Outward Foreign Direct Investment from India

India has been continually attracting massive foreign investments since the opening up of its economy with a series of liberalization policies in the early 1990s. This inward FDI plays an important role in the Indian economy as a financier of her BOP. However in recent years, India has been fast emerging as an exporter of large foreign direct investment. An increasing number of Indian firms are resorting to outward investment in order to access new technologies, skills and managerial expertise etc. from the developed countries. This is a bit of an anomaly. What explains this boom in FDI from India? What have been the motivations to invest abroad? What could be its economic implications? These are the questions that generally come into mind. A large number of strategic factors and motivations along with a series of policies liberalization and financial deregulation those are undertaken since the early 1990s are supposed to be the driving forces for this outflow of FDI from India. The present article tries to address some of these issues.Outward Foreign Direct Investment, Balance of Payment, Capital Account

Agriculture-Industry Interlinkages: Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Indian Context

The inter-relationship between agriculture and industry has been a long debated issue in most of the developing countries. In the Indian context, the issue has acquired interest since the industrial stagnation of the mid 1960s. Over the years the Indian economy has undergone a structural change in its sectoral composition: from a primary agro-based economy during 1970s, the economy has emerged as predominant in the service sector since the 1990s. This structural change and uneven pattern of growth of agriculture, industry and services sector in the post reforms period is likely to appear substantial changes in the production and demand linkages among various sectors, and in turn, could have significant implication for the growth and development process of the economy. This has triggered a renewed interest in studying the inter-relationship between agriculture and industry. The present paper tries to address some of the theoretical and methodological issues in analyzing the agriculture-industry interlinkages in the Indian context.Agriculture, Industry, Sectoral linkages, Indian economy

Economic Conditions of the In-Migrant Workers in Kerala: A Case Study in the Trivandrum District

The major objective of the paper is to examine the economic conditions of the in-migrant workers in Kerala. This has been done by analysing their savings, income and consumption pattern and nature of work before and after migration. The analysis is based on data from a sample of 166 in-migrants workers in the Trivandrum district, which has been collected through a primary survey during September-October, 2008. While existing studies provide evidences for short distance migration from nearby states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to Kerala, our study observed that long distance migration from states like West Bengal and Assam dominated the inflow of migrant workers in recent years. Informal information networks through acquaintances that have already migrated plays important role in migration of workers to Kerala. Poor economic conditions along with several other overlapping factors have been identified as the reason of migration. There has not been any change in the nature of employment of the migrants even after migration. However, there has been a shift from the low-income brackets before migration to high-income brackets after migration. We observed positive relationship of skill level and instance of migration with income level. Notwithstanding the improved income level the living condition for most of them is deplorable, most of them live together in either poor rented houses or work sites with one room shared by many and no provision of hygienic sanitation. The amount and pattern of food expenditure is found to be more or less same for all the migrants, whereas that of non-food expenditure varies from person to person. The savings and investment habit among the migrants is found to be very poor.In-migration, Saving and Consumption Pattern

Service Sector Led Economic Growth in India and Some Measurement and Database Issues

In recent years there has been a rapid and sustained growth of the service sector in the Indian economy. But unfortunately, while the importance of the services is growing statistical data and other relevant information of the services are abysmally low. There are problems relating to the methodology employed on the contribution of the private sector, especially the unorganized part of the private sector. In this article an attempt has been made to find out the problems associated with the estimation of services sector GDP.Services Sector, Indian Economy

Trends in agriculture-industry interlinkages in India: pre and post-reform scenario

Over the years the Indian economy has undergone a structural change in its sectoral composition: from a primary agro-based economy during 1970s, the economy has emerged as predominant in the service sector since the 1990s. This structural change and uneven pattern of growth of agriculture, industry and services sector in the post reforms period is likely to appear substantial changes in the production and demand linkages among various sectors, and in turn, could have significant implication for the growth and development process of the economy. This has triggered a renewed interest in studying the inter-relationship between agriculture and industry. The present paper is intended to examine the trends of interlinkages between the two sectors from a three sectoral perspectives for the pre- and post-reforms periods in India. The study observed that ‘agriculture-industry’ linkage has been deteriorating over the years and there has been directional change in the inter-linkages between the two sectors. Both the production and demand linkages were primarily from the industry to agriculture sector in the pre-reform period, which changed to from agriculture to industry in the post-reform period. Further, while the linkage was primarily through the production channel in the 1960s through 1980s, it translates primarily through the demand channel since 1990s.Agriculture, Industry, Sectoral linkages, Indian economy

