Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India

Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India
Author: Goran Djurfeldt
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317429745

The landlord and his emaciated labourer are symbolic of Indian agriculture. However, this relationship has now changed as large landowners have fallen from their superior position. This volume explores how this emblematic pair is becoming a thing of the past. Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India investigates whether family labour farms are gaining prominence as a consequence of the structural transformation of the economy. The authors work alongside Weberian methodology of ideal types and develop different types of family farms; among them family labour farms that rely mainly on family workers, contrasted with capitalist farms that depend on hired labour. Agriculture is shrinking as a part of the total GDP at the same time as agricultural labour is shrinking as part of the total labour force. The changing agrarian structure is explored with the use of unique long-term survey data and statistical models. Results show that India is approaching farm structures that are typical of East and South East Asia, with pluriactive smallholders as the norm. This book successfully criticizes popular narratives about Indian agricultural development as well as simplistic evolutionist, Marxist or neoclassical prognoses. It is of great importance to those who study development economics, development studies and South Asian economics.

Agrarian Transformation in Western India

Agrarian Transformation in Western India
Author: B. B. Mohanty
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429753330

This book examines the economic gains and social costs of agrarian transformation in India. The author looks at three phases of agrarian transformation: colonial, post- colonial, and neoliberal. This work combines macro and micro economic data, economic and noneconomic phenomena, and quantitative and qualitative aspects while exploring the context of historical and contemporary changes with special reference to Maharashtra in western India. It discusses regional disparities in agricultural development, issues of modernisation and social inequality, land owning among scheduled castes and tribes, women in agriculture, pattern of labour migration and farmer’s suicides, and documents the experiences and conditions of the rural poor and socially weaker sections to provide a comprehensive understanding of the significant changes in agrarian rural economy of western India. It also discusses contemporary development policy and practices and their consequences. Lucid and topical, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of agrarian studies, rural sociology, social history, agricultural economics, development studies, political economy, political studies, and public policy, as well as planning and policy experts.

Development Challenges of India After Twenty Five Years of Economic Reforms

Development Challenges of India After Twenty Five Years of Economic Reforms
Author: Nripendra Kishore Mishra
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2020-10-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811582653

This book revisits some of the persisting challenges of development of India, which remain unresolved even after twenty-five years of economic reforms and almost fifteen years of high growth rate. These include defining purpose of development, inequality, labour, work, unemployment, agrarian distress and migration. The book questions the overemphasis on growth to the extent of neglecting basic issues of development. With a number of contributions re-imagining development and its political economy, the book discusses above mentioned issues in light of new data and more recent conceptions of the issues. The contributors of this volume are eminent researchers in their respective field. Presenting primary as well as secondary data, the book considers the latest advances and research and also addresses new challenges like the global reorganization of production and the consequences for labour and the world of work, along with skills question. World of work has received detailed investigation in this book. This is a timely addition in existing literature especially in context of pandemic and lockdown. Informality and un/employment question is addressed in this context. Relationship among poverty, inequality and growth is examined in light of newer understanding. Agrarian distress is looked in a broader context. A number of papers are examining migration question by expanding coverage of migration and including labour mobility as apart of migration debate. The present crisis of migrant labour and absence of social security for these workers is also discussed. This book is primarily intended for those interested in recent advances on some of the basic aspects of development, like poverty, inequality, informality, word of work, migration and labour mobility. It is also useful for researchers, policy makers, journalists and civil society organizations working on these issues.

Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India

Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India
Author: Goran Djurfeldt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317429737

The landlord and his emaciated labourer are symbolic of Indian agriculture. However, this relationship has now changed as large landowners have fallen from their superior position. This volume explores how this emblematic pair is becoming a thing of the past. Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India investigates whether family labour farms are gaining prominence as a consequence of the structural transformation of the economy. The authors work alongside Weberian methodology of ideal types and develop different types of family farms; among them family labour farms that rely mainly on family workers, contrasted with capitalist farms that depend on hired labour. Agriculture is shrinking as a part of the total GDP at the same time as agricultural labour is shrinking as part of the total labour force. The changing agrarian structure is explored with the use of unique long-term survey data and statistical models. Results show that India is approaching farm structures that are typical of East and South East Asia, with pluriactive smallholders as the norm. This book successfully criticizes popular narratives about Indian agricultural development as well as simplistic evolutionist, Marxist or neoclassical prognoses. It is of great importance to those who study development economics, development studies and South Asian economics.

