PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

The Foundation supports the publication of books on agrarian studies.

Financial Liberalization and Rural Banking in India

This book, edited by V. K. Ramachandran and Madhura Swaminathan, is published by Tulika Books, New Delhi . Contributors to the book include

• Amiya Kumar Bagchi Institute of Development Studies Kolkata
• C. P. Chandrasekhar Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi
• Pallavi Chavan Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata
• Keya Mukherjee Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi
• Prabhat Patnaik Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi
• V. K. Ramachandran Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata
• R. Ramakumar El Colegio de Mexico Mexico City
• Smriti Rao University of Massachusetts at Amherst
• Vikas Rawal Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi
• Sujit Kumar Ray
• Abhijit Sen Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi
• S. L. Shetty EPW Research Foundation Mumbai
• V. Surjit Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata
• Madhura Swaminathan Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata

From the jacket flap:

Financial liberalization after 1991 damaged the formal system of institutional credit in rural India severely. It represented a clear and explicit reversal of the policy of social and development banking, and contributed in no small way to the extreme deprivation and distress of which the rural poor in India have been victims over the last decade.

The papers in this volume, theoretical and empirical, examine the implications of financial liberalization with respect to rural credit. The theoretical papers deal with the macro-economic and structural effects of neo-liberal financial policy on the rural banking system. The empirical papers, both secondary data-based and village-level case studies, show that changes in national banking policy have had a rapid, drastic and potentially disastrous effect on the debt portfolios of rural households, particularly the income-poor.

Although it is clear that chronic indebtedness among the rural poor is a problem that cannot be solved by banking policy alone, and that the abolition of usury requires agrarian reform and major public investment, a decisive change in banking policy is essential for the very survival of the working people in rural India .

Proceedings of the Conference on Agriculture and Rural Society in Contemporary India , Barddhaman, December 17 to 20, 2003 .

In recent years, Indian agriculture has been exposed to major policy changes and a new international environment; these have had rapid, drastic and sometimes disastrous effects on large sections of rural households. It is important that scholarship and our understanding of the present situation in the countryside do not lag behind the rapid and complex changes that are occurring there. The Development and Planning Department, Government of West Bengal, and the Zilla Parishad, Barddhaman, organised a Conference on Agriculture and Rural Society in Contemporary India in order to take stock of the opinions of a wide section of scholars and activists on these issues. The conference was attended by about 60 participants, including academic scholars and organiser-activists from mass organisations of peasants, agricultural workers and women.

The focus of study of the conference was on the changing nature of agrarian relations and socio-economic formations in the contemporary Indian countryside. The conference dealt with issues of agriculture, rural development, public policy and rural distress in India today. It did so by bringing together theoretical and empirical (including field-based) papers on the following themes:

An overview of agriculture and agrarian relations since Independence

• Production conditions in contemporary agriculture
• Public investment in agriculture and rural development
• Wages, employment, livelihoods and employer-employee-relations in rural India
• Standards of living in rural India

The papers of the Conference are being collected in a volume and shall be published in 2005.

WORKING PAPERS

It is an important part of the mandate of the Foundation to invite scholars and specialists to write papers on specific subjects identified by the Foundation, and to publish a regular Working Paper series. We hope that this series can be begun in 2005.