China and India: The Institutional Roots of Differential Performance

Asia Research Centre invites you to a Guest lecture by

Ashwani Saith

Dean, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

on

"China and India: The Institutional Roots of Differential Performance"

At the start of the so-called development race sixty years ago, China, showcasing revolutionary socialism, and India, boasting parliamentary democracy, had close similarities in economic structures and levels of development, but striking differences in terms of cultural cohesion, institutional flexibility and political orientation. The outcome of the race is unambiguous: the question is not who won, but why and how? It is argued here that a wide margin had already opened up in China's favour by the time of the systemic or policy-regime switch-points, 1978 in China, and shortly thereafter in India. The author seeks explanations for this differential performance in the divergent institutional configurations of the two societies and economies, especially in the rural sector in the pre-reform period, and highlights the contrast between the power of the Chinese mass mobilization mode of transformation and the persistent institutional rigidities and obstacles in the Indian case. The author reflects on the historical significance of the two development paths: did Nehruvian state-led planned development and Maoist socialism serve essentially as pioneers of capitalism, levering the re-launching of the two once-powerful Asian giants back into the global capitalist game on dramatically revised terms of engagement?

Ashwani Saith holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge. He taught at Delhi School of Economics, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, London School of Economics, and since 1981 at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. He has published extensively in the fields of agrarian change and rural development, poverty, and migration, among others covering India and China. He serves on the editorial boards of many leading journals in development, agriculture, peasant studies, and labor economics. He is the Chair of Board of Directors of Development and Change, an international journal from ISS. He has worked with many UN agencies and NGOs such as the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad, on strategies of gender empowerment; and with the MV Foundation, Hyderabad, on strategies for the elimination of child labour and the universalisation of school education.

 Full paper attached below.

Everybody is welcome to attend and the event is free of charge. For further information, please contact Asia Research Centre at arc@cbs.dk