China Studies in India—3
I feel deeply honoured to have been invited to deliver the Keynote Address at this Fourth All-India Conference of China Studies (2011), held this time at the University of Hyderabad, an institution for which, over several years of association in various capacities, I have developed a strong affection. I also feel humble in this present company of accredited China scholars. Although my first two academic degrees were in Chinese Studies—in fact, old-style language/literary studies that went by the now unfashionable and politically incorrect title of ‘Oriental Studies’—I have spent most of my professional life as a sociologist/socio-cultural anthropologist. I should say that the focus of Indian sociology, as with other social science disciplines in the Indian context, has been almost exclusively on India, the unwritten (and in my opinion misguided) assumption being that such inward-focused research is transparently of greater social relevance—to the ‘masses’ or to ‘policy-makers’, as the case may be. There is an old English idiom, deployed of course in a completely different context, that says: ‘Nothing so dead as an old flame’. My own continuing involvement with China Studies through all these years, albeit on the professional periphery, speaks to the contrary. But my attachment is not merely sentimental, fanning the dying embers of an erstwhile passion. I truly believe that a comparative perspective, born of familiarity with another society (besides Europe/the US which is invariably our default ‘Other’) may constructively renovate our sociological understanding of ‘Indian’ society. At the same time, I also fully believe that China Studies must engage fully and self-consciously
Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India
Preface vii Chapter 1 Introduction: The Myths Floating around the Giants 1 Chapter 2 Economic Reform and Growth: Differing Patterns and Institutions 19 Chapter 3 Agriculture: Still the Most Crowded Sector 42 Chapter 4 Infrastructure: The Dazzling Difference 54 Chapter 5 High Saving, Low Financial Intermediation 65 Chapter 6 The Pattern of Burgeoning Capitalism 78 Chapter 7 Poverty and Inequality: How Is the Growth Shared? 90 Chapter 8 The Social Sector: The Relevance of the Socialist Legacy 104 Chapter 9 Environment: The Alarming Signs 117 Chapter 10 Looking to the Future: Through the Lens of Political Economy 125 References 161 Index 169
Dependency and development in Latin America
The theory of imperialist capitalism, as is well known, has so far attained its most significant treatment in Lenin’s works. This is not only because Lenin attempts to explain transformations of the capitalist economies that occurrred during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, but is mainly because of the political and historical implications contained in his interpretations. In fact, the descriptive arguments of Lenin’s theory of imperialism were borrowed from Hobson’s analysis. Other writers had already presented evidence of the international expansion of the capitalist economies and nations. Nevertheless, Lenin, inspired by Marx’s views, was able to bring together evidence to the effect that economic expansion is meaningless if we do not take into consideration the political and historical aspects with which economic factors are intimately related. From Lenin’s perspective, imperialism is a new form of the capitalist mode of production. This new form cannot be considered a different mode of economic organization, insofar as capital accumulation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of the labor force remain the basic features of the system. But its significance is that of a new stage of capitalism.