Imperial Modernity: History and global inequity in rising Asia

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 581-601

  Ludden, David ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABSORPTION; CAPITALISM; ECONOMIC GROWTH; ECONOMIC POLICY; ECONOMIC REFORM; GLOBALIZATION; NEOLIBERALISM; TERRITORIALITY;

CHINA; INDIA;

EID: 84861168506     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2012.657419     Document Type: Article

References (103)

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8. For a compelling account of this intersection as it appears to a perceptive activist author in India, see A Roy, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, Boston, MA: South End Press, 2004.
9. Focusing on these dynamics in India was the great initial contribution of Subaltern Studies, which, interestingly, began its career at the onset of contemporary trends in globalisation and inequality, and then diverted attention from those trends with its 'cultural turn' in the mid-1980s.
10. See D Ludden, Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical Histories, Contested Meanings, and the Globalisation of South Asia, New Delhi/London: Permanent Black/Anthem Press, 2002.
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47. For a recent account of the famine's imperial dimensions, see M Mukerjee, Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II, New York: Basic Books, 2010.
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52. and Ludden, 'A useable past for a post-national present: governance and development in South Asia', Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 50(1-2), 2006, pp 259-292.
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55. Clark, 'The great divergence', p 28, Figure 2.
56. More or less equal?', special report on global economic inequality, The Economist, 11 March 2004, at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2498851.
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58. Y Zheng, Globalization and State Transformation in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2004.
59. D Ludden (ed), Making India Hindu: Community, Conflict, and the Politics of Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
60. For a recent example, see The Men Who Would Conquer China, a First Run Icarus film about how a US-Hong Kong business partnership bought state-owned Chinese companies.
61. See Ludden, 'Development regimes in South Asia'
62. and Ludden, 'A useable past for a post-national present'.
63. For Pakistan, see M Sokefeld, 'From colonialism to postcolonialism: changing modes of domination in the northern areas of Pakistan', Journal of Asian Studies, 64(4), 2005 pp 939-974.
64. T Besley & R Burgess, 'Land reform, poverty reduction, and growth: evidence from India', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(2), 2002, pp 389-430.
65. For a descriptive account of policy trends, see FR Frankel, India's Political Economy, 1947-2004: The Gradual Revolution, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
66. A Banerjee & L Iyer, 'History, institutions and economic performance: the legacy of colonial land tenure systems in India', October 2004, at http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=517. I thank Yuthika Sharma for this reference.
67. See Kohli, Poverty amid Plenty in the New India.
68. For concurrent trends in cultural politics, see Ludden, Making India Hindu.
69. A Kishore, 'Towards an Indian approach', in D Gruen & T O'Brien, Globalisation, Living Standards, and Inequality: Recent Progress and Continuing Challenges, Sydney, Australia: Reserve Bank of Australia, 2002, p 126, at http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/conf/2002/kishore.pdf, accessed 10December 2009.
70. BB Bhattacharya & S Sakthivel, 'Regional growth and disparity in India: comparison of pre- and postreform decades', Economic and Political Weekly, 6 March 2004, pp 1071-1077.
71. See also NJ Kurian, 'Widening regional disparities in India: some indicators', Economic and Political Weekly, 12-18 February 2000, pp 538-550.
72. Milanovic, Half a World
73. and Milanovic, 'Social justice and stalled development: caste empowerment and the breakdown of governance in Bihar', Philadelphia, PA: Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, 2006.
74. See A Deaton & J Dreze, Poverty and Inequality in India: A Reexamination, Working Paper No 107, Centre for Development Economics, New Delhi, 2002
75. J Ghosh, 'Income inequality in India', at http://pd.cpim.org/2004/0215/02152004_eco.htm
76. and A Deaton & V Kozel (eds), The Great Indian Poverty Debate, Delhi: Macmillan, 2005.
77. G Datt & M Ravallion, 'Is India's economic growth leaving the poor behind?', Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(3), 2002, pp 103-106 state that cross-country regressions support the idea that several factors explain why growth reduces poverty in some places, for some people, more than others: 'credit market imperfections and greater initial inequality of assets (particularly of land)', 'low educational attainment', urban-rural sector divisions in 'dualistic' labour markets
