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1. Reforming Indian Agriculture

Author:
Ashok Gulati, Devesh Kapur, and Marshall M. Bouton
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Following an overwhelming election victory, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new government has a golden opportunity to bring about historic reforms in the agricultural sector to improve farmer livelihoods and national food security. The sector affects the economic well-being of half the Indian population and the access to affordable and nutritious food for all Indians. Fundamental reforms can achieve sustainable and broadly distributed agricultural growth that will add to India’s GDP, increase export earnings, help conserve increasingly scarce resources of land and water, and enable the more orderly movement out of agriculture and into other productive sectors. Reforms in four areas should be the priority if Prime Minister Modi’s bold goal of doubling farmer incomes is to be accomplished in the coming years. First, the focus of agricultural policies must shift from production per se to farmers’ livelihoods. Second, policies to improve the allocation and efficiency of land and water are essential if the critical resources of water and land are to be conserved. Third, reforms are needed to help farmers cope with the growing risks of weather and price volatility. Fourth, agricultural markets must be opened to greater competition and provided with better infrastructure if farmers are to realize better returns for produce while ensuring nutritional security for low-income consumers. Agriculture is a state subject but where the Central government has had—and will continue to have—a large role. Reforms can only succeed if the Central and state governments work closely together in a spirit of “cooperative federalism.” Many of the important levers of change—water, power, irrigation, extension, agri-markets, etc.—are controlled by the states. Going forward, it would be helpful if the government created an Agri-Reforms Council on the lines of GST Council for a somewhat longer term than is currently done (for two months). The focus for the Government of India will need to be twofold: actions that it can unilaterally take to raise agricultural incomes; and second, actions to influence state government efforts to improve agriculture with its sustainability at the core. The steps listed should be thought of as a package, which will have an impact if most are implemented and not one or two in isolation.  Reduce cereal procurement and keep MSP price increases for rice and wheat below inflation, and not exceeding border prices, while encouraging the private sector to develop robust markets in less water intensive crops like pulses and oilseeds by removing controls on stocking, trading, exports, etc. This will also have a beneficial impact on depleting water tables in certain regions, notably in north-west and southern India.  Implement income transfers scheme for farmers in tandem with reductions in the subsidies for power, water, and fertilizer that distort incentives and hinder change. This will have large positive environmental effects and help toward better natural resource management. Keep the real prices of subsidized grains under the National Food Security Act, 2013 and link them to the MSP to incentivize the production and consumption of non-cereals.  Scrap the Essential Commodities Act and other laws designed fifty years ago for conditions of scarcity. Those conditions of scarcity have long since disappeared. India is trying to cope more with the problems of surfeit than scarcity.  Focus on income from livestock to help marginal farmers (<1 ha). Change laws and more importantly the political and social climate that have been so detrimental to the livestock sector lately.  Eliminate or reduce dramatically export restrictions and export taxes on agricultural products. Trade policies that have been arbitrarily and pro-cyclically imposed (increasing tariffs and import restrictions when world prices come down, and imposing export bans and taxes when domestic prices rise)—must become stable and predictable by setting “trigger levels” well in advance.  Accelerate the effort to create a single agricultural market by introducing assaying, grading, setting standards, bringing “Uber-type” logistical players on e-platforms to move goods from one region to another, and setting dispute settlement mechanisms so that farmers and farm organizations can transact with any buyer, anywhere in India, and at any time of their choosing.  Support the creation of public mandis as a viable alternative to private trade. Most importantly, across the board, increase marketing options available to farmers while subsidizing market infrastructure improvements.  End support for the rehabilitation of inefficient urea plants and create a plan for closing the most inefficient plants.  Incentivize the passing of state laws to allow easy leasing/renting of agricultural land and relax restrictions on conversion of agricultural land for other purposes. At present, these restrictions keep the value of agricultural land low and raise the barriers to exit from agriculture. Finally, even as these reforms are undertaken, it needs to be recognized that growth and employment opportunities outside agriculture are critical for long-term improvements in farmers’ incomes. Relentless population pressures have meant that most Indian farms are too small to provide viable incomes. The long-term future of Indian farmers fundamentally depends on getting many people out of farming. Ironically, that future will come about more reliably if policies to improve agricultural production and incomes are pursued today.
Topic:
Agriculture, Reform, Elections, and GDP
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

