New evidence on the distribution of revenues in the IT sector points to the continued dominance of a few firms in this heterogeneous industry, despite rapid growth and expansion. In this edition of Macroscan, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine the factors that could explain such revenue concentration in a sector considered inherently competitive in structure because of low barriers to entry and rapid technological change.

In recent years, the ‘official’ India has been patting itself on account of accelerated economic growth rates and the presumed progress in poverty reduction. However, as this paper argues, the recent economic growth has been extremely lopsided; more than ever before. Further, large sections of the country’s population continue to suffer, very acutely, with reference to a whole range of development deficits. This paper is an attempt to sketch a snapshot of India’s economic growth performance, along with some of the major development deficits it is facing.

It seems that in education as in so many other areas, the UPA government has now gone almost completely off track. The distortion of the promised Right to Education Bill, involving the proposal to suggest a model bill to be enacted by state governments without any additional financial commitment by the centre, is one example of this callous and cynical attitude. The reduction of the proposed outlay on elementary education in the coming years is another.

The basic thrust of government education spending today must surely be to ensure that all children have access to government schools, and to raise the quality of these schools. A voucher system would not only divert much-needed resources, it would also divert our attention from addressing the real issues involved in improving quality in school education.

The most recent data on employment suggest that employment growth in the first half of this decade has been rapid among urban women. This paper investigates the changing patterns of women's paid work in urban India and questions whether or not these trends can be seen as a sign of a vibrant dynamic economy undergoing positive structural transformation.

Providing free and universal access to basic services as far as possible is important not only in welfare terms or because the poor have a human right to health and education, but also because the social costs of poor health and inadequate educational development are large. Recognising this, there is an important trend even in the market-dependent US towards universal healthcare coverage.

Increased access to cheap bandwidth would have wide ramifications, some of which would be positive external benefits for many sectors. But one industry that may be disadvantaged due to the consequent increased competition and migration of advertisement revenues to the web media is the print media in India, which has so far remained unaffected by the global trend of decline in print media circulation, especially that of daily newspapers.

A recent book throws into sharp relief the process by which competitive brand positioning has come to dominate all higher educational activities in the US. This entire approach creates basic changes in the way higher education is conceived and delivered so that the central mission of universities to advance and transmit knowledge has been largely ousted by this branding process.

India is supposedly the new growth ''miracle'' in the developing world. However, unless the recent GDP growth rates are robust and sustainable, it may be prudent to hold back on the celebration. Indeed, against the backdrop of rising inflation and current account deficit, there is reason to be sceptical about the sustainability of this process of services-driven growth.

The declared aims of the Planning Commission's Approach to the XIth Plan, all of which require substantially increased public expenditure in physical infrastructure and social sectors, simply cannot be met within the confines of a restrictive fiscal policy stance. The need to rethink policies of resource generation and financial regulation is therefore urgent. In this context, this paper, presented to the National Commission on Enterprises in the Informal Sector, seeks to examine the effects of the three perceptions underlying the prevailing fiscal conservatism, questions their validity and offers some alternatives for mobilising resources for development.

Offshoring of services in India is now seeing its new 'avatar' in the form of surrogate motherhood which has become a highly profitable source of foreign exchange earning through ''reproductive tourism''. If government leaves it unregulated and provides the wrong incentives, it poses a significant threat to the physical and emotional health of women in general and poor women in particular.

In spite of large positive externalities associated with health spending, in India it is until now largely privately financed. The relatively low spending by the government, a trend aggravated during the liberalisation era, implies that health infrastructure and services will be underprovided and will simultaneously deny access to the poor. This study seeks to examine the actual pattern of government spending on health and related areas (particularly, family welfare and child development) by both central and state governments.

The abysmal conditions of health care in our country - both public and private – are often ignored by the elite, which has seceded into its own privileged world. For any improvement in these unacceptable conditions, there must be a much larger infusion of public funds to provide all the things that are now in such short supply, from physical infrastructure to human resources.

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.

The inadequate level of public health spending, which has been a constant and unfortunate feature of Indian development in the past half century, has deteriorated further. If India is to achieve even a small part of the potential that our leaders are so proud of declaring, government health expenditure has to be substantially increased from the current abysmally low levels.

The diffusion of Internet technology in India can take one of two routes, one elite-oriented, the other democratic. The Government seems to want to promote the second; but the minimum requirement for this is credible information.

The scorching pace of expansion in the exports of hi-tech manufactured products from China and software and IT-enabled services from India, has supported the view that 'knowledge capital' plays a crucial role in the growing global presence of these countries. This paper discusses the empirical basis for that assessment.