This paper analyses landholding inequality in India using data from the 2019 NSSO All India Debt and Investment Survey. It finds persistent disparities across social groups, with Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes facing acute deprivation despite land reforms. Landownership is highly concentrated, particularly among the top decile. The analysis suggests that post-reform economic policies have reinforced these inequalities, with sharper disparities urban areas for SCs and STs, and significant concentration among affluent Other Backward Classes and Forward Castes in rural areas. The paper also links landholding inequality to debt vulnerability, underscoring the need for policies promoting more equitable land access and distribution.

Using data on Indian manufacturing firms for 1999–2019, this paper examines the impact of participation in global value chains on total factor productivity. GVC participation—captured through exports, imports of intermediate inputs, and, in some cases, outward foreign direct investment—is identified using cluster analysis. The analysis employs a propensity score matching difference-in-differences approach, along with an advanced estimation method. The findings indicate that GVC participation has a statistically significant and positive effect on firm productivity. Even limited participation yields gains, while deeper integration into GVCs leads to further improvements in TFP.

In his academic writings spanning over six and a half decades, Amiya Kumar Bagchi straddled several areas among which economic history and political economy of development/underdevelopment attracted his abiding interest. He generally drew his insights from Marx and Keynes and illuminated the problems of underdevelopment with his own analytical perspective seeped in history. In this paper, we take an in-depth look at Bagchi’s huge scholarly output, classified into major thematic areas, which are industrialisation, the behaviour of investment, and the role of the state in a mixed economic system; colonialism and its connection with the growth of global capitalism; and conceptualising a global history of capitalism from the perspective of human development.