INDIA’S ECONOMY AND SOCIETY: Lateral Explorations

Book Details

• Publisher: Springer

• Editors: Sunil Mani, Chidambaran G. Iyer

• Language: English

• Edition: 2024

• ISBN: 9789819974832

• Pages: 452

• Cover: Hardcover

• Release Date: 2024

About the Book

This book is a comprehensive collection of fifteen insightful contributions that provide a detailed analysis of various aspects of India’s economy and society. The contributions are empirically driven and theoretically informed, tackling issues that are both contemporary and expected to remain relevant in the future. The book is divided into sections covering agriculture, industry, innovation, infrastructure, international trade, health, education, labor, employment, and gender.

The opening section discusses the ongoing crisis in India’s agricultural sector, offering data-backed insights into its origins, responses, and potential future directions. Another section delves into infrastructure financing, critically analyzing new methods of financing large-scale infrastructure projects in India. The book also examines the impacts of innovations and technology on Indian industries, India’s international trade performance, and important social sectors such as health, education, and labor.

A major portion of the book focuses on gender issues, analyzing topics such as sex selection, family-building strategies, and the political economy of gender. With a combination of empirical data and theoretical analysis, this collection is a rich resource for researchers in development studies, policymakers, and corporate watchers.

Contents

1. Introduction

• Sunil Mani

Agriculture
2. The Crisis in Indian Agriculture: Genesis, Response and Future Prospects

• Himanshu

3. Supply Chain Management of Food Grains in India

• Parmod Kumar, Yasmeen

Industry, Innovation, and Technology
4. Regional Concentration of Industries in India: What Does the Recent Data Say and How to Understand the Implications?

• K. V. Ramaswamy

5. Indian Electronics Industry’s FDI-Led GVC Engagement: Theoretical and Policy Insights from a Firm-Level Analysis

• Smitha Francis, Murali Kallummal

6. India’s Performance in Science, Technology and Innovation: The Post 2000 Scenario

• Sunil Mani

Infrastructure
7. Financing Green and Brownfield Private Infrastructure in India

• Sebastian Morris

8. Land for Development: Market Versus Non-market Mechanisms

• Ram Singh

International Trade
9. Looking at India’s Engineering Exports: Stuck in the Middle of the Value Chain

• Parthapratim Pal, S. S. Swathysree

Health and Education
10. Towards Universal Health Coverage? Taking Stock of Two Decades of Health Reforms in India

• T. K. Sundari Ravindran, Neena Elezebeth Philip

11. Changing Landscape of Professional Higher Education in India: What Do We Know and What Do Recent Data Tell Us?

• Pradeep Kumar Choudhury, Amit Kumar

Labour and Employment
12. Has Labour Rigidity Slowed Down Employment Growth in Indian Manufacturing?

• Jayan Jose Thomas

Gender
13. Sex Selection, Family Building Strategies and the Political Economy of Gender

• Mary E. John

14. When South Meets North: Interrogating Agency and Marital Mobility in Kerala-Haryana Marriages

• Paro Mishra

15. Gender and Development: Back to Basics Continued Relevance of Marcal’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner

• Padmini Swaminathan

16. Women, the Planned Economy, and the Anticipation of Utopia

• V. Geetha

About the Author / Editor

Sunil Mani is a Professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and has done postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford. He has taught and conducted research at various prestigious institutions and is a leading expert on development economics, technology, and innovation.

Chidambaran G. Iyer is an Associate Professor at CDS. He completed his Ph.D. at IGIDR, Mumbai, and specializes in Technology and Innovation. He has contributed to numerous papers and journals on topics related to technology in industry and education, specifically focusing on India.