2. Gender and India into the 21st Century: Policy, Paradoxes, and the Personal

Author:
K.R. Meera
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
If one wants to understand gender changes in India over the past 25 years, the life narratives of the women of my generation would be the best examples. We have seen and experienced the paradox called India. We have contributed to its complexities, while empowering ourselves in the process. We have been struggling to evolve into more responsible citizens and complete human beings. I am an Indian citizen, a literate woman, a post-graduate, and an independent professional. Just like many other women in India, my life has undergone tremendous political, legal, and social changes over the past 25 years. These formative changes have not been linear; rather, they can be compared to the sides of a Rubik’s cube. Any change in one had repercussions on the others. When the Mandal Commission report granting 27 percent reservation to Other Backward Castes was accepted by the V. P. Singh government in 1991, the resulting alarm of reduced accessibility to government jobs was one of the factors that prompted me to accept at job at a Malayalam newspaper, my first job in media. Located in Kottayam, I was the first woman sub-editor to be appointed to the editorial of that newspaper in its 108 years of existence. CMS College, the very first college in Kottayam and the second oldest in the country, was established in 1815. Kottayam is hailed as the land of letters because it is also a leading publishing hub, home to the head offices of three newspapers, including the two oldest ones in Malayalam. One of the factors that made my appointment possible was the impact of economic liberalization that India initiated in early 1990s. Whether or not it was a coincidence, I received the appointment in July 1993, just after India ratified the constitution of the National Commission For Women and the Convention the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. In 1993, I walked alone after dark, for the first time in my life and travelled in auto rickshaws all by myself even after six o’clock at night. Until then, going outside after six o’clock in the evening had been strictly discouraged all my life. I realized soon that no residential hostel for women in Kottayam would allow its guests to check in after seven o’clock in the evening. Likewise, it was next to impossible for a single young woman to rent out a house anywhere in Kottayam or easily check into a hotel. It took me yet another year to check into a hotel all by myself and that was possible only because I had the care of address of my newspaper. After my appointment, my newspaper recruited more women journalists; there were a few senior women at some of the other newspapers but they were largely unknown to the outside world. The only woman reporter we knew was Leela Menon, a correspondent for the English daily, The Indian Express. By 1994, after the launch of the first privately owned television channel that year—which was also the second in India—, the number of women journalists in the media steadily increased. In 1995, I flew for the first time to a USIS conference. Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve as a Justice in the U.S. Supreme Court, was the chief guest. I stayed in a five star hotel and attended a formal dinner—all first time experiences. The same year, I purchased my first two wheeler, a scooter, with a vehicle loan from my office, and inadvertently became the first woman in Kottayam to ride a scooter in the wee hours of the day! The purpose of this rather detailed elucidation is not to claim I represent all the women of India. No single woman can represent all the women of India. One can safely surmise that the changes in my life would be representative of a large cross section of women in the vast and rigid “middle class” of Kerala who hold the unique distinction of being modern and traditional at the same time. These women were born and brought up in a state hailed as the model state of India with the lowest infant mortality rate, lowest population growth, highest literacy, and highest life expectancy. To be sure, there are hundreds more liberated women in many parts of India who overcame the barriers of gender and were liberated in every sense of the term. Sadly, millions of women are yet to travel alone, participate in a strike, or even attend a school. Many of these women are condemned to give birth every single year in the hope of a male child. And even today, millions of women throughout India, have to wait until after dark to answer the call of nature. Many have no concept of safe sanitation or, even worse, have to sleep on the pavement with a stick next to them to drive away the stray dogs as well as potential rapists. The uniqueness of India shines forth in its complexities and contradictions. The past twenty five years have been bustling with changes. These initial political and legal sparks of change eventually roared into flames over the past five years and have played a critical role in changing the gender parity in India.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Social Movement, and Feminism
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

