State of India’s Economy: Distress and Challenges Amid Global Uncertainty (Alternative Economic Survey 2026)

Description

The State of India’s Economy is a critical commentary on various aspects of contemporary India’s economy and polity. This is a part of the annual series published by the Alternative Economic Survey Group of the Indian Political Economy Association.

This volume containing seventeen articles authored by experts focuses on the decline of the neoliberal myth of ‘free market’ and rise of strategic autonomy within neoliberalism manifested through the destruction of multilateral trade and existing institutions of collective conscience. Amid global uncertainty Indian strategy has largely been confined to manufacturing precarity through hyper exploitation and subsidiarisation of labour instead of climbing the productivity ladder. Trade gaps have widened and in absence of effective capital control rupee falls to historically low levels. Global warming amplifies inequality that India experiences due to K-shaped recovery with declining real wages and rising dispossession. In the late neoliberalism ‘surplus’ population is being managed through various tools of control including invisibilising citizens.

Contents

1. New Numbers Do Not Change the Story: The Indian Economy in Adversity and Crisis – Surajit Mazumdar

2. Living in the Near-End Times – V. Upadhyay

3. Reflections on the Evolving Global Trade Architecture: Challenges for India – Amit Shovon Ray

4. The Old Order has Not Ended, But a New World is Struggling to be Born – Vijay Prashad

5. India and the Political Economy of Strategic Autonomy – Narender Thakur and C. Saratchand

6. Jobs for India’s Young: The Need is for Economic Growth Built on Innovation, Not Low Wages – Jayan Jose Thomas

7. Challenges in the Agriculture Sector: Productivity and Viability – S.P. Singh

8. The Political Economy of Climate Change: Severity, Impact, and Sources – Dibyendu Maiti

9. Political Economy of Persistence of Public Debt in India – R.V. Ramana Murthy, Siva Durga Rao Narava, Vijay Kumar Venna

10. Beyond the Neoliberal Regime? Contradictions of India’s Quest for National Self-Sufficiency – Paramjit Singh & Balwinder Singh Tiwana

11. Subsidiarisation of Employment and Mutation of Informality – Avinash Kumar, Abhishek Kumar, Puja Rani

12. Large Firms, Fragile Jobs: Employment Growth and Labour Welfare in Indian Manufacturing – Angarika Rakshit

13. Why Have Wages Stagnated in A Fast-Growing Economy? – Rahul Menon

14. Commercial Microfinance in India: A Shining Star or a Waning Promise? – Tara Nair

15. Acquired for Whom, Used for What: Land, State and Urban Development in Greater Noida – Pranav Trigunayat

16. The Political Economy and Empirics of India’s Youth Jobs Crisis – Vipin Negi

17. Managing the Growing ‘Surplus’ Population in Late Neoliberalism – Satyaki Roy