The management of huge and growing quantities of electronic waste may emerge as one of the more important environmental problems of developing countries in the near future. The problems arise from the very significant health and environmental hazards associated with e-waste. As usual, this impact is worse in developing countries, where people often live in close proximity to dumps or landfills of untreated e-waste.

Short-term migration for work has evidently increased rapidly in recent times in India, but our statistical systems are currently not adequate to capture such flows of labour. In this edition of MacroScan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh discuss the limitations of the existing data, the tendencies that do emerge and the policy implications of short-term economic migration.

Neo-liberalism has spawned a more plausible division of the country into two ''nations'', a term that may not stand up to strict scrutiny under the canons of Marxist theory, but nonetheless contains a rich description, reminiscent of Lenin, of the Indian context. One of these two nations, the ''nation of the rich'', believes that it belongs to the first world, while the other, ''the nation of the poor'', remains stuck in the third world, experiencing agrarian crisis, unemployment, and privations on account of cuts in government expenditures, that pervade the entire third world.

Continuing with the discussion on Basel II and India's banking structure, the authors argue that using external ratings to decide the appropriate risk-weights to assess capital adequacy inevitably leads banks to decide their lending patterns based on pure profit considerations. This makes it difficult to simultaneously implement a banking policy that seeks to direct a proportion of lending to specified sectors for meeting growth and equity objectives.

Despite the postponement of the target dates for banks to implement the Basel II guidelines, adjustments aimed at realizing that goal are underway. In this and the following article, the authors examine what the guidelines involve, their effects on banking structure and behaviour and some likely outcomes of implementing them.

The increase in the scale of social ''bribes'' which governments have to offer capitalists in order to elicit investment from them is an important feature of neo-liberalism. Currently, the Indian nation state as well as its different state governments are experiencing this. Because of its impact on state finances, this has crucial implications for the poor and the working masses.

Around half of the work force in India currently does not work for a direct employer not only in agriculture, but increasingly in a wide range of non-agricultural activities. This significance of self-employment brings home the urgent need to consider basic social security that covers not just hired workers in the unorganised sector, but also those who typically work for themselves.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 jointly to Muhammad Yunus, the recognised creator of the ''microcredit'' model of finance for the poor shows the Nobel Committee's recognition that peace is not really possible without more equitable development. The most engaging aspect of Muhammad Yunus' contributions lies in his flexible approach to looking for new solutions for meeting the needs of the poor.

While considering demands from more well-to-do sections in the country for domestic access to the services of foreign educational providers, the government needs to assess the private and social benefits of acceding to this demand after taking into account the social costs that such a policy may entail. Making a commitment under GATS could tie the hands of the government.

To remain confined to the ''thingness'' of economic categories without reference to the social relations of which they were simultaneously the expression, was ''vulgar economy'' according to Karl Marx. Almost a century and a half after his painstaking work had unearthed the anatomy of modern bourgeois society, we are once more in the danger of being deluged by ''vulgar economy'', manifest in the contemporary Indian discourse on the farmers' suicides, GDP growth rate and poverty reduction, etc.

In this paper, the authors look at the specific proposals made in the Planning Commission's Approach Paper to the Eleventh Plan in the areas of control over and loss of land, employment generation, agriculture and food security, health and education. The paper questions the underlying perception that creating a profitable environment for private sector functioning will be enough to fulfil most social goals, and no particular planning strategy is required for this.

This paper argues that in a situation where unemployment is generated through the disappearance of small-scale production, the ''efficiency'' argument in favour of their closure does not stand, even if small-scale units are more inefficient at the micro-level. The destruction of petty production through exposure to liberal trade, in the name of efficiency, is therefore an undesirable course of action.

Given the dangers involved in allowing the neglect of migrant workers to continue, it is absolutely imperative for both society at large and government policy in particular, to make the issue of basic protection for migrant families and the provision of public services and systems for migrants, including children, a basic priority.

While GDP growth in India is touching new highs, the divergence in sectoral growth rates only increases. While industry and, particularly, services record creditable or remarkable rates of growth, the agricultural sector performs poorly. In this article, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh discuss some implications of this disproportionality.

An ongoing process of mobilisation and social audit that is taking place in the Dungarpur district of Rajasthan shows how the rural employment programme can indeed be made to work. But, given that the Central Government has started going slow in terms of making available the necessary funds transfers, vigilance is required even in terms of monitoring the Central Government.

In this article, the author discusses the Baran hypothesis that there cannot be a spontaneous diffusion of industrial development from the developed world to the countries of the third world under capitalism: a hypothesis apparently contradicted by the current pattern of development visible at least in Asia. His analysis resolves this contradiction by using an inherent but less talked about 'contradictions to capitalism' which is the role of a stable medium of wealth or in the present context, a leading currency. He explains why the current pattern of growth and technology diffusion in the newly industrialising countries cannot be sustained given the necessary pattern of their interaction with the leading capitalist country.

The erosion of language skills in India has implications which go far beyond mere economic disadvantages. It extends to more worrying effects upon our ability as a society for introspection and creative reflection.