Anthony P. D'Costa

• PhD
• Honorary Professorial Fellow (otherwise retired) at University of Melbourne

The Indian information technology and software services sector has been a poster boy of Indian business. The purpose of this paper is to offer an interest-based institutional understanding of the factors behind the governance of the IT sector’s growth, which departs from the national narrative of economic change. Three actors are identified, namely...

This volume is based on a conference organized in Kolkata by the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, and the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata in December 2015. The title of the conference was Instruments of Intervention: Capitalist Development and the Remolding of the Indian State. The aim was to tackle three broad threads,...

The purpose of this article is to offer an alternative perspective to worsening wealth disparity in India. It does so by critically applying the framework of uneven and combined development in a novel way. It develops two analytical constructs based on internal and external forces that collectively contribute to increasing wealth inequality. The in...

A reflection on the Indian state.

Capitalist progress implies the destruction of the old and uncompetitive sectors and the creation of new ones in their wake. However, in the Global South the loss of jobs in the older sectors is not necessarily offset by the new forms of employment. The objective of this paper is to critically examine how the vast employment in the Indian handloom...

Capitalist progress implies the destruction of the old and uncompetitive sectors and the creation of new ones in their wake. However, in the Global South the loss of jobs in the older sectors are not necessarily offset by the new forms of employment. The objective of this paper is to critically examine how the vast employment in the Indian handloom...

Presents an analysis of the movement of Indian professionals to the OECD and other destinations. The objective is to illustrate the leading role Indian professionals play and to identify some of the reasons for their visibility in the global IT services industry. At the same time, and contrary to what might appear is the increasing relative ease of...

In this chapter D’Costa critically examines both the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of India’s employment challenges to assess whether the Indian state is in a position to make a dent in India’s growing employment deficit. This is in spite of the efforts made in creating the world’s largest employment program in the countryside. Using a po...

The objective of this introductory chapter is to theoretically and empirically tackle four interrelated themes that examine the various facets of the contemporary Indian state. Rather than simply assessing the deviations of the Indian state from the generalized abstractions of a developmental state, this chapter shows the actual functioning of the...

Changing role of the Indian state.

Employment challenges in India

Expert comment: This commentary focuses on late industrialisation as a point of entry to explain why India, notwithstanding its multiple institutional challenges with a large impoverished agrarian population, is also able to generate a visible and globally mobile wealthy class. India’s particular configuration of recent economic development policie...

https://www.diis.dk/en/event/the-rise-of-the-indian-wealthy-elite (video) India as a late industrializer has an unusual development trajectory. It is still rooted in agriculture but has a dynamic service sector. Puzzlingly, its manufacturing sector is stagnating despite the availability of vast reserves of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Altho...

India as a late industrializer has an unusual development trajectory. It is still rooted in agriculture but has a dynamic service sector. Puzzlingly, its manufacturing sector is stagnating despite the availability of vast reserves of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Although India has shed its state-led economy since the reforms of the 1990s and...

South Korea's post World War II economic development trajectory is well known. From an impoverished warn‐torn nation, the country has progressed on all fronts. However, the objective is to focus on the “post‐development” question, namely, what does a country do after it becomes prosperous. To put it another way, what are some of the emergent challe...

International mobility of technical professionals

Labor Migration in Asia

India’s contemporary textiles sector is globally known. Less known is the struggling traditional textiles sector, whose decline began with the onslaught of colonial economic policy, leading to India’s deindustrialization in the nineteenth century. The nationalist argument has been that colonial economic policies more or less decimated local handloo...

This volume takes a fresh look at the land question in India. Instead of re-engaging in the rich transition debate in which the transformation of agriculture is seen as a necessary historical step to usher in dynamic capitalist (or socialist) development, this collection critically examines the centrality of land in contemporary development discour...

This paper examines changing labor markets in India and argues that labor-abundant India is also subject to the same contemporary OECD pressures of jobless growth brought about by increasing investments in capital equipment, automation, and growing (but proportionately much smaller) reliance on high skilled workers and professionals. Furthermore, u...

India’s economic turnaround since the 1980s and especially since 1991 has been widely credited as a result of economic reforms. Gradual and systematic deregulation at home and increased international integration promises even better economic performance. While this may be only partly true since a good part of India is untouched by economic growth i...

Forthcoming chapter in: Global Economic Crisis and Local Economic Development International cases and policy responses

International mobility is not a new concept as people have moved throughout history, voluntarily and forcibly, for personal, familial, economic, political, and professional reasons. Yet, the mobility of technical talent in the global economy is relatively new, largely voluntary, structurally determined by market forces, and influenced by immigratio...

This paper examines the nature of changing labor markets in India and identifies the severe structural limits of the state in creating plenty of meaningful jobs. The argument is follows: the instruments of intervention available at the state's disposal are highly constrained due to a variety of structural endogenous and exogenous factors, whose cum...

With over a decade's worth of extensive research in India, Japan, Finland, and Singapore, this book provides an alternative understanding of how capitalism functions at the global level by specifically analyzing the international movement of technical professionals between India and Japan. This book is an essential addition for scholars and student...

