Articles by Ashok Rudra

Using a sample of private sector employees in Calcutta the authors analyse the nature and extent of differences in income, service conditions and levels of living across occupational groups. This is the fourth in a series of articles aimed at analysing interand intra-occupational differences in income and standard of living.

THIS has reference to the discussion piece of Ramaswamy R Iyer (March 11) on my article The Emergence of the Intelligentsia as a Ruling Class in India' (January 21). It is understandable that one should be somewhat confused abqut the identity of the class I have called the Intelligentsia, its lines of demarcation from other classes and the common properties shared by different members of the class, as I have myself taken different stands on this point in my notes and in the body of the article (and all the more so as by some clumsy handling there has been some mess created between notes 6 and 7). Classes are like elephants which are easy to identify but difficult to define. I, stand by my identification of the class in terms of the sections of the population covered by it, as well as the social characteristics described by me. However, at the time I wrote the paper I was dissatisfied myself about how to give a theoretical definition to the class. As such, my treatment of this most important question in the body of the text reads as if the demarcation depends on the distinction between manual and non- manual labour. I agree with everything Iyer writes about this being not at all satisfactory. On the other hand, I think I gave a perfectly satisfactory solution to the problem in note 6, where I define the class as follows: "Members of this class sell their services at a price higher than the value produced by them. It may be noticed that I am making use of Marx's distinction between value produced by a labourer and the value of the labour power of that labourer. Workers in the Marxian scheme sell their labour power at a price lower than the value of what they produce. Members of the intelligentsia do the opposite

Income and Level of Living Manabendu Chattopadhyay Robin Mukherjee Ashok Rudra There is an extremely weak correlation between level of income and standard of living for central government employees. Expenditures on different items in some cases do not rise at all with rise in income. In other cases it does rise but at a much lower rate than income. This insensitivity suggests a social homogeneity giving rise to common values, aspirations and life styles. The hypothesis suggested is that there is possibly some point in the income range above which people belonging to the middle class reveal extremely similar consumption patterns.

The Possibility of Politics: A Study in the Political Economy of the Welfare State by Stein Ringen; Clarendon Press, Oxford; pp xi + 303,

Emergence of the Intelligentsia as a Ruling Class in India Ashok Rudra There is general agreement among Marxian analysts of Indian polity that it has two ruling classes: one with base in agriculture and the other with base in large industry. This paper argues that while this was true during the first two decades, there has been an important change in this regard