Indian Political Economy Research Articles

NaMo: transformation from flagship to parent brand

Learning outcomes After working through the case, the students should be able to understand Indian political economy and the brand building process of NaMo; identify the media mix strategies used to build the brand NaMo in India; evaluate possible future growth strategies for brand NaMo; and compare and contrast brand NaMo with business brands. Case overview/synopsis Narendra Modi popularly called as NaMo was the current Prime Minister of India. He belonged to Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) which won India’s general elections in two consecutive terms 2014 and 2019. NaMo was recognised worldwide for his prudence in leading the country to greater heights of achievement. NaMo started his political journey as the worker of BJP at a tender age. His rise in political career was akin to flagship brand overtaking the parent brand. All the steps taken in the past to position himself as a cult brand, will it fortify to NaMo’s victory in 2024 general elections? Business firms may follow NaMo’s strategies. What can the business brands emulate from NaMo to market and position themselves? Can political success be transpired to business success? Complexity academic level This case is designed for use in a graduate-/postgraduate-level marketing course in segments on brand management, brand expansion and the marketing strategies of a market leader. The case can also be used in a brand management course to discuss brand management models (e.g. Keller’s brand resonance pyramid and brand value chain). This case has particular application for classes that focus on brand equity, STP for any brand (segmentation, targeting and positioning) and brand value chain. The case looks in detail at the Indian political market and brand building process of NaMo and examines competitive moves since its inception. This case can be used in brand management, media management courses. The dilemma can be explained as part of a marketing course for postgraduate and executive programmes. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing.

Ancient Indian Political Economy

Publicamos el siguiente documento del Dr. Ratan Basu como una joya digna de preservarse para tener una visión más clara de la historia de la India y cómo fueron desarrollándose las formas sociales, políticas y económicas. Basado en las tradiciones indias antiguas de las fuentes autóctonas de la historia que se encuentran dispersas en los Vedas, Puranas, las epopeyas -Rāmāyana y Mahābhārata-, textos budistas, jainistas y las excavaciones e inscripciones rupestres como fuentes de información, amplía el foco de su investigación ya que en lo que respecta a la historia cronológica -como generalmente entendemos por el término "historia"-, los textos indios antiguos apenas brindan una idea coherente. Es por eso que incluye en este documento autores extranjeros desde Escílax de Carianda pasando por autores griegos, chinos, cristianos hasta principios del siglo XX. Es fundamental esta investigación sistemática y profunda, para comprender los orígenes y las fuentes del primer manuscrito hallado del Pancha Tantra datado en los albores del siglo XI que dan cuenta acabada de la sociedad, la economía y la política de la antigua India para que los eruditos en filosofía tántrica puedan establecer con mayor precisión y rigor científico la categoría “tantrismo” como fuente de los movimientos emancipadores que culminaron con la constitución del 1949 y el artículo 15 motorizados entre otros por B.R. Ambedkar.

The Political Economy of India and Its Strategic Choice under USA–China Power Rivalry and Hegemonic Competition: A Defensive Hedging Policy

This paper explores hedging in a theoretical thinking and applies it to the foreign policy of India in an era of growing USA–China power rivalry. In this regard, hedging is defined as insurance seeking strategy under situations with high uncertainty, where rational actors (both middle and small states) will try to avoid taking sides and to pursue room for autonomy in decision-making. While Washington and Beijing dislike middle and small countries’ hedging, they both overlook that it is the uncertainties stemming from their own behaviors that push middle and small states to hedge. As uncertainties deepen, most countries in Indo-Pacific region will prefer to use hedging policies to reduce their possible losses. For India, unless USA–China rivalry escalates into a direct military conflict, or unless Washington retreats its commitment to regional security in Indo-Pacific, then India will stop hedging and moving to bandwagoning with China; or if Beijing’s actions directly undermine India’s vital interests in security, then India’s hedging will be replaced by balancing against China. In short, hedging is a passive response, not an active choice; India’s hedging strategy is very likely to persist on making ambiguities in the USA–China–India strategic triangle and entanglement.

Neither Corporate, Nor Family: The Indian “Patronal” Farm

After the disappearance of socialist State farms and cooperatives, the diversity of farms in the world seemed to have been reduced to a simple dichotomy: family farms on the one hand and corporate farming on the other. The former category, the dominant model on the planet, includes undertakings where labor is provided by the family, while corporate farming that was long limited to South America, is exclusively based on hired labor. This reading grid, however, turns out to be particularly problematic when looking at the Indian case. Despite their small size, a considerable number of Indian farms make use of a combination of family and hired labor. Based on an analysis of national statistics and fieldwork in 13 small regions, this article characterizes agricultural work and how family and hired labor function together on Indian farms. It shows that alongside family farms where wage labor (either hiring or being hired) serves to ensure full employment for family labor, there is another type of farm, which we define as “patronal farm”, where hiring agricultural laborers increases the income earned by family labor. In our surveys, this is systematically the case for irrigated agriculture, where wages paid to laborers are lower than the agricultural labor productivity per workday. After describing the characteristics of this original model, the article discusses its coherence with India's political economy and questions its sustainability.

