C. T. Kurien and Rethinking Economics – Creating Economics

Born in 1931, C. T. Kurien contributed to rethinking economics by means of his varied writings, significantly books and his imaginative and prescient for a sensible B.A level in Economics at Madras Christian Faculty (MCC), an autonomous school located in Chennai, a port metropolis in Southern India. In addition to MCC, one other establishment he contributed to was Madras Institute of Improvement Research (MIDS), a research-only institute, additionally in Chennai. Kurien handed away in July 2024 aged 93.

This weblog publish supplies a short introduction to Kurien’s life and economics.

Transient Life

Whereas at college in Kerala, Kurien was struck by the glimpses of Indian socio-economic realities present in Minoo Masani’s Our India, which was a textual content for his English course. It was advisable that he research logic and historical past earlier than enterprise a level in economics; and so, Kurien pursued his Intermediate (immediately’s class 11 & 12) from St. Joseph’s Faculty, Bengaluru between 1948 and 1950.

Kurien did his B.A (Hons.) Economics at MCC (1950-53). In an autographical dialogue in Rethinking Economics: Reflections Based mostly on a Research of the Indian Economic system (1996), Kurien shares particulars concerning his tutorial life. As a BA pupil, Kurien needed to research 6 papers and write one essay; within the first 12 months, he had ‘Rules of Economics’ and ‘Financial Historical past’; and in his remaining 12 months, he had ‘Public Finance’ and ‘Rural Economics’. The ‘Rules of Economics’ course handled the speculation of client behaviour drawn from marginalist economists equivalent to Lionel Robbins. It was within the ‘Public Finance’ course the place the scholars have been uncovered to modern discussions associated to the Indian Economic system.

Since Madras College recognised BA (hons) as equal to an MA in Economics, Kurien was eligible for lectureship. And so, after his BA, he joined the instructing college at MCC in 1953. Kurien was to be related to MCC for 25 years—he left MCC in 1978.[1] Between 1953 and 1958, Kurien (1996) identifies two debates, which passed off within the pages of Financial Weekly that influenced him. First was VKRV Rao’s critique of Keynesian economics primarily based on the standpoint of Indian specificities. The second was the controversy on the selection of method in relation to questions concerning planning. Within the former, KN Raj, Joan Robinson, Amartya Sen, and others participated.

Taking a go away of absence from MCC, Kurien moved to Stanford College in 1958 to start work on his PhD, which was accomplished in 1962. His academics included H. Houthakker, Ok. Arrow, Irma Adelman, Hollis Chenery, Lorie Tarshis and Bernard Haley. Kurien’s Ph.D supervisor was Chenery, and when Chenery left to affix the Kennedy administration, Moses Abramovitz turned Kurien’s supervisor. Kurien’s Ph.D thesis was titled Issue Market Construction and Technological Traits  of an Underdeveloped Nation: An Indian Case Research. The central argument was that there was a rational foundation “for issue market imperfections in underdeveloped nations, significantly these stated to be characterised by surplus labour” (p. 27).

In 1978, Kurien left MCC and joined MIDS as its director. MIDS was based by Malcolm Adisheshiah in 1970 and in 1977 was reconstituted as an Indian Council for Social Science Analysis (ICSSR) institute. Kurien served as Chairman of MIDS from 1997 to 2003. At MIDS, he supervised ten PhD dissertations (for the listing, see Appendix A). In 1996, Kurien acquired UGC’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he served because the President of Indian Financial Affiliation.

Rural Transformation

Kurien’s ebook Dynamics of Rural Transformation:  A Research of Tamil Nadu, 1950-1975 (1981) was a pioneering one in regional economics, and it was tailored as a mannequin research for different states by ICSSR. Printed in 1981, the ebook examined the character of rural transformation in Tamil Nadu between 1950 and 1975.

Kurien outlines the next methods to interpret modifications in Tamil Nadu’s rural economic system.

