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The aftermath of demonetisation witnessed several books engaging with the black economy. However, the seminal work on the black economy in the Indian context is Arun Kumar’s The Black Economy in India (1999). Saumen Chattopadhyay’s Macroeconomics of the Black Economy is an extension of his PhD thesis which signifi cantly draws on Kumar (1999).

With 1.1 million schools, 143 million students and 4.9 million teachers, the government school system in India is one of the largest and most complex public systems across the world. The past three decades have seen an exponential rise in the number of schools and enrolment due to various government initiatives. However, issues such as caste, class, gender and religious inequalities still persist in our country and they have a strong correlation with student attendance, retention, and dropouts. These issues will remain unabated unless the beliefs and attitudes of the different stakeholders gravitate towards the ideals of diversity and inclusivity as envisaged by our Constitution. Most contemporary policy discourses focus on school choice, teacher accountability, assessments, and ICT in education. What is missing and urgently needed is the creation of a learning environment in schools and classrooms that enables inclusivity, and not one where inequalities are reproduced.

This paper provides a detailed account of the engagement of Arun Bose (1919-2003), the Marxist economist, with Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960), based on the articles he published in the 1960s in the Economic Journal and Economic Weekly. The paper closely deals with the two fundamental aspects of Bose’s involvement with Sraffa’s 1960 book: (a) the assumption of constante turns to scale and (b) the role of demand in value theory. The Bose-Sraffa engagement yields a useful output – an interpretation of Sraffa’s work, in the tradition of the classical economists.

For Piketty, capitalism generates forces of convergence as well as divergence. ‘The main forces for convergence are the diffusion of knowledge and investment in training and skills’ (21). However, these forces are not automatic. Indeed, as Piketty notes, ‘the principal force for convergence—the diffusion of knowledge—is only partly natural and spontaneous. It also depends in large part on educational policies, access to training and to the acquisition of appropriate skills, and associated institutions’ (22, also 71). He underplays this element of contingency when he writes that the ‘overall conclusion of this study is that a market economy based on private property, if left to itself, contains powerful forces of convergence associated in particular with the diffusion of knowledge and skills’ (571). Piketty’s fundamental inequality, r > g, is ‘amplified by inequality in the returns on capital as a function of initial portfolio size’ (439) arising primarily from ‘“economies of scale” in portfolio management’ (431). In other words, wealth begets more wealth. Is it not the same with knowledge? Endowments matter in the acquisition of knowledge too because technological diffusion depends on existing technology and skill capacity.

Against the backdrop of demands to reduce the theory cources ad increases the number of 'applied' courses, 2009, I wrote an essay titled on Economic Theory and Economics Policy' The Student Economist, a JNU student publication. I had argued for pluralism in the teaching of economics because the dominant paradigm marginalist economic theory runs into logical problems and is incapable of offering useful policy suggestions as far as the Indian economy is concerned whereas the heterodox approach drawing from Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and Keynes offer a better alternative.

David Ricardo’s 1817 work, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation (Principles hereafter), is a classic in economics, and revised editions were published in 1819 and 1821. Unfortunately, all classics are ill-fated because they are often quoted but seldom read. Classics are revered and quotations from them adorn the walls of economics departments. Another way in which economics students learn about Ricardo is in the initial chapters of their textbooks, suggesting that these ideas were once-upon-a-time relevant, and that the current economics is an intellectual advance over Ricardo’s economics. It is in this way that his comparative advantage theory, growth theory, rent theory, and tax theory have been assimilated into various textbooks.

Economic Thought: A Brief History by Heinz D Kurz translated by Jeremiah Riemer, New York: Columbia University Press, 2016; pp viii+208, 27. I end with some observations on the book in its entirety. Kurz’s Economic Thought is written in an accessible manner for the interested reader and indeed, “no prior knowledge [is] needed” (p vii). Additionally, owing to the breadth of the book and its focus on classical economics, Marx, marginalism, and Keynes, it can also be used as a supplementary text in undergraduate classes. In the fi nal paragraph of the book, Kurz warns the reader “against the naïve idea that it is the privilege of living economists to articulate only correct ideas” (p 185). Hence, readers of this book will come across contemporary research (especially in capital theory (pp 168–70) and demand-led growth theory (pp 175–76) which has its origins in the ideas of classical economists and Marx. One minor quibble is that this reviewer hoped to see a longer refl ection on the method, practice, and usefulness of history of economic thought in the book given the author’s substantial scholarship in this area. That said, overall, the book is rem arkably successful in its objective of providing a brief history of economic thought.

