Agriculture,Poverty,and Natural Resource Conservation in 21st Century India: Impact Evaluation and Analysis of Rural Development Policy.

详细信息   

• 作者：Bhargava ; Anil Kumar.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2014
• 毕业院校：University of California
• Department：Agricultural and Resource Economics.
• ISBN：9781321362107
• CBH：3646255
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：3555897
• Pages：117

文摘

This dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of todays development challenges by shedding light on the constraints,linkages,and opportunities currently facing rural populations in the developing world. It examines two policies aimed at increasing incomes of Indias rural poor and the many linkages at play in their unfolding. Although recent years in the country have been marked by high growth in the country,particularly in urban areas and the services sector,the country remains vastly rural and agricultural. Consequently,a primary focus of economic development policy---and this dissertation---is on agricultural productivity and efficiency,unskilled rural labor,and the role of natural resources in agriculture. Part I examines short-run outcomes of Indias Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act NREGA) on agricultural technology adoption. Since 2006,NREGA has offered up to 100 days per year of guaranteed public works employment to tens of millions of rural Indian households. Though it is intended to augment the purchasing power of the rural poor during droughts and slack agricultural production periods,given its scale,it has the potential to generate additional ripples throughout the rural economy,including on agricultural technology use. Using a regression discontinuity design and Indian agricultural census data,this paper finds that NREGA causes a shift of roughly 20 percentage points away from labor-intensive technologies toward labor-saving ones,particularly for small farmers and low-powered technologies. Farmers also use less water-related technologies,such as water-intensive diesel pumps and water-conserving irrigation systems. Part II explores the long-run potential of NREGA. Higher wages and increased technology adoption are short-run results that only partly give the full story. Most of Indias rural sector is intricately tied to agricultural production. This essay explores the impact of the program on production by developing a household-farm model intended to address the highly-interdependent nature of Indias rural sector. The model deviates from neoclassical assumptions that agents make production and consumption decisions independently,as is often assumed in more developed parts of the world. For small Indian farms,the household is both a producer and consumer of farm goods,and linkages may be strong between farm production and consumption decisions,including on the labor/leisure choice. A simple numerical exercise with new Indian household-farm data shows that potential impacts of NREGAs wage increase and infrastructure development can lead to 6--12% boosts in agricultural output and hired labor demand. Finally,Part III focuses on one a particular region of the country and its use of water-conserving agricultural technology WCT). WCTs reduce the amount of irrigated water needed to grow the staple crops on which the poor depend,such as rice and wheat. While previous research has documented the benefits that accrue privately to farmers adopting this technology,who spend less on diesel needed to fuel their pumps,this study examines the spillover effects of adoption to the public via increased water availability to all farmers whether they adopt the technology or not. The study calibrates a hydro-economic model of groundwater supply using household-plot level data gathered in Maharajganj,Deoria,and Gorakhpur districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Preliminary results show that careful socio-economic and spatial distribution of water-conserving technology can lead to both decreases in poverty and increases in public water availability. This is a particularly important finding in light of consistently low uptake of productive agricultural technologies found in many developing countries. Overall,these three studies can contribute to the current policy debates in India on balancing agricultural development,growth of the unskilled agricultural worker population,poverty alleviation,and natural resource management,especially in the face of increasing climate volatility. Rural development policies focused on any one of these areas may take into account secondary impacts and linkages highlighted in this dissertation. For example,NREGA may increase rural incomes,incentivize technology adoption,and develop public infrastructure in the short run,but depending on its overall impact on agricultural production,impacts on long-run employment and rural productivity are uncertain. Meanwhile,direct intervention into select agricultural technology markets could lead to more nuanced policies that take advantage of the socio-economic and hydro-geological distribution of farmers in the country. There are many policies that can be introduced in a country as vast and complex as India. This research hopes to shed light on some of the key linkages that may be affected in todays rural sector.