Articles by Kalpana Bardhan

Women's Work, Welfare and Status Forces of Tradition and Change in India Kalpana Bardhan The first three Sections of this paper are about how work is structured in relation to poverty and hierarchy: the differentials to quantity arid quality of work participation; the inequalities in work options, in remuneration, in access id the means and opportunities for better work; and in the organised bargaining capacity to change the terms of existing employment. The central question is how patriarchy combines with the caste-and-class hierarchy to sustain the segmentation of the labour market and the inequities in access to the means and resources for work.

its demographic compulsions and democratic commitment can ill afford to turn away from social justice and equality and thrust for freedom. And for that very reason it is not possible on the one hand to pursue a policy of "let the hounds run", under which the private enterprise can dictate the course of economic development, and on the other hand, to permit the existing state apparatus, with its insensitive bureaucracy and power and patronage-prone politicians, to have a stranglehold over the economic system. Social justice can be guaranteed when State intervention is on a scale which is small enough to checkmate the concentration of power; economic efficiency, freedom and growth can be ensured if the units in the economy, while animated by social conscience, can compete with each other. It is just this balance which is likely to be attained if India could have numerous small states with better communication with the people in each state. If it is a communist or a socialist ideology it will have its full sway in a smaller unit; if it is the free enterprise approach, it may be experimented within a small area. If any of the alternative succeeds, it would then affect other states, without the failure of any one of them doing irreparable and irreversible damage. Social purposiveness can. then be dovetailed with the imperatives of economic efficiency and democratic commitment.

Any increase in irrigation and cropping intensity is likely to raise agricultural wages more in an area with a smaller proportion of the rural labour force dependent on wage employment and/or with higher non-agricultural wage rates than in an area where vast masses of tiny peasants and the landless flood the labour market and the non-agricultural sector is too small to absorb much of it. This may not happen if the farmers in the former area resort to using a lot of labour-saving machinery, or the labourers in the latter organise themselves for group bargaining. If the former is characterised by substantial and widespread underemployment it would dampen or block entirely the rise in the wage rate. Much of the data studied here indicate that irrigation or multiple cropping does generate a positive response not only in the wage income but also in the daily wage rate for agricultural labourers.

Kalpana Bardhan Do the large imports of foodgrains which we have had to make depress production of food- grains in the country?
They need not. First, the imports are in response to shortages and rise in prices; they are determined by, and do not determine, domestic foodgrain prices. Second, the gap between internal production and demand is likely to persist for some time; so imported foodgrains can be absorbed without affecting production.