78. They reiterate their earlier conclusion, from M Ravallion & G Datt, 'Why has economic growth been more pro-poor in some states of India than others?', World Bank Economic Review, 8(1), 2002, pp 1-25, that some conditions in Indian states in 1960-eg average farm yield, ratio of urban to rural average consumption, proportion of the state's landless population, literacy rate, and mortality rate-'are significant predictors of the elasticity of poverty with respect to growth'.
79. They find that poor initial conditions in rural development 'inhibited the prospects of the poor participating in growth of the nonagricultural sector' (p 104). They particularly emphasise 'the role played by initial literacy', noting 'India's relatively poor performance in expanding literacy' and the fact that Kerala's high literacy rate largely explains its success in poverty reduction.
80. J Assayag, The Making of Democratic Inequality: Caste, Class, Lobbies and Politics in Contemporary India, 1880-1995, Pondichery: Institut Français de Pondichery, 1995.
81. For China, a large proportion of inter-regional inequality can be explained by urban-rural disparities. AS Bhalla, S Yao & Z Zhang, 'Causes of inequalities in China', Journal of International Development, 15, 2003, pp 133-152
82. and R Kanbur & X Zhang, 'Fifty years of regional inequality in China: a journey through central planning, reform, and openness', cited in Milanovic, Half a World.
83. Deaton & Dreze, Poverty and Inequality in India
84. Datt & Ravallion, 'Is India's economic growth leaving the poor behind?', note that the two richest states in the 1980s (Punjab and Haryana) hit a lowgrowth trend in the 1990s but that, leaving these two states out, 'there is a strong positive relationship between level of GDP in the mid-1980s and growth rate in the 1990s; that is, there is divergence between per capita GDP among all but the richest states in India' (p 97).
85. D Ludden (ed), Agricultural Production and South Asian History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
86. Datt & Ravallion, 'Is India's growth leaving the poor behind?', pp 97-98.
87. Being out of the globalisation loop may not be so bad, as incorporation is exceptionally destructive for livelihoods and environments on these far peripheries and frontiers of imperial nations based in the lowlands. For a wider view of economies on the margins, see van Schendel & Abraham, Illicit Flows and Criminal Things.
88. MG de la Rocha & A Grinspun, 'Private adjustments: households, crisis, and work', in UNDP, Choices for the Poor, ch 3.
89. Disparities in inequality', at http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/mar/wom-states.htm
90. and DM Siddiqi, 'Miracle worker or woman-machine? Tracking (trans)national realities in Bangladeshi factories', Economic and Political Weekly, 27 May 2000, pp L11-L17.
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92. OnMuslim women, see Z Hasan & R Menon, UnequalCitizens: Muslim Women in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
93. S Adnan, Migration, Land Alienation, and Ethnic Conflict: Causes of Poverty in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, Dhaka: Research and Advisory Services, 2004.
94. MA Reddy, Lands and Tenants in South India: A Study of Nellore District 1850-1990, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996
95. and D Ludden, Peasant History in South India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
96. For a broad view, see D Ludden, An Agrarian History of South Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
97. J Breman, Footloose Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
98. For the USA, see L Uchitelle, The Disposable American: Layoffs and their Consequences, New York: Knopf, 2006.
99. Datt & Ravallion, 'Is India's economic growth leaving the poor behind?', p 100.
100. For updated readings of Polanyi, see A Bugra & K Agartan (eds), Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-First Century: Market Economy as a Political Project, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007.
101. The effectiveness in reducing poverty of egalitarian state policies that shift power over resources down the class ranks is well demonstrated by the Indian state of Kerala, where the poverty rate was as high as that of India's poorest state, Bihar, in 1960, but less than half by 1990.
102. Datt & Ravallion, 'Is India's economic growth leaving the poor behind?', p 98.
103. Thus for promoting poverty reduction, Datt and Ravallion conclude that, in addition to economic growth, 'The sectoral and geographic composition of growth is also important, as is the need to redress existing inequalities in human resource development and between urban and rural areas' (p 106).