Articles by Jashbhai Patel

The biggest beneficiary of the Narmada Project wilt be Gujarat, while the other two states, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra will be deprived of vast areas afforest, natural resources and will also-be forced to uproot thousands of people, mostly tribals, who have lived in these regions for generations. Does Gujarat have any right to these benefits at this enormous cost?

computers use, can be bought and sold as a commodity. Telecommunication is growing rapidly. "If all the banks shut their doors but maintained their telecommunications links", writes Smith, "it would still be possible for a monetary economy to continue in existence". At the centre of the global information power stands the International Business Machines Corporation, which is responsible not only for 70 per cent of the world's computer installations but is taking a giant stride toward consolidating its dominance through the new satellite technologies.

March 8, 1980 have left the rural poor in Telengana almost in the same position as those in Basti.
Why was this? In part Sunil Sen's "Agrarian Relations in India" is an attempt to answer this question. In contrast to Rao's collection, it is a study by an ex-activist in the peasant movement who worked "without any financial assistance from the proliferating research institutes" (vii). According to Sen, commercial agriculture helped lay the basis for the growth of capitalist relations of production, and the growing class of rich peasantry who benefited from this not only had their quarrels with merchants and landlords and so entered the agrarian movement, but also came to dominate it and to emerge after Independenpe as a rising class of capitalist farmers who were the main oppressors of the rural poor. (Though Sen notes that merchant and! usurer capital remain significant in many areas, and tends to stress the capitalist transformation as occurring most completely in the Punjab.) Sen is critical of the Kisan Sabha (and thus indirectly of its communist leadership of which he evidently remains a part) for its ambivalent attitude towards the khetmajurs and for appeasement of the rich peasants


the aspect of double counting in the aggregation of public debt. It is well known that a major portion (75 per cent) of the states' debt is on account of loans taken from the Centre, and if no deduction is made to the extent of loans taken from the Centre, the aggregation of Central and states' debt would give an exaggerated picture of total public debt Similarly, the calculation of debt services involves double counting. For example, the interest charges of state governments include those paid to the Central government, while interest charges of the Central government include those on loans it has taken, irrespective of recoveries made from state governments and commercial departments.' It would have been better had interest charges paid by state governments on loans taken from the Centre been deducted, particularly when they are expressed as a percentage of national income to assess burden of debt.

paper on the Soviet transport system by Khachaturov may have some relevance since transport service is, by and large, in the public domain in most developing countries. His paper, which is more descriptive than analytical, highlights the Soviet achievement of low transport costs and fares and a satisfactory level of profits, through centralised planning and generation of economies of scale. Contrary to the general belief, the author points out that though capital investment costs could be covered out of general revenues, the Soviets have decided to cover these costs through appropriate pricing in the transportation sector itself. Lack of inerest in the public services of the developing world could be for. two reasons. It is possible that economists of the developing countries have limited access to conferences of this type. Alternatively, very few persons are working on the economics of public services in the developing countries, including economists of such countries. If the former is the plausible reason, we need not worry too much since other forums exist for dissemination of research. But if the latter is the case, it is high time that our professionals wake up and address themselves to this neglected, yet highly relevant area of stud}-. Must we wait till some Western economists descend on us and make such studies fashionable in our own countries?