May 19, 2007

Development Discourse: Issues and Concerns by T.K. Oommen; Regency Publications, New Delhi; 2004 .
Back in 1965, Dudley Seers wondered aloud:
What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? If all three of these have become less severe, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development for the country concerned. If one or two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would (…)

The threat held out to the judiciary by some politicians because of the interim stay of OBC quotas shows lack of maturity and understanding of the role of the judiciary in our constitutional set-up. Is it advisable to raise the pitch, however important the issue may be? After all, we are a civilised constitutional democracy and must proceed on the basis of bonafide action by each instrumentality of the state, however we may disagree with it.
The charge that courts do not understand the (…)

The functional-financial theorists like Lord Keynes (Cambridge), Learner A.P. (London School of Economics) wanted public finance and the Budget to subserve the ends of macro-economics like growth in investment, employment, output and consumption etc., rejecting the classical advocacy of small and surplus Budgets. On the other hand, development-fiscal economists like Richard Musgrave (Harvard) and Stiglitz (Columbia) added the goals of capital formation, re-distributive justice, price (…)

COMMUNICATION
Apropos Shri Chaturanan Mishra’s article on the possibility of Left expansion in the Hindi speaking region [“For Left Expansion in the Hindi Region”, Mainstream Annual 2006 (December 23, 2006)], I have noticed the causes of stagnation mentioned by the writer. But behind it lies the fundamental lacuna in the approach of the Left movement which fails to recognise the primordial importance of religion and caste as deeply rooted social factors particularly in this region. To the (…)