Articles by Danish A Hashim

With the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) coming to an end, competition in the Indian textile and garment industries will increase manifold. One of the main factors determining their competitiveness would be unit cost, where India has fared poorly in the recent past. The unit cost depends upon factor prices and productivity level. The present study attempts to examine these factors in detail for the cotton yarn and garment industries for selected states using panel data analysis for 1989-97. The study suggests that large-scale production should be encouraged in this sector. Disbursement of credit, cheaper raw materials, greater availability of electricity at reasonable rates, promotion of better capacity utilisation and flexible labour laws are some other steps necessary to help the cotton yarn and garment industries become more cost-effective.

There are a number of deficiencies in the performance of Indian Airlines, which are subsequently passed on to the consumers in terms of higher fares. In this scenario, when the skies were opened to private schedule operators in 1991, it was believed that the consumers would stand to gain from competition. This paper studies the structure of cost in the Indian Airlines with a view to assessing the scope of unlimited competition in domestic civil aviation industry. The findings suggest a high degree of scale economies in the Indian Airlines, limiting the scope of competition. The results on price and substitution elasticities, technical change and productivity growth indicate that better management of the Indian Airlines would be more helpful than the intense competition.