Articles by Arjun Sengupta

If India is to cope with the fallout of the global financial meltdown, it needs to think of unusual policies and strategies, including those it had earlier turned its back on. The immediate challenge is to arrest the loss of confidence of private investment and the attendant tightening of liquidity. The only way this can be achieved is by sustaining growth - through a major expansion of public investment in infrastructure and social programmes, financed by a monetised budget deficit. Such a deficit will infuse liquidity and well-chosen public outlays will revive growth. Inflation is a risk in such a strategy, but it is now a question of playing at the margin - the risk we are willing to take on inflation in order to raise domestic expenditure that would lead to faster growth.

Despite the US commitment to successive world declarations that emphasise the fulfilment of basic needs as a human right and the country's long history of fighting poverty with social security measures, a substantial section of the poor continue not to be covered by such schemes and welfare measures. These sections comprise those living in conditions of "extreme poverty", defined as a composite of income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion. This article analyses various conditions of extreme poverty as presently seen in the US and suggests the need for programmes with a specific target focus and time-bound action.

Voices in Development Management Series by Nurul Islam; Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003;
ARJUN SENGUPTA This is an extraordinary book written by one of the finest analytical economists of south Asia, engaged in formulating, implementing and thinking about development policy. Nurul Islam after completing his PhD at Harvard, started his career as professor of economics at Dhaka University, but decided soon in his life to actively engage in policy-making, and policy-reviews, first in Pakistan then in Bangladesh, later in the FAO and afterwards in the Food Policy Research Institute at Washington. He was head of the Pakistan Institute of Development Studies during a period when that institute produced seminal work in development policy, particularly related to effective rates of protection, cost and benefits of investment and agricultural development. After the Bangladesh war he became deputy chairman of Bangladesh Planning Commission, leaving an unmistakable mark of his expertise and understanding of political economy on the Bangladesh planning process. From there he went to serve as deputy director general of FAO and during that period he produced major writings on agricultural policies for development. After retirement from FAO he joined IFPRI and has continued to work there till today on food and agricultural problems. Nurul Islam saw how policies are made from the close proximity of highest authorities. He brought in his analytical writings on development policies, his enormous experience of the political economy of policy-making. And throughout his busy and active role of a policy-maker, Nurul Islam kept producing major research papers on all the subjects he dealt with.

Official development assistance (ODA) is one of the most effective methods of promoting development in low-income countries. However, the idea of development itself has changed significantly over the years, and ODA has increasingly come to incorporate the human rights approach to development. Developing countries can draw up a basic framework incorporating the requirements of growth without violating other rights, and industrial countries can then raise the funds needed for development assistance. The human rights approach has the advantage of the recognition that the rights are universal and the responsibility of fulfilling those rights is also universal.

The finance minister wanted to provide a growth-promoting budget. But budgets cannot promote growth or even arrest the process of slowing down if the fundamentals are not addressed squarely and carefully. These fundamentals belong to the sphere of political economy and are not just economic or financial. They are the long-term factors which determine the outcomes of policies. The budget of a particular year must be seen against these longterm factors to assess its impact or its likelihood of success.