Journal Of International Development: Vol.2 No.3, July 1990 PP.423-440 423

BOOK REVIEWS

The Hindu Equilibrium. vols.1 & 2. By D E E P A K L A L . (Oxford, Oxford University Press, Vol. 1 , 1988, pp.345, €35.00; V01.2, 1989, pp.196, €22.50.)

In principle, there is every reason to welcome any serious attempt to inform history with theory and, of course, vice-versa. Depending upon the type of question under consideration, economic and social historians can potentially derive benefit from taking on board some of the general insights and suggestive analytical techniques pioneered by economics; and, in turn, can supply valuable information and data sets about the past, and also offer advice on how best to approach its study (i.e., with due caution!). Despite the yawning gap now separating the disciplines, voices from both sides of the divide have sporadically pointed out the advantages of co-operation, cohabitation and even Some loose form Of Convergence. The establishment of cliometrics was one obvious (though now somewhat tarnished) manifestation of this tendency, and there have also been a few outstanding works written in this genre

by individual scholars - Lewis, Hicks, Olson, Williamson, J ~ ~ ~ ~ , McCloskey and North spring most readily to mind.

I believe that few well-informed observers, even the diehard disciplinary purists, would deny that the resulting fusions have been nlutually enriching - at least to Some degree, and that several worthy search agendas have been thereby created. It must be admitted, however, that the vohme of such traffic is very limited in both absolute as well as relative terms; that the greater part of the flow has been one-way, namely economists moving into the terrain of history; and that it is a hazardous journey to undertake on account of the minimum time and knowledge required to pursue the relevant range of- often intractable - issues, and to trace the appropriate- sometimes even primary - source materials. In practice then, during the course of a busy professional career, those who have had the temerity to cross this particular division of academic labour have seldom done so lightly, and neither have they been driven only by casual curiosity. I would venture to suggest that three broad categories of motivation may be identified: those whose impulse stems primarily from the inherent logic of their current research preoccupation; those - usually very eminent - scholars of mature years who feel that their experience, combined perhaps with some long dormant interest, merits a 'grand overview' approach; and finally those who, harbouring some missionary zeal, seek to demonstrate that advances made in one discipline can illuminate another. Now although the quality of theultimate outcome is not necessarily directly related to original stimulus, the traditional disciplinary standard-bearers have tended to greet these categories of incursion with sympathy, tolerance and suspicion - in that succeeding order. Furthermore, receptivity is often affected by the manner of presentation: a modest, tentative mode of discourse is far

As far as the work under review is concerned, there can be little doubt that its likely to win over support than the opposite.

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thrust is missionary and the manner of its delivery highly provocative. The basic objectives of the author seem to be twofold. First a vindication of the chosen

- that of new neo-classical economic theory; and second, the related attempt to demolish existing traditions of explanation - and hence policy prescription - starting at the top with Malthus, Marx and Lewis, proceeding to post-war sdevelopment economics', and then to a somewhat vaguely articulated and shadowy version of nee-Marxism. Those familiar with Lal's previous work, especially the combative Poverty of Development Economics (1983), will not be surprised by either orientation. Indeed, the existence of such a study in draft mimeo form (UCL) was announced in a note to that now infamous Hobart Paper as having made a n appearance as early as 198 1. This dating seems to be confirmed upon a perusal of the prefaces to both volumes, wherein it is frankly owned that the labour was completed before 1980 with only superficial (vol.1) and perfunctory (vo1.2) attempts t o cover events and the new l~terature penned since then. Lest the reader should sense that a decade-old manuscript comprising two barely articulated volumes composed of some inexpertly cobbled-together and (in some cases) previously published and jointly written essays might occasion some self-doubt, the following sentiment should immediately disabuse such temptation: 'if the argument in this book is correct, these [re. the period 1980-91 are but brief moments in an epic story which has not altered in its essentials' (vol., p.X). New neo-classical man is not only alive and well in space but also through time: no less than the entire sweep of almost three millennia of sub- continental history! I suppose that when we bear in mind the tidal waves which have been moving in this very direction during the 'eighties in East and West, and in both theory and practice, it may seem perfectly reasonable to take a shy at any target. however remote. Once this general approach has been so eagerly accepted in the public domain (but not necessarily in V. P. Singh's India, and certainly not in the last phases of Rajiv Gandhi's) why bother to take any notice of the critical views of the doubting Thomases? Even A. K. Sen, who has stoutly defended 'development economics' o n a number of recent occasions, has been acknowledged by the author as amongst those 'offering help, encouragement and suggestions'. When the march of history is apparently on one's side, as it were, caution can be thrown to the wind.

