Papers by Anthony D'Costa
Market expansion in India has been undoubtedly solid as evidenced by the growth of the vehicle in... more Market expansion in India has been undoubtedly solid as evidenced by the growth of the vehicle industry. Not only has demand increased to unprecedented levels but there has been considerable diversity in the composition of demand. From the supply side firms have kept up with market growth with new products — parts and components — and adopted institutional arrangements, which have contributed immensely to production flexibility. The Indian state contributed to the class of consumers through state-led industrialization in general. But most importantly it transformed itself from a passive regulator to an active participant in the industry. It formed the key joint-venture in the Indian auto industry with majority equity, regulated industry participants, and ultimately facilitated the internationalization of the industry through economic liberalization, deregulation, and privatization.
University Microfilms International eBooks, 1989
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2005
In this chapter the process of embourgeoisment in India and its contribution to market developmen... more In this chapter the process of embourgeoisment in India and its contribution to market development is presented. While an incipient capitalist class had already emerged under the British, in post-independent India the state significantly contributed to its further development. The state itself pursued a national capitalist project, which was cloaked under a social-democratic form and circumscribed by the vestiges of non-capitalist social relations. Adhering to the then popular tenets of Keynesianism and structuralism, the government of India attempted to transform the Indian economy through public investments as well as insulating the domestic economy from the forces of global capitalism.
The changing regime of capital accumulation at the national level has fostered significant transf... more The changing regime of capital accumulation at the national level has fostered significant transformation of the auto industry. In a liberalizing environment embourgeoisment has also led to increased production and consumption of consumer durables. These developments suggest uneven development, not only in terms of worsening pre-existing economic and social inequality (a theme taken up in the next chapter) but also regional differentiation. The assumption is that not all social groups or geographic regions are likely to experience similar rates of growth. Rather, in an expansionary environment the benefits of growth also accrue differentially among different groups. Not all firms are capable of making a successful transition to the new imperatives of capital accumulation.1 Older firms located in older industrial regions are likely to find it more difficult to adjust to the new mode of capitalist regulation involving not only less state protection but also the adoption of flexible systems of production. Moreover, institutional legacies, firm strategy, local industrial relations, and, in the case of multicultural, federated system in India, the particular role of provincial governments will have a cumulative bearing on industrial transformation. The long march to capitalism entails industrial restructuring, whereby lagging firms must either adjust to a new competitive environment or else become moribund. There must be also an accompanying ideological shift, whereby the regime is anticipated to change to accommodate the imperatives of a deregulated capitalist environment. In the event of failure to change, regional decline becomes imminent.
By pursuing the national capitalist project the Indian state contributed to embourgeoisment and t... more By pursuing the national capitalist project the Indian state contributed to embourgeoisment and the material basis for market demand. Regulation of the economy — through public investments, five year plans, subsidies, and infant industry protection promoted home-grown capitalism. The results were by no means a runaway success and by some accounts disastrous (Bhagwati 1993). Indian demand was constrained by low incomes, endemic poverty, and persistent inequality. By the late 1970s the Indian economy as a whole exhibited signs of exhaustion. Declining public investments and internal political turmoil fundamentally challenged the state-led national capitalist project (Bardhan 1984). Excessive regulation, prompted by political expediencies, led to bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, criminalization of politics, and corporate technological lethargy (see Ahluwalia 1989). Inter-party rivalry, militant trade unionism, the centralization of power by the ruling party, and radical insurrectionary movements in various parts of the country severely undermined political stability. Exogenous shocks, such as the tripling of world oil prices and the associated worsening balance of payments (BOP) position, exposed the overall vulnerability of the Indian economy.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 28, 2012
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Mar 17, 2011
The aim of the paper is to apply a political economy framework both to explain the rise of the in... more The aim of the paper is to apply a political economy framework both to explain the rise of the information technology (IT) industry and to analyse the spatial and developmental consequences of this growth, especially the distributive dimension on the wider society. The purpose is also to reveal the contradictions associated with the industry, question the crude optimism surrounding the IT sector's transformative capabilities, and by extension, assess the 'model' of development implicit with its growth trajectory. As there is class bias in the workings of the sector, which excludes large swathes of the population and reproduces educational inequality, policy implications are briefly discussed. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited eBooks, Jan 12, 2023
Journal of Contemporary Asia, Jun 21, 2022
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2009
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2009
At the dawn of the twenty-first century India's traditional image as an impoverished nation ... more At the dawn of the twenty-first century India's traditional image as an impoverished nation is undergoing considerable change. While India continues to suffer from rampant poverty, persistent inequalities and internal political uncertainties, there has been a quiet ...
