Another Unnecessary Book
Editing and publishing a collection of conference papers is always difficult,, especially if the conference itself did not have a clear theme. Papers can be written on everything under the sun, and their format is not standardised. These problems can be taken care of when the authors revise their papers, assuming of course that the editors have taken their job seriously.
Sponsored by the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University, the International Institute for Dev-elopment Studies held a conference in Perth in 1993. Two volumes of conference papers have already appeared, and this collection is the third. Editorially, this volume is a peculiar hotchpotch. Some papers have abstracts, others dont. One even has a preamble. Some have a separate set of notes, as opposed to a bibliography. In others, they are combined. The title of the volume under review is Economic Development and Change. But one wonders what two papers on Australias trade links with South Asia and an analysis of Australias agricultural exports are doing here? Shouldnt these have been included in the first collection which was on trade in the Asia Pacific region? There is also a paper on sustainability of tribal villages in West Bengal. Surely that should have been included in the second collection on sustainable development. The first point thus is that the editors have been lazy.
The second point is that the authors have been lazier. The original papers were written in 1993, and the book has been published in 1996. With changes taking place all over the Asia and Pacific region, the least one expected was that authors would have revised their papers. Take, for example, the papers that directly deal with India. Apart from the sustainability of tribal villages, there are two other papers B Ray and R N Ghosh on sustainable development in India, and R Datta on foreign direct investment in India. The first two are non-resident Indians, which is perhaps it was so difficult for them to keep track of what had been happening in India. The figures (fiscal deficit, savings rate, foreign investments) are, therefore, wrong and the policy changes hopelessly outdated. There are also intriguing statements like in the first half of February the inflation rate was 11.52 per cent and the budget deficit forecast for the current financial year is 5.5 per cent. Which years these refer to, is anyones guess
could be anywhere from 1993 to 1996. If these two authors have a somewhat unsatisfactory excuse of being non-residents, Rakhal Datta has none. One need not, therefore, waste time with a paper that was clearly written in 1993 and has not been updated since.
Moving away from India, there are papers on structural adjustments and reform processes in Kenya, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Have these much-maligned IMF and World Bank-type reforms been successful? The limited cross-country experience documented in this volume offers no answers. Success or failure depends on the criteria one is using. More generally, the underlying theme of most papers is that structural adjustments provide necessary conditions. They are not sufficient in themselves. For reforms to work, one must have investments in human resource development and infrastructure, and the legislative and administrative environment must change. Since these assertions are almost tautologies, it is impossible to disagree with any of them.
This leaves two other papers. One of these, by Peter Longton, argues that a certain socio-economic environment is necessary to ensure economic change. According to the editors, this is a very erudite paper. Perhaps it is. I have not been able to figure out what the paper is trying to say, which presumably, is a sad commentary on my lack of erudition. There is also an extremely interesting paper by L A Duhs, which offers three different interpretations of the Lewis model of economic development with unlimited supplies of labour. This is then reconciled with alternative Prebisch and Remenyi-type formulations. Rather neat paper. However, the question of what this paper is doing in this book remains unresolved.
Whether reforms have had trickle-down benefits on the poor is debatable. But they have certainly had trickle-down benefits on academics. For example, never before have so many books been written on the Indian economy in so short a time. (This book is not exclusively on India, but it does have an Indian focus.) There is no particular reason for reading this volume. But if you are an academic, get the message. Organise a seminar on reforms and edit the collection. Will look good on your curriculum vitae.