AVINASH GUPTA

PhD Student

Potential Research Title: The Politics of Industrial Strategy: A Global Production Network Analysis of Nepal’s Pharmaceutical Sector
Research Group: Politics, Economies And Space (PEAS)
Thesis Advisor: Assoc Prof Woon Chih Yuan
Co-advisor: Prof Neil M Coe

From the Lumbini region in midwestern Nepal, I completed my first degree and an MBA at public universities in India. Subsequently, I entered the corporate sector in Nepal and worked with a bank for five years. Having developed some interest in critical social sciences during business school, I became interested in these fields—which include geography—and also aspired for a second master’s degree. A Chevening scholarship in 2015 became my chance to study critical political economy at SOAS, London. Upon graduating, I took up a research position at a Kathmandu-based NGO working in socioeconomic policymaking amidst contemporary globalisation. This policy research job offered a modest living wage but served me well in my broader aspirations to pursue a doctorate and a career in academia. Over the four years, the position offered opportunities to develop analytical skills – capabilities that have helped me obtain the support of my current supervisors and enter NUS Geography. Thus, by studying industries like pharmaceuticals and footwear, I learnt how these were being organized globally through interfirm networks. While somewhat neglected and under-researched, industrial policies play a key role in this organisation. How do industries evolve in the global production networks context and amid place-based government policies? This is the broad question I hope to address by examining Nepal’s pharmaceutical industry. To do so, I combine global production network theory and insights on the state and industrial strategy.

Despite consensus that government policies are outcomes from contested social processes—these processes have important bearings on the nature of policies—the unmistakable politics implicating multiple spaces and scales remains minimally theorised (and under-researched) in economic geography. Distributional contests involving powerful business interests as well as state institutions are common since industrial policies not only promote specific sectors but also disincentivise others. By examining the policy processes and its politics, my dissertation engages with the how, why and for whom questions surrounding industrial policy measures that critically impact both sectoral and regional development. Addressing the questions take us closer to how Nepal’s pharmaceutical industry has developed alongside the government policies. GPN theorists, however, posit that a credible understanding into development of an industry in the contemporary global economy requires examining an industry’s interactions with global production networks.

Indeed, the pharmaceutical industry is organised globally via what geographers have conceptualised as global production networks. Coupled into such networks, a reference to organisationally and geographically fragmented production of goods by diverse firms in multiple geographies, each firm contributes to a part of the production process. Thus, a typical pharmaceuticals manufacturer relies on specialised chemical firms (routinely Chinese or German) for their key inputs. Predictably, some firms in these networks are more powerful than others. The power differential (partly due to varying capabilities) impacts the nature of network connections and with it, the overall performance and growth of embedded firms. In studying the industry’s global production network connections and its outcomes over time, my thesis engages with both, the horizontal interactions (place-based government policies for the industry) as well as the vertical links and relations emanating from the production networks. This geographically-historically grounded analysis enables me to address an important theoretical gap in the GPN scholarship: how government policies influence industry integrated into global production networks. My project relies significantly on primary data obtained via elite interviews of mainly, businesses and state officials.

This contextually grounded qualitative analysis helps me address what are considered fecund and important theoretical gaps in GPN scholarship and economic geography at large. Although the existing literature recognizes the role of politics in industrial strategy in a global production networks context, associated interactions remain barely dived into. Works that pay greater attention to politics are problematically thin on theory. Therefore, the multiscalar relations and interactions—among businesses, state, and global production network actors—that shape industrial policies are poorly accounted for (Coe and Yeung 2019).