Tulika Books Research Articles

Book Review: Partho Datta, Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta c. 1800–1940

Partho Datta, Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta c. 1800–1940, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2012, pp. 332.

Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta c.1800–c.1940. By Partho Datta. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2012. xv, 332 pp. Rs 650 (cloth).

Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta c.1800–c.1940. By Partho Datta. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2012. xv, 332 pp. Rs 650 (cloth).

Nyla Ali Khan, Islam, Women & Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009, pp. 185, Rs 395

Nyla Ali Khan, <i>Islam, Women &amp; Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan</i>, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009, pp. 185, Rs 395

Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (New Delhi: Tulika Books), 2009, pp. ix + 346, Rs 995

Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, <i>Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema</i> (New Delhi: Tulika Books), 2009, pp. ix + 346, Rs 995

The New Development Economics: After the Washington Consensus

DOI: 10.1355/ae23-3g The New Development Economics: After the Edited by Jomo K. S. and Ben Fine. New Delhi: Tulika Books; London and New York: Zed Books, 2006. Pp. 304. This book is the final part of a trilogy that looks at the emergence and evolution of development economics - a discipline taken by many to constitute a separate branch of economics due to its focus on issues specific to industrializing countries. While the previous volumes look at the forerunners of the discipline on one hand and its pioneers on the other, this book looks at the recovery and current status of development economics following two decades of sustained criticism from mainstream economists. Following its consolidation in the post-World War II years, during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, development economics was strongly attacked by orthodox economists advocating an adherence to market forces - as opposed to state initiative - as the most effective way to foster economic growth. International financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were important players in shaping the debate, seeking to promote market-based solutions for a wide array of development issues - the so-called Washington Consensus. However, over the course of the subsequent decade, mainstream economics became more receptive to heterodox arguments. The unexpectedly negative effects of liberalization and privatization in Russia, the high social cost of market reforms in Latin America, and the East Asian financial crisis highlighted the importance of non-market factors such as the quality of public institutions and historical and cultural factors in shaping market outcomes. Now for many orthodox economists, the market has lost its unassailable superiority vis-a-vis the state - paving the way for a more nuanced treatment of both the market and the state. Leading mainstream economists have begun to incorporate a range of unorthodox elements such as geography, culture, and distance in their modelling in an attempt to understand, and compensate for, a variety of market failures marking the beginning of a new period for development economics. The book, then, brings together a wide collection of essays on many of the discipline's key debates. While not for the faint-hearted, as it is densely written and quite technical, the book contains several excellent essays. The first two chapters are useful as they place debates within their historic context, namely where development economics is perceived to be and how this relates to positions and policies advocated by the IMF, World Bank, and leading U.S.-based universities. The essays by Rose, Harriss, Byres, and Khan are succinct and powerful, and Goodacre's chapter is a muchneeded treatment of the relationship between mainstream economics and its more academic and theoretical sibling, economic geography. In collating these pieces, the book provides a very good snapshot of where the discipline of development economics is at the moment and tries to pinpoint the main controversies it faces. However, while its historical overviews and essays are valuable, as a whole greater than its parts The New Development Economics suffers from several shortcomings. First, the book reads a bit unevenly, ranging from very technical discussions on specific debates in mainstream economics, such as New Growth Theory, to a policy issue such as financial programming, to overviews of entire disciplines, such as Economic Geography. In the process, several vital issues are left out. For example, while readers receive an excellent review of the debates surrounding agricultural development, industrial policy receives a short-shrift in the Developmental State chapter, and the knowledge economy is left untreated. …

The Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development

DOI: 10.1355/ae23-2m The Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development. Edited by Jomo K.S. New Delhi: Tulika Books; London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. Pp. 234. The central preoccupation of modern economic thinking over past two centuries has been question of how best to foster national economic development. Emerging in conjunction with industrial capitalism, economic thinking has given rise - after many permutations - to a dominant orthodoxy popularly known as Washington Consensus, which promotes a Neoliberal economic order based on profit motive, markets, and free trade. The current book is part of a trilogy that aims to trace and reassess of economic ideas, presenting both a critique and an alternative discourse to dominant Neoliberal paradigm. In a crucial contribution to history of economic thought, contributors to this book revisit and reassess important contributions to debates surrounding economic through analysing work of many economists that are not normally considered pioneers of economics. The authors of volume suggest that way forward for is to reject imperialist and nineteenth century English liberal economic orthodoxy and instead build on heterodox economic legacies of various economists examined in book. Indeed, this book (and two others in trilogy) is part of ongoing reassessment of as a discipline to make it less autistic and respond more effectively to needs of developing world. In doing so, essays in this collection provide a critical response to formalistic reductionism in as well as a wealth of alternative views on economic ideas from the pioneering generation of post-war decades, reflecting diversity that still characterised economic thought at that time, before orthodoxy of today was established (pp. vii-viii). This current volume is comprised of sixteen chapters, and in its introduction, Jomo K.S., currently Assistant secretary General for Economic Development in United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), contends that a re-evaluation of history of provides an opportunity to challenge current 'limited and limiting' Neoliberal perspective, whose fundamental categories of analysis are necessarily linked to particular historical circumstances (p. viii). Prabhat Patnaik, in first chapter of book, argues that division between economics and development as disciplines should be rejected, as underdeveloped economies are not merely laggards struggling to catch up with economies. Rather, their state is a result of their interaction with metropolitan capitalism, and not due to their pristine pre-capitalist condition. Prabhat Patnaik argues that developed and underdeveloped countries together constitute totality of capitalism (p. 6) and this totality must be domain of analysis of economic theory, to be treated as a whole. The following chapters reassess contributions of many different economists in their richness and variety to ideas on economic development. While Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Alexander Gerschenkron, Raul Prebisch, Arthur Lewis, and Hans Singer are normally seen as key - albeit heterodox - thinkers in of ideas in economics, other contributors in book also assess works and ideas of economists such as William Petty, Friedrich List, Alexander Hamilton, Alfred Marshall, Michael Kalecki, Nicholas Kandor, and John Maynard Keynes. Given richness of debates that chapters in volume discuss, this review focuses on two chapters as examples: Utsa Patnaik's chapter on David Ricardo and Kari Polanyi Levitt's on his father, Karl Polanyi. Utsa Patnaik, in his contribution to volume, takes David Ricardo to task and argues that his theory of comparative advantage rests on an erroneous assumption. …

Amiya Kumar Bagchi, editor. &lt;italic&gt;Money and Credit in Indian History: From Early Medieval Times&lt;/italic&gt;. New Delhi: Tulika Books. 2002. Pp. xli, 228. Rs. 450.00

Journal Article Amiya Kumar Bagchi, editor. Money and Credit in Indian History: From Early Medieval Times. New Delhi: Tulika Books. 2002. Pp. xli, 228. Rs. 450.00 Get access Bagchi Amiya Kumar, editor. Money and Credit in Indian History: From Early Medieval Times. New Delhi: Tulika Books. 2002. Pp. xli, 228. Rs. 450.00. Dietmar Rothermund Dietmar Rothermund University of Heidelberg Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 109, Issue 1, February 2004, Pages 168–169, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/109.1.168 Published: 01 February 2004