The spikes in global food prices in 2007-8 served as a wake-up call to the global community on the inadequacies of our global food system. Commodity prices doubled, the estimated number of hungry people topped one billion, and food riots spread through the developing world. A second price spike in 2010-11, which drove the global food import bill for 2011 to an estimated $1.3 trillion, only deepened the sense that the policies and principles guiding agricultural development and food security were deeply flawed.

The author investigates the present crisis in Europe that is threatening to undo the economic integration process started under the European Union. The single market and common currency concept is today under threat because of national egoisms and undemocratic manner in which the EU operates currently.

These Notes are organised in three main parts. Part I looks at examples of three approaches to land use and land acquisition issues. Two are from international organisations - the FAO and IFPRI - and concerned primarily with the acquisition of large tracts of farm land in developing countries by foreign investors, including Indian investors, and one is exemplified by a recent Indian Supreme Court judgment. Part II seeks to come to grips with the specific features of India's agricultural and agrarian crises, and to make a distinction between the two. Part III deals with long term trends in land use in India, outcomes in terms of average area owned, the size distribution of land holdings, and declining land/man ratios. Part IV looks at the corresponding long term trends in agricultural worker productivity and the impact of declining land/man ratios on agricultural worker productivity.

Nepal is a 'least developed country' characterised by significant socioeconomic insecurity that is currently witnessing some interesting socio-political policy innovations, triggered by the end of a ten-year violent conflict. The article explores the social protection policies devised by the interim government to address the various dimensions of insecurity, discusses their novelty, limitations and offers suggestions for improvements.

This paper examines three different explanations of the global financial imbalances. It begins with the neoliberal globalisation hypothesis that explains the imbalances as the product of the model of globalisation implemented over the past thirty years. It then examines the saving glut and reserve currency hypotheses. The paper concludes by arguing that both the saving glut and reserve currency hypotheses are inconsistent with the empirical record and both provide a misleading guide for policy.

The global economic crisis has created an opportunity to rethink macroeconomics for development. Rethinking macroeconomic policies requires using fiscal and monetary policies for the pursuit of development objectives and not just for the management of inflation and the elimination of macroeconomic imbalances. In doing so, it is essential to overcome the constraints embedded in orthodox economic thinking and recognise the constraints implicit in the politics of ideology and interests.

In the context of the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis and the US subprime mortgage crisis, this article looks at the question of how the losses ought to be distributed between borrowers and lenders in cases of debt resolution. The author points out that it is unlikely that debtors can fully bear the losses in a debt resolution. It is argued that the behavior and policy of creditors is just as important a factor to consider in assessing the situation.

In this paper, the author presents an outsider reform program that focuses on: central bank governance and independence; reshaping the economic philosophy of central banks to be more intellectually open-minded; major monetary policy reform that includes adoption of an inflation target equal to the minimum unemployment rate of inflation (MURI) and implementation of asset based reserve requirements; and regulatory reform that addresses problems of flawed incentives, excessive leverage, and maturity mismatch.

This study attempts to explain the evolution of poverty and income concentration in Chile and Mexico. It focuses on the impact that changes in the rates and pattern of economic growth have had on poverty. The author concludes that since the rise in labour productivity was not accompanied by an increase in total production, there was a sustained reduction of the GDP elasticity of employment, which resulted in poverty.

That the World Bank has devoted its 2012 flagship publication to the topic of gender equality is a welcome opportunity for widening the intellectual space. However, it is also a missed opportunity. By failing to engage seriously with the gender biases of macroeconomic policy agendas that define contemporary globalisation, the report is unable to provide a credible and even-handed analysis of the challenges that confront gender equality in the 21st century.

Evidence on trends in surplus generation and utilisation suggests that India's recent transition to a high-growth trajectory has been accompanied by and partly based on tendencies towards profit inflation and increased inequality. This paper offers an explanation as to why the net implications for employment and conditions of work of this growth trajectory have been adverse.

The recent economic growth process in India and other parts of the developing world exhibits the inability of even high rates of output growth to generate sufficient opportunities for 'decent work' to meet the needs of the growing labour force. Therefore, there is a clear case for a shift towards wage-led and domestic demand-led growth, particularly in the economies that are large enough to sustain this shift.

The paper argues that the emergence of the G-20 is a result of the financial crisis of 2008. Its composition reflects a new balance of power in the world. The role of emerging markets, in particular China, Brazil and India is increasing, whereas the position of the West is relatively weakened. In so far the G-20 is a historic progress compared to the G-8. Nevertheless the G-20 is still characterised by a democratic deficit. The G-20 also aggravates the marginalisation of the UN, thus weakening democracy in the overall system of global governance.

The work of the Russian prince, Peter Kropotkin, is interesting even when one sets aside the historical and revolutionist context in which it was originally developed and even though the actual realisation of anarchist societies along the lines that he envisaged remains a dream. His work can still illuminate owing to way in which communitarian thinking is woven into a programme covering a broad range of issues such as institutional infrastructure, labour and employment, cross-border economic relations, etc.

In the wake of the food, fuel and financial shocks, a fourth wave of the global economic crisis began in 2010, viz., fiscal austerity. Updating earlier research by UNICEF, this working paper examines the latest IMF government spending projections for 128 developing countries, comparing the three periods of 2005-07 (pre-crisis), 2008-09 (fiscal expansion) and 2010-12 (fiscal contraction). It discusses the possible risks of the adjustment measures for social expenditures and summarises a series of alternative policy options.

While raising productivity in the Global South is obviously an important component of poverty alleviation and efforts to reduce inequality, it is equally imperative to recognise the underlying fallacy of productivity reductionism. Otherwise, an obsession with raising productivity risks being turned into a powerful ethos for disciplining an increasingly Southern global workforce together with nationally based productive capitalists.