The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays Author: Utsa Patnaik

Publisher: Three Essays Collective

ISBN-10: 0850366062

ISBN-13: 978-8188789337

About the Book

Utsa Patnaik’s book is as much a comment on the state of economics as a discipline today, as on the economic policies that are ruining the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the Third World. The unifying theme of her essays is the impact on the Third World of the new imperialism in the present era, which takes the form of deflationary neo-liberal ‘economic reforms’, a thrust towards free trade and subservient agriculture. She shows how these policies are causing unprecedented rural distress and universal hunger in the developing countries including India. Hers is a voice of sanity, conscience and true scholarship.

Content

1. Introduction
2. The Ideology of Overpopulation
3. The Costs of Free Trade: The WTO Regime and the Indian Economy
4. The Economic and Demographic Collapse in Russia
5. The Loss of Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa
6. Asia Must Starve to Feed the West: The Rice Debacle in the Philippines
7. Peasant Resistance to Globalisation: Chiapas a Symbol
8. Mass Income Deflation, Burgeoning Foodstocks
9. Foodstocks and Hunger: Causes of Agrarian Distress
10. The Republic of Hunger
11. Theorising Food Security and Poverty in the Era of Economic Reforms
12. It is Time for Kumbhakarna to Wake Up
13. Agrarian Crisis under Neo-Imperialism and the Importance of Peasant Resistance

About the Author

Utsa Patnaik is Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the author of ‘The Long Transition: Essays on Political Economy’ (1999); ‘Peasant Class Differentiation: A Study in Method with Reference to Haryana’ (1987); ‘The Agrarian Question and the Development of Capitalism in India’ (1985). She has also edited several collections including ‘Chains of servitude : bondage and slavery in India’ (with Manjari Dingwaney) and ‘The Agrarian Question in Marx and His Successors’.