New Directions in Indian Political Economy: Reflections on Development, Welfare, and Governance

In this introductory paper of the Special Issue, we explore how India’s political economy is moving in a new direction by focusing on three key political economy issues: development, welfare, and governance. India has undergone a substantial political transformation in recent years, especially since Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi formed the first majoritarian government in three decades in 2014. In this paper, we first demonstrate that this political transformation has a significant impact on the Indian political economy, given that the country is witnessing the rise of a new developmentalism, a new welfarism, and the new modes of governance. After that, we summarize the collections of articles of the Special Issue and situate them in relation to our central theme, new directions in the Indian political economy. This paper, and this Special Issue more broadly, seeks to contribute to the existing literature by introducing new analytical frameworks to understand recent changes in the Indian political economy and providing new empirical evidence on this topic drawing on content analysis and field research.

Book review: Elizabeth Chatterjee and Matthew McCartney, eds. Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India

Elizabeth Chatterjee and Matthew McCartney, eds. Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2019. 299 pages. ₹1,395

Contesting ‘Permit-and-Licence Raj’: Economic Conservatism and the Idea of Democracy in 1950s India*

Abstract Economic conservatism in India traces its roots in the fragmentation of political consensus following the success of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. Framed in the context of the Cold War, long before the 1991 liberalization reforms, this economic conservatism blended anti-communism, free-market advocacy, and the defence of property. This was expressed as the central agenda of the broadly secular Swatantra Party, an effort to consolidate two-party democracy that emerged by the late 1960s as the most serious challenger to the dominant Congress Party. Swatantra brought together diverse progenitors aligned with American development ideas for the Third World. This article reconstructs Indian economic conservatism’s transnational history through an interconnected study of three founding figures of the party and the network of urban associations and periodicals brewing alternative ideas beneath the layers of dominant opinion in which they were embedded. It recasts non-aligned India as a site of ideological contestation affected by the Cold War. Swatantra’s lasting critique of Indian political economy was indicative of a more widely held dissent on India’s development strategy, which has helped to drive the fragmentation of Indian politics. Demands for the party’s revival reveal a desire for a secular alternative to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

What was ‘Indian’ Political Economy? On the separation of the ‘social’, the ‘economic’, and the ‘ethical’ in Indian nationalist thought, 1892–1948

AbstractThis article argues that to gauge the significance of state planning in mid-twentieth century India, it is necessary to study the trajectory of what was called ‘Indian political economy’ during the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. Through a close reading of selected texts, I demonstrate that the transmutation of Indian political economy into an abstract science of economics was a function of Indian nationalists’ inability to hold together the ‘social’, ‘economic’, and ‘ethical’ spheres within a single conceptual framework. The separation of these three spheres was the enabling factor behind the conceptualization of planning as a purely technical process of economic management. Further, the article contends that these conceptual developments cannot be adequately explained with reference to either ‘elite’ interests or the insidious effects of ‘colonial’ discourses. Rather, the narrative demonstrates that economic abstractions can—and must—be grounded in the historical development of capitalist social forms that transformed the internal fabric of Indian society. Drawing on a theory of capitalism as a historically specific form of social mediation, I argue that a Marxian social history of Indian state planning can overcome certain limitations inherent in extant approaches. Finally, the interpretation proposed here opens up the possibility of putting Indian history in conversation with a broader development during the first half of the twentieth century, namely the separation of political economy into economics and sociology.

Marx, Anderson and the Critique of Indian Political Economy and the Caste System

This article will deconstruct the assumptions of the famous British Western Marxist, Anderson (2012) , and his recent critique of the Indian political economy in his controversial The Indian Ideology. Anderson’s work is a blistering critique of the origins of the post-British colonial Indian political-economy, society and culture. The paper examines different critical responses to Anderson’s work by Indian intellectuals in light of our re-interpretation of Marx and Engel’s classic, The German Ideology. Our aim is to critically appropriate the salience of Ambedkar’s ideas today in treating contemporary modalities of social exclusion, the continued practice of caste discrimination and political and constitutional responses to caste inequality. The paper argues for the development of new philosophical tools beyond the twentieth century Western Marxist frameworks, which informs the work of current thinkers like Anderson, to extend in new directions Ambedkar’s initial impulses in the South Asian critique of caste.