1. Commodity move method: this largely includes the “conversion of all portions into worth classes…” (p. 119). Inside this, the generally used strategies are the neoclassical mixture manufacturing operate and the disaggregated input-output.
2. Class method: since lessons are “conceptual classes”, their utilization permits for commenting on long-term modifications. Furthermore, when utilized to finding out short-term modifications, the interpretation of “conceptual classes into operational empirical classes” have been discovered to be “tough” (p. 120). Kurien, right here, refers back to the debate between Ashok Rudra and Utsa Patnaik in 1971 in Financial & Political Weekly (p. 147, n. 4).
3. Issue evaluation: this “permits an examination of the interrelationships amongst a set of variates to proceed in the direction of the development of a composite index out of the number of variables” (p. 120). Kurien in all probability picked this up from Adelman, one in all his Stanford academics; she co-authored with Cynthia Morris Society, Politics and Financial Improvement: A Quantitative Strategy in 1967.
4. Cluster evaluation: it “permits one to group a set of variables or entities whose properties will be represented by a wide range of variables, into extra homogeneous subgroups…” (p. 120); this was utilized in his earlier work with Josef James which was revealed as Financial Change in Tamil Nadu 1960-1970 (1979).

Kurien eschews all these 4 approaches and prefers going with “a intentionally chosen focus” (p. 120) to make sense of rural transformation. Within the ebook, he makes use of decile teams, Gini coefficients and focus ratios. Kurien makes the problems in evaluating varied survey knowledge very specific and supplies a wealthy description of the information sources. There are insightful discussions on cropping patterns within the districts versus the state (pp. 37-41), elevated mechanization of agriculture (p. 35), elevated consumption of fertilizers (p. 36), decline in rural actual wages (p. 100).

Markets in Financial Idea

Kurien’s R.C. Dutt lectures on political economic system, given in 1990, was revealed as a ebook in 1993. It was titled On Markets in Financial Idea and Coverage.

Whereas he has not made theoretical contributions to the notion of markets, as a pupil of improvement economics, Kurien has “tried to know the phenomenon of the market within the context of the evolution and transformation of economies” (p. 7). He rightly observes that “…whereas idea has the power to make abstractions from actuality, coverage can not summary away from actuality” (p. 12). After stating that “[t]listed below are totally different theoretical traditions in economics”, Kurien attracts our consideration to the “two very broad traditions” outlined by Amartya Sen: “the ‘moral’ and ‘engineering’ traditions (p. 8). Kurien’s standpoint is greatest captured by this sentence: “the market should be thought of each as a social establishment and as embodying sure logical properties” (p. 10).

In his lectures, Kurien focuses his consideration on 4 thinkers: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Hicks, and Karl Polanyi. On this weblog publish, we will prohibit our consideration to Kurien’s view of Adam Smith—particularly due to the dominant view which incorrectly views Smith as a precursor of marginalist economics and a champion of free market.

Kurien rightly factors out the state of affairs that Smith shouldn’t be happy with: guilds and restrictions on commerce. Smith wished that folks had the liberty to enter the market and compete. And, most significantly, “…Smith’s place is that the train of self-love should be seen throughout the context of a type of social relationship constructed on justice which incorporates defending the weak and chastising the responsible” (p. 15). Kurien makes his personal place very specific when he writes that he favours the “moral custom…the institutional method” (p. 11).

Traditions in Economics

Kurien’s engagement with varied approaches in economics is seen in his Dynamics of Rural Transformation (1981), On Markets in Financial Idea and Coverage (1993), and ‘Historical past, Logic and Narrative in Pedagogy’ (2019)—a chapter in Pluralistic Economics and Its Historical past, a ebook I co-edited with Ajit Sinha.

Drawing on Sen, Kurien (1993) locations Socrates, Aristotle and Kautilya within the “moral custom” and Walras within the “engineering custom” (p. 9). However the truth is, Sen locations Kautilya within the engineering custom alongside Petty and Walras. Sen, in his slim ebook On Ethics and Economics (1987), writes: “The ‘engineering’ method additionally connects with these research of economics which developed from the technique-oriented evaluation of statecraft. Certainly, in what was nearly definitely the primary ebook ever written with something just like the title ‘Economics’, particularly Kautilya’s Arthasastra, the logistic method to statecraft, together with financial coverage, is outstanding” (p. 5).