Industrial Location in India under Liberalization

The economic liberalization policy initiated in the country since 1991 has made large-scale delicensing of industry and changes in the industrial location policies along with the stabilization-cum-structural adjustments of the economy. This curtailed the role of the state as industrial owner and location regulator and increases the role of private sector in industrialization. With the increasing dominance of private sector in industrialization under the liberalization policy it is expected that industries will be more spatially concentrated in the leading industrial regions. However, the neoclassical principle suggests that in the long run “divergence is followed by convergence”. This is in contrast with the theory that raises the question about the regional industrial development in India under the two policy regimes (an inward looking restrictive policy regime prior to 1980s and liberalization policy since 1991). The main objective of our study is to see whether there is convergence or divergence of industrial location and also the relative concentration of industries within the states in the post liberalization period, and thus, understands the influence of economic liberalization on industrial location in India. These two objectives are examined with the employment data of organized manufacturing sector for the pre- and post-reform periods using: first coefficient of variation of manufacturing employment, aggregated for all industries and second, location quotients and specialization coefficients, disaggregated into three use-based manufacturing sectors (consumer goods, intermediate goods and capital goods). Our study finds that there is more concentration of the manufacturing industries in the post liberalization period in India and the tendency to catch up the industrially developed states is hardly seen among the backward states, which suggest widening inter-regional divergence, as against the neo-classical principle “divergence followed by convergence”.Industrial Location, Economic Liberalization, India

Unorganised Manufacturing Industries in India – A Regional Perspective

Notwithstanding various policies to address regional disparities in industrial development, the issue of balanced regional industrial development still remains in India. Studies dealing with the issue mainly focused on the organised industries. In spite of the fact that the unorganised manufacturing sector occupies a dominant position compared to the organised sector and recognized as the most potential sector for rapid employment creation; no attempt has been made so far to examine the regional pattern of the sector. The major objective of the paper is to analyze the regional of unorganised manufacturing in India before and after reforms. We found that while unorganised manufacturing continued to concentrate in few advanced states, there is barely any improvement in the position of the backward states even after reforms. Spatial concentration is high for the high-technology industries and low for resource-based low-technology industries. Spatial concentration is found to be declined for all and most of the two- and three-digit industries after reforms

The Socio-economic Status of Migrant Workers in Thiruvananthapuram District of Kerala, India

Abstract. This paper examines the socio-economic condition of the migrant workers in Kerala. We analyse the income, consumption and savings pattern, and nature of work of the migrant workers in the Thiruvananthapuram district, based on data from a sample of 166 migrant workers. While existing studies provide evidences for short distance migration to Kerala from nearby states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, we find evidence for long distance migration from states like West Bengal and Assam in recent years. We find that informal information networks through migrant workers from native place plays important role in migration of workers to Kerala. Poor economic conditions in the native place and high wage rate and better employment opportunities in Kerala have been identified as the main reasons of migration to Kerala. Though there is barely any change in the nature of employment of the migrants even after migration, there has been a shift from the low-income brackets before migration to high-income brackets after migration. Notwithstanding the improved income level the living condition for most of migrant workers is deplorable, most of them live together in either poor rented houses or work sites with one room shared by many, without proper provision of hygienic sanitation.Keywords. Internal migration, Kerala, Reasons of migration, Remittances.JEL. J60, J61, J62

Agriculture-Industry Interlinkages: Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Indian Context

The inter-relationship between agriculture and industry has been a long debated issue in most of the developing countries. In the Indian context, the issue has acquired interest since the industrial stagnation of the mid 1960s. Over the years the Indian economy has undergone a structural change in its sectoral composition: from a primary agro-based economy during 1970s, the economy has emerged as predominant in the service sector since the 1990s. This structural change and uneven pattern of growth of agriculture, industry and services sector in the post reforms period is likely to appear substantial changes in the production and demand linkages among various sectors, and in turn, could have significant implication for the growth and development process of the economy. This has triggered a renewed interest in studying the inter-relationship between agriculture and industry. The present paper tries to address some of the theoretical and methodological issues in analyzing the agriculture-industry interlinkages in the Indian context

Economic Conditions of the In-Migrant Workers in Kerala: A Case Study in the Trivandrum District

The major objective of the paper is to examine the economic conditions of the in-migrant workers in Kerala. This has been done by analysing their savings, income and consumption pattern and nature of work before and after migration. The analysis is based on data from a sample of 166 in-migrants workers in the Trivandrum district, which has been collected through a primary survey during September-October, 2008. While existing studies provide evidences for short distance migration from nearby states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to Kerala, our study observed that long distance migration from states like West Bengal and Assam dominated the inflow of migrant workers in recent years. Informal information networks through acquaintances that have already migrated plays important role in migration of workers to Kerala. Poor economic conditions along with several other overlapping factors have been identified as the reason of migration. There has not been any change in the nature of employment of the migrants even after migration. However, there has been a shift from the low-income brackets before migration to high-income brackets after migration. We observed positive relationship of skill level and instance of migration with income level. Notwithstanding the improved income level the living condition for most of them is deplorable, most of them live together in either poor rented houses or work sites with one room shared by many and no provision of hygienic sanitation. The amount and pattern of food expenditure is found to be more or less same for all the migrants, whereas that of non-food expenditure varies from person to person. The savings and investment habit among the migrants is found to be very poor