Book Review: Sabyasachi Kar and Kunal Sen. 2016. The Political Economy of India’s Growth Episodes

Book Review: Sabyasachi Kar and Kunal Sen. 2016. <i>The Political Economy of India’s Growth Episodes</i>

Silent Voices: A Critical Analysis of Surrogacy’s Legal Journey in India

After two decades of debates, the law governing surrogacy in India was passed during the winter session of the Parliament, and Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2018 came into existence. This new law prohibits commercial surrogacy on grounds of preventing exploitation of surrogate women and to protect the rights of children born out of surrogacy. The Act allows only ‘ethical altruistic’ surrogacy. This commentary criticises the false premise of the legislative understanding of identifying patriarchal family structure as exploitation free and argues that the complete ban of commercial surrogacy is not the answer to the exploitation of women who act as surrogates in the current Indian political economy. The author identifies the process of new surrogacy law as a Hindutva morality phase where the inherent violence and exploitation within the patriarchal family system is hidden by the state acting as a benevolent lord.

Sabysachi Kar and Kunal Sen: The political economy of India’s growth episodes

Sabysachi Kar and Kunal Sen: The political economy of India’s growth episodes

The Political Economy of India's Postplanning Economic Reform: A Critical Review

A quarter of a century has passed since neoliberal economic policies were first adopted in India in 1991, and it is timely to review their outcome. The study is important because there currently seems to be a gap in the literature since most published research has highlighted India's overall GDP growth rates. In the postplanning reform period, India reduced the role of the state and public sector and dismantled controls, while increasing the role of the market and private sector within the economy. As a result, foreign capital investment and foreign exchange reserves improved. The study intends to examine what happened to the industrial sector after neoliberalism was adopted. This article primarily focuses on the discourse about neoliberal economic policy and its effects on Indian economy, especially, in the context of sectoral change. The article centres on a critical review of the available literature and a contribution to the substantive topics indicated in the title. The study contributes to the existing literature by focusing on the industrial and the agricultural sector, which has been neglected by the mainstream economists who have focused largely on growth rates.

What laws determine progress? An Indian contribution to the idea of progress based on Mahadev Govind Ranade's works, 1870–1901

ABSTRACTBy the late nineteenth century, the school of “Indian Political Economy” was founded to understand India's extreme poverty and deindustrialisation. This paper examines how Mahadev Govind Ranade (the school's founder) conceptualised progress by tracing its origins and evaluating how it was formulated to reconcile theory with India's political and socio-economic reality. Ranade identified specific Indian determinants of progress: the centrifugal nature of Indian politics; the dependence of a colonial economy; and its refutable role within the international division of labour theory.

The Political Economy of India’s Economic Changes since the Last Century

The objective of this study is to examine India’s transformation from a colonial to a modern economy on the basis of the macro-economic changes that have occurred over the last century. This is important because it will help us to understand the associated growth performance and its impact on sectoral changes and employment in the wider context of developing economies such as India. The methodology to be followed here is derived from the aims of the study and comparisons of international statistics that provide the means by which to address the research questions and the objectives of this paper. The study found that during the colonial period, the Indian economy became subservient rather than sovereign in terms of policy matters. As a result, economic development was hampered by the removal of “surplus”, along with very high land rents and tribute charges. A densely populated country like India was drawn into the orbit of exploitation in the mid-18th century. Soon after independence in 1947, the Indian government took a number of initiatives to enhance industrial and agricultural development, but the biggest failure was that it did not make any real impression on the country’s huge unemployment problems.

State formation and the political economy of India: The Rudolphian paradigm

ABSTRACTLloyd and Susanne Rudolph were world renowned political scientists and iconic academic couple who devoted six decades of their lives to teaching and researching India and South Asia. The liberal-centrist Rudolphian framework is clearly evident in their numerous works. Their writings show the innovativeness and interpretative richness of methodological pluralism questioning the hegemony of western theories and categories. The Geertzian notion of “culture bound” contextualism was central to their ideas on concept formation and “situated knowledge” paradigm. The phrases like “situated knowledge,” “self as other,” “imperialism of categories,” “modernity of tradition”, “living with difference,” and “post-modern Gandhi” provided newer conceptual tools and vocabularies in their writings. Writing within the broader framework of liberal-centrism, they continued to counter generalizations and deepen our understanding about the puzzle of Indian democracy and nature of the Indian state.

