Articles by Arun Banerji

Colin Simmons, a reputed economist and economic historian, died last May at the peak of his academic career. He pursued a range of interests; especially the study of economic processes in the south Asian subcontinent.

Operations formed the core of the new standard. Curzon's unusual despatch of 1900 began it, permitting free sale of council bills, ostensibly for 'convenience of trade' (words the Chamberlain Commission wished to bury); really to get funds in London faster than accumulating coinage profits. We apprehend that with London's financial market recently internationalised, the India Office-Exchange Banks' tie-up gave them added power over disposition of India's exchange earnings. The Commission justified hurried transfer of large funds to London, for its 'present and prospective ends', using every possible means, some we reveal. All this impinged on a weak economy, precipitating ominous rise of prices, attracting notice of all, the viceroy included, and endangering the welfare of many millions, and perhaps storing up difficulties for the future. We shall turn to that in Part III.

As silver fell vis-a-vis gold in the 1870s, to remit home charges in gold (on which "The very existence of the British Government in India depends", Lytton) became a problem, worsened by reduced capital inflow, and capital flight. So in 1878 Lytton proposed a gold standard, upvaluing, and making the rupee a token - unconventional and in parts flawed. Experts and the India Office rejected it rudely. This episode is revealed here for the first time, and examined. The historian of economic analysis will detect a likeness of Lytton's proposal with the exchange standard soon to be cobbled by London, and defended by Keynes in 1913.

' A Long Struggle to Escape from Old Ideas' Arun Banerji John Maynard Keynes, who died 50 years ago, strove relentlessly for some three decades to break out of the system of thought he had inherited and to found one which interpreted the industrial economies of the 1920s and the 1930s better and allowed them to be managed to serve wider interests.

Painful Transition Arun Banerji Transition to Market: Studies in Fiscal Reform edited by Vito Tanzi; International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, 1993; pp vix + 387 with index, $ 30.