In “The Interest Rate Affair,” Sugata Marjit (EPW, 4 April 2015) points out the deficiency of one particular mainstream macro­economic viewpoint. Marjit’s counterpoint, which we are in broad agreement with, is that a lower rate of interest does “not spur investments” because “[t]he rate of investment depends on other ­factors” (p 14). However, there are logical issues with his neoclassical economic methodology.

Shahrukh Rafi Khan’s History of Development Economics Thought is part of the ‘Routledge Studies in Development Economics’. The book is divided into four parts. The first part deals with heterodox challenges to the mainstream view of development; the second part is about challenges to the mainstream view of development from within the mainstream neoclassical school; the third part summarises the ‘neo-classical counter-challenge’; and the fourth presents the challenges to ‘Neo-liberalism’. According to the author, the ‘book adopts a history of development thought approach’ (xvi) and ‘is designed to complement textbooks in development economics but can also be a standalone monograph for scholars and students interested in the evolution of macro development economics’ (xvi). It is, as Khan mentions in the Preface, a selective study in which he ‘focuses on key thinkers and their contributions and in some cases key debates’ (xviii). These ‘key thinkers’ reviewed number more than 35, spanning over 145 pages, with Adam Smith getting two and a half pages and Karl Marx slightly over one page. Khan writes: ‘I avoid critically engaging with the arguments in the text … . Comments are provided in the endnotes, or in the summary section, when I think they may be relevant’ (xvii). However, the presence of critical engagement in the main text would have contributed towards a better representation of ‘challenges and counterchallenges’ in development economics.

This thesis is first and foremost an exploration of classical economics with consumption as its focus. It is the latter which distinguishes the present work from the already existing and growing literature on classical economics. The distinctive nature of the theory of value and distribution and the theory of activity levels and growth in classical economics and Marx is analysed and interpreted in chapters 2 to 9, which deal respectively with Cantillon, Quesnay, Turgot, Steuart, Smith, Ricardo, Sismondi and Malthus. The analytical separability between the theory of value and distribution and the theory of activity levels and growth emerges clearly in these chapters. The development of the role of consumption in economic growth, within the classical theoretical framework, particularly from Sismondi and Malthus, is then traced through Marx, Luxemburg and Kalecki – Marx and Luxemburg in particular working within that classical framework. Hence, the thesis we put forward is that the problem of demand insufficiency present in classical economics and Marx, but not satisfactorily formulated or theorized, finds an analytical resolution in Kalecki, via Luxemburg, independent of Keynes. Both Kalecki and Keynes articulate clearly the coordination mechanism between planned saving and planned investment which occurs via changes in aggregate activity levels. In classical economics, most notably in Smith and Ricardo, planned saving is one and the same as planned investment (our latter-day terms); but this assumption is untenable in any economy where saving and investment decisions are decentralised. Finally, in chapter 12, a simple demand-led growth model is presented. Consumption, especially autonomous consumption, is shown to play a decisive role. The last section of the chapter notes the affinities between classical economics and demand-led growth. This reflective section affirms the enduring relevance of the theoretical framework of the classical economists and Marx.

In 1936, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, one of the most influential books in economics of the twentieth century. With this publication, Keynes has confused and will continue to confuse generations of economists as to what classical economics means. This short essay argues that the 'classical economists' whom Keynes referred to in The General Theory were actually those economists who primarily employed 'marginal methods' in economics.

This volume is a history of economics – as it was interpreted, discussed and established as a discipline – in the 20th century. It highlights the pluralism of the discipline and brings together leading voices in the field who reflect on their lifelong work. The chapters draw on a host of traditions of economic thought, including pre-classical, classical, Marxian, neoclassical, Sraffian, post-Keynesian, Cantabrigian and institutionalist traditions in economics. Further, the volume also looks at the history of economics in India and its evolution as a discipline since the country’s independence. This book will appeal to students, researchers and teachers of economics and intellectual history, as well as to the interested general reader.