Poverty and Agrarian Distress in Orissa

The relatively lower reduction of poverty in Orissa, 0.2 percentage points per annum from 48.6% in 1993-94 to 46.4% in 2004-05, has been a matter of concern. The current exercise attempts to analyse whether part of the explanation lies in the state of affairs in agriculture. An analysis for 2004-05 shows that incidence of poverty is 47% for rural and 44% for urban Orissa. The vulnerable sub-groups are southern (73% rural, 55% urban) and northern (59% rural, 43% urban) across National Sample Survey (NSS) regions, the scheduled tribes (76% rural, 65% urban) and scheduled castes (50% rural, 75% urban) across social groups, the agricultural labourers (65%) and other labourers (52%) in rural areas and casual labourers (56%) in urban areas across household type, and marginal and small farmers (51%) across size-class of land possessed in rural areas. What is even worrying is a much greater incidence of calorie poor (79% rural and 49% urban). This reflects a gap in the poverty line and the calorie that it is supposed to represent and a seeming nutritional crisis even among the groups that resorts to hard labour that includes among others marginal and small farmers and landless households the hands that grow food. The agrarian scenario is in dire straits. Per capita per day returns from cultivation, based on the situation assessment survey of 2002-03, is less than four rupees, a pittance. What is more, in 1990s, agricultural value addition and growth in production has been negative across all crop groups and paddy production, the main crop, shows a decline in all districts. It is this poor showing in agriculture that does partly explain the slow reductions of poverty in the 1990s in Orissa. The call of the hour is people-centric planning that revives the livelihood bases of the farmers and agricultural labourers.Calorie poor, Incidence of poor, Agricultural growth

Understanding Fundamentalist Belief Through Bayesian Updating

Using Bayesian updating to deterministic priors persistence of fundamentalist belief like those in the mind of a terrorist is explained. Under such belief system if conditional evidence is diametrically opposite and also deterministic then a process of change will set in and in the present war against terrorism this can be effectively done through Islamic religious authorities. In situations where interaction is the basis, self-defeating scenarios can be avoided by giving space to others. Thus, in the political sphere one has to be accommodative about the concerns of Middle East, this will also make things easier for intervention through Islam.Bayesian updating, fundamentalist belief, interaction, variation

Food, hunger and ethics

Management of hunger has to look into issues of availability, accessibility and adequacy. Posing it from an ethical perspective the paper argues out in favour of right to food. But, for this to happen, the state has to come up with an appropriate and effective bill on food and nutrition security, address the issue of inadequate provisioning of storage space by state agencies leading to rotting of foodgrains - a criminal waste when people are dying of hunger, and rely on a bottom-up approach involving the community that complements the top-down administrative structure to identify poor and reduce both exclusion and inclusion errors in targeting.Bottom-up, cash transfers, exclusion and inclusion errors, foodgrains, Mahatma Gandhi, nutrition adequacy, poverty, Rawls, right to food, targeting, top-down, unique identification

On measuring group-differentials displayed by socio-economic indicators: An Extension

In a recent paper, Mishra and Subramanian (2006) propose a measure to explain group-differential which is sensitive to levels in the sense that a given hiatus at lower levels of failure (or higher levels of attainment) is considered worse off. This paper critically evaluates their method - refines their two axioms, adds an additional axiom of normalization and proposes an alternative which is more general. It proposes to reduce subjectivity when there is lower hiatus at lower levels of failure and also addresses scenarios when rank ordering of sub-groups will be reversed. Empirical illustration with infant mortality rate data for selected Indian states is also provided.Difference-based, indicator of failure, level sensitivity, ratio-based

Risks, Farmers’ Suicides and Agrarian Crisis in India - Is There A Way Out?

Poor returns to cultivation and absence of non-farm opportunities are indicative of the larger socio-economic malaise in rural India. This is accentuated by the multiple risks that the farmer faces yield, price, input, technology and credit among others. The increasing incidence of farmers suicides is symptomatic of a larger crisis, which is much more widespread. Risk mitigation strategies should go beyond credit. Long term strategies requires more stable income from agriculture, and more importantly, from non-farm sources. Private credit and input markets need to be regulated. A challenge for the technological and financial gurus is to provide innovative products that reduce costs while increasing returns. The institutional vacuum of organising farmers needs to be addressed through a federation of self-help groups (SHGs) or alternative structures.Credit burden, Crop loss/yield uncertainty, Market vulnerabilities (price shocks and increasing input costs), Returns to cultivation, Suicide Mortality Rate (SMR)

