut prices ofpackaged tea by about 20 per cent (Financial Times, 14 December 1983). The Indian Government apparently feared that the supply of tea for the domestic market was going to run out (The Times, 5 January 1984). The effect of thesemeasures is artificially to depress prices in the domestic market whilst raising them overseas (The Economist, 14 January 1984).
[33] Pick’s Currency Year-book, various editions
[34] Krueger (1977), op. cit., pp. 27-28.
[35] Balassa (1978), op. cit., p. 39; Balassa (1980), op. cit., p. 16.
[36] Ibid.,p. 22.
[37] Short surveys of the relevant practices can be found in Lele, op. cit.,Appendix 1, pp. 225-37, and Sukhatme, op. cit., pp. 29-37. Also Gilbert Brown, `Agricultural pricing policies in developing countries’, and G. E.Schuh, `Approaches to “basic needs” and to “equity” that distort incentives in agriculture’, in Schultz (ed.), op. cit.,pp. 84-113 and pp. 307-27 respectively.
[38] Theoretical economists have long recognised that a fundamental flaw in, for example, the Arrow-Debreu model is its assumption that all conceivable futures contracts are practicable. The longest futures price actually quoted at
the Chicago Board of Trade, however, would be for silver, at about two years; for grains, the longest would be only about three months. Since the natural market outcome is a far-cry from the theory, the Indian Government’s fears about the effects of speculation appear to be much exaggerated. To see the risk-dispersing character of a futures contract, let us suppose that both buyer and seller place a probability of one-half on prices being either in 8 or 2; if they are risk-averse, they may prefer to trade at a certain futures price of 5 now, rather than wait for the future to unfold.
[39] David Hopper, `Distortions of agricultural development resulting from Government prohibitions,’ Schultz (ed.), op. cit., p. 69 ff.
[40] K. Prasad, `Foodgrains policy 1966-1976′, in Wadhwa (ed.), op. cit., p.479.
[41] Schultz (ed.), op. cit., p. 309.
[42] Sukhatme, op. cit., pp. 74-86; T. W. Schultz, `On the economics and politics of agriculture’, in Schultz(ed.), op. cit., p. 15 ff.
[43] Schultz (ed.), op. cit., pp. 92-93.
[44] Ibid.,p. 95.
[45] T. N. Srinivasan, `Income Distribution: A survey of policy-aspects’, in Wadhwa (ed.), op. cit., p. 265. That the small farmer may not find it profitable to invest in storage, and that (if it has been taxed) agriculture has been taxed regressively, are also remarked upon by Srinivasan.
[46] Lele, op. cit., p. 2, where reference is made to Sir Henry Knight, Food Administration in India, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1954.
[47] Lele, op. cit., pp. 214-24
[48] For example, M. Todaro, `A model of labor migration and urban unemployment in less developed countries’, American Economic Review, March 1969, 59, pp. 138-48; J. P. Harris & M. Todaro, `Migration,unemployment and development: a two-sector analysis’, American Economic Review, March 1970 60, pp. 126-42.The best paper known to the author is by Jerome Rothenberg, `On the economics of internal migration’, Working Paper No. 189, Dept. of Economics, MIT, July 1976.
[49] Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions, Basic Books, New York, 1980, pp. 268-69.
[50] `The logic of protection’, The Statesman, Editorial, 19 March 1981; also the Editorial, `Danger of caste ethnic
[51] S. K. Datta Ray, `Backlash to protection: fancy gifts ignore real reform’, The Statesman Weekly, 21 March 1981.
[52]M. Weiner, M. F. Katzenstein, K.V.N. Rao, India’s preferential policies : migrants, the middle classes and ethnic equality, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1981, pp. 16-17.
[53] Ibid. p. 5
[54] P. T. Bauer, `Population explosion: myths and realities’, in Equality, the Third World and Economic Delusion, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1981, pp. 42-65, contains some of the clearest arguments known to the author about this question; also M. Weiner, India at the Polls : the Parliamentary Election of 1977, American Enterprise Institute, Washington DC, 1978, pp. 35-39.
[55] 10 8 million people affected by floods’, The Statesman Weekly, 22 August 1981; also `Down the drain’, Editorial in The Statesman, 8 July 1981.
[56] Justice with speed’, Editorial in The Statesman, Calcutta and New Delhi, 21 July, 1980
[57] Aristotle, op. cit., 1,094a1-1, 094b11.
[58] There are few thorough studies known to the author that are relevant. One such is Asha L. Dattar, India’s Economic Relations with the USSR and Eastern Europe 1953-1969, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972.
[59] Bauer (1981) op. cit. Chapters 5 & 6.
[60]. Adam Smith op cit Book IV; also B. Baysinger et al.,`Mercantilism as a rent-seeking society’, in Buchanan et al (eds) op. cit. pp. 235-68.
[61] G. Tullock in Buchanan et al. (eds.), op. cit., p. 48.
[62] Bauer (1981), op. cit., p. 144.
FA Hayek’s letter to me when I was 26
February 18, 1981 — drsubrotoroyProfessor Frank Hahn, who supervised my doctoral thesis, was kind enough to once say he considered me “probably the outstanding young Hayekian”. Certainly throughout my undergraduate days at the London School of Economics and my research work at Cambridge and later in the United States, I was quite an ardent Hayekian in several respects, and I recall being thrilled to receive the enclosed letter from FA Hayek himself in February 1981.
My 1989 book Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry (London & New York: Routledge International Library of Philosophy), now republished here, records both my praise and my criticism of Hayek. My 1984 monograph on India, also republished here, applied the work of Hayek and many others.
Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy 
