Patchwork on Economic Policies

Bhabatosh Datta India's Economic Policies, 1947 Publishers, New Delhi, 1980; pp THE publishers' blurb on the dust cover states that the collection of papers has been "designed as a textbook for Honours as well as Post- Graduate students of Economics throughout the country and as a refer- ence book for researchers and admi- nistrators both in India and abroad". The editor must have faced tremen- dous difficulty in attempting to provide a bill of fare that would satisfy all these customer groups. The book will be certainty useful to students in universities, but one hopes that researchers will not turn to it for reference, ignoring the primary sources that are easily available. The statistical data given in the papers are not planned in any systematic manner, each contributor having been left free to choose his own method of presentation. Even in regard to reading lists and references, there is no uniformity and some of the writers have not considered reading lists necessary at all. There is evidence of hurried editorial work in the form of overlaps and glaring gaps. For example, there is very little on the banking structure. Though there are papers on trade policy and on exchange rates, there is no analysis of the balance of payments as a whole. There is no paper on the national income and its distribution. On the other hand, there are two papers on fiscal policy and the essays on agriculture encroach upon one another. Editorial slackness appears in the refer- ence to Pranab Bardhan and P K Bar- dhan as two different "persons and so also to Jagdish Bhagwati and J N Bhagwati. One H L Dantwala has taken the credit for M L Dantwala in two places.