India's increased exposure to world markets and relaxation of domestic controls has given a spurt to the GDP growth rate, but its impact on poverty, inequality and employment have been controversial. This book examines these aspects of the post-reform scene, discerning the changes in trends which the new developments have created.

India started on a program of reforms, both in its external and internal aspects, sometime in the mid-eighties and going on into the nineties. While the increased exposure to world markets (‘globalization’) and relaxation of domestic controls has undoubtedly given a spurt to the GDP growth rate, its impact on poverty, inequality and employment have been controversial. This book examines in detail these aspects of post-reform India and discerns the changes and trends which these new developments have created. Providing an original analysis of unit-level data available from the quinquennial National Sample Surveys, the Annual Surveys of Industries and other basic data sources, the authors analyse and compare the results with other pieces of work in the literature. As well as describing the overall situation for India, the book highlights regional differences, and looks at the major industrial sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and tertiary services. The important topic of labor market institutions - both for the formal or organized and the unorganized sectors - is considered and the possible adverse effect on employment growth of the regulatory labor framework is examined carefully. Since any reform of this framework must go hand in hand with better state intervention in the informal sector to have any chance of acceptance politically, some of the major initiatives in this area are critically explored. Overall, this book will be of great interest to development economists, labour economists and specialists in South Asian Studies.

This book explores the effects of product market and labour market reforms on firms, labour institutions and labour rights in the economic and industrial relations system in India. India has over the years liberalized its economy through a broad range of reforms concerning the product market and complementing these it has also sought to reform the labour market and the industrial relations system. The book assesses the impact of these reforms on both the formal and informal labour markets in India, critically examines the labour processes and uncovers/describes precarious conditions of labour in various industries and occupations, and analyzes the dynamics involved in the making of industrial, employment and labour policies in contemporary India.

Within-country income inequality has risen since the early 1980s in most of the OECD, all transitional, and many developing countries. More recently, inequality has risen also in India and nations affected by the Asian crisis. Altogether, over the last twenty years, inequality worsened in 70 per cent of the 73 countries analysed in this volume, with the Gini index rising by over five points in half of them. In several cases, the Gini index follows a U-shaped pattern, with theturn-around point located between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Where the shift towards liberalization and globalization was concluded, the right arm of the U stabilized at the 'steady state level of inequality' typical of the new policy regime, as observed in the UK after 1990.Mainstream theory focusing on rises in wage differentials by skill caused by either North-South trade, migration, or technological change poorly explains the recent rise in income inequality. Likewise, while the traditional causes of income polarization-high land concentration, unequal access to education, the urban bias, the 'curse of natural resources'-still account for much of cross-country variation in income inequality, they cannot explain its recent rise.This volume suggests that the recent rise in income inequality was caused to a considerable extent by a policy-driven worsening in factorial income distribution, wage spread and spatial inequality. In this regard, the volume discusses the distributive impact of reforms in trade and financial liberalization, taxation, public expenditure, safety nets, and labour markets. The volume thus represents one of the first attempts to analyse systematically the relation between policy changes inspired byliberalization and globalization and income inequality. It suggests that capital account liberalization appears to have had-on average-the strongest disequalizing effect, followed by domestic financial liberalization, labour market deregulation, and tax reform. Trade liberalization had uncleareffects, while public expenditure reform often had positive effects.

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Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

This book offers an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to thinking about inequality, and to understanding how inequality is produced and reproduced in the global South. Without the safety net of the various Northern welfare states, inequality in the global South is not merely a socio-economic problem, but an existential threat to the social contract that underpins the democratic state and society itself. Only a response that is firmly grounded in the context of the global South can hope to address this problem. This collection brings together scholars from across the globe, with a particular focus on the global South, to address broad thematic areas such as the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring inequality; the political economy of inequality in the global South; inequality in work, households and the labour market; and inequalities in land, spaces and cities. The book concludes by suggesting alternatives for addressing inequality in the global South and around the world. The pioneering ideas and theories put forward by this volume make it essential reading for students and researchers of global inequality across the fields of sociology, economics, law, politics, global studies and development studies.

“The author has done a service to this line of study by collating and analysing a novel dataset in a manner that is going to be of use for researchers of the labour market in India, a subject in need of critical enquiry.”– Shanti Chakravarty, Professor of Economics, Bangor University, Wales, UK This book deconstructs the dynamics of the job market in an emerging economy (India) that has vast capital resources, addressing a key concern in relation to inequality in the labour market by social groups. The author examines the changing impact of caste on employment opportunity using two sets of large databases, and extends this analysis into religious affiliation and gender. The findings in this book will be of importance to those working in both research and policy, and makes an important contribution through addressing the decomposition of inequality based on disparity and discrimination.

The nature of globalization and the fallout from the international financial crisis have brought profound changes to societies and economies around the world. This book documents that, over the last two decades, the growth of nonstandard and informal employment has led to greater inequalities. This is partly explained by the fact that adjustment policies in the 1980s, market liberalization policies in the 1990s and, more recently, globalization and anti-poverty policies did not pay sufficient attention to policies for employment and income redistribution. As a response to these trends, this book recommends the development of clearer policies for employment and income redistribution. These policies should now become an integral part of national and international economic policy making. This is even more relevant in the current context of the international financial crisis as: Several elements of globalization, especially the unfettered markets, and the growing inequality have given cause to the current crisis and, There is growing evidence that the employment, human and social effects of the financial crisis will be felt well after an economic recovery has taken place, especially if no corrective action is taken. This volume will be of benefit to policymakers, scholars and practitioners alike. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.

This book analyses the current conditions of work in the Indian factory sector, and provides a critical analysis of the wage, profit and productivity behaviour in India’s organised manufacturing sector over the last two decades. Examining the specificities of the conditions of industrial workers, it addresses three major questions:/-//-/- What has happened to the relative shares of profits and wages;/-/- How do we explain the levels and changes and;/-/- Are better labour standards antithetical to the project of industrial restructuring?/-//-/The author also examines the problem of industrial restructuring in India within the broader context of power and inequality in the workplace. He argues that even though the existing laws mandate decent labour conditions, India has been unable to implement them because of the minimalist position taken by successive governments./-//-/Providing new and fascinating insights into industrial growth, labour standards and development in the framework of globalisation, this book will interest students and scholars of economics, economic history, political science and sociology, as well as students of management and labour relations.