3. Gender Bias in Education During Conflict: Evidence From Assam

Author:
Sutanuka Roy and Prakarsh Singh
Publication Date:
11-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Using a large-scale novel panel dataset (2005–14) on schools from the Indian state of Assam, we test for the impact of violent conflict on female students’ enrollment rates. We find that a doubling of average killings in a district-year leads to a 13 per cent drop in girls’ enrollment rate with school fixed effects. Additionally, results remain similar when using an alternative definition of conflict from a different dataset. Gender differential responses are more negative for lower grades, rural schools, poorer districts, and for schools run by local and private unaided bodies.
Topic:
Education, Gender Issues, and Gender Based Violence
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

4. Whose Side Are You Om? Identifying The Distributive Preferences of Local Politicians in India

Author:
Mark Schneider and Neelanjan Sircar
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The literature on decentralized public programs suggests that errors in the targeting of anti-poverty programs are rooted in the capture of these programs by local elites or local politicians. Consistent with the literature on moral economy in political science and experimental economics, we argue that voters in contexts of rural poverty prefer local leaders who target subsistence benefits to the poor. In a high- information village context, where voters and leaders know each other, we argue that local elections lead to the selection of local leaders with pro-poor preferences over the distribution of these benefits. We show this with a novel theory of local politicians’ social preferences. We test our theory with unique data from a behavioral measure, conducted in the context of a lottery with a modest cash prize in rural India, that captures a scenario in which local leaders have full discretion and anonymity over allocation among members of their rural communities. We analyze our data using a novel estimation strategy that takes the characteristics of the pool of potential beneficiaries into account in decisions over allocation under a budget constraint. We find that local leaders have strong preferences for targeting the poor, and particularly those they believe supported them politically in the past. This article suggests that free and fair elections at the local level can powerfully encourage pro-poor targeting even in contexts of weak institutions and pervasive poverty. It also makes a fundamental contribution to research on distributive politics by challenging research in this area to demonstrate the effect of electoral strategies and other distortions on allocation relative to local leaders’ baseline distributive preferences.
Topic:
Elections, Domestic politics, Rural, Local, and Decentralization
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

5. A Tale of Two Villages: Kinship Netwoks and Political Preference Change in Rural India

Author:
Neelanjan Sircar
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
This paper develops a theory on how voters form and change political preferences in democratic de- veloping world contexts. In the developing world, where state institutions are often weak, voters tend to be more focused on the competence and capacity of parties and candidates to deliver benefits. Such information may be difficult to ascertain, so voters must glean information from how candidates con- duct themselves during the electoral campaign. Voters use kinship networks to develop more accurate preferences by collectively reasoning through newly available information on candidates. In order to demonstrate these claims, this study analyzes data collected on political preferences and kinship net- works in two villages just before and after the campaign period during the 2011 Assembly election in the Indian state of West Bengal. The paper finds very strong kinship network effects on changes in issue preferences and vote choice over the course of the campaign and explains the results through qualitative work and a series of network autoregressive statistical models. In sum, this paper demonstrates how vot- ers develop independent preferences and implement political change, even in low information contexts with weak human capital.
Topic:
Elections, Democracy, and Networks
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, Asia, and West Bengal

6. Reclaiming the Grassland for the Cheetah: Science and Nature Conservation in India

Author:
Ghazala Shahabuddin
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The role of scientists in influencing the aims and priorities of biological conservation in developing countries has been a topic of debate and needs elucidation. The Asiatic cheetah reintroduction plan in India sparked much discussion on the pros and cons of attempting to revive the population of a large carnivore that had been missing from the landscape for over half a century. This paper traces the history of cheetah reintroduction with the aim of exploring the relationships amongst the constituencies of scientists, politicians, local communities and the bureaucracy. This paper suggests that the decision to reintroduce the Asiatic cheetah in India was motivated by political symbolism and had little grounding in scientific rigour. Science was used as a legitimizing tool for a politically influenced conservation goal which had little space for socio-economic constraints or academic rigour. While there are many strands of wildlife conservation emerging in India, the dominant paradigm upheld by biologists continues to be negligent of both scientific and social concerns.
Topic:
Nationalism, Science and Technology, Conservation, and Nature
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

