My roots

I have been awarded a Ph.D. at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India on “H Y V technology and Relative Productivity of Small Farms: Case Study Bangladesh” in May 1993. It seems useful to mention a few highlights of my Ph. D. thesis in the light of both academic and policy perspectives.

It used to be claimed, notably in developing countries, that imperfection of factor markets is the determinant factor in explaining unemployment and poverty. Solutions such as supply of inputs and land reforms etc were suggested. Yet in poorer countries the odds are, that even within a village and during a peak farm operation, the question of disguised unemployment is liable to be troublesome as these are time specific and water management specific. What is thus interesting and seems to have been missed out by the existing literature is that several of the factors can be exacerbated or minimized depending on the management of water in question. Likewise, there was a time when researchers argued against adoption of the new technology in agriculture, as it may compound the misery of the poor. This is perhaps not the case in Bangladesh. In fact,

adoption of new technology averted widespread starvation and helped millions of people to escape hunger once and for all. I have re-explored the problem and have addressed various policy implications with economic incentives.

The above facets are exclusively explained my rural roots with immense curiosity of village, people and institutions. I worked for World Bank (Delhi Office), International Development Research Center (Delhi Office) and International Labour Organisation (Delhi Office) as a Development Economist immediately submission of my Ph.D. dissertation. My experiences were diverse. In fact, I found an opportunity to develop myself in various aspects of development and policy there of.

In 1994, I decided to join as associate professor at International Management Institute ((IMI), New Delhi. Since then, I have been teaching Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, International economics, Statistics and International finance. In addition, I designed and coordinated 10 -short term programmes on “ Farm Management” for the participants of Nigeria. The programmes were sponsored by the World Bank. I am quite satisfied with my teaching performance. I was one of the most highly rated teachers among both local and foreign participants (mostly from South Asia, Africa, Central Asian Republics and Russia).

At IMI, I exposed to diverse research areas. For example, we conducted a survey in 199-2000 to investigate the factors explaining beneficiary artisans’ increase in income across 129 districts in India. In addition, the study aims at examining the impact of beneficiary households’ assets, education, social group and extent of experience on the income effect of The Supply of Tool Kits to Rural artisans (SITRA).

The Supply of Improved Toolkits to Rural Artisans (SITRA) was launched as a sub-scheme of the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) of the Government of India in July 1992 with the objective of enabling rural artisans below the poverty line




(BPL) to enhance the quality of their products, increase their production and income and ensure a better quality of life for themselves. This was also expected to help reduce their migration to urban areas.

The study was based on information gathered from three main sources, namely, the implementing agency which was the District Rural development Agency (DRDA), the Gram Panchayat and the individual beneficiary artisans from the target group. The number of districts for the study was fixed at 20 per cent of the total number of districts subject to a minimum of two districts in each state. The districts were selected through purposive sampling to ensure that these districts were adequately representative of the state with respect to geographical distribution and special conditions of the state, if any. A total of 6788 beneficiary artisan households were chosen. These households were under the BPL households enumerated by the Government of India in 1992/1997.

The estimate of the logit regression reveals that the backward classes as a broad social group were more likely to have benefited from the programme. The importance of ‘using kits’ appears to be the second-most significant factor in enhancing the income of artisans’ households. Interestingly, the number of years of education at the artisan household level is reflected in the negative coefficients. This may be due to the non-availability of skill-specific education at the beneficiary artisan level. The small, though significant, negative estimated coefficient of the ‘number of assets’ variable shows that the artisan will have to contribute from other sources of household income to create the assets.

I was also involved in other research areas such as technology transfer, comparative analysis of foreign investment in India and China, trade pattern in the south Asian region and so on.

I took leave from IMI, New Delhi to join the Department of Economics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados (West Indies) in January 2001. I taught Elements of Macro economics, Intermediate macroeconomics, Economic planning and project appraisal, International Finance and development economics. There, too I showed my potentiality in teaching. In addition, I published several research papers on “foreign Capital transfers in the Caribbean region” and “new growth theories “.

My book entitled “Foreign Capital Inflows to the China, India and the Caribbean: Trends, Assessments and Determinants” was published by Palgrave-Macmillan’s Global Academic Publishing, Macmillan Publishing Limited, London in July 2006. It is in this context to be mentioned here that foreign capital inflows are large and diverse in the context of both developing and developed countries. Generally, foreign capital flows are believed to be influenced by economic indicators like market size and export intensity, institutions etc., irrespective of the source and the destination countries. My book looks at the foreign capital inflows in an alternate approach based on the concepts of neighbourhood and extended neighbourhood. While a substantial fraction of foreign inflows may be explained by select economic variables, the country-specific factors and the idiosyncratic component account for more of investment inflows in China, India and the Caribbean. My book also investigates the spillovers of foreign capital-particularly technology transfer in the vibrant economies of China, India and the Caribbean. It hosts a number of research issues and brilliantly captures the background of why India and China are likely to dominate the world in future.