Waquar Ahmed

The Neoliberalization of the Water and Energy Sectors in South Africa and India

South Africa and India are viewed as incipient economic powerhouses of the developing world – South Africa is the biggest economy on the African continent and India a rising star in the global economy. Both countries have adopted neoliberal policies. The forms in which neoliberalism has unfolded, however, have been contingent upon the countries’ and utility sector’s historical-geographical context. In this paper we attempt to provide a comparative perspective demonstrating similar processes of neoliberalism in South Africa and India. We examine the contradictory nature of neoliberalism with respect to particular sections of the population – the poor in particular. A broadly political-economy approach is adopted. The paper reveals that there is particular state-market logic driving the delivery of basic services such as water and energy. It is this logic which has undermined the states’ attempts at providing basic services to the poor in particular.

Antinomies of the Indian State

The BRIC economies, that refer to Brazil, Russia, India and China, symbolize the apparent shift in global economic power away from the USA and Western Europe. India is one of the prominent members of the BRIC economies. India’s annual growth rates of net national income at constant market price during the eighth ((1992–1997), ninth (1997–2002), tenth (2002–2007) and eleventh (2007–2012) Five-Year Plans have been as high as 6.5%, 5.4%, 7.6% and 7.5% respectively. In 2014–2015, the advance estimates of the annual growth rate of net national income at constant price were reported at 7.4%. In other words, India’s economy has grown at a relatively high rate since the initiation of the free market or New Economic Policy in 1991. The benefits of India’s new economic policy and foreign investment friendly climate, however, have been slow or negligible for the large majority of the poor. Only five countries outside Africa (Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Yemen) have lower “youth female literacy rates” than India, only four countries (Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Myanmar and Pakistan) do worse than India in terms of child mortality rates and none has a higher proportion of underweight children (World Development Indicators 2011). Hence, the question arises, how does the new economic policy gain acceptance in a democratic India? And how does a democratic state gain legitimacy in the face of such uneven development?

Governing Foreign Direct Investment: Post-Enron Initiatives in India

Since the initiation of the New Economic Policy in 1991, India’s power policy illustrates the crystallization of a form of situated rationality that relies on capitalist competitiveness and foreign investment for growth and development. This paper, using critical discourse analysis, examines the resettlement of the Enron/Dabhol Power Project to highlight how this situated rationality represents power/knowledge that “legitimizes” prioritization of international capital, erosion of national sovereignty, and facilitates capitalist exploitation. JEL Classification: F65