Nepal has a large and persistently growing trade deficit with India and an overall negative trade balance. Its economy is growing slowly relative to India’s, while the exchange rate is pegged with India at a parity that is believed to be overvalued. In this article, possible misalignment...

Agriculture has been the target of modernization for a long time. The earlier interventions of deploying ‘green revolution’ technologies were a statist project and aimed at increasing productivity. The focus of public policy has shifted from increasing productivity to finding and...

The non-governmental development organization (NGO) sector in India has seen unprecedented growth in the recent past. A whole range of NGOs are not just ‘demanding’ development from the state but also ‘delivering’ development in the Indian countryside. While popular...

Most firms that process rubber in Sri Lanka do not comply with national water pollution control standards. The present command and control system fails in the face of a slow enforcement process, and also because of the nature of ‘older’ production units, many of which date back to...

Professors Bhagwati and Panagariya in their recent book have sought to debunk what they perceive to be common mistaken perceptions about the Indian economic performance. They argue reforms centering on a more open economy of early 1990s is the primary spurt behind economic growth. India’s...

This article contributes to further our understanding of factors shaping collective action in urban India. Based primarily on fieldwork conducted in slums and middle-class neighbourhoods in Bangalore, the article strengthens the case against a dualistic reading of collective action by...

The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of how the Nepalese Maoist movement intersects with non-Maoist trade unions. I challenge dominant views of an enduring antagonism between the Nepalese Maoist movement and non-Maoist trade unions. Instead, I contend that for an urban...

India’s strategy towards the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka shifted over the course of the conflict from a strategy of diffusion to a strategy of mediation and then finally to a strategy of suppression—each strategy marking a distinct phase in the conflict. While India’s...

This article tests whether manufacturing has acted as an ‘engine of growth’ for the Indian states in the post-1990s.Our methodology involves regressing the state domestic product (SDP) growth rates on growth rates of manufacturing. If the coefficient of manufacturing growth is...

This article examines a significant shift that is taking place in the way social and economic development is funded and practised. The article acknowledges the emphasis within India on nurturing enterprise and entrepreneurship which marks a move away from the country as a recipient of direct...