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India's Political Economy 1947-2004: The Gradual Revolution
This is a revised and updated edition of the classic on India's post-Independence political economy published in the early 1980s. It addresses the fundamental paradox of India's political how do we achieve the goals of increased economic growth and reduced economic and social
disparities without causing social turmoil and dissent. This revised edition includes substantial new chapters carrying forward the analyses to the second generation in the 21st century.
disparities without causing social turmoil and dissent. This revised edition includes substantial new chapters carrying forward the analyses to the second generation in the 21st century.
839 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2005
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April 26, 2016
Frankel has written a fairly decent liberal/institutionalist account of Indian political economy in the years from independence. This took be more than a month to grind through, daunted especially by the sheer mass of information presented in the early and middle chapters. The later chapters added to the second edition of 2006 went for a more thematic approach concerned with the macroeconomic reforms, political fragmentation, and growth of Hindutva that I could not help feeling would have been a more useful approach for the whole book.
Like other works of a similar intellectual aspiration, I found a lot of valuable information on economic policy, legal process and political debate within the state and major parties without, however, much to ground it in terms of the overall changes in India's agrarian and industrial capitalist development. Frankel's conclusion that "India cannot achieve its potential of building either a developed economy or a composite nationhood as the basis of a powerful state without an inclusive secular government that works for the poor and gives them a stake in the performance of a stable coalition" (p. 786) remains, in the end, unmoored without a structural analysis of the major barriers to egalitarian economic development lying in the maintenance of the power of landed castes at the local and state levels, who have been the major beneficiaries of economic development.
In the end, especially since the resurgence of the Sangh combine with the election of Modi as PM, who by the time of the publishing of the second edition of this book was only the upstart CM of Gujarat seen as responsible for the horrific pogrom of 2002, it seems deeply unsatisfying to endorse Frankel's conclusion that a resurgence of the Nehruvian development agenda under Congress leadership is either possible or would be able to turn back threats to Indian democracy and minorities as well as maintain the "human face" of neoliberal capitalist development that Manmohan Singh promised when he assumed office over a decade ago.
Valuable but deeply compromised, mainly for those trying to become specialists.
Like other works of a similar intellectual aspiration, I found a lot of valuable information on economic policy, legal process and political debate within the state and major parties without, however, much to ground it in terms of the overall changes in India's agrarian and industrial capitalist development. Frankel's conclusion that "India cannot achieve its potential of building either a developed economy or a composite nationhood as the basis of a powerful state without an inclusive secular government that works for the poor and gives them a stake in the performance of a stable coalition" (p. 786) remains, in the end, unmoored without a structural analysis of the major barriers to egalitarian economic development lying in the maintenance of the power of landed castes at the local and state levels, who have been the major beneficiaries of economic development.
In the end, especially since the resurgence of the Sangh combine with the election of Modi as PM, who by the time of the publishing of the second edition of this book was only the upstart CM of Gujarat seen as responsible for the horrific pogrom of 2002, it seems deeply unsatisfying to endorse Frankel's conclusion that a resurgence of the Nehruvian development agenda under Congress leadership is either possible or would be able to turn back threats to Indian democracy and minorities as well as maintain the "human face" of neoliberal capitalist development that Manmohan Singh promised when he assumed office over a decade ago.
Valuable but deeply compromised, mainly for those trying to become specialists.
Displaying 1 of 1 review