1st Edition

The Rural-Urban Nexus in India's Economic Transformation

Edited By Tsukasa Mizushima Copyright 2023
    258 Pages 63 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book describes and analyzes the transformation of Indian economy taking into account historical changes and present dynamics of the rural-urban nexus.  

    India has recently experienced a period as a high-performing economy, with the great improvement of indices of human development, including literacy rates, life expectancy, child mortality rates and others. In contrast to this bright outlook, features such as the retarded growth of women’s average height, the noticeable gap between male and female population, the overwhelming proportion of informal employment in the manufacturing sector, or increasing pollution overshadow India’s future, in some cases pose a threat to lifestyle and environment.

    Examining the rural–urban nexus where the new transformative dynamics of Indian socio-economy is most conspicuous, the contributors to this book shed light on the actual changes taking place at the bottom of Indian society through regional comparisons and spatial differentiation. The book offers unique perspectives on the topic produced mostly by Japanese scholars, including analysis of original data, that have hitherto been unavailable and inaccessible to an international audience.  

    As the first book published on the rural–urban nexus in India, this book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian History, Economics, Politics, Geography, Sociology and Anthropology, Development Studies and Economic History.

    Introduction Tsukasa Mizushima; Chapter 1. A Long-term Trend of Rural India Tsukasa Mizushima; Chapter 2. Crop Specialization and Long-Term Productivity Growth in Indian Agriculture: A District-Level Analysis Takashi Kurosaki; Chapter 3. Thirty Years of Change: Tamil Villages Re-Surveyed Haruka Yanagisawa; Chapter 4. Recent Changes in Employment Structure in India Yoshifumi Usami and Vikas Rawal; Chapter 5. Food Consumption of Low-Income Households in India in the Era of Economic Growth Daizo Sugimoto; Chapter 6. Dairy Industry Modernization and the Changing Rural Economy of India Hideki Esho; Chapter 7. Disparities in Convergence: Rural-Urban Child Welfare in India Kazuya Wada; Chapter 8. Environmental Problems of Food Production and Consumption: A District-Level Analysis of Nitrogen Flow Ippei Sekido; Chapter 9. Power Sector Reform and Blackouts in India Atsushi Fukumi; Chapter 10. India in the World Economy: Inferences from Empirics of Economic Growth Takahiro Sato

    Biography

    Tsukasa Mizushima is a historian in the fields of Indian economic history and global history and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, Japan. His recent publications include Sustainable Development in India: Groundwater Irrigation, Energy Use, and Food Production, co-edited with Koichi Fujita (Routledge, 2020) and Hinterlands and Commodities: Place, Space, Time and the Political Economic Development of Asia over the Long Eighteenth Century, co-edited with George Bryan Souza and Dennis O. Flynn (2014).