Table Of ContentIndia Studies in Business and Economics
Nripendra Kishore Mishra Editor
Development
Challenges of India
After Twenty Five Years
of Economic Reforms
Inequality, Labour, Employment and
Migration
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Nripendra Kishore Mishra
Editor
Development Challenges
of India After Twenty Five
Years of Economic Reforms
Inequality, Labour, Employment
and Migration
123
Editor
Nripendra KishoreMishra
Department ofEconomics
Banaras HinduUniversity
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
ISSN 2198-0012 ISSN 2198-0020 (electronic)
India Studies inBusiness andEconomics
ISBN978-981-15-8264-6 ISBN978-981-15-8265-3 (eBook)
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Preface
India embarked on the path of economic liberalization since 1991 and witnessed
fasteconomicgrowthbytheturnofthemillennium.Infact,feebleattemptstoward
economic reforms had already started since the mid-1980s, and most economists
agree that structuralbreak in thegrowthof GDP started from theearly 1980s. The
needforchange ineconomicpolicywasbeing feltfromtheearly1980s, andthere
were someattemptstodoso inthelate 1980s, which isfamously known inpolicy
circleas‘MDocument.’In1980,thesizeoftheIndianGDPwaslargerthanthatof
China, which fared poorly in all indicators of development as compared to India.
During the same period, countries of South East Asia were doing better than India
notonlyintermsofGDPgrowthbutalsointheindicatorsofhumandevelopment.
Politicalcrisispost-1989undercoalitiongovernmentshaltedanyattempttoaddress
thesimmeringeconomiccrisis,anditultimatelyfelluponaminoritygovernmentto
carry out full-fledged economic reforms from 1991 onward. These economic
reforms paid large dividends in later periods as India traced a trajectory of high
economic growth. This ‘golden run’ continued for nearly 20 years. It is now more
than a quarter of a century since the initiation of economic reforms. Slowly and
steadily,allpretensions ofthemixedeconomyhavebeenshed,andthere ishardly
any hesitation either on the part of the state or public in accepting that India has
absolutely adopted the capitalistic path of development. Ironically, the word
‘socialist’ continues to define the state in the preamble of the constitution. The 25
years of market reforms have also seen changes in other spheres such as coalition
power politics largely based on communal and caste equations, the rise of the
middleclass,andtheemergenceofservicesector,especiallyIT-enabledservices,as
thedriverofgrowthandpro-businessratherpro-marketeconomicpolicy.By2020,
theembraceofthemarketiscomplete,andplanning asaninstrumentofeconomic
policy is a thing of the past.
These years of liberalization have been years of ‘celebration of growth,’ and
euphoriaovergrowthhasbeentheprincipaldrivingforceofpolicy.Inaverysubtle
shift, theconcept ofdevelopment standsreplacedby theidea of growth inpopular
discourse with the latter being touted as a panacea for all ills. A growth in GDP is
supposedtousherindevelopmentalongallsocialindicatorsaswell.Thisviewhas
v
vi Preface
been advocated globally by neo-liberal economists and multilateral agencies. In
India, this shift in the perception of ‘development’ was effectuated very forcefully
in 2014 when the Hindi word for development vikas was pushed into the growth
narrative without spelling out its content. It only became evident later that it was
actuallythegrowththatwassoughttobepursued.Theideaof‘development’itself
hasbecome atopic ofdebate with adefinite tilt toward pushing through growth in
the name of development. Sadly, this has been done without any theoretical or
empirical evidence as it is suited to neo-liberalism (global capital), to the ‘new’
Indianstate,tonewercoalitionsofinterestgroups,andalsotothenew‘aspirational
India.’
It is now time to evaluate these past 25 years under the liberalized economic
regimewhichhasachievedsubstantialgainsbutalsolostgroundonseveralcounts;
probablythelatterisgreaterthantheformer.Nodoubt,thesizeoftheeconomyand
per capita income has gone up. After some letup in the 1990s, there has been
sustained reduction in poverty, while the rate of unemployment remained fairly
stable till 2011–12. However, the rate of unemployment shot up sharply from
2011–12 to 2017–18. Indicators of health and education have improved. The pri-
vatesectorhascomeofage.Therehadbeensomeaccelerationinthegrowthrateof
wagerateandearningsoflabor,butitcollapsedlater.Atthesametime,inequality
ordisparitiesinincome/consumptionandwealthhavegoneupconsiderably.There
are newer forms of inequality. Economic growth has not been poverty reducing.
The content and the process of growth have been unequalizing. Unemployment
remainsachallengeasitwastwodecadesago.Theperiodafter2014hasbeeneven
morechallengingaccording totheCentreforMonitoringIndianEconomy(CMIE)
and Periodic Labor Force Surveys (PLFS). One does not have any information
about poverty after 2011–12, but there are indications that it might have gone
up. The share of labor in value added is declining. The labor class is in distress,
especially unskilled workers. Migration has become an important coping up strat-
egy with continued agrarian distress. The neglect of these issues over the last 25
years came to the fore as the economy came to a grinding halt in the Covid-19
pandemic. The pandemic exposed several fault lines in society, polity, and econ-
omy. The class character of the state, role of public institutions, and ‘othering’
oftheworkingclass,especiallymigrantworkers,havebecomeclearlyvisible.The
pandemichasprovedrightourpresumptionthattheeconomicreformshaveworked
wonders on many fronts, but they have been equally punishing on more counts.
