The Impact of Liberalization and Globalization

on India’s Agrarian Economy

V. K. Ramachandran, Indian Statistical Institute

Vikas Rawal, Jawaharlal Nehru University

ABSTRACT
This paper describes and analyzes the impact of policies of globalization and liberalization
on the agrarian economy of India. In particular, it discusses the reversal of land reform,
changes in the policies of administered agricultural input costs and output prices,
cutbacks in public investment in rural physical and social infrastructure, the dismantling
of the institutional structure of social and development banking, the withdrawal of
quantitative restrictions on the import of agricultural products, cutbacks in the public
distribution system, and the undermining of national systems of research and extension
and protection of national plant and other biological wealth. The data used in the paper
come from the major sources of national-level official statistics and primary data collected
as part of a Project on Agrarian Relations in India.

KEY WORDS
agrarian economy, globalization, India, liberalization, Project on Agrarian Relations in
India

1. Introduction
The subject of this paper is the impact of policies of so-called stabilization and
structural adjustment, or liberalization and globalization, on the agrarian economy of
India. These are policies that have been imposed, in differing degrees, on the people of
the Third World by international capital and domestic bourgeoisies for more than two
decades now, and we shall examine their specific form and impact on the Indian
countryside (Ramachandran and Swaminathan 2002). In India, although there are
continuities between the era of globalization and preceding periods, particularly after
1984, the sharp acceleration of the policies of neoliberal reform can be said to have
occurred after 1991, when the Congress Government in which the present Prime
Minister was first made Finance Minister came to power.
In order to understand the impact of globalization and liberalization in rural
India, it is important to understand the nature of the agrarian question, and, in turn, the
class character of the state in India. Landlords are a constituent part of the state in India,
and nothing in the present situation has undermined landlordism as a fundamental

56
barrier to agrarian and general social progress. At the same time, the general class policies
of the Indian state in the countryside, and, specifically, its collaboration with
imperialism, have taken qualitatively new forms since 1991.
This paper begins with a discussion of land reform and landlordism. We discuss
the interconnections between landlordism, moneylender-merchant exploitation and caste
and gender oppression in the countryside, and argue that neo-liberalism has not lessened
the tactical or strategic importance of addressing these issues.
Next, we attempt to show how state policy has acted as a vast depressor in the
countryside, and we document the reversal of policies of administered agricultural input
costs and output prices, cutbacks in public investment in rural physical and social
infrastructure, the dismantling of the institutional structure of social and development
banking, the withdrawal of quantitative restrictions on the import of agricultural
products, cutbacks in the public distribution system, and the undermining of national
systems of research, extension and the protection of national plant and other biological
wealth.
The paper uses data from, first, the major sources of national-level official data,
and, secondly, primary data collected as part of a larger Project on Agrarian Relations in
India.

2. The Reversal of Land Reform

Genuine agrarian reform alters class relations in favour of the working people,
frees demand constraints and opens up home markets in the countryside, and provides a
basis for broad-based productive investment. The promise of land reform was part of our
freedom movement, a promise betrayed in practice by the ruling classes in the years
following Independence.
In India today, however, land reform as conceived during the Independence
movement and in the first decades after Independence, has been jettisoned by official
policy, and reversed in certain areas in favour of counter-reform.1 Legislation is being
considered and has been passed that raises ceilings to levels that undermine the objectives
of land ceiling laws and make absentee farming by large owners and corporations a
certainty. Such policies reduce the extent of land for redistribution, accelerate the loss of
land by poor peasants and worsen inequalities in the distribution of land.
One of the objectives of land reform is the destruction of landlordism. A major
feature of landlordism is the concentration of ownership of land and other assets in the
hands of landlords, that is, of a class that does not work on the major manual operations
on the land and is a historical participant in the land monopoly. The data are clear that
the state has not abandoned the slogan of land reform because this class – and such
concentration of wealth – has ceased to exist. On the contrary, data from the National
Sample Survey (Table 1) and from recent village studies (Table 2) show the continuation
of very sharp inequality.
In Table 1, data from the National Sample Survey (NSS) indicate that the degree
of concentration in the distribution of operational and ownership holdings of land has
marginally increased over the last four decades.2
Table 2 presents data from different villages across India; these are the first nine

57
villages surveyed as part of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India. As can be seen, the
surveys have been conducted across a variety of agrarian regimes – in surface-irrigated,
lift-irrigated, and unirrigated tracts – across the country. The immediate conclusion is
that, although there are differences of degree, sharp inequalities persist in respect of the
ownership of land.3
With regard to the actual redistribution of land, an estimate from official data by
a senior member of the All-India Kisan Sabha4 illustrates the chasm between potential
and performance in India. Working with a ceiling of 25 acres a household, ‘no less than
63 million acres of land would have been available in the mid-1950s and early 1960s for
distribution among landless and land-poor farmer households’ (Mishra 2007). The
reality, according to the Annual Report of the Ministry of Rural Development 2006-07,
is that only 4.89 million acres of land were distributed over the first 60 years of
Independence (Mishra 2007). A recent estimate based on the NSSO’s Survey on Land
and Livestock Holdings (2002-03) suggests that the current extent of ceiling-surplus land
is more than three times the extent of land that has ever been redistributed under land
reform (Rawal 2008).

