Articles by Deb Kumar Bose

The nuclear establishment has clearly acknowledged that nuclear power is more expensive than thermal power within a 1,000-km radius of the pithead. So why is it looking for a site for a nuclear power plant in West Bengal and eastern India?

International trade in permits for emission of greenhouse gases as formulated in the Kyoto protocol is not to the advantage of developing countries. The pressure likely to be mounted by the developed countries on the developing countries to accept the proposals should be resisted.

ECONOMIC liberalisation and globalisation of the economy now holds the centrestage in economists' attention. To the West, these appear to be the most benign means of relieving their economies of the recession through which they are passing and simultaneously pulling the third world out of the stagnation they are struggling to overcome. For many of the economists in the third world these appear to be the only feasible means open to introduce dynamism in their economies. Such convergence of views between the leading economists of the north and the south has rarely been observed earlier. Perceptive economists have always distinguished their policy prescriptions keeping in view the levels of development of the respective economies, which laid the foundation for the discipline of development economies. The World Bank and the IMF and the donor countries of the western world, however, have a different perception of the problems. They have drawn up a set of guidelines which should apply universally, irrespective of the prevailing structural features and different levels of income and development. The thrust of their policy prescriptions is on reliance on market forces to obtain efficient allocation of resources. The strategy advocated is of privatisation of public sector enterprises, withdrawal of subsidies, liberalisation of credit facilities, withdrawal of all restrictions to private sector investment activities and restriction of government investment to building of infrastructure only.

I was in two minds about responding to my good friend T N Srinivasan (EPW, August 3-10 and September 14, 1991) like the Irishman who asked if it was a private fight or anybody could join in. After Ashok Rudra's paper (EPW, December 21, 1991) I feel more easy about joining. So, following Srinivasan, I prepared a number of statements gathered from his own responses and attempted my version of responses to them.

Planning: The Next Necessary Stage Deb Kumar Bose IN a country like India, with its vast territory, centralised planning has its limitations. A central authority can plan for industries whose technological co-efficients are given and whose products are valued for their national significance. Usually, these are large- scale units. They often depend for their inputs on raw materials transported from distant regions; their products are again distributed over different parts of the country. At the current stage of development in. the country, the large industries can achieve economies of scale only when they can cater to markets spread over large areas in the country, as the size of the markets in the regions neighbouring the industries is not big enough to absorb their products. Planning of investments in such industries has to be undertaken keeping the total economy in view. Concurrent with industrial planning, the central authority has to plan for transport and communication systems to provide the necessary support to the industries.