The term 'Third World' was used frequently in histories of the societies, economies and cultures of many parts of the world in the second half of the twentieth century. But, although the phrase was widely used, it was never clear whether it was a clear category of analysis, or simply a convenient and rather vague label for an imprecise collection of states in the second half of the twentieth century and some of the common problems that they faced. Not even enthusiasts for the term provided any precision. As Peter Worsley, one of those who self-consciously began the process of passing it into academic currency, later confessed, . . . the nature of the Third World seemed so self-evident in the 1960s that in a book on The Third World I published in 1964, I saw no need to define it any more precisely than that it was the world made up of the ex-colonial, newly-independent, non-aligned countries. 1 Like other collective descriptions of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific islands and Latin America -such as the 'South', the 'developing world', or the 'less-developed world' -the designation 'Third World' was more about what such places were not than what they were. That the term was often used normatively rather than analytically complicates matters further. As Christopher Clapham has pointed out, 'there is no gap so wide as that between those who seek to change the Third World and those who seek merely to understand it'. 2 Those who developed a concept of the Third World around a set of measurable criteria usually relied on identifying material circumstances. As John Goldthorpe put it in his influential The Sociology of the Third World: Disparity and Involvement in 1975, 'if the affluent industrial countries of the modern world are grouped into those of the "West" and those of the "East", . . . then the poor countries constitute a "Third World" whose small command over resources distinguishes them from both'. 3 However, all such attempts to establish a standard measurement of relative poverty that can distinguish
Rapid economic growth has put India at the centre of current debates about the future of the global economy. In this fully revised and updated text, B. R. Tomlinson provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging account of the Indian economy over the last 150 years. He sets arguments about growth, development and underdevelopment, and the impact of imperialism, against a detailed history of agriculture, trade and manufacture, and the relations between business, the economy and the state. The new edition extends the coverage right up to the present day, and explains how one of the largest countries in the world has sought to achieve economic progress and lasting development, despite institutional weaknesses, rigid structures of political and social hierarchy, and the legacy of colonialism.
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