Assoc Prof Rahul Mukherji

Associate Professor

B.A. (Hons) (Delhi University), M.A.(Jawaharlal Nehru University), Ph.D. (Columbia University)

 Rahul Mukherji

Contact information

Telephone: 6516 8582

Email: sasrm@nus.edu.sg

Location:

South Asian Studies Programme

National University of Singapore

5 Arts Link, AS7-04-06, Singapore 117570

Research Interest

Political economy; development; economic regionalism; South Asia; China; Southeast Asia

 More about my research

Teaching Interest

Political economy and development; foreign economic policy and regionalism; international relations and research methodology
 
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About Me

My interest in political economy and economic history arose from undergraduate grooming in economics in Delhi University. I pursued international relations and political economy at the School of International Studies in JNU at the Master's level, and secured a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University.

 

My work tries to marry the richness of area studies with the analytic insights of comparative and historically oriented social science. I have worked on various aspects of India’s economic liberalization in the context of democratic politics, the politics of promoting competitiveness and improving public service delivery, shifts in trade policy and economic regionalization within and beyond South Asia, and, the impact of globalization on South Asian countries.

Before joining the NUS, I served as Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). I have taught at Hunter College located within the City University of New York (New York) and at the University of Vermont (Burlington); and, have held fellowships at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (New Delhi), the Australian National University (Canberra), and the Institute of South Asian Studies (Singapore).

 

My teaching interests lie in the area of political economy and development, foreign economic policy and regionalism, international relations, and research methodology. My research is largely focused on India and South Asian countries, and I maintain a lively interest in comparative work on China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, United States, Britain and the Scandinavian countries.

 

My research has been supported by the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace (Columbia University, New York), the Institute of South Asian Studies (Singapore), the World Bank, the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (New Delhi), the Centre for the Advanced Study of India (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), the Berkeley APEC Study Centre (University of California, Berkeley), and the South Asia Program (School of Advanced International Studies, Washington).

 

I serve on the editorial board of India Review (Routledge), and have refereed manuscripts for journals such as Comparative Politics, Asian Survey, Pacific Affairs, Review of International Political Economy, and Business and Politics. I have also reviewed book manuscripts for Oxford University Press, Sage, and Brill Publishers. I serve on the Research Advisory Committee of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (New Delhi).

 

My current research
 

The modules I teach
 

My selected publications

Books

  • India: The Political Economy of Reforms, edited with Bibek Debroy, (New Delhi: Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Bookwell, 2004).

  • India Since 1980, co-author with Sumit Ganguly (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, Under contract, forthcoming 2010).

  • Under preparation: Democracy and Industrialization in India: Political Economy of Industrial Change and Competitiveness. Supported by a National University of Singapore, Faculty Research Committee Grant.

 

Refereed Journals

  • “Interests, Wireless Technology and Institutional Change: From Government Monopoly to Regulated Competition in Indian Telecommunications,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 68, No. 2 (2009), pp. 491-517.

  • “The State, Economic Growth and Development in India,” India Review, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2009), pp. 81-106.

  • “The Political Economy of India’s Economic Reforms,” Asian Economic Policy Review, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2008), pp. 315-331.

  • “The Politics of Telecommunications Regulation in India: Explaining State - Industry Alliances Favoring Foreign Investment,” Journal of Development Studies Vol. 44, No. 10 (2008), pp. 1405-1423.

  • “Managing Competition: Politics and the Building of Independent Regulatory Institutions,” India Review (Routledge), vol. 3, no. 4 (October 2004), pp. 278-305. Republished in India’s Economic Transition: The Politics of Reforms (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Also selected for publication in Subrata Mitra, ed., Politics of Modern South Asia (Routledge, 2009).

  • “Globalization and the Politics of International Corporate Taxation: A View from India”, India Review (Routledge), vol. 3, no. 2 (April 2004), pp. 89-113. Republished in Jaivir Singh, ed., Regulation, Institutions and the Law (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2007).

  • “Privatization, Federalism and Governance,” (Special article in a special issue on Globalization and India) Economic and Political Weekly vol. 39, no. 1 (January 3 2004), pp. 109-113.

  • “Digitized Trade Rules and India” South Asian Survey (Sage) vol. 11, no. 1 (March 2004).

  • “India’s Aborted Liberalization – 1966,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 73, no.3 (Fall 2000), pp. 375-392.

  • “Economic Power as an Instrument of Statecraft,” Indian Defense Review, 15, 3 (September 2000), pp. 46-50.

  • With Sumit Ganguly and Rajesh Rajagopalan, “India and South Asian Security,” Defence and Peace Economics vol. 10, no. 4 (1999): pp. 335-345.

  • “Global Political Economy, Regionalism and South Asia,” Man and Development (Center for Research in Rural and Industrial Development: India) vol. 14, no. 2 (June 1992), pp. 120-129.

 

Shorter comments and book reviews

  • “A Tiger Despite the Chains: The State of Reform in India,” Current History vol. 109, no. 726 (April 2010), pp. 144-50.

