Development, Transformations and the Human Condition

The world is grappling to come up with alternative imaginations for transformation despite repeated crises, inequalities and immiseration caused by the increasing dominance of the neo-liberal capitalist framework and the collapse of twentieth-century socialist models. This book looks at concepts that form the core of development economics and political economy and brings together perspectives that explore the inextricable relationship between development and human rights, social movements and the call for social transformation.

The essays in this volume honour the massive corpus of work across a large number of areas around development issues by the eminent economist Jayati Ghosh. The book includes contributions by academics, activists and practitioners and attempts to understand the socio-economic causes of inequality, poverty and oppression. Divided into five parts – corresponding broadly to key areas of Ghosh’s work – the book explores capitalism, inequality and development, gender and development, political economy of trade and financial systems, human development and human rights, and music. The volume situates Ghosh’s work within a heterodox and broad-based understanding of development processes and provides many insights towards a new vision that sets an agenda for further research as well as mobilisation.

This volume will be of great interest to students, researchers, practitioners and scholars working on the issues of development, transformations, political economy, social science, economics, macroeconomics, international economics, politics and development studies.

Sumangala Damodaran is an economist and a musician, whose scholarly work spans industrial organisation and labour studies and popular music studies. She is presently Director of Gender and Economics at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) and has more than 30 years of teaching experience at Delhi University and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the Institute for Human Development, Delhi.

Smita Gupta works on employment, land rights, tribal rights, natural resources policy, etc. She did policy research for the Planning Commission at the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi. She is currently engaged with household surveys on living and working conditions of the poor in India at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. She regularly makes submissions to Parliamentary Committees on macroeconomic, gender and natural resource policies.

Sona Mitra is an economist and is currently the Director of Policy and Research at the Institute for What Works to Advance Gender Equality (IWWAGE) – an initiative of LEAD at Krea University, India. She has worked on issues of women, labour and development policies for almost two decades. Her current work includes methodological innovations for capturing women’s work better and incorporating the ‘care economy’ concerns within the economic policy discourse.

Dipa Sinha is a Delhi based independent researcher. She writes and researches on issues related to social policy, gender and development, food security and nutrition and public health in India. She has over 20 years of experience of working in research and policy advocacy and is associated with various rights-based campaigns.