The brief which Lal sets himself is predictably ambitious. In addition toofferinga general (and incidentally very materialist) interpretation of the nature of both long- run structures and aggregate performance, which privots on the functioningof labour markets (within an 'overall demand andsupply framework', vol.2, p.172), he purports to probe, en-passant, the causes, working and consequences of a formidable list of phenomena and institutions. These include, inter alia, the influence of climate, certain ecological considerations, the caste system, the operation ofjajmani(the largely intra- village and inter-caste exchange of goods and services for religious functions), sacred cows - In the literal not figurative sense, pastoralism, complex revenue arrangements, slavery, Indian 'feudalism', the rise of different types of state politics in both 'north' and 'south' India, and the impact of Islam together with the later arrival of the Mugha1 empire. All of this is compressed within the first ninety pages of vol.l! La1 then turns his attention to the British period. Were he takes on some twenty or so highly

Book Reviews 425

topics such as demographic change; per capita income growth; educational provision; urbanisation; irrigation; the drain controversy; industrial, agricultural and commercial development; agrarian regimes; employment; migration and monetary and fiscal policy (some one hundred and twenty pages in all). A third and final section of ~ 0 1 . 1 traces the post-independence story down to the late ’seventies, and encompasses planning, growth trends, sectoral shifts, the incidence of poverty, certain distributional issues, and a review of economic policy (approximately eighty-five pages). By way of contrast, the size and scope of v01.2 is positively muted; but, even so, in only one hundred and seventy pages of text we are presented withnine widely-ranging chapters plus a skimpy general COnClUSiOn of just three pages. This volume focuses upon various aspects of labour market behaviour, and though more contemporary then its antecedent (but nonetheless restricted to the pro1980 period) still CUtS a swathe through space and time with almost cavalier abandon. Chapter 2, for example, is concerned with ‘trends in wages and wage differentials over 2,000 yeam’ (p.16). The bulk of the remaining Part of this volume weaves in and out of highly

t o p i s such as the existence of SUPlUS labour (adamantly denied!), the rate of urban unemployment, wage determination in both rural and urban and, for good measure, we are treated to a part lecture, part review essay on ‘Labour in Development’.

From this still incomplete description of content, it should be obvious that professor Lal’s aspirations are, to say the very least, considerably beyond the horizons of dl but the most intrepid Of his peers. Certainly, I am not aware of anything in the field of South Asian studies of comparable Scope, scale and vaulting ambition. professors T. Schultz, I. Little, and P. Bauer have all made excursions into modern sub-continental history from time to time, but their studies have been strictly operational and therefore consciously limited; and from the altogether antithetical tradition Ofneo-Marxism, even A. G. Frank and I. Wallerstein have not attempted to go all the way back. Surely, if ‘analytical economic and social history’ (which is Lars model form, vol. 1, p.ix) is tosatisfy the twin tests ofcarryingconviction and providing a useful framework of thought, then it must surely rest upon solid foundations; in short, it has to trawl exhaustively the available secondary literature and demonstrate that there has been a careful, judiciously balanced and open-minded view of both the evidence and the ideas of the subject and topic specialists.

Unfortunately. there are serious grounds for thinking that neither task has been accomplished here; indeed, it is abundantly clear that such a standard of scholarship is simply not present. There is a good reason for this state of affairs. On the one hand, it is scarcely possible t o imagine any single individual managing t o get to grips with the enormous body of literature dealing with one of the oldest, highly sophisticated and complex societies in existence. The task of assembling and perusing the relevant material on, say, the caste system, is so daunting that even Louis Dumont’s celebrated study, Homo Hierarchicus, does not pretend to be a comprehensive account. 1 fear that the sociological library of Professor Lars wife (vol.1, p.ix) was not up t o the job. For the early periods, Lal’s heavy reliance upon a few of the popular narratives such as thoSeofR. Thapar, A. L. Basham and D. D. Kosambi will not inspire confidence; and

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for the later, the bibliographical lacunae are SO marked that the reader can hardly avoid the sensation of vacuity. On the other hand, since the whole rationale of the enterprise was to show the superiority of neo-classickm, it was surely incumbent of the author to openly acknowledge the very real dangers of distortion and bias from creeping in. This is not in evidence, and hence one feels that in an important sense history is being used to validate the legitimacy of an already predetermined set of outcomes. Such a selective appropriation of the past is quite at odds with deductive as well as inductive methods of historical reconstruction, and cannot but weaken the case.