Contributionsinthisvolumeaddressthesequestionsfrommultipleperspectives.
Problems in conceptualization of development and Indian development model are
compared with other countries. Newer forms of vulnerability and sources of
inequality are highlighted, and distress in labor market is examined from multiple
lenses. Connections between agrarian economy and rural distress are established.
Migration is addressed in a wider conception of labor mobility. A common con-
clusion isthatmanyvitalissuesofdevelopmenthavebeenneglectedinthelast25
years of economic reforms in pursuit of growth.
Preface vii
This volume emanates from a seminar organized by the Department of
Economics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, on the theme of 'Twenty Five
Years of Economic Reforms in India' in March 2018 in honor of Prof. Ravi
Srivastava. The sub-themes in the seminar, which constitute the sections of the
book too, were essentially areas of his work. Prof. Ravi Srivastava, who superan-
nuated in 2018 from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has had a very close
academicinteractionwiththeDepartmentofEconomics,BHU,Varanasi.Iamfull
of gratitude to Prof. Srivastava as he has been a great source of inspiration to me
throughout my academic journey. I express my sincere thanks to all contributors
who are known experts in their respective areas of research. I am also thankful to
Prof. R. P. Pathak, former Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Prof. A. K. Gaur, the
Head of theDepartment, andall my colleagues andstudents. I amalso thankfulto
the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, Department of
Planning, Government of Uttar Pradesh, and the Tata Trust, Mumbai, for their
financialsupportfortheseminar. IamgratefultoProf. DeepakNayyarforsparing
timetogothroughthemanuscriptandwriteaforewordforthisvolume.Ms.Sudha
Passi has very diligently done copy editing of this volume. I am thankful to
Ms. Nupoor Singh and Ms. Jayaraniprem Kumar from Springer for their cooper-
ation and valuable support.
Idedicatethisvolumetomyparentswhoraisedmeinchallengingcircumstances
and encouraged my pursuit of knowledge to satiate my spirit of enquiry.
Varanasi, India Prof. Nripendra Kishore Mishra
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Nripendra Kishore Mishra
The Challenge of Development in India
Some Reflections on Development Challenges of India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Arvind Subramanian
Development Challenges of India After 25 Years of Economic
Reform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Ashok K. Lahiri
Secrets of the Heart: Adding Subjectivity to Policy Prescriptions
for a Pleasant Economic Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
B. V. Singh, Siddharth Singh, Ravish Kumar Shukla, and Lav Jee
Poverty and Inequality
Toward Understanding the Nature of Inequality in India in Terms
of Changing Perceptions on Its Sources and Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
D. Narasimha Reddy
Growth, Inequality and Labour Force Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Arup Mitra
Inclusiveness of Economic Growth in Uttar Pradesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Nripendra Kishore Mishra and Manish Kumar Singh
Labor, Work, and Employment
Structural Change and Increasing Precarity of Employment
in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Ravi Srivastava, Balakrushna Padhi, and Rahul Ranjan
ix
x Contents
Contemporary Capitalism and Employment Challenges:
Some Reflections on India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Praveen Jha and Satadru Sikdar
Structural Change and Rural Households in India: An Analysis
of the Nature of Transformation in Their Economic Activities . . . . . . . 183
Vinoj Abraham
Wage Employment, Informality, and Social Networks in Indian
Labor Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Rajendra P. Mamgain
Entrepreneurial Avenues for Scheduled Tribe Communities
in Nonfarm Enterprise Sector: Prospects and Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Partha Pratim Sahu and Manik Kumar
MGNREGS and Rural Labour Market in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Ashok Pankaj and Mondira Bhattacharya
Subcontracting Linkages in the Informal Manufacturing Sector
in Uttar Pradesh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Udai Bhan Singh
Skill Inequality Among Social Groups in India: Regional Analysis
in Uttar Pradesh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Ishwar Chandra Awasthi and Puneet Kumar Shrivastav
Agrarian Question
Structural Transformation and the Agrarian Question
in the Indian Economy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
K. P. Kannan
FailingAgricultureandFrazzledFarmers:TheInsideStoryofIndia’s
Most Populous States—UP and Maharashtra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Rakesh Raman and Khursheed Ahmad Khan
Labor Mobility
Labour Mobility in Historical Perspective from East U.P, South U.P
and North Bihar: Contours of Changes and Continuity. . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Tulika Tripathi
Migrating to the Roads in the Cities in Uttar Pradesh:
Some Reflections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Bhaskar Majumder and V. Narayan
Mobility and Threshold Social Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Pushpendra and Dipak Kumar Singh