The global capitalist system is at a particular historical juncture with a dilution of the capitalist core away from Western (and Japanese) centers of accumulation to China and India, among other countries. What is the nature of capitalism in these countries? Are China and India going along the same development trajectories that advanced capitalist...

The series situates contemporary development processes and outcomes in Asia in a global context. State intervention as well as neoliberal policies has created unusual economic and social development opportunities. There are also serious setbacks for marginalized communities, workers, the environment, and social justice. The rise of China, India, an...

The purpose of this paper is to show how the Indian IT industry could position itself in the Japanese market. But in order to accomplish this, it is necessary to identify the key challenges and opportunities the Indian IT industry faces in the Japanese market. The opportunities for India, as well as other IT-strong developing countries, are to supp...

Since the 1980s there has been considerable global economic and political realignment, with Asia as a significant centre. Japan’s dramatic rise in the post-World War II era, the rise of poverty-stricken East and Southeast Asian economies based on multinational-driven manufacturing growth, and more recently China and India’s wider and deeper engagem...

India and China-the two largest and fastest growing economies in the world-are contributing to the realignment of the global economy while most of the advanced capitalist countries are reeling under a severe financial crisis. At the same time, the transition in the two countries is characterized by deep rural poverty and underdevelopment, unprecede...

This chapter introduces the rationale for the persistence of economic nationalism in Asia, its forms, how it differs from past practice, and its implications for the functioning of the world economy. It theoretically captures the changes in the world economy from an era of economic nationalism of the orthodox kind, when infant-industry protection w...

This concluding chapter reiterates the significance of the role of the state in managing national economies, especially under new pressures and opportunities arising from globalization. The continuity of state activism was captured by modifying the conventional definition of economic nationalism and underscoring it as a dynamic concept and process,...

This book documents the different ways by which Asian governments have been pursuing economic nationalism even as they have been integrating with the world economy. The book challenges the popular view that with globalization either the role of the state becomes redundant or that states are unable to purposefully intervene in the economy. The book...

Introduction It is clear that states in the developing world have been overextended. Not only did they inherit the ill-fitting economic and social structures of colonial rule, but they were also expected to guarantee political democracy and foster economic development. However, the full logic of the market was not accepted by most late developers u...

The aim of the paper is to apply a political economy framework both to explain the rise of the information technology (IT) industry and to analyse the spatial and developmental consequences of this growth, especially the distributive dimension on the wider society. The purpose is also to reveal the contradictions associated with the industry, quest...

This paper examines how the pattern of investment in the Indian auto industry has changed. The author argues that the industrial relations climate has been an important determinant of that pattern. Industrial relations climate is politically and institutionally determined hence any shift in the broader capital-labour relation in the wider global ec...

The labels ‘new India’ and ‘new Indian’ are now commonplace. Businesses hawking products or journalists and social commentators reporting on contemporary India use the label lavishly. There is a new India, which is different from what it was before, an unstated ‘old India’. Presumably there is also a new Indian, who is assumed to enjoy the fruits o...

India has been on the move, changing from within and without in multifarious ways. These changes have been sincerely as well as glibly dubbed a 'new' India, which has surreptitiously and unwittingly swept away the 'old' India. Any casual observer would notice that the 'new' no doubt coexists with an 'old' India, although where one begins and the ot...

This volume critically examines the notion of a 'new' India by acknowledging that India is changing remarkably and by indicating that in the overzealous enthusiasm about the new India, there is collective amnesia about the other, older India. The book argues that the increasing consolidation of capitalist markets of commodity production and consump...

This article examines why Japan is not perceived to be attractive by foreign technical talent even though there is growing demand for such professionals. It examines three sets of barriers: Japanese business practices, immigration policies and social-cultural factors. Given Japan's sluggish growth and demographic crisis, the study also suggests tha...

The purpose of this paper is to understand the transition that Japan must make to regain its global economic competitiveness. It examines the significance of foreign technical talent to the Japanese high technology sector, specifically, the information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Japan is the second largest ICT market in the world...

With increasing international economic interdependence, the scholarly treatment as well as the practice of economic nationalism has become passe. Contrary to this conclusion, I argue that economic nationalism is not inconsistent with globalization. States are not only active participants in globalization but they continue to strategically express n...

The success of the Indian software industry is now internationally recognized. Consequently, scholars, policymakers, and industry officials everywhere generally anticipate the increasing competitiveness of India in high technology activities. Using a structural framework, the author argues that Bangalore's (and India's) information technology (IT)...

This paper charts the complex dynamics of the movement of technical talent in the world economy and assesses broadly the impact of such mobility on both sending and receiving countries. Based on secondary data and primary information from the Indian and Japanese IT industry, the study presents a global view of the movement of talent and its develop...

This volume takes a broad look at the new economy both theoretically and empirically to understand the development possibilities and the attendant challenges associated with ICT. As services comprise a significant sector in the new economy, the book begins with some conceptual issues pertaining to the measurement and performance of services. Anders...

