Degree of Monopoly and Distribution of Income in India’s Organised Manufacturing Sector

The present study is an attempt to examine the development of monopoly capitalism in India through industry-level analysis of the change in the degree of monopoly and distribution of income. To this end, the Kaleckian approach has been applied to all the 56 three-digit Indian organised manufacturing industries listed in the Annual Survey of Industries covering the period 1998–2018. The data have been examined at four levels: the aggregate sectoral level, the aggregate of the top 25 per cent industries, the aggregate of the top 10 per cent and disaggregate analysis of the top 6 industries. The study finds strong evidence of the growth of monopoly power in the manufacturing sector with the rising growth rate of the economy, indicating the rise of monopoly capitalism in India. It also brings out the dominance of the top 25 and top 10 per cent (in terms of gross value added [GVA] share and employment) manufacturing industries) in the determination of aggregate monopoly power and the wage share in the organised manufacturing sector. The study finds that under monopoly capitalism, the rise of profits of the larger industries in India’s organised manufacturing sector primarily comes from the deduction of wages of production workers and the flow of surplus from smaller to larger industries.