Articles by Debarshi Das

Given the robust performance of India’s rural organised manufacturing industries in recent times, this study attempts to understand the nature of the technical change underlying it. Felipe and Kumar’s (2010) analytical framework is used to assess the direction of technical change in India’s rural industries in the period 1998–99 to 2016–17. The findings indicate that the direction of technical change was Hicks-neutral from 1998–99 to 2007–08 and Marx-biased from 2008–09 to 2016–17. At the disaggregated level, various industries exhibited diverse directions of technical change. The high growth seen in the economy in the first decade of this century was accompanied by a sustained rise in capital productivity. This ended subsequently, which contributed to a slowing down of the growth rate.

In the recent Lok Sabha elections, Assam’s Hindu vote consolidation shows as the highest in the country. The elections also brought into the limelight the irrelevance of ethnicity-based regional parties and the inability of the opposition to convert the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Bill protests into votes. How and why this happened is examined here.

In an effort to understand the trends of farmer suicides, this article uses data from the National Crime Records Bureau to estimate the suicide mortality rate of farmers and non-farmers for India and its states. The methodology used corrects for an error present in previous studies and alters some commonly held views about the level and trend of farmer suicides in India.

The usual explanations for the divergence between calorie intake and consumption expenditure in India ignore the enormous squeeze on food budgets arising from dispossession (leading to loss of access to common property resources), rising migration (involving a loss of access to non-market food items) and the forced turn to the private sector for social sector services that are more expensive than public sector provision. It is the resulting squeeze on food budgets that has led to calorie intake declining even as per capita consumption expenditure has risen.

Unlike the rest of the subcontinent, Assam retained many elements of its tribal economy well into the 19th century. With the British invasion the picture began to change gradually. Opening up of the Brahmaputra Valley in 1826 brought about two major changes in the mode of surplus extraction. One, colonial capital flowed into tea plantations, along with indentured labourers from mainland India. Though immensely profitable for the planters, this had a limited impact on the larger peasant economy of Assam. A more fundamental second change - spurred by the revenue of the colonial state, infusion of merchant capital and immigration of peasants from East Bengal - started a process of land alienation, commercialisation and indebtedness. In time, the agrarian economy of Assam started to resemble, and become firmly integrated with, the rest of the subcontinent. This essay examines a few aspects of this economic change.