Essays on the Transformation of India's Agrarian Economy

Essays on the Transformation of India's Agrarian Economy
Author: Chiranjib Sen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-06-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351798707

The central problem to which this book, first published in 1984, is addressed is the transformation of agrarian structure as it historically evolved in India. The term ‘structure’, however, has multiple meanings. The sense in which the term is used refers to the system of production, including the pattern of its composition in terms of micro-units of production, and the social and economic relations by which they are integrated. This concrete analysis and examination of the evidence of Indian agriculture is undertaken from this perspective, and contributes to the theory of agrarian change as well as an interpretation of the development of Indian agriculture.

How Lives Change

How Lives Change
Author: Himanshu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2018-08-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0192529072

Development economics is about understanding how and why lives change. How Lives Change: Palanpur, India, and Development Economics studies a single village in a crucially important country to illuminate the drivers of these changes, why some people do better or worse than others, and what influences mobility and inequality. How Lives Change draws on seven decades of detailed data collection by a team of dedicated development economists to describe the evolution of Palanpur's economy, its society, and its politics. The emerging story of integration of the village economy with the outside world is placed against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming India and, in turn, helps to understand the transformation. It puts development economics into practice to assess its performance and potential in a unique and powerful way to show how the development of one village since India's independence can be set in the context of the entire country's story. How Lives Change sets out the role of, and scope for, public policy in shaping the lives of individuals. It describes how changes in Palanpur's economy since the late 1950s were initially driven by the advance of agriculture through land reforms, the expansion of irrigation and the introduction of "green revolution" technologies. Since the mid-1980s, newly emerging off-farm opportunities in nearby towns and outside agriculture became the key driver of growth and change, profoundly influencing poverty, income mobility, and inequality in Palanpur. Village institutions are shown to have evolved in subtle but clear ways over time, both shaping and being shaped by economic change. Individual entrepreneurship and initiative is found to play a critical role in driving and responding to the forces of change; and yet, against a backdrop of real economic growth and structural transformation, this book shows that human development outcomes have shown only weak progress and remain stubbornly resistant to change.

A World Without Agriculture

A World Without Agriculture
Author: C. Peter Timmer
Publisher: A E I Press
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This monograph, A World without Agriculture, was the 2007 Henry Wendt Lecture, delivered at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. on October 30, 2007. The Wendt Lecture is delivered annually by a scholar who has made major contributions to our understanding of the modern phenomenon of globalization and its consequences for social welfare, government policy, and the expansion of liberal political institutions.

Capitalism, Inequality and Labour in India

Capitalism, Inequality and Labour in India
Author: Jan Breman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108482414

Jan Breman analyses labour bondage in India's changing political economy from 1962 to 2017. Focusing on what has happened since Independence, he argues that colonial rule changed the country's agrarian economy. Capitalism has led to progressive inequality, lack of welfare and the exclusion of the dispossessed from mainstream society.

Reforms and Economic Transformation in India

Reforms and Economic Transformation in India
Author: Jagdish Bhagwati
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2012-10-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199996229

Reforms and Economic Transformation in India is the second volume in the series Studies in Indian Economic Policies. The first volume, India's Reforms: How They Produced Inclusive Growth (OUP, 2012), systematically demonstrated that reforms-led growth in India led to reduced poverty among all social groups. They also led to shifts in attitudes whereby citizens overwhelmingly acknowledge the benefits that accelerated growth has brought them and as voters, they now reward the governments that deliver superior economic outcomes and punish those that fail to do so. This latest volume takes as its starting point the fact that while reforms have undoubtedly delivered in terms of poverty reduction and associated social objectives, the impact has not been as substantial as seen in other reform-oriented economies such as South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, in China. The overarching hypothesis of the volume is that the smaller reduction in poverty has been the result of slower transformation of the economy from a primarily agrarian to a modern, industrial one. Even as the GDP share of agriculture has seen rapid decline, its employment share has declined very gradually. More than half of the workforce in India still remains in agriculture. In addition, non-farm workers are overwhelmingly in the informal sector. Against this background, the nine original essays by eminent economists pursue three broad themes using firm level data in both industry and services. The papers in part I ask why the transformation in India has been slow in terms of the movement of workers out of agriculture, into industry and services, and from informal to formal employment. They address what India needs to do to speed up this transformation. They specifically show that severe labor-market distortions and policy bias against large firms has been a key factor behind the slow transformation. The papers in part II analyze the transformation that reforms have brought about within and across enterprises. For example, they investigate the impact of privatization on enterprise profitability. Part III addresses the manner in which the reforms have helped promote social transformation. Here the papers analyze the impact the reforms have had on the fortunes of the socially disadvantaged groups in terms of wage and education outcomes and as entrepreneurs.