• About

Economics for India

~ Research & Reflections on Indian Economy

Economics for India

Category Archives: diverse perspectives

Weather shocks, railroads, and openness to trade

05 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by paragwaknis in diverse perspectives, economic history, Infrastructure

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Dave Donaldson, famine in India, rainfall shocks, Weather shocks in India

It is quite interesting to see a bunch of papers written on one aspect of Indian economy from a variety of angles. Following are some such papers by Dave Donaldson of MIT. The first one was presented in the ASSA 2014 and that is what got me reading Dave’s work.

1. Can Openness to Trade Reduce Income Volatility? Evidence from Colonial India’s Famine Era

2. Weather and Death in India

3. Can Openness Mitigate the Effects of Weather Shocks? Evidence from India’s Famine Era

While we are on weather shocks, you might be interested in my earlier post on weather shocks and consumption smoothing in India and this one on general importance of rainfall shocks in post independence India.

Is Congress really secular and BJP really communal?

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by paragwaknis in diverse perspectives, economics and governance, politcal economy, socioeconomic perspectives

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

communalism, election platforms, Indian politics, swing voters

Elections are around the corner and the political climate is really heating up in India. The current Congress led government has been a disappointment on many fronts including the economic one. People seem to be desperate to have a leader that seems decisive and unfaltering. Unfortunately none in the Congress seem to be fitting the bill. I think this vacuum was sensed well by BJP in portraying Narendra Modi as a prime ministerial candidate. For this the political strategists from BJP have to be lauded. As expected media is all over Modi’s credentials as a leader and has trudged up his role in the Godhra riots as a major factor in discrediting him. And I think it has only helped the BJP to stoke anti Muslim sentiments furthering its agenda of divisive politics. As a person who supported the saffron coalition once upon a time, I always wondered how much truth is it to the story of Hindu-muslim animosity. The more I read and thought, the more it was obvious that it was more of a political ploy than reality.  I think many people actually see that, which might include even the senior leaders of BJP. So why go by such divisive agenda?

One reason is the politics of Congress. Congress’s political strategy has always involved wooing the swing voters who came in various forms. At times they were migrant communities or slum dwellers in cities like Bombay and yet at other times they were communities with lack of access to affirmative action or any kind of government support. All these groups lacked any political influence and hence made very good candidates for political machinations or sometimes plain simple exchange of votes for economic benefits. Unfortunately, Muslim community in various states forms the biggest of such swing voter communities that does not have access to any kind of affirmative action in spite of its socio-economic backwardness. So is Congress really secular- I think not! It is just playing the election game and has done so successfully for many years.

Now given that Congress caters to Muslims for political reasons, highlighting it becomes a really obvious and easiest political platform for an opposing party to contest elections on. That is where BJP’s politics comes into picture. Except briefly, in the post emergency period, Congress never had a real opposition till BJP shot to prominence after Lalkrishna Advani’s rathayatra in 1992. So whether we like it or not, polarization on communal lines seems to be the only way we could produce a viable opposition to Congress in the post independence period. This is as much of a reflection on Congress’s minority pandering politics as much it is on BJP’s divisive communal strategies. In reality, both of them are basically two sides of the same coin- they both engage in vote bank politics, rather than fighting on substantive election platforms.

The communal politics that both Congress and BJP excel in is also an acute reflection on the inability of the Indian polity to produce an alternative election platform that addressed the socioeconomic inequities. Unfortunately, in there also lies the failure of the Indian Left. Assuming that they truly understand and follow the Marxian philosophy, they should have brought the emptiness of Congress’s secular politics to people’s notice. But instead, in deciding to side with Congress to thwart BJP’s growth, the Left has done a big disservice by not allowing genuine societal reform to be an election platform. The philosophical void in the post cold war world has only added to its ineffectiveness. Even though there is lot to be desired of economic systems in delivering prosperity to common man, there does seem to be an overwhelming evidence in support of markets as an effective way of organizing economic activity.  But as a party that stands against capitalism, the Left is not able to provide an alternative election platform that delivered both on economic and social justice.

So that leaves us saddled with the communal parties of India. As a stop-gap arrangement I do hope that at least they are not be able to form a government on their own. Coalitions seems to be the Indian way of providing checks and balances in a political climate devoid of any vision for social and economic progress. However, that cannot really be a long term solution to the problem. We do need substantive political platforms and not just ones based on communal lines. For example, we need political parties debating the best way of achieving socio-economic justice for all or ways to improve the laggard and in some cases nonexistent public education system or whether the current public distribution system is the best way to ensure food security, or how do we ensure equal access to credit or to consistent electric supply or just simply to effective governance. These are the problems that are plaguing the Indian economy and society and holding the progress back or keeping it in the hands of few. Who is going to float a election platform based on these issues? I guess we will have to wait and see!