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2004
, and is also involved with the creation of a research centre there for 'High-Tech, Biotechnology... more , and is also involved with the creation of a research centre there for 'High-Tech, Biotechnology and Globalization Studies'.
The Journal of Asian Studies, May 1, 2005
The 2004 general elections in India produced some dramatic outcomes. The incumbent government, le... more The 2004 general elections in India produced some dramatic outcomes. The incumbent government, led by the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was unexpectedly thrown out and the Congress Party was returned to power. In forming a government the mildly left-of-center Congress party secured the alliance of India’s communist parties. Neither defeating the incumbent party nor forming unusual political alliances are unfamiliar in India’s anti-incumbent voting behavior and coalition politics. What was jolting, however, was that the BJP could not cash in on the goodwill it had generated during its five-year tenure marked by a high economic growth rate, the rapidly emerging information technology sector, and India’s larger presence in the global economy. The class revolt indicates that a large segment of Indian society has not benefited from economic growth and India’s integration with the global economy. At the same time, India’s long-established Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), which won its sixth consecutive victory in the state of West Bengal, has been enthusiastically embracing globalization and its attendant capitalist imperatives such as multinational investments, shopping malls, and middle class consumerism. Recently the Chief Minister of West Bengal, who is also a senior politburo member of the CPM, argued that “globalization is a must” and proceeded to meet with several multinational business leaders (Rohde 2004).
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2015
Dynamics of Asian development, 2016
India's economic turnaround since the 1980s and since 1991 has been widely credited as a result o... more India's economic turnaround since the 1980s and since 1991 has been widely credited as a result of economic reforms. Gradual and systematic deregulation at home and increased international integration promises even better economic performance. This is only partly true since a good part of India is untouched by economic reforms in any meaningful way, even if official reports of declining poverty are to be believed. The question this paper poses is why despite envious economic growth rates, India's development seems elusive. This is a complex issue and could be addressed variously but they are all likely to resort to 'nation-centric' explanations. I take an alternative perspective (still work in progress) to position India in the wider capitalist dynamic of the late twentieth century articulating the national with the global. Late capitalism in India, and for that matter many other developing countries, has meant new technologies, mature capitalists, and a relatively well-developed state. All three cumulatively stand for economic growth, industrialization, urbanization, and some politically negotiated redistribution. However, I will argue that the working of compressed capitalism, that is, primitive accumulation, which is historically complete elsewhere, is an ongoing feature in India and coexists with advanced sectors on a high road to accumulation. However, the dispossession and displacement of people and the persistence of petty commodity production in the context of technology-led, enclave-based economic production add to the development conundrum. The resulting inequality (and polarization) in India in an expanding economy is thus not an anomaly but a reflection of systemic dynamics of contemporary.
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Papers by Anthony D'Costa
industry in the last seven years. The project originated with a suggestion
made by R. Narasimhan, one of the pioneers of computer science in India.
He was a senior member of the team which designed and built TIFRAC, the
first electronic digital computer that was designed, built and operated in
India (at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, in the 1950s).
E. Sridharan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the
Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), expanded the idea and developed it into
a fully-fledged proposal. The Institute, set up in New Delhi in 1997, is an
affiliate of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The Center, established in 1992, was created
to undertake studies of contemporary India. Sridharan raised funds from
seven sources and identified participant scholars from several institutions in
India, the United States, Canada and Israel. Anthony P. D’Costa, one of the
invited participants, later came on board as a co-editor of the volume and
played an active editorial role from the end of 2000 onwards.
The project was driven by the need to understand the factors that contributed to or hindered innovation in the Indian IT industry, especially the
software sector. The Indian software industry was then one of the few internationally competitive and large export-oriented industries in India, and
also classified as a high-technology industry. It was observed that the globally competitive Indian software industry, though expanding throughout
the decade at an annual compound rate of 40–50 per cent, was overwhelmingly based on the export of personnel for low value-added, on-site work. It was evident that this business model of ‘bodyshopping’ would not be sustainable in the long run or would consign the Indian industry to low valueadded activities. Indian IT would have to diversify its markets by reducing its dependence on the US market and go beyond ‘bodyshopping’ to innovate new products and services. Strategies would have to include exploiting new IT areas such as the Internet, creating niche products for both the domestic and world markets, integrating software and hardware in embedded IT products, and spinning off technologies developed for the
defence/space complex into commercially successful products. A comprehensive research project on innovation in the Indian IT industry, it was
believed, would be a useful first step towards this.