Jharkhand state is carved out from Bihar state in 2000. The state is rich in mineral resources and poor in agricultural production. More than 75% of work force is engaged in agriculture, but generates only 20% of state’s GDP. About 45% area is under non-agricultural use and 32% is culturable...

This paper revisits one of the classic debates on world capitalist development – the ‘transition to capitalism’ debate framed in Robert Brenner’s classic critique of World Systems and Dependency Theory. It was originally presented to the July 2007 conference of the International...

The paper examines the the profession of economics in the light of its disarray in the face of the financial crash of 1998 We subject the profession to a theoretical and historical enquiry, examining both its reaction to the empirical facts of its failures, and the manner in which its...

This article was published in a Capital and Class symposium on the 1987 crash. Its analysis retains its full force in 2009. It compared the 1987 and the 1929 crash, and explored the historical similarities between the long US postwar decline and the UK’s, from the mid-nineteenth century. It...

The alleviation of poverty has consistently been one of the chief objectives of Indian policy. The country‘s modern history contains myriad examples of discussion on this topic as far back as 1901. After India achieved independence from Great Britain in 1947, it launched a series of...

This paper was originally presented at the ‘Marxism and Political Economy’ conference called by the International Socialist Journal on Saturday 29th September 2007. A revised version was presented to the Historical Materialism conference on 13th November 2007. It enquires why, although...

In India, Bihar is amongst poorest state, with poverty incidence of 42.6%. Bihar constitutes about 3% of national geographical area, but supports, 8 % of its population. The state is characterized as most backward state of India. In Bihar there has been a slow decline in the incidence of...