Towards a Critique of Maharashtra's Political Economy: Conceptual Cobwebs and Policy Puzzles

Studies and commentaries on the economy and politics of the state of Maharashtra, over the last 50 years of its history, in the media or in the scholarly work of some of the distinguished thinkers and researchers, three or four major themes seem to recur as serious contradictions or paradoxes between the professed visions of the state and its unflattering reality. The most glaring of these is the rapid and simultaneous growth of unprecedented affluence for a few and life-threatening poverty for many. An equally rapid but highly truncated urbanisation and the festering problem of regional disparity follow. All the three are closely interrelated and are reflected in the fourth issue that has recently concerned the scholars and media. It is the phenomenon of farmers’ suicides, particularly in Vidarbha.