Articles by Rajaram Dasgupta

Two reports, one exclusively on financial inclusion, under the chairmanship of C Rangarajan and another under the chairmanship of Raghuram G Rajan, were submitted to the government in 2008. Whereas both the reports agree on the diagnosis of exclusion, they differ on the prescription for inclusion. A discussion of the differences, similarities and additional prescriptions.

One of the reasons for the lacklustre performance of both public and private sector banks in extending credit to weaker sections is their high level of NPAs. While credit under the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna scheme across states has been extended in proportion to the poor in the population, this is not so in the case of self help group (SHG) credit that has been growing at the rate of 120 per cent per annum. However, growth in SHG credit has been uneven. The southern states are seen as SHG-developed states while Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are among those characterised as SHG-backward. But besides the SHG model in extending credit to weaker sections, other different models exist for extending microcredit to the poor and weaker sections.

While the fiscal measures recommended in the Dunkel Draft seem to give Indian agriculture a boost in the international market by forcing the developed countries to reduce the subsidy level, the proposals on intellectual property rights wilt make production costlier because of royalty payment to multinationals for genetically engineered seeds and bio-substitutes, thus taking away the advantage given by fiscal measures.

September 7, 1985 ed the debt cancelling proposals of Castro. Latin American diplomats told the New York Times reporter in Havana that Castro "is improving our negotiating position with the banks. He is cornering them with the idea that we are not going to pay. We are going to pay; we should pay. But we can only pay if the rules of the game are changed. We need better conditions. Castro is pressuring for all of us. He is saying things we do not dare say. Perhaps he is helping us find an intermediate position, and we appreciate that." In the process, Castro is being heard all over Latin America and has begun to isolate the US from its Latin neighbours REVIEW IT was a Western myth that the nutrition problem in India was of protein deficiency. This was perhaps because of insignificant presence of animal food either because of poverty or because of taboo in Indian diets. Credit goes to P V Sukhatme for venturing to discard this Western idea. He studied Indian diets and convincingly concluded that calorie deficiency was of much greater concern for Indians.1 Same facts were supported by Gopalan2 for India, and Ghassemi3 for Iran. Then came in 1971 a pioneering work for India by Dandekar and Rath4 linking poverty line with minimum requirement of calories. Calorie became the catchword, and a large volume of literature was written to show increasing or decreasing trend of poverty. Also, this became an important tool for the planning exercise. Importance of other nutrients was ignored, and requirements of calorie were not scientifically derived. It was again Sukhatme who first started an attack on this unscientific use in his Lal Bahadur memorial lecture in 1977.5 He accused others of overestimating the problem of undernutrition. He has later written quite a few articles to prove his case.6 Many others have shared his view7 and many have not.

Rajaram Dasgupta Until the mid-sixties the nutrition problem was looked upon as one of protein deficiency, mainly the deficiency of quality and animal foods' This Western myth was exploded subsequently by scholars who showed with a wealth of data that calorie deficiency was of much greater concern. In almost all classes, there was no group that was protein deficient but not calorie deficient.