7. Complaining to the State: Grievance Redress and India's Social Welfare Programs

Author:
Nicholas Robinson
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Poor implementation of social welfare programs is a chronic challenge in developing countries such as India. Yet, despite the large number of people affected and the serious consequences of implementation failure, there have been few studies, and even less theorization, of grievance redress in these contexts. Based on fieldwork conducted by the author, this article examines grievance redress for social welfare programs in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. It argues that the idea of accountability regimes, which has been developed in the administrative law literature, provides a more useful framework for understanding grievance redress than commonly invoked alternatives, such as a purely rights-based approach or an ad hoc analysis of the costs and benefits of specific redress mechanisms. While not rejecting either of these alternatives, it claims that an accountability regime approach that focuses on how officials are monitored and controlled through grievances is both more descriptively complete and more likely to generate a wider range of useful policy prescriptions.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, and Developing World
Political Geography:
South Asia

8. Colonial Origins of Maoist Insurgency in India: Long Term Effects of Indirect Rule

Author:
Shivaji Mukherjee
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
In this dissertation I try to answer the puzzle of why the Maoist insurgency in India, which is considered to be the most important internal security threat to the world's largest democracy, occurs in certain districts in India and not others. To restate the puzzle described in the Introduction Chapter, why did the insurgency emerge and consolidate along certain districts in the central-eastern part of India and not in other areas? Why are certain districts affected by the insurgency and not others? Is it as Fearon and Laitin (2003) would argue, purely because of opportunities for rebellion being present in some areas of India in the form of forest cover or mountainous terrain? Is it because of the fact of rebellious tribes or oppressed lower castes facing horizontal inequalities living there as theorized by Murshed and Gates (2005)? Is it as Gurr (1970) would argue because these areas are poorer or with higher levels of economic inequality than others? Yet there are other areas of the country which have similarly high forest cover, poverty, and socio-economically deprived ethnic groups like dalits (lower castes) and adivasis (tribal people), and yet have no Maoist insurgency. Is it as Teitelbaum and Verghese (2011) have recently argued because of colonial direct rule setting up the caste structures and poor quality civil services leading to Maoist insurgency in India? But the Maoist insurgency occurs in certain districts of states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa where there was indirect rule through native princes, rather than direct rule. None of these existing theories can fully explain the spatial variation in Maoist insurgency in India. There must be some other omitted variable which explains the full extent of this unusual spatial variation.
Topic:
Security, Communism, Post Colonialism, Armed Struggle, and Insurgency
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

9. The Laboratory and its Double: The Making of the Scientist-Citizen at TIFR

Author:
Indira Chowdhury
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The first day of Indian independence is popularly identified with Nehru's famous "tryst with destiny" speech delivered at the Red Fort - the symbolc seat of power at New Delhi, the capital of the new nation. At the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, that the physicist Homi Bhabha had set up two years ago, the day was celebrated quietly, though not without its lessons for the scientists who now had to be nurtured into becoming scientist-citizens. The available records of TIFR do not have any reference to the ceremonies that took place on August 15, 1947. However, the oral history interviews of a scientist present on that day bear testimony to the relationship that was being imagined between nationalism and science.
Topic:
Development, Education, Science and Technology, and History
Political Geography:
South Asia

10. The Skills They Want: Aspirations of Students in Emerging India

Author:
Devesh Kapur, Megha Aggarwal, and Namrata Tognatta
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
This report investigates student awareness, interests and aspirations around general and vocational education. Using a survey administered to class 12 students in one district each in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, and Karnataka, we attempt to gain a better understanding of student aspirations, awareness levels, sources of information, key stakeholders and factors that influence their education and career choices. We then map student interests against sectors that are slated to experience the highest growth in terms of job creation. Our results indicate aspirations of students are largely misaligned with the needs of the Indian economy. It is important to create opportunities, generate awareness about various career options and the respective pathways available to realise career goals. Our findings have implications for policies aiming to improve participation in vocational education and training.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Education, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
South Asia and India