Since World War II, China has had a command economy administered under a dictatorship, while India's democracy has introduced a highly regulated economy. Despite obvious differences in their political systems, each country endured remarkably similar economic problems with respect to industry during the 1960s and 1970s. Both embarked in the 1980s on a series of industrial reforms designed to improve technology and efficiency in the use of resources, as well as to stimulate industrial growth in the face of declining productivity. For economists, the two countries offer an interesting test case for examining similar reform programs launched from disparate political and economic systems. For policymakers concerned with the region's stability, a clear view of the economic futures of these two major powers is paramount. Examining and comparing the reform experiences of China and India up to the present, George Rosen shows that although China enacted more sweeping reform measures and produced more impressive local growth, it also experienced more significant inflationary spurts. Two-thirds of each nation's population was involved in agriculture at the start of the reform period and nearly that many at the conclusion. Ultimately, the effects of the past industrial reforms in both countries in terms of significantly greater industrial employment or well-being of their populations were limited. An important lesson in these findings, argues Rosen, is that they actually reveal more about the political factors that limit and shape economic policy reforms in a dictatorship or democracy than they confirm the virtues of either capitalism or communism.

This book explores the role of public action in eliminating deprivation and expanding human freedoms in India. The analysis is based on a broad and integrated view of development, which focuses on well-being and freedom rather than the standard indicators of economic growth. The authors placehuman agency at the centre of stage, and stress the complementary roles of different institutions (economic, social, and political) in enhancing effective freedoms.In comparative international perspective, the Indian economy has done reasonably well in the period following the economic reforms initiated in the early nineties. However, relatively high aggregate economic growth coexists with the persistence of endemic deprivation and deep social failures. JeanDreze and Amartya Sen relate this imbalance to the continued neglect, in the post-reform period, of public involvement in crucial fields such as basic education, health care, social security, environmental protection, gender equity, and civil rights, and also to the imposition of new burdens such asthe accelerated expansion of military expenditure. Further, the authors link these distortions of public priorities with deep-seated inequalities of social influence and political power. The book discusses the possibility of addressing these biases through more active democratic practice.

What is the relationship between internal development and integration into the global economy in developing countries? How and why do state–market relations differ? And do these differences matter in the post-cold war era of global conflict and cooperation? Drawing on research in China, India, and Russia and examining sectors from textiles to telecommunications, Micro-institutional Foundations of Capitalism introduces a new theory of sectoral pathways to globalization and development. Adopting a historical approach, the book's Strategic Value Framework shows how state elites perceive the strategic value of sectors in response to internal and external pressures. Sectoral structures and organization of institutions further determine the role of the state in market coordination and property rights arrangements. The resultant dominant patterns of market governance vary by country and sector within country. These national configurations of sectoral models are the micro-institutional foundations of capitalism, which mediate globalization and development.

Which factors identify "winners" (tigers) in the development game and which characterize "losers" (elephants) are described in this original and comprehensive approach to understanding economic development in a post-cold war environment. "The book provides an honest, readable, and provocative introduction to the new rules of the development game."-J.T. Peach, New Mexico State University, from Choice

Which factors identify "winners" (tigers) in the development game and which characterize "losers" (elephants) are described in this approach to understanding economic development in a post-cold war environment.

Subalterns and Raj presents a unique introductory history of India with an account that begins before the period of British rule, and pursues the continuities within that history up to the present day. Its coverage ranges from Mughal India to post-independence Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, with a focus on the ‘ordinary’ people of India and South Asia. Subalterns and Raj examines overlooked issues in Indian social history and highlights controversies between historians. Taking an iconoclastic approach to the elites of South Asia since independence, it is critical of the colonial regime that went before them. This book is a stimulating and controversial read and, with a detailed guide to further reading and end-of-chapter bibliographies, it is an excellent guide for all students of the Indian subcontinent.

Presents a history of India's macroeconomy and recent developments in its political economy. Valuable lessons from India's stabilization policies explain how structural adjustment can also benefit long-term growth in the subcontinent. This analysis looks at various government policies that have influenced imports and exports, national investment and savings, gross national and domestic product, and the balance of payments. It specifically examines the degree to which stabilization has reformed agriculture and industry and has improved the relationship between the public and private sectors. A brief introduction to the Indian economy is given, and India's basic economic controls are reviewed. These include the government's national budget and its regulation of prices, production, investment, interest rates, and credit allocation. Also discussed are recent trends in investment and public spending.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this book, based on the 1995 Ohlin Lectures, Deepak Lal provides an accessible, interdisciplinary account of the role of culture in shaping economic performance. Topics addressed include a possible future "clash of civilizations," the role of Asian values in the East Asian economic miracle, the cultural versus economic causes of social decay in the West, and whether modernization leads to Westernization. Lal makes an important distinction between material and cosmological beliefs, showing how both were initially shaped by factor endowments and how they have evolved in response to changing historical pressures in different civilizations. Lal's first major theme is the interaction of factor endowments, culture, and politics in explaining modern intensive growth in the West. The other major theme is the role of individualism--an inadvertent legacy of the medieval Catholic Church--in promoting this growth, and the strange metamorphoses this has caused in both the West's cosmological beliefs and the interaction between "the West and the rest." Lal takes account of the relevant literature in history, anthropology, social psychology, evolutionary biology, neurology, and sociology, and the economic history of the regions and cultures that form Eurasia. An appendix shows how the stories Lal tells can be described by four formal economic models.