Marriage Squeeze, Dowry, and Female Infanticide

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by paragwaknis in diverse perspectives, socioeconomic perspectives

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

consumption smoothing in India, dowry inflation, mariage squeeze

Dowry continues to plague a country like India, more so today than before. Looks like the rising dowries and female infanticide feed into each other. For example in one of her papers, Anja Sautmann of Brown University tests the proposition that if women marry younger than men, increased population growth leads to a surplus of women in the marriage market possibly leading to dowry inflation.

There are other features that need to be added to the male female age gap at marriage in order to have such inflation. If we start with a situation of more males than females, population growth and add the practice of females marrying younger than males, then it leads to the problem of ‘marriage squeeze’. It literally means that there are few older men available to marry for women every cohort leading to increase in the dowry. This in turn leads to raising ‘a girl child’ deemed to be costlier than raising a male creating incentives for infanticide. You can find Anja’s interesting analysis of marriage squeeze in India here.

Worse economic conditions in rural parts only add to the problems created by marriage squeeze and dowry inflation.  In a post on my other blog, I describe some research that shows how negative rainfall shocks could lead to a lower probability of a girl child surviving  This happens because of lack of credit and insurance arrangements to tide over negative production and consumption shocks. So in the spirit of dismal science, a female child faces higher mortality risk because the poor rural household is trying to smooth consumption in the absence of any kind of insurance. Though it sounds cynical, it has interesting policy implications- specifically that providing some kind of consumption smoothing mechanism to rural landless households might lead to a better male-female ratio.

Natural economic and social forces might take its course and correct the social imbalances arising out of such socio-economic conditions. More women might prefer to stay unmarried and better economic prospects will only make easier. Rational brides and grooms might soon realize that age gap has to be reduced in order to increase the probability of getting married. But this all might take a lot of time and given the increasingly young population of India, the situation might only get worse if interventions are not deliberate to speed up the necessary process of change.

Habit Persistence, Undernourishment and Gains from Trade

24 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by paragwaknis in diverse perspectives, growth, macroeconomics, socioeconomic perspectives

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

david atkin, food preferences in India, gains from trade, habit persistence

While I was studying in New Delhi, I used to pine for food from my homestate (may be even hometown or just homefood!). That is what migrants usually do and you find great markets in some pockets of bigger cities which cater to migrants preferences for certain kinds of food. This explains why there is a China Town, a Little India or a Little Italy in almost all bigger cities in North America. Hell, there is even little Madras in an area called Rasta Peth in Pune! New Delhi’s Delhi Hat has food stalls from all over India, but I am pretty sure most of the visitors flock to their state’s food stall. Does such kind of food preference have any economic implications at large? The answer is yes according to David Atkin from Yale.

In an innovative paper, he shows that habit persistence in food preferences among people from different regions in India imply much lower gains from trade than otherwise, should we decide to allow a freer movement of commodities between states. It also might illustrate how our somewhat fixed preferences for certain kinds of food may hold us back from getting the necessary nutrition for a healthy life!

On the imminent water crisis in India

15 Tuesday Sep 2009

Posted by paragwaknis in diverse perspectives

≈ Leave a comment

The Economist’s latest issue carries this interesting article on the imminent water crisis in India. It definitely provides some good food for thought and action.

Arthakranti

24 Monday Nov 2008

Posted by paragwaknis in diverse perspectives

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arthakranti

Simplitstic ideas abound and there is no reason why economics should be an exception. Arthakranti (economic revolution) would defintely count as one of such ideas. Here is why I think so.

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 864 other followers

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blogroll

  • Ajay Shah's blog
  • EconAcademics blog aggregator
  • Musings of the Sorts!

Links on Indian Economy

  • An Alternative View of India's Economic Policies
  • Business Cycles in India
  • Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
  • Economic and Political Weekly
  • eSocialSciences
  • FT's India Page
  • Ideas for India
  • IGIDR Finance Group
  • India at LSE
  • India Knowledge@Wharton
  • India Macroeconomics Annual
  • India Policy Forum
  • Indian data at FRED
  • Indian Economc Review
  • Indian Economic & Social History Review
  • LSE: EOPP Indian State Data
  • National Institute of Public Finance and Policy
  • NIPFP Macro-Finance Group
  • Parliament Research Services
  • People's Archive of Rural India
  • Reserve Bank of India
  • The Economist's India Page

Categories

  • affirmative action
  • Agrarian Issues
  • book review
  • business cycles
  • comparative development
  • diverse perspectives
  • economic history
  • economic reforms
  • economics and governance
  • education
  • Financial Crisis
  • growth
  • inflation
  • Infrastructure
  • legal reforms
  • macroeconomics
  • monetary policy
  • policy
  • politcal economy
  • politics
  • public policy
  • RBI
  • regional imbalance
  • socioeconomic perspectives
  • Uncategorized
  • Unemployment
  • voting behavior

Archives

  • June 2017
  • April 2017
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • November 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • July 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • June 2011
  • April 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • October 2010
  • August 2010
  • March 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • February 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • January 2008

Goodreads

Top Clicks

  • None

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy