Articles by Sandip Sarkar

Examining the course of inequality in terms of average per capita expenditure, it is seen that the period after the reforms were initiated registered a dramatic increase in the relative growth of welfare in the top expenditure group, even as the poorest group progressed at a rate higher than the mean. The dip in the middle of the distribution disappeared later when a “ladder” pattern of growth was observed, with each quintile group showing a higher growth rate than the preceding one. The major reasons for this changing pattern are discussed in terms of the structure of growth in the Indian economy, particularly what happened in the tertiary and manufacturing sectors. The paper is being published in two parts. Part II will appear in the issue of 12 August. 

What are the consequences for profits, rents and wages of the splintering of production tasks across firms in different countries? Such global production networks allow the concentration of rents in lead firms, with some share of these rents possibly being shared with labour. However, profits and wages in competitive production segments, largely located in developing countries, will tend towards market-based minima. Various combinations of product and labour market conditions and their outcomes are analysed in this paper. It ends with a discussion of the different routes by which wages might be increased in such a system of global production networks.

India witnessed a widening of income inequality during the phase of acceleration in economic growth in the post-reform period (1993-94 to 2004-05). This paper analyses the issue by using different types of inequality measurements like general entropy indices, kernel density graphs, percentile of income graphs and field decomposition. It finds two major features of a rising inequality in urban areas: (a) even with a doubling of per capita consumption growth in the post-reform decade, the decline in poverty was less by a quarter compared to the pre-reform decade, and (b) in the post-reform period, the growth of the wage rate of regular workers was negative up to the 50th percentile of wage earnings, and beyond that point, wage rate growth turned positive and rose sharply to reach 5% per annum in highest quintile of wage earnings.

This paper presents estimates of the human development index, human poverty index and gender development index for the scheduled tribes in India. The HDI and HPI for STs are found to be around 30 per cent lower than the corresponding all-India indices. In an international comparison, development and deprivation among the STs of India are similar to that in the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa.