Development and Sustainability ― India in a Global Perspective

Following the reforms undertaken in the last two decades, India’s economic landscape has been radically transformed. This book examines the new economic map, which is shown to be shaped by two intertwined currents: globalization and sustainability. Weaving extensively through these currents and the canvas of development in the Indian economy they open up, this work seeks to introduce new methodologies, a corpus of concepts and modes of analysis to make sense of the emerging order of things. What transpires in the course of the investigation is a critical reflection of the present in which not only the new institutions, policies and practices are analyzed, but their limitations, fragility and at times myopic approaches are brought to light. By highlighting the rough edges created by the new conditions, this book is firmly engaged with the frontier of the Indian economy and ends up challenging many well-known conjectures and assumptions. In doing so, it strives to shift the Indian economy to a new terrain, thereby fundamentally re-locating and re-orienting the discourse of that economy as a unique object of analysis.

Sarmila Banerjee is currently the Rajiv Gandhi Chair Professor of Eco-systems and Sustainable Development at the University of Calcutta. She has served in the Faculty of Economics at the same institution for more than three decades. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA and carried out her post-doctoral research on Environmental Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Her teaching interest focuses on Econometrics and Environmental Economics; her research interest is primarily in Quantitative Aspects of Sustainable Development. She is the coordinator of the UGC-SAP program in her Department and Convener of the University of Calcutta’s Ph.D. Program in Economics. She is connected with different academic institutions and research networks in India and abroad through her active involvement in capacity building and curriculum development. Anjan Chakrabarti received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Riverside and is currently a Professor of Economics at the University of Calcutta. He is the Chairperson of the Undergraduate Board of Studies in Economics and a Committee Member of the University of Calcutta’s Ph. D. Program in Economics. His teaching interest is in Political Economics, History of Economic Ideas and Macroeconomics, while his research interest revolves around Political Economy, Development Economics, Indian Economics and Political Philosophy. He has published five books and over thirty academic articles to date. His published books include ‘Transition and Development in India’ and ‘Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to World of the Third,’ both from Routledge, and ‘World of the Third and Global Capitalism” from Worldview Press. He is the recipient of Dr. V.K.R.V. Rao Prize in Social Science Research in Economics for the year 2008.