  • With Sunila Kale, “Introduction: India Sixty Years On,” India Review vol. 8, no. 1 (2009), pp. 1-3.

  • Review of “Divided Leviathan: The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India,” by Aseema Sinha,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics vol. 44, no. 3 (2006), pp. 392-93.

  • With Sudha Pai, Pradeep Sharma and Pralay Kanungo, “Uttar Pradesh in the 1990’s: Critical Perspectives on Society, Polity and Economy,” Economic and Political Weekly vol. 50, no. 21 (May 21, 2005), pp. 2144 – 2147.

  • Review of “Federation without a Centre,” by Lawrence Saez, The Journal of Asian Studies vol. 63, no. 3 (2004).

  • With Bibek Debroy, “Editor’s Introduction” (to the special issue on The Politics an Economics of Liberalization in India), Global Business Review (Sage), vol. 3, no. 2 (July-December 2002), pp. 195-199.

  • “The Danger of Conflict and the Prospect of Cooperation in South Asia,” Harvard Asia Pacific Review (Winter 2000-2001), pp. 61-64.

  • “Economic Power as an Instrument of Statecraft,” Indian Defense Review vol. 15, no. 3 (2000), pp. 46-50.

 

Chapters in edited books

  • “Political Economy of the Indo-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement,” in E Sridharan, ed., International Relations Theory and South Asian Regionalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).

  • “Regulation and Infrastructure Development in India: A Comparison of Telecommunications, Ports and Power,” in Vikram Chand, ed., Public Service Delivery in India (Washington and New Delhi: World Bank and Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).

  • “Political Economy of Reforms,” in Neerja G Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, eds., The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010): 483-98.

  • “Political Economy of Reforms,” in The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, eds., Pratap B Mehta and Neerja G Jayal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2009).

  • “India’s Foreign Economic Policies,” in India’s Foreign Policy, ed., Sumit Ganguly (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2009).

  • "India's Shifting Trade Policy: South Asia and Beyond," with Vinod K. Aggarwal in Asia's New Institutional Architecture: Evolving Structures for Managing Trade and Security Relations, eds., Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2008), pp. 215-258.

  • “Appraising the Legacy of Bandung,” In Bandung Revisited: The Legacy of the 1955 Asian African Conference for International Order, eds., See Seng Tan and Amitav Acharya, eds., (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), pp. 161-79.

  • “The Indian State under Globalization: A Research Agenda,” in Peace and Development: Haksar Memorial Volume IV, ed., Subrata Banerjee (Chandigarh, India: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 2007), 153-186.

  • “Introduction: The State and Private Initiative in India,” in India’s Economic Transition: The Politics of Reforms, in India’s Economic Transition, ed., Rahul Mukherji (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1-24.

  • “Economic Transition in a Plural Polity,” in India’s Economic Transition: The Politics of Reforms, ed., Rahul Mukherji (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 118-145.

  • “Promoting Competition in India’s Telecom Sector,” in Reinventing Public Service Delivery in India, ed., Vikram Chand (Washington DC and New Delhi: World Bank and Sage, 2006), pp.57- 94.

  • “Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool,” in International Relations in India: Bringing Theory Back Home, ed., Kanti Bajpai and M. Siddharth, (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2005), pp. 367-383.

  • “A Review of Administrative Reforms in India,” in Agenda for Improving Governance, ed., Bibek Debroy (New Delhi: Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies and Academic Foundation Publishers, 2004), pp. 104-120.

  • “The Potential for Trade and Economic Cooperation between India and the US,” in Engaged Democracies: Indo-US Relations in the 21st Century, ed., Kanti Bajpai and Amitabh Mattoo (New Delhi, Har Anand, 2000): 63-84.

 

Working Papers / Reports / Course Materials

  • “Special Economic Zones in India: Recent Developments and Future Prospects,” Institute of South Asian Studies Working Paper 30 (Singapore: 8 January 2008). See, http://www.isasnus.org/events/workingpapers/29.pdf

  • “Investing in the Indian Special Economic Zones: A Background Paper,” with Aparna Shivpuri Singh, Institute of South Asian Studies Working Paper 12 (Singapore, 30 May 2006). This paper was shared with the India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry as the Singapore Approach Paper.

  • “The Indian State under Globalization: A Research Agenda,” Paper for the Ford Foundation’s Project on Globalization and the Indian State: A Research Project: (New Delhi: Ford Foundation and National Foundation for India, 2005) Working Paper Number 1, see:"http://www.globalizationinindia.com/html/working_papers.html

  • “India in the Global Economic Order,” Indira Gandhi National Open University Course on South Asia: Economy, Society and Polity, Country Profile: India II (New Delhi, 2005).

  • Digitized Trade Rules and India’s Service Sector (Bombay: MVIRDC – World Trade Centre & Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2003).

  • “Digitized Trade Rules and India’s Service Sector,” Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Working Paper, No CSLG/WP/03-03 (New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2003).

  • Governing the Taxation of Digitized Trade [Canberra: Australia South Asia Research Centre - Economics Division (Australian National University) Working Paper No. 2002/05, 2002]. See http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers/asarc/RahulMukherji.pdf