Terms of Trade and Supply Response of Indian Agriculture: Analysis in Cointegration Framework.

In this paper, we examine the presence of stochastic trend (unit root) and structural break in various agriculture-industry terms of trade series in India. The results suggest that underlying data generating process of terms of trade are most likely non-stationary. We subsequently re-examine the aggregate supply response of Indian agriculture in this light. We investigate the presence of long-run functional relationship(s) underlying the supply response model through cointegration analysis and error correction framework. The multivariate results indicate presence of a cointegrating relationship in the supply response model. The vector error correction estimates suggest that short-run output adjustments are not related to changes in agricultural terms of trade in a temporal causal relationship. However, the short-run deviations in terms of trade from its long-term level create error-correction in the long-term output adjustments through changes in technology (irrigation). This may imply that agricultural growth can respond better if price incentives are combined with investments in irrigation.domestic terms of trade, agricultural supply response, unit root, cointegration

The Debate on Agriculture-Industry Terms of Trade in India

In this paper, we focus on the vast literature that involved analysis of the agriculture-industry terms of trade in India. We first state the key policy issues that are found to be associated with changes in terms of trade variable, and subsequently discuss specific issues concerning the empirical estimation of agricultural terms of trade. We find that the barter terms of trade measure may not only be subject to an aggregation error associated with the index number construction, but is also exposed to the aggregation problems of empirical estimation. We also undertake a set of statistical tests to examine the difference among various agricultural net barter terms of trade series on India. The results indicate that in spite of the methodological differences, the alternate series reflect similar attributes over comparable time periods.agricultural linkage, price policy, index number and aggregation, non-parametric methods.

How 'dynasty' became a modern global concept : intellectual histories of sovereignty and property

The modern concept of ‘dynasty’ is a politically-motivated modern intellectual invention. For many advocates of a strong sovereign nation-state across the nineteenth and early twentieth century, in France, Germany, and Japan, the concept helped in visualizing the nation-state as a primordial entity sealed by the continuity of birth and blood, indeed by the perpetuity of sovereignty. Hegel’s references to ‘dynasty’, read with Marx’s critique, further show how ‘dynasty’ encoded the intersection of sovereignty and big property, indeed the coming into self-consciousness of their mutual identification-in-difference in the age of capitalism. Imaginaries about ‘dynasty’ also connected national sovereignty with patriarchal authority. European colonialism helped globalize the concept in the non-European world; British India offers an exemplar of ensuing debates. The globalization of the abstraction of ‘dynasty’ was ultimately bound to the globalization of capitalist-colonial infrastructures of production, circulation, violence, and exploitation. Simultaneously, colonized actors, like Indian peasant/‘tribal’ populations, brought to play alternate precolonial Indian-origin concepts of collective regality, expressed through terms like ‘rajavamshi’ and ‘Kshatriya’. These concepts nourished new forms of democracy in modern India. Global intellectual histories can thus expand political thought today by provincializing and deconstructing Eurocentric political vocabularies and by recuperating subaltern models of collective and polyarchic power.PostprintPeer reviewe

Agriculture-Industry Interlinkages: Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Indian Context

The inter-relationship between agriculture and industry has been a long debated issue in most of the developing countries. In the Indian context, the issue has acquired interest since the industrial stagnation of the mid 1960s. Over the years the Indian economy has undergone a structural change in its sectoral composition: from a primary agro-based economy during 1970s, the economy has emerged as predominant in the service sector since the 1990s. This structural change and uneven pattern of growth of agriculture, industry and services sector in the post reforms period is likely to appear substantial changes in the production and demand linkages among various sectors, and in turn, could have significant implication for the growth and development process of the economy. This has triggered a renewed interest in studying the inter-relationship between agriculture and industry. The present paper tries to address some of the theoretical and methodological issues in analyzing the agriculture-industry interlinkages in the Indian context

Can the Gap between Infant and Child Mortality be explained by Malnutrition Prevalence in India?

Some recent findings indicate malnutrition as the major determinant of death burden among children in India. Although the association between malnutrition and mortality is well established for children below 4 or 5 years of age, exploration of the relation specific to infant or children’s age group have remained limited. This issue is crucial considering the wide gaps that are observed between the infant and child mortality rates as well as the disparities between malnutrition prevalence at the relevant age groups of less than 12 months and 12 to 48 months. We consider the National Family Health Survey (2015-16) data from 29 states of India and examine the extent to which the malnutrition burden diverges across age groups and also attempt to link this with the gap between infant and child mortality rates across different states. Our results indicated greater correlation between death burden and malnutrition for the children’s age in comparison to the infant age. As regards the burden of infant mortalities, the regression analyses revealed the role of other determinants, viz., women illiteracy, vaccinations, breastfeeding, dietary diversity or per capita income levels across states in India. Watch the recorded version of this presentation</a

Gender Roles in Family Decision Making: Results from Indian States

Basic family decisions like desire to limit child-bearing, sex of the new-born or child care are not always an individual affair but involve interaction between choices of men and women in the family. This study examines how background characteristics as well as decisions of men and women determine the family outcomes such as, women’s fertility, family-size, sex preference of the new-born and children orphan-hood. Our analysis is performed using cross-sectional data pertaining to 29 states of India. The results indicate that while men’s preferences for male children remain as a significant barrier to fertility reductions, women’s literacy level can contribute to the men’s decisions of limiting family-size. The men’s literacy along with women’s lack of media exposure weakens women’s desire for controlling family-size and also enhances their preference for the male child. Finally, while alcohol use by men and literacy level or cash earning of women plays a role for the separation of children from their parents, the lack of wealth possession and men’s literacy level seems to have prevented the abandonment of children across Indian states. Key Words: Family Decisions, Family Structure, Child Care, Cross-Sectional Models, India, Regional Dimensions. JEL Classification: D10, J12, J13, C21, O53, R1