Knowledge/Power in (Post)Colonial India 1870–1920: Indian Political Economy as Counter-Knowledge and the Transformation of the Colonial Order

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries South Asian intellectuals began to develop a specifically Indian political economy – ostensibly grounded in Indigenous interests, values, norms, knowledge systems, and practices – as a response to the failure of the British colonial government to bring ‘moral and material improvement’ to the subcontinent. The article examines the relationship between colonial knowledge/power and the anti-hegemonic project of an Indian political economy, which claims to assert ‘Indigenous’ knowledge as <italic>counter</italic>-knowledge, but continues to share the same discursive space as orthodox political economy. The contribution explores how the alterity and indigeneity of Indian political economy was justfied and discusses the power relations in which the legitimacy of this alterity was enmeshed. Finally, the article analyses the limits set to the emancipatory impetus of such an ‘indigenous, postcolonial critique’.

Assessing Administrative Reform in India

This paper outlines trends in efforts at administrative reform in India. It spans the shift of ideological paradigm of the Indian political economy. While the pre-1991 period was marked by a waning Statism, structural economic reforms marked a shift towards neo-liberal public management in the post 1991 period. This shift made the role of markets more salient as a framework for public services, in contrast to traditional perspectives of public administration. In the last two decades, even though some concern regarding administrative reform was expressed, substantive change took place outside the realm of the state machinery while blurring the borders between private and public institutions in delivering public services. The current political regime has added emphasis in the direction of using the bureaucracy to promote marketization and privatization in the allocation of public resources.

Opening Speech at the Eleventh Forum of the World Association for Political Economy

June 16, 2016Dear Mr. President Jaspal Singh and members of the Indian Political Economy Association, Dear Mr. President Cheng Enfu and members of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE), Distinguished guests,It is a great pleasure, I am sure, for all of us, to gather at this very important country, INDIA, in this very famous Punjabi University at Patiala, for discussing and debating about Globalization, Employment and Agriculture.But first, on behalf of the Indian Political Economy Association and of the WAPE, let me say our sincere welcome to the scholars and experts from more than 13 countries around the world who are going to attend this forum. I would like also to express our deep gratitude to the leaders, scholars, and staff members at the Punjabi University of Patiala, who co-host this forum.After these words, which are not only the words of politeness but the words of friendship, I would like to say some words concerning our coming debate.Be sure I am not going to start a forum inside this forum. I would simply like, after the words of politeness and the words of friendship, to tell you the words of fight. Because, whatever deeply and sincerely peaceful we are, we, intellectuals, scholars, researchers, deans, professors, teachers, students, also have to fight with our appropriate weapons.Let me talk and ask some few questions about the three following points: (1) Agriculture and globalization; (2) Employment, working conditions and globalization; (3) Nation and globalization.1. Agriculture and GlobalizationWe are used to thinking of agriculture as if it were a very special activity compared with industry and services.Of course, there are differences between agriculture and industry. But in reality, agriculture, which is more and more penetrated by industry, is not so different.Through the huge quantities of problems affecting agriculture, we can observe the dual meaning of globalization today.A. The first meaning is that globalization is a capitalist process, more and more critical.On one side, globalization is a capitalist mature process, going on within the frame of what we name Imperialism, since Hobson and Lenin.Agriculture is a part of this process. We can observe three points which make this activity a part of the present global crisis.a. The very large volatility of prices, especially since 2006. As you know, the present crisis started officially in 2007-2008.b. Anticipations relative to the evolution of demand of food products. Food should bring high opportunities of high profits for multinational firms.c. The tendency of reducing State intervention for the solution of agricultural problems, especially in Europe.B. But there is a second meaning of globalization. More and more countries are developing and want to be full members of the world life.Countries which still recently, were industrially underdeveloped are going to be more and more developed and want to be a part of the world.With this meaning, globalization of agriculture means that people want to eat as much as they need and want to eat good stuff.According to this new and revolutionary situation, there is a fight between those who wants to develop free markets for food and those who say that it is necessary to organize production and distribution of food.The first ones say that global markets are going to be the best way for every people to get the necessary food. They marketize food security. In reality they want to develop free markets for high profits.On the contrary, there are countries (United States included, which is apparently surprising) that are wanting to organize and regulate food security on their territory, with the help of their State.How to organize food security at a global scale, in the dual context of globalization? I guess this question will be one of the most important in this forum. …

A Distinctive Indian Political Economy: New Concepts and a Synthesizing Framework

This article discusses Rudolphs’ contribution to the study of India’s political economy. Taking off from the ideas they presented in their work, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, the article argues that certain concepts, such as Bullock capitalists, demand-led growth, involuted pluralism, federal market economy and state as a third actor, continue to be critical in understanding India. Through these conceptual innovations, Rudolph and Rudolph not only analyzed India at a given moment but also shaped the larger agenda of debates over India’s political economy.