Political Economy of Inclusive Growth and India

Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1. Understanding exclusion and inclusion. 2. Public policy and the Indian social scene. 3. How inclusive is rural development?. 4. Intellectual property: whose property?. 5. The political economy of inclusive growth. Index.

Inclusive development appeared as a metropolitan discourse particularly in the recent past. The discourse on the subject in India however started even later. Unlike the West no serious academic discourse on the subject took place in India before it came as a new development policy and a paradigm. This concept first caught the attention of the policymakers and then of the academic community. A major landmark of inclusive development in India was the Eleventh Five Year Plan. Since then the concept became one of the major concerns of not only the policymakers but also of the academic community.

This book is an addition to the inclusive development discourse in India. It presents a critique of the political economy of inclusive development and views public policies and the Indian social scene, rural  development, intellectual property rights from the larger perspective of concept and theories of inclusion and exclusion. This book ends with an overall critique of inclusive development. It unpacks the political economy implications of inclusion and exclusion both as a normative theory and as a political economy. The central purpose of this book is to demystify  the concept in the Indian socio-economic context and to sensitise the academic community and policy makers about the criticalities of the inclusive paradigm of development. (jacket)