Articles by V M Dandekar

Unequal Exchange of Errors V M Dandekar RECENTLY, there has been an interesting exchange between Arun Bose and Ranjit Sau on the possibility of unequal exchange in international trade [1, 2, 3, 4]. Sau, after arguing out "Emmanuel's attempt to demonstrate the occurrence of unequal exchange even under the conditions of perfect competition" as unsuccessful, presents what he calls a 'Fresh Approach* to demonstrate, "at the theoretical plane", the possibility of unequal exchange in international trade [5, p 55]. Taking two countries, 'an advanced country' and 'the Third World country' as Sau refers to them, trading two commodities x and y (the Third World country exports x and imports y), Saw assumes balanced trade and chooses units of measurement such that the unit prices of x and y arc equal and, by implication, the quantities of the two commodities traded, expressed in these units, arc also equal. Sau says that he ''chose the units that way only to simplify the analysis" [2]. Rose contends that it is not a "harmless simplification", that in fact it is a "highly restrictive assumption" and that the result is "nothing more than a curiosum, or a freakish special case, based on highly restrictive assumptions, which cannot be dropped without killing the result" [3]. On this limited point, Bose is wrong and Sau is right. But on other more crucial points, Sau is wrong, Bose shares some of Sau's errors and does not notice others. There is a typographical error in his book which Sau corrects in his Reply [2] and in a footnote adds that the error "escaped Bose's kind notice". Sau is not aware that there are other errors of his, not typographical but typical, which also have escaped Bose's kind notice. Bose has his own errors to contribute which Sau in his turn and kindness does not notice, Bose in his Rejoinder to Sau's Reply [2] says; All "he [Sau] does in his Reply is to make mistakes and to try to side-track some issues, in Ordei to cover up his failure. This may make some though hopefully not many, curious readers wonder whether it is worth their while to try to understand the issues involved" [3], The latest in the exchange is Sau Reply-II [4]. Before Bose sends his Rejoinder-Il, the curious readers might want to know a third view of the issues involved in this rather curious exchange.

Unequal Exchange: Imperialism of Trade V M Dandekar This article, and another to appear next week, are extracted by the author from his R C Dutt Lec- tures on Political Economy delivered recently at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In this article, after reviewing Emmanuel's thesis on unequal exchange in international trade, the author reformulates its main propositions by recasting them in the Sraffa system. In the article to follow, he applies these propositions to a domestic economy and elaborates on the form exploitation and class conflict as- sume under conditions of unequal wages between different sectors and industries. He concludes by bringing out the implications of this for the prospects of a peasant-worker alliance in the Indian economy.

Review of Agriculture June 1976 "households having no cultivated land." 14 The cereal output for Maharashtra was pooled with that of Gujarat for these regressions, as these two states formed the Bombay state which is the area to which the p indices refer for the base period

V M Dandekar THE Third Pay Commission of the Central Government has been sitting for long and must one day make its report. It has to address itself to the same two basic questions which earlier Commissions had addressed themselves to: What should be the minimum remuneration for a Central Government employee? And what should be the maximum salary of a Central Government employee? However, even more basic than these two questions are two other questions: Can or should the Pay Commission try to answer these questions for the employees of the Central Government in isolation? Or do we need an integrated policy in respect of wages, incomes and prices in order to be able to answer these two questions? The Pay Commission certainly recognises the latter two questions. But it will probably leave them alone as being outside its terms of reference. If it leaves these broader questions alone and proceeds to deal with the pay scales of the Central Government employees in isolation, it will inevitably push the country further on the path of wagc- price inflation in which the employees of the Central and State Governments and the public sector generally have been leading for sometime.

Poverty in India