Agrarian scenario in post-reform India: A Story of distress, despair and death

Indian agriculture today is under a large crisis. An average farmer household's returns from cultivation would be around one thousand rupees per month. The incomes are inadequate and the farmer is not in a position to address the multitude of risks: weather, credit, market and technology among others. Social responsibility of education, healthcare and marriage instead of being normal activities add to the burden. All these would even put the semi-medium farmer under a state of transient poverty. The state of the vast majority of small and marginal farmers and agricultural labourers is worse off. An extreme form of response to this crisis is the increasing incidence of farmers' suicides. In such situations, employment programmes can provide some succour to the agricultural labourers and also perhaps to the marginal and small farmers. The least that one can expect from such programmes is rent-seeking. Some recent evidences indicate that one can develop institutions to address this. It is this that gives a glimmer of hope in the larger story of distress, despair and death. Incidentally, this paper provides some estimates from National Sample Survey (NSS) region wise information on returns to cultivation and on some aspects of farmers' indebtedness based on the 33rd schedule 59th round survey of 2003. It provides suicide mortality rate for farmers, non-farmers and age-adjusted population across states of India from 1995-2004.Agrarian crisis, agricultural indebtedness, farmers' suicides, employment programmes, value of output in agriculture

Agrarian Scenario in Post-reform India - A Story of Distress, Despair and Death

Indian agriculture today is under a large crisis. An average farmer households returns from cultivation would be around one thousand rupees per month. The incomes are inadequate and the farmer is not in a position to address the multitude of risks : weather, credit, market and technology among others. Social responsibility of education, healthcare and marriage instead of being normal activities add to the burden. All these would even put the semi-medium farmer under a state of transient poverty. The state of the vast majority of small and marginal farmers and agricultural labourers is worse off. An extreme form of response to this crisis is the increasing incidence of farmers suicides. In such situations, employment programmes can provide some succour to the agricultural labourers and also perhaps to the marginal and small farmers. The least that one can expect from such programmes is rent-seeking. Some recent evidences indicate that one can develop institutions to address this. It is this that gives a glimmer of hope in the larger story of distress, despair and death. Incidentally, this paper provides some estimates from National Sample Survey (NSS) region wise information on returns to cultivation and on some aspects of farmers indebtedness based on the 33rd schedule 59th round survey of 2003. It provides suicide mortality rate for farmers, non-farmers and age-adjusted population across states of India from 1995-2004.Agrarian crisis, agricultural indebtedness, employment programmes, value of output in agriculture

Growth and Poverty in Maharashtra

Maharashtra is among the richest states in India in terms of per capita income, yet incidence of poverty in the state remains close to the national average. The states economy grew at a faster rate than the all-India average during 1980-1 to 1992-3, but it slowed down a bit during 1993-4 to 2003-4 due to poorer performance of agriculture and industry. Agricultures contribution to GSDP has come down to 12 per cent in 2002-3, but more than 50 per cent of total workers are still engaged in this. Cropping pattern has been shifting to greater value addition non-cereal crops like fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and sugarcane. Composition of manufacturing has shifted towards more capital-intensive sectors. Communication, transport and public administration have accounted for large part of service growth. The benefits of this growth process have, however, not spread equally across social groups or regions, which partly explains prevalence of high poverty compared to other states at similar mean income. The much talked about Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme (MEGS) has had limited success and its coverage across districts/divisions is not proportionate to the share of poor. Despite these developments, rural poverty has reduced from 38 per cent in 1993-4 to around 24 per cent in 1999-2000. Given current investment flows, the overall growth potential of Maharashtra does look bright for the medium run. But, distributional implications of the emerging growth pattern across sectors suggest that the poor might not benefit proportionately from the growth process. The lessons that Maharashtra provides is that growth has to be more broad-based and inclusive, and that intervention through social welfare programmes like MEGS should be designed to suit the local resource base of poorer regions for faster poverty reduction.Growth, poverty, Maharashtra

Size-class and returns to cultivation in India: A Cold case reopened

This paper investigates the relationship between returns to cultivation per hectare and size-class of land cultivated in India, using unit level data from the 59th round National Sample Survey, 2003. The analysis is done separately for `kharif' and `rabi' - for total value of cultivation from all crops at the all India level. The empirical evidence rejects the null hypothesis of no relationship and points to the existence of an inverse association. We argue that the efficiency of the small-holders has to be taken with a pinch of salt because their low absolute returns brings into focus the question of their livelihood sustainability which is further aggravated on account of higher unit costs. Being the first exercise in a series of proposed explorations into disaggregated analyses across states, and for specific crops, it opens up the classic debate on farm size and productivity in the 21st century.agrarian crisis, agriculture, efficiency, livelihood sustainability, NSS, productivity, size-class