Development, Transformations and the Human Condition: Essays in Honour of Jayati Ghosh

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 organization and labour studies and popular music studies. She is presently the Director, Gender and Economics at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) and has more than thirty years of teaching experience in Delhi University and 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 is an independent economist who, from 2007 till the enaction, helped the All India Kisan Sabha and Left Parliamentarians respond to drafts of the land acquisition and resettlement and rehabilitation bills that were put out by the then Congress led UPA government in New Delhi.

Sona Mitra is the Principal Economist with the Institute for What Works to Advance Gender Equality, hosted by LEAD at Krea University. She has been working on issues of women, development, labour and public policy for close to two decades with reputed institutes including NIPFP, CWDS and CBGA in India. Her recent work include methodological innovations in probing techniques for capturing women’s work better.

Dipa Sinha is Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. 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, policy advocacy and is associated with various rights-based campaigns.