02 | June | 2014 | Mostly Economics

Archive for June 2nd, 2014

Debating electoral systems – First-past-the-post vs Proportional Representation..

June 2, 2014

There has been many kinds of interesting and heated debates over India’s recent elections. One such debate is the issue of how the leading party managed to come to majority with just 31% of votes?

India follows a system of First Past the Post system where whoever secures the highest number of votes is declared winner. Other so called matured democracies seem to follow proportional representation system where MPs in a party are determined by the share of vote received. Based on this BJP should have got 31% of total seats or around 168-169 seats and so on..

CPI (M) in its newsletter says:

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Posted in Academic research & research papers, Indian Economy/Financial Markets | 1 Comment »

History and political economy of Bombay Plan of 1944…

June 2, 2014

Trying to read up little these days on Business history especially pertaining to India. HBS has done a great job by putting up papers on business history work of emerging markets including India. So this blog will have more of such stuff on India’s business history.

Came across this paper by Prof. Medha Kudaisya of National University of Singapore. It provides this fascinating account of Bombay Plan of 1944. The plan was formed by leading industrialists of that time to boost India’s industry post independence. What is interesting is how each of these industrialists were connected highly to the political class at that time but still the plan was largely ignored. Infact none of them were called when Planning Commission was finally floated and India moved onto planning:

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