In this type of exercise particularly, theseunderstandable gaps obviously matter a great deal. In the first place, the incomplete range of ‘inputs’ vitiate the resultant ‘output’, thus rendering some of the judgements suspect. Perhaps the most questionable instance of this is the central notion of a‘Hindu equilibrium’- a novel- sounding term lying at the heart of the argument and which, perish the thought, bears some passing resemblance to Marx’s original Asiatic mode of production. Forced to deploy an extremely elastic definition of equilibrium borrowed wholesale from Frank Hahn, La1 maintains that such a condition was established in India ’in about thesixth and fifth centuries AD.’ (vol.1, p.6) and has remained intact ever since. Neither endogenous change nor colonial rule (Mughal as well as British) could break this equilibrium, and coming up to date, the wishy-washy dirigisme of the Nehru-Mrs. Gandhi years, simply perpetuated those ‘Brahminical’ attitudes (v01.2, p. 177) which have discouraged growth. The one guarantee of its demise is predictable: only unfettered market forces operating through a process of labour-intensive industrialisation will enable India to escape from ‘economic stagnation’. It seems t o me that only a rather superficial acquaintance with the issues and extant literature could have yielded such an empty and uninformed central concept. What is the reader to deduce from the highly unremarkable statement that the ancient Hindus established a social order particularly suited to the physical environment (vol. I , p.5) - especially when it is the book‘s ‘major thesis”! Or the quite unverifiable claim that ‘the standard of living this [equilibrim] provided for a fairly large population [sic] was relatively high by contemporary standards for nearly a thousand years’! I fear that many informed readers will not find the ideas of a sort of reverse Protestant Ethic to be very meaningful. Rather than casting aspersions on the work of other students of labour in India (unprofessional, crude) Professor La1 might have found it useful t o have familiarised himself with the appropriate historiography. He would then have discovered the existence of important traditions such as the modem Cambridge school, the new business, social and demographic history, and the Subaltern Studies series. Even cursory exposure to this writing would have alerted the author to the now commonplace view, very well summed-up by Kingsley Davis in a recent Foreword t o a collection of papers on South Asia, that ‘the notion of stability in agrarian systems is an illusion created by distance. When one gets close to details ... one finds tremendous short-term fluctuations’ (Tim Dyson (ed.) India’s Historical Demography. London 1989). Scratch the all-India surface today - let alone for a couple of thousand years - and you will find that the ‘Hindu equilibrium’, ‘long cultural stability’ and ‘economic

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stagnation’ dissolve away. This should not imply that generalisation about India as a whole IS Impossible, merely that it has to be done with extreme care and only after the tedious spadework has been accomplished.

Turning finally to the question of bias, it seems that Professor La1 is determined to show the developmental virtues of free markets and to try and refute all perceptions to the contrary, particularly nationalist, neo-Marxist and ‘dirigiste’. To this end, he contests the charge that the free trade regime operating in Indiaduring the last century had thwarted - or even partially constrained - industrialisation; he adamantly denies any version of the de-industrialisation thesis as it applies t o the handicraft sector; he maintains that the inter-war policy of discriminating tariff protection damaged the growth potential of the factory-based industries; and he vigorously attacks virtually the whole basis of protective labour legislation - especially the laws proscribing long hours in the textile industry. As polemic, this part of the work ranks with Friedman’s Free 10 Choose book (and was probably written around the same time)and, no doubt, will add ammunition to the cause; as an essay in serious economic history, however, it utterly fails to meet the necessary requisites of scholarship. Professor La1.s foray into these areas is characterised by sweeping claims - some of a counterfactual nature - which are not argued through; reliance upon a tiny sample of the total number of available Sources; and a to appreciate the problematic and ambiguous nature of

r imav evidence. One cannot help but wonder whether Professor La1.s mind was the not We are therefore led to conclude that these two volumes will only find a warm

on the shelves ofthose who share Deepak Lal’s faith in the new neo-classical methods, and those non-specialists who are tempted by grand-sounding, all- embracing nostrums. The vast majority of historians will struggle t o follow the modelling, and the eCOnOtniSts Wil l s tWdetounderstand the context and the purpose of it all. Above all, those looking for a fresh set of insights on the longrun causes of India’s contemporary economic problems Will be as disappointed as those interested in designing a realistic set of cures.

UP long before he confronted the historical ‘data’?

COLIN SIMMONS Department of Economics University of Salford

I n Search ofSourheasr Asia: A Modern History. By DAVID J. STEINBERG (ed.). (London, Unwin Hyman, 1988, pp.590, €24.95 paperback.)

This is a book that was first published in 1971 and the revised work reviewed here uses the same format and approach as in the previous edition. The original contributors (David P. Chandler, William R. Roff, John R. W. Smail, David J. Steinberg, Alexander Woodside and David K. Wyatt) have been joined by Robert H. Taylor a specialist on Burma. As before the book begins with a brief, but extremely useful section which deals with the Southeast Asian world of the eighteenth century