Dispossession, Deprivation, and Development ― Essays for Utsa Patnaik

Agrarian transition, exploitative production relations, bondage in the agriculture and informal sectors, food insecurity, and poverty are among the central concerns that have marked the work of the eminent economist and author Utsa Patnaik. She has sought to seek and define alternative economic models that address these concerns and that are therefore emancipatory in nature. This festschrift attempts to engage with the theoretical frameworks, historical analyses, and developmental questions that her remarkable academic contributions have raised. The volume delves deep into issues such as the agrarian question in contemporary India, the issue of primitive accumulation, displacement and land rights, the crisis of employment generation and women’s work under present economic regimes, the challenge of environmental sustainability, and environmental constraints to development, left politics, issues of secularism and the social challenges of communalism—all of which are contradictions faced in the development process today. The editors hope that the volume will be useful to all whose praxis and work are anchored on the motivation to build a better and just world.

Arindam Banerjee is associate professor in economics in the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi, where he teaches courses on colonialism, political economy, and agrarian development. He has researched and published on subjects such as agrarian relations under neoliberalism, the global food crisis, food management in India, and colonial historiography in various journals and edited volumes.

C. P. Chandrasekhar is professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has published widely in academic journals, and has authored several books including Karl Marx’s "Capital" and the Present, The Market that Failed: Neo-Liberal Economic Reforms in India (with Jayati Ghosh) and Demonetisation Decoded: A Critique of India’s Currency Experiment (with Jayati Ghosh and Prabhat Patnaik). He is a regular columnist for Frontline and Business Line.