By Mausam Kumar
Mausam Kumar was our inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow in Industrial Policy at Reimagining the Economy. We asked him about his experiences and work for the project.
How did you become interested in industrial policy?
I have a very interesting story about how I became a student of industrial policy. During the first year of my PhD my PhD supervisor recommended reading Vivek Chibber’s Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India. The book conducts a comparative analysis of South Korea and India to argue why the developmental state in Korea was able to install a successful industrial policy as against the failure of a similar experience in India. That book is probably my most read book on industrial policy and I have a copy which is laden with highlighter marks all over. In essence, I owe it to Vivek Chibber and his book that inspired me to become a student of industrial policy. It opened up a world of ideas for me to think about and develop my PhD project and my overall research on industrial policy.
And then the works of Johnson Chalmers, Alice Amsden, Peter Evans, Robert Wade, Meredith Woo Cummings and most importantly Dani Rodrik solidified my turn towards industrial policy. All of these people have inspired me to think deeply about industrial policy and how policy design needs to be (re)negotiated to adapt to the unique political economies that emerge thereof. As academics and researchers, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and I certainly stand on theirs who have inspired me to study industrial policy.
What work did you do while at Reimagining the Economy?
The opportunity to be a postdoctoral fellow with the Reimagining the Economy program at Harvard Kennedy School has been a career milestone for me. I'm very grateful to Dani Rodrik, Gordon Hanson, and Rohan Sandhu for having me as a part of this incredible project. Having an opportunity to learn from Dani is a dream for any researcher thinking about industrial policy and just being around him and being able to get his comments on some of my projects has been immensely valuable.
Most of my work with RtE revolved around studying the industrial policy experience of Vietnam and its transformation from a communist agrarian economy to a manufacturing behemoth on the back of coherent industrial policies. I also studyied the industrial policy experience of South Africa’s Sectoral Master Plans and the Production Linked Incentive Scheme in India. As a postdoc with the RtE program, I also developed some of my work on rethinking the role of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in India in workforce training. I also did some work on landscaping the expanding industrial policy ecosystem in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India to conceptualize the practice of industrial policy in arenas of low state capacity. All these projects are in the process of taking a coherent shape through journal publications in the near future.
None of this would be possible without the guidance of Dani and I hope to be able to contribute to the intellectual mandate of the Reimagining the Economy Program by further expanding the work that I did as a postdoctoral fellow with the program.
What are some key lessons you've learned about policy and economics?
Harvard Kennedy School is an island of intellectual opulence when it comes to public policy, and just being here and being a part of the discourse on policy generally and industrial policy in particular has been a huge experience. To be able to build networks and to be able to get to know people who work on these ideas very coherently has been immense. I especially miss the exchange of ideas through seminar presentations and the general exuberance inside the building.
In terms of concrete policy lessons, I have learned to think of industrial policy at a disaggregated level beyond a general subsidies-led approach, which is often seen as the hallmark of industrial policy. Developing countries have limited fiscal space for industrial policy and there is often a need to provide the necessary facilitation in terms of addressing the structural and institutional bottlenecks for enhanced economic activity. The importance of designing industrial policies which can adapt to their unique political economies has been a huge policy lesson for me.
What are the next steps for you in your career and in your study of industrial policy?
After my post doc at Harvard Kennedy School with the RtE program I have moved to the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University where I'm currently working on green industrial policies and how they can be deployed in developing countries to achieve goals of green transition. There are so many facets to industrial policy and to be able to work on this as a long run academic project has been a huge motivation for me.
As a researcher and academic, I want to work towards building a coherent body of work which engages with contemporary industry policy challenges and tries to develop the knowledge base especially from a global South perspective. I have been thinking about studying the regional dimensions of industrial policy and have been developing a book project around these themes to contribute towards a study of industrial policy in contemporary political economy.
