Teaching Plan

Programme: B.A. in Social Sciences

Campus: TISS Guwahati Campus

Batch: 2015-18

Course Title / Theories of Economic Development
Course Number / DC7
Semester / III
Credit / 4

Economic development became a major concern of the discipline of economics at the end of the second world war that led to the demise of European colonialism and brought to the fore a divided world consisting of ‘developing countries’, mostly from among the erstwhile colonies with low living standards in sharp contrast to the ‘developed economies’. Development economics is a study of this divided world, and is concerned with two major questions – what are the causes of underdevelopment, and, what policies can be taken to accelerate the rate of growth of incomes in the developing economies? While initially economic development was envisaged mainly in terms of increase in productivity and transformation of production structures, since the 1990s, attention gradually shifted to human development. This paper introduces the student to the major concepts and theories of economic development. An understanding of these theories should enable students to understand the uneven patterns of development in the world and evaluate development policies, their scope and limitations within particular contexts.

Objectives

  • To understand the concept of development, features of underdeveloped economies, and patterns of development in the world.
  • To build a theoretical foundation based on which students may understand and question development policies and development trajectories of underdeveloped nations, particularly India.

Lecture / Topic / Course Teacher
Lecture-1,2,3,4
(8 Hours) / UNIT 1: What is development?
  • Growth and development
  • Indicators of economic development – income, income inequality, poverty, industrialization, population
  • The development gap – Regional patterns of development in the world
  • Obstacles to growth and development
  • Concepts of poverty – absolute poverty, relative poverty, chronic and transitory poverty, vulnerability
/ DS
Tutorial
(2 Hours) / UNIT-1 / DS
Lecture-5,6,7,8
(8 Hours) / UNIT 2: Economic development and agricultural growth (10 Hrs RS)
  • Agricultural growth as a pre-requisite to economic development
  • Land relations and agricultural productivity, reorganization of land relations in developed nations before industrial revolution,
  • Land reforms, land reforms in underdeveloped countries
  • Globalisation and agricultural growth
/ RS
Tutorial
(2 Hours) / UNIT-2 / RS
Lecture-9,10,11,12
(8 Hours) / UNIT 3. Economic development and structural change (Section-A)
  • Production structures of underdeveloped economies
  • Kuznet’s theory on features of modern economic growth, structural change and income inequality, inverted-U hypothesis, differences in early industrialized nations and present day less developed economies
  • Concept of the dual economy
/ DS
Tutorial
(2 Hours) / UNIT-3 (Section-A) / DS
Lecture-13,14,15,16
(8 Hours) / UNIT 3. Economic development and structural change (Section-B)
  • Choice of Technique – Labour and capital intensive technologies, small scale vs large scale production
  • Terms of trade between agriculture and industry
/ RS
Tutorial
(2 Hours) / UNIT-3 (Section-B) / RS
Lecture-17,18,19,20
(8 Hours) / UNIT 4. Partial Theories of growth and development
  • Balanced growth and big push (Rosenstein Rodan)
  • Unbalanced growth and backward and forward linkages (Hirschman)
  • Low level equilibrium trap and critical minimum effort (Leibenstein)
/ DS
Tutorial
(2 Hours) / UNIT-4 / DS
Lecture-21,22,23,25
(8 Hours) / UNIT 5. Human development
  • Evolution of the concept of human development – Utilitarianism, Basic needs approach, Capability approach
  • The Concept of human development
  • Human development indices: Human Development Index (HDI), Gender Development Index (GDI), Gender Empowerment Index (GEM) (Tutorials: 5 hours, one hour for each unit)
/ RS
Tutorial
(2 Hours) / UNIT-5 / RS
Mode of Assessment / 50%
Assignment + Presentation / 30%