Such a distinction is a poor one as a result of Smith’s political economic system is a mixture of logical and moral issues. Extra considerably, such a distinction is problematic as a result of it obfuscates the reality—that there exists contending paradigms throughout the so-called engineering custom. For instance, Ricardo is a classical political economist whereas Walras is a marginalist economics—and each have been involved about moral issues.

On the primary level, Kurien additionally agrees. As he writes: “there isn’t any incompatibility between the moral and engineering approaches” and “…the tendency to think about the 2 traditions as mutually unique, and whilst antagonistic … is an error and a pity” (p. 9). Kurien additionally calls them the “institutional method” and the “logical method” (p. 10).

In Kurien (2019), he begins by noting that economics instructing is dominated by neoclassical (I choose marginalist) economics owing to the dominance of textbooks by Mankiw (and prior to now, Samuelson and Marshall). Whereas Kurien (1981) distinguished between the neoclassical manufacturing operate and sophistication evaluation, his subsequent writings draw from Sen’s classification. In Kurien (2019), he calls the 2 approaches in economics because the “substantive method” and the “formal method”. He locations Smith within the former and Ricardo, Jevons, Walras, Arrow, and Debreu within the latter.

Concluding Ideas

Kurien had a life-long curiosity within the pedagogy of economics. In Kurien (2019), he advisable the inclusion of real-life points, historical past of financial thought and financial historical past, and the gathering and evaluation of information within the economics curriculum. And so, after I despatched him my ebook Macroeconomics: An Introduction (2021), which is constructed on my standpoint of contending (“engineering”) approaches in economics, I used to be somewhat anxious. I used to be reassured and delighted when he wrote that he discovered my work as “an authentic contribution to economics as a department of the social sciences” (private correspondence, 17 July 2021).

Kurien’s work helps us perceive the specificities of the Indian economic system higher. Initially, he used descriptive statistics, and later in life he employed narratives—all with the clear objective of guaranteeing life for all.[2] Let me finish this essay with an excerpt from Kurien (1993): “My view is that…any critical research of social points and of society, or of the economic system as a part of the research of society, is said to 2 primary queries: ‘What’s my accountability to myself?’ and ‘What’s my accountability to my neighbour?’, exactly as a result of society (and economic system) consists of myself and my neighbours and of our interplay” (p. 11).  

ALEX M. THOMAS is Affiliate Professor of Economics, Azim Premji College, Bengaluru, India. He’s the creator of Macroeconomics: An Introduction (Cambridge UP, 2021). He’s a founding member of the Indian Society for the Historical past of Financial Thought (ISHET) and serves as a council member for the European Society for the Historical past of Financial Thought (ESHET).

Photograph: C. T. Kurien, Supply: The Hindu.

This weblog publish is predicated on the web presentation I gave at The Studying Membership, Division of Economics, MCC on 3^rd August 2024; I’m grateful to Arun Koshy for inviting me to commemorate Kurien’s life and work. The content material and opinions expressed are mine and aren’t endorsed by and nor do they essentially replicate the views of Azim Premji College.

APPENDIX A

Desk: Listing of PhD college students supervised by C. T. Kurien at MIDS

Supply: https://www.mids.ac.in/doctoral-programme/phd-thesis-awarded/

[1] Beneath Kurien’s management, the school physique at MCC restructured their undergraduate curriculum; a report of that train, together with the syllabus, was revealed as ‘An Undergraduate Course in Economics’ (1976) in Financial & Political Weekly (vol. 11, no. 51, pp. 1962-1966). I’m grateful to C. Selvaraj for alerting me to this text.

[2] He reviewed a wide range of economics books for the journal Frontline; it could be fruitful for somebody to write down a paper finding out his quite a few ebook evaluations. For an inventory of evaluations, see https://frontline.thehindu.com/profile/creator/C-T–KURIEN/ (for drawing my consideration to this facet of Kurien’s work, I acknowledge Raghunath Nageswaran).