Working Papers

Special Economic Zones: Promise, Peformance and Pending Issues

Over the past few months, the CPR has been engaged in studies about some of the aspects of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs). This set of four CPR Occasional Papers addresses different facets of what continues to be a contentious subject.

India: The Politics of Accommodation and Reform

India’s “Great Transformation” seems to be finally underway. During the last four years it has experienced growth rates of almost eight percent, and many analysts believe that this growth is sustainable. India has averaged a growth rate of six percent for almost two decades. While this seems less...

A J&K Primer: From Myth to Reality

Jammu and Kashmir is a contentious and emotional issue that has beenwith us since Independence. It has two aspects.The first is internal, concerning relations between the people of J&K and the Indian State. The other is external and entails Pakistan's aggressive role in the matter that India took...

Fungible Borders and Informal Regionalism: Rethinking China’s Inter...

The processes of informal or soft regionalism driving China’s engagement with the regional and global economy are resulting in nuanced understandings of state, security and the conduct of international relations in China. The paper looks at a set of three interrelated processes that made this eng...

Growth in Urban India: Issues of Governance

A part of this paper was presented in an India Urban Space conference held in Goa on 10th and 11th February 2006. The present paper is a considerably enlarged version. Apart from the text the paper also contains several tables relating to migration, urban mobility and relevant provisions of the 7...

Alternative Service delivery models to transform citywide municipal...

This paper discusses the process of involving the private sector in the management of the solid waste for the Indian capital Delhi – an urban area with a population of over 14 million. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is among the largest municipal bodies in the world The first section of...

A Critique of ‘Unravelling Bhakra’

The Bhakra-Nangal multipurpose project is among the earliest water resource development projects undertaken by Independent India. Though the main objectives were stated as irrigation and power generation, it has rendered several other incidental and indirect benefits, too. It has already bestowed...

Urban Development in India in the 21st Century

This paper traces urban development in India in the 20th century. It studies urbanisation projections made by different scholars in the past, and speculates on a set of economic policy choice reasons that have led to the lower than expected levels of urbanisation. Some of these resons articulated...

Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half-Baked Socialism to Half-B...

This paper examines the political economy of Indian higher (tertiary) education. We first provide an empirical mapping of Indian higher education and demonstrate that higher education in India is being de facto privatized on a massive scale. But this privatization is not a result of changing ideo...

Impact of Globalisation on South Asian Economic Development

Globalisation has significantly influenced economic growth in developing countries. However, its impact on development has been diverse. The growing divergence in the impact of globalisation on developing countries has been noticeable. The Centre for Policy Research in its research program of 200...

The Economic Experiences of the Indian Diaspora

Indians have, since times immemorial, been guided by the philosophy of ‘Vasudhaiva Kudumbakam’. It is hence not surprising that people from India have been responding to economic opportunities of an international nature knocking at their doors and have migrated to other parts of the world in sear...

Supplier Reliability and Economic Reforms

Production around the world is now increasingly characterized by shorter product cycles and just-in-time processes. Consequently, the reliability of the supplier is an important distinguishing characteristic. This paper presents a situation where suppliers in more distorted economies would be mor...

Special Economic Zones: Promise, Peformance and Pending Issues

Over the past few months, the CPR has been engaged in studies about some of the aspects of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs). This set of four CPR Occasional Papers addresses different facets of what continues to be a contentious subject.