Surbhi Kesar
Surbhi Kesar is a development and political economist, who works as a lecturer in the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London. Her work focusses on labour, the informal economy, and the reproduction of the structure of economic dualism in the Indian context of high economic growth, thereby critiquing theimaginary of development-as-capitalist-transition (some works on the theme here, here, here and here). Her other works focus on the process of economic growth and social exclusion in India; political economy of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic (some works here, here, here, and here); and approaches towards decolonizing the field of economics (see here; forthcoming book: Decolonizing Economics). She is an editorial board member of the Review of Radical Political Economics journal and the Review of Political Economy journal. She is also a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and a steering group member for the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative. She received her PhD in Economics from South Asian University, New Delhi, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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Surbhi Kesar is a development and political economist, who works as a lecturer in the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London. Her work focusses on labour, the informal economy, and the reproduction of the structure of economic dualism in the Indian context of high economic growth, thereby critiquing theimaginary of development-as-capitalist-transition (some works on the theme here, here, here and here). Her other works focus on the process of economic growth and social exclusion in India; political economy of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic (some works here, here, here, and here); and approaches towards decolonizing the field of economics (see here; forthcoming book: Decolonizing Economics). She is an editorial board member of the Review of Radical Political Economics journal and the Review of Political Economy journal. She is also a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and a steering group member for the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative. She received her PhD in Economics from South Asian University, New Delhi, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
In their own words…
– IEA: Can you tell us a little bit about your life story, what got you interested in economics, and how you decided to pursue an academic career?
– Surbhi: I grew up in India during a period when the economy had already embarked upon a high growth phase and the process of liberalization was underway. It was always striking for me how this experience did not fundamentally alter the spectacle of informal and precarious livelihoods and social stratification in the Indian landscape – while its forms changed, its persistence did not. I experienced a sense of discomfort and urgency in trying to make sense of this reality. It was my Masters’ coursework, and then the graduate coursework, particularly courses on economic development and political economy, which provided me with the set of tools and frameworks to think systematically about this conundrum and to identify nodes and strategies for change. My academic journey continues to be driven by this discomfort, and one which has not necessarily eased over time.
– IEA: In your recent work you study the economic transitions and informality in India, particularly on the informal market, can you briefly summarize your findings?
– Surbhi: This paper relates to my interest in unpacking the issue of persistence of informality in the Indian economy despite its high growth experience. This persistence has often been seen in the literature as a temporary phenomenon that would wither away with high growth. I examine the Indian economy during a peak period of high growth between 2005 and 2012 to analyse the patterns and nature of household-level transitions across different sectors, characterised by varying degrees of formality/informality and various production structures and labour processes. Even within this brief period, while the overall structure has remained intact, there has been a huge volume of household-level transitions across sectors, with about 46–75 percent of households from each sector in 2005 transitioning towards some other sectors over the period. However, the structure stayed intact since this movement was accompanied by an almost proportional transition towards these other sectors. Thus, the structure, and its segmentations, has continued to be reproduced through a huge amount of underlying churn, accompanied by a regeneration of “traditional” non-capitalist informal spaces that were expected to wither away with economic growth.
Moreover, for the majority of those who did transition to another sector, these transitions have been “unfavourable” in nature given their socioeconomic characteristics. The likelihood of undergoing a “favourable” versus “unfavourable” sectoral transition, on average, varies with household characteristics, some of which, like social caste, are structurally given and cannot be chosen by households. Through this work, I aim to bring forward the complexity in India’s contemporary development trajectory, whereby a seemingly stagnant economic structure is reproduced, paradoxically, through a continuous reshuffling and reconstitution of economic spaces, accompanied by significant volume of “unfavourable” household-level sectoral transitions.
– IEA: In your recent works you study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market in India, particularly on the informal market, can you briefly summarize your findings? What made you interested in this topic?
– Surbhi: During the Covid-19 pandemic India faced a set of stringent lockdowns. While the measures were put in place to contain the spread of the pandemic, it came, for many, as a choice between “lives and livelihoods”. In order to understand how these livelihood dynamics were playing out for the informal workers and to contribute to an informed policy making process, as a part of a team, we undertook a few projects.
During the lockdown, we conducted a purposive survey of 5000 informal workers in India to study the impact of the Covid containment measures on employment, livelihoods, and food security. We documented the intensity of the impact, for example about two-thirds of respondents reported losing their employment and about eighty percent of households reported a reduction in their food intake, identified coping strategies of the workers, and suggested policy measures for mitigation (some findings here). In other works, using a pan-India high frequency panel data, we documented the trajectories of workers in the labour market and how it varied across identity groups (some findings here). Specifically looking at the gender identity, in this work, my co-authors and I studied the gendered nature of the impact on the labour market, whereby women were much more likely than men to lose work and were much less likely to return to work. While for men informality emerged as a fall-back option, women were usually pushed out of the workforce. We also document how this impact intersects with other identities of religion and caste. The empirical findings from these primary field-based surveys and secondary data-based analysis allowed us to understand certain dynamics of the Indian labour market and fissures in India’s development trajectory, which got particularly accentuated during the pandemic. In an attempt to critically reflect on this, in this work, my co-authors and I theorize some of these dynamics as articulations of certain key contradictions that define the world of work today.
– IEA: Why is this research relevant?
– Surbhi: This research is relevant to grasp the nature of India’s development trajectory and the related question of informality that affects the lives of a significant population of the world today. These issues have global implications. Most other so-called less developed economies are still geared towards improving their growth rates and, in that context, India stands as a case in point to study the conditions under which growth may not deliver secure livelihoods. Furthermore, with informality, which was supposed to be a marker of underdevelopment, now peeking its head even in the developed countries, one is forced to contend with this issue in terms of global and systemic nature. It is surprising that debates about informality in the global North today do not draw upon the rich debates from the global South that have been underway since 1970s onwards. The engagement is needed not simply to make economics inclusive, but to understand how the nature, forms, and role of informal economy in the process of capitalist development has evolved. Without understanding its historic character and its systemic nature, our analysis of informality today will remain partial. I highlight this need to use a decolonized lens to understand the process of economic development in a forthcoming book on decolonising economics that I am co-authoring and in a forthcoming special issue on decolonising economic development in the journal World Development that I am guest editing.
– IEA: Why is it important for economic research to be racially diverse and inclusive?
– Surbhi: It would not be a stretch to imagine that any space which is not broadly representative across class, caste, gender, race, and other identities, is partaking in a process of exclusion. For starters, simply for the sake of equity, measures need to be instituted against such exclusionary processes. It is a pity that in various, even most, economics spaces, it is quite the contrary – masculine traits are normalized, an intensely toxic competition is promoted, a crude hierarchy, rather than an urge to understand the world, drives the discipline. However, I also believe, there is a deeper issue at stake here, and lack of diversity in our discipline is merely a reflection of it.
The issue of diversity in economics is not limited to “who does economics research?” Instead, the more crucial question to ask is: “to what extent do theoretical frameworks and tools employed in economics centrally locate issues of structural aspects of power and identity-based social processes?” It is in this specific context the issue of racial diversity and inclusion needs to be placed. In so far that our frameworks do not address this, they will remain inadequate to sufficiently understand the dynamics of various economic and social processes that we seek to study and will ultimately fail to attract the people and research agendas that would make the discipline diverse and inclusive.