The social science discourse on the power of modernity and its everyday negotiation with tradition and locality in India has been a matter of continuous debate and discussion among academicians since the colonial era. By taking agriculture as a special field of investigation, this book describes the condition of ‘modernity’ in the agrarian social system of contemporary India. Farming is not only an economic activity, but also a personality formation where ‘status’ plays a significant role in Indian society. Taking ‘culture’, and ‘social status’ as the two important variables in the local ‘agriculture as performance’, this book develops a sociology of knowledge approach towards agrarian modernity and development in postcolonial India.

This 2017 OECD Economic Survey of India examines recent economic developments, policies and prospects. The special chapters cover tax reform and regional development.

This book, the first of two volumes, explores India’s economic development from 5000BC through to the India’s independence period from 1947AD to 2022AD. The specific characteristics of economic development in India are examined to help determine development paths India can pursue to create sustainable development in the 21st century. The transition from the primary section to the secondary sector, through the process of industrialisation and in turn the move towards the services sector, is discussed in relation to climate change and the pressure on resources posed by population growth. This book aims to contextualise India’s economic development within the political economy of trade, sustainable development and culture with a particular focus on the institutions that have emerged in the Indian sub-continent since 5000BC. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in economic history, development economics, and the political economy.

We identify key factors, from large set of potential determinants, that explain the variation in export diversification across countries and over time using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA), which addresses model uncertainty and ranks factors in order of importance vis-a-vis their explanatory power. Our analysis suggests, in order to diversify, policy makers should prioritize human capital accumulation and reduce barriers to trade. Other policy areas include improving quality of institutions and developing the financial sector. For commodity exporters reducing barriers to trade is the most important driver of diversification, followed by improving education outcomes at the secondary level and financial sector development.