The last three decades have witnessed a sea change in the character and functioning of the world economy. Both quantitatively and qualitatively the OECD and a handful of newly industrialising economies have been transformed by global flows of trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), technology and technical talent. Within national economies the ensu...

To analyze India’s long march to capitalism this study focused on the process of industrial change within the broader context of capitalist heterogeneity. Despite common sets of economic dynamics in market capitalism, the process of development is inherently evolutionary, subject to structural conditions, institutional variations, and divergent out...

Market expansion in India has been undoubtedly solid as evidenced by the growth of the vehicle industry. Not only has demand increased to unprecedented levels but there has been considerable diversity in the composition of demand. From the supply side firms have kept up with market growth with new products — parts and components — and adopted insti...

In this chapter the process of embourgeoisment in India and its contribution to market development is presented. While an incipient capitalist class had already emerged under the British, in post-independent India the state significantly contributed to its further development. The state itself pursued a national capitalist project, which was cloake...

The 2004 general elections in India produced some dramatic outcomes. The incumbent government, led by the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was unexpectedly thrown out and the Congress Party was returned to power. In forming a government the mildly left-of-center Congress party secured the alliance of India’s communist parties. Nei...

The objective of this study is to capture the process of capitalist transformation in India. The starting point is a theoretical account of why the singular logic of capitalism, namely, market exchange for profit based on mainly wage labor, in reality takes many institutional guises. An examination of the “heterogeneity” of capitalist “models” allo...

The changing regime of capital accumulation at the national level has fostered significant transformation of the auto industry. In a liberalizing environment embourgeoisment has also led to increased production and consumption of consumer durables. These developments suggest uneven development, not only in terms of worsening pre-existing economic a...

By pursuing the national capitalist project the Indian state contributed to embourgeoisment and the material basis for market demand. Regulation of the economy — through public investments, five year plans, subsidies, and infant industry protection promoted home-grown capitalism. The results were by no means a runaway success and by some accounts d...

The ability of the Indian economy to accommodate numerous automobile manufacturers rested partly on demand growth. It was also supported by a fundamental restructuring of the industry as a whole, spearheaded by jointventures such as MUL and other collaborations between Indian and multinational firms. To meet growing demand not only did auto firms i...

The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that the trajectory of recent Indian development under the spell of information and communications technologies (ICTs) reveals a number of debilitating structural flaws caused by a host of external and internal factors. The trajectory of the Indian ICTs sector is unique, both cross-nationally and rela...

The author captures the evolution of Indian industrial capitalism by extending the ‘models of capitalism’ and ‘regulation framework’. Using principally the auto industry and anchoring the analysis to the expansion of markets, he demonstrates that the Indian state and businesses have been important institutions for creating markets. He acknowledges...

The objective here is to understand how the mobility of technical talent might be changing the structural relationship between rich and poor countries. This paper examines the under-researched relationship between India and Japan in the context of globalization, migration, and developmental impact with demographic, immigration, and innovation polic...

This paper explains the remarkable restructuring of the Indian automobile industry. It argues that firms have had to deploy new governance modes (flexible industrial practices) for economic coordination to overcome supply bottlenecks and meet expanding demand. Firms that failed to adopt these practices performed poorly, while firms that attained ec...

The Indian software industry has come a long way from its humble beginnings in the 1980s. The industry has grown at an impressive rate over the past decade and has in aggregate, and for its major companies, attained brand name recognition in selected software service niches. Its export-driven model now commands the world’s attention for skilled pro...

The Indian software industry is growing rapidly. Whether firms can actually sustain this high rate of growth remains an empirical question. The ability to maintain the momentum of software export growth will ostensibly be determined by innovative capability. Notwithstanding the immense benefits accruing from the external orientation of the Indian s...

At the dawn of the twenty-first century India’s traditional image as an impoverished nation is undergoing considerable change. While India continues to suffer from rampant poverty, persistent inequalities and internal political uncertainties, there has been a quiet revolution underway in India’s high-technology industry. India, known for its tea, j...

Development theorists and practitioners recognize the importance of durable and adaptable institutions for economic and social transformation. The decline of the Euro-centric modernization models and the collapse of the centrally planned ‘socialist’ bloc draws our attention to Japan, a nation that has successfully combined the market system with in...

The evolution of the Indian software sector is explained by the larger context of uneven and combined development. The imperatives of a market-driven global order suggest an open-ended process of development, making some economic and technological convergence realizable but also generating contradictions at various levels. This paper focuses on dif...

Based on a survey of Indian software firms, this paper analyses whether export dependence locks Indian firms into a dependent non-innovative growth path. The author argues that lock-in effects operate, placing Indian firms into a non-innovative dependent path because higher-end services are difficult to outsource. More importantly user- feedback li...

The discussion on high technology has been concerned with advanced capitalist economies. Developing countries have been unable to alter radically their industrial structure due to numerous internal institutional and external technological barriers. Consequently, they have sought global participation through outsourcing activities. This is indeed a...