Articles by Ashok Rudra

Results of a Survey in West Bengal, 1981-82 Pranab Bardhan Ashok Rudra The boundaries of the village labour market in an agrarian economy are often rather narrowly delimited and heavily dependent on social and territorial affinities. Even where there is a fairly rigorous market for agricultural labour, particularly for seasonal operations, the operation of this market sometimes does not extend very strongly beyond the cor\fines of the village or beyond some local neighbourhoods. This paper reports the results of a survey of five clusters of neighbouring villages carried out in West Bengal in 1981-82. The authors find some significant, though varying, evidence of territorial segmentation of the rural labour market and of limited labour mobility even within adjacent territories.

Agrarian Policies of Left Front Government in West Bengal Ashok Rudra BIPLAB DASGUPTA, in a series of three extremely interesting articles (EPW, Reviews of Agriculture, March, June and September, 1984), has covered a huge ground in Indian agricultural economics, focusing attention on agricultural labourers and tenancy relations in their proper historical perspectives. While the historical part of the papers is highly informative and valuable, it is unfortunate that he has messed up matters by trying to take up in the same papers a defence of the agrarian policies of the Left Front Government of West Bengal of which he is an important office-holder and a leading spokesman. Historical narration and their analytical treatment go ill with the polemical style of rebutting all criticisms that might have been made of the West Bengal government's policies. It is in this latter part of his papers that he has made plentiful references to me, many of them critical. Though, curiously, he has made more references to me for presenting evidence in terms of facts and figures for making positive propositions, or refuting views held by some others, I shall try in the following to defend positions held by me against some of his criticisms.

Planning in India: An Evaluation in Terms of Its Models Ashok Rudra The launching of the Seventh Five-Year Plan provides an appropriate occasion to look back at the experience of planning in India. Assuming that there wilt be no difference of opinion that it has been a total disaster, the author proposes to took at the philosophy that guided and the methodology that articulated that planning. This he proposes to do by an examination of the plan models that have been used in our planning.

Paddy Sales Ashok Rudra Standard economic theory treats the Economic Man as a maximising agent. The universal assumption

Crop Selection Ashok Rudra Standard economic theory treats the Economic Man as a maximising agent. The universal assumption is that a producer or seller is a maximiser of short-run profit and this is common to neo-classical and Marxian economics. A close look at the decisions taken by farmers in India, however, suggests that they are guided by considerations other than maximisation of short-run profit.