3. Public Investments in Agriculture and Rural Infrastructure (Particularly

Irrigation and Roads) Slowed Down Substantially
Economists are familiar with the concept of complementarity between public and
private expenditure; when the state withdraws from investment in public works,
infrastructure and programs of mass employment, it robs the countryside of the
foundations for growth and the means of poverty alleviation.
Fiscal contraction is at the core of current policy, and Table 3, which shows the
trends in public investment in agriculture and allied activities, shows that the decline in
public investment in agriculture started in the 1980s and accelerated further in the
1990s. By the end of 1990s, public investment in agriculture and allied activities was
only about 1.6 percent of agricultural GDP and about 6.6 percent of total gross capital
formation in the public sector.5

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Table 1 Gini coefficients for the distribution of operational and ownership holdings of land, India, 1960-61 to 2003-04
Type of holding 1960-61 1970-71 1980-81 1990-91 2003-04

Operational holdings 0.58 0.59 0.63 0.64 0.62

Ownership holdings 0.73 0.71 0.71 0.71 0.74

Source: National Sample Survey (NSS) Land and Livestock Surveys cited in Ramakumar (2000), Ramachandran and Ramakumar (2000), NSS
Report Nos. 491 and 492

Note: These are official estimates of Gini coefficients. Ownership holdings in these estimates refer to ownership of any type of land including homestead land. Gini coefficient of
ownership of agricultural land in 2003-04 was about 0.76 (Rawal 2008)

59
Table 2 Share of agricultural land owned by the 5 percent of households with the largest ownership holdings and the 50 percent with the smallest ownership
holdings, by village, 2006-2007 (percent)
Serial Village Share of agricultural land owned by
number top 5 percent bottom 50 percent
1 ANANTHAVARAM, Guntur District, south coastal Andhra Pradesh 54 0
2 BUKKACHERLA, Anantapur district, Rayalaseema region, south-west Andhra Pradesh 33 17
3 KOTHAPALLE, Karimnagar district, North Telangana region, north Andhra Pradesh 41 1
4 HAREVLI, Bijnor district, Western Uttar Pradesh 39 2
5 MAHATWAR, Ballia district, Eastern Uttar Pradesh 40 6
6 WARWATKHANDERAO, Buldhana district, Vidarbha region, Maharashtra 35 10
7 NIMSHIRGAON, Kolhapur district, Marathwada region, Maharashtra 24 5
8 DUNGARIYA, Adivasi village, south Udaipur district, Rajasthan 23 18
9 GULABEWALA, Sriganganagar district, Gang Canal region, Rajasthan 43 0

Source: Survey data, Foundation for Agrarian Studies.

Note: Agricultural land includes net sown area and current fallows.

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Table 3 Gross capital formation in agriculture and allied activities as a proportion of
agricultural GDP and as a proportion of gross capital formation in all activities (percent)

Year As a proportion of GDP from As a proportion of gross capital

agriculture and allied activities formation in all activities
1960-61 1.8 11.2
1965-66 2.1 10.5
1970-71 1.8 11.9
1979-80 4.2 13.9
1980-81 3.7 15.6
1981-82 3.6 12.0
1982-83 3.7 11.2
1983-84 3.4 11.6
1984-85 3.4 10.5
1985-86 3.3 9.4
1986-87 3.2 8.3
1987-88 3.3 9.8
1988-89 2.8 8.6
1989-90 2.5 7.2
1990-91 2.3 6.8
1991-92 2.0 6.3
1992-93 2.0 6.5
1993-94 2.0 6.9
1994-95 2.2 6.8
1995-96 2.2 7.4
1996-97 2.0 7.6
1997-98 1.8 6.9
1998-99 1.6 6.6
1999-00 1.9 6.0
2000-01 1.8 5.7
2001-02 2.1 6.6
2002-03 2.0 6.4
2003-04 2.3 7.0
2004-05 2.9 7.4
2005-06 3.4 7.6
2006-07 3.7 7.9

Source: Thulasamma (2002), EPW Research Foundation (2002), Agricultural Statistics

at a Glance (2007, 2008) and National Account Statistics (2008).

4. Financial Liberalization After 1991 Decimated the Institutional

Structure of Rural Banking in India
Financial liberalization represented a clear and explicit reversal of the policy of
social and development banking, such as it was, and contributed in no small way to the
extreme deprivation and distress of which the rural poor have been victims since the early
1990s.
61
It is well known that the burden of indebtedness in rural India is very great, and
that, despite major structural changes in credit institutions and forms of rural credit in
the post-independence period, the exploitation of the rural masses in the credit market is
one of the most pervasive and persistent features of rural life in India.
Historically, there have been four major problems with respect to the supply of
credit to the Indian countryside. First, the supply of formal credit to the countryside as a
whole has been inadequate. Second, rural credit markets themselves have been imperfect
and fragmented. Third, as the foregoing suggests, the distribution of formal credit has
been unequal, particularly with respect to region and class, caste and gender in the
countryside. Formal sector credit needs specially to reach backward areas, income-poor
households, people of the oppressed castes and tribes, and women. Fourth, the major
source of credit to rural households, particularly income-poor working households, has
been the informal sector. Informal sector loans, typically, are advanced at very high rates
of interest. Further, the terms and conditions attached to these loans have given rise to an
elaborate structure of coercion – economic and extra-economic – in the countryside.
That these constitute what may be called the ‘problem of rural credit’ has been
well recognized; recognized, in fact, in official evaluations and scholarship since the end
of the nineteenth century. Given the issues involved, the declared objectives of public
policy with regard to rural credit in the post-independence period, were in the words of a
former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, ‘to ensure that sufficient and timely
credit, at reasonable rates of interest, is made available to as large segment of the rural
population as possible’ (Rangarajan 1996). The policy instruments to achieve these
objectives were to be: first, extending the geographical and functional reach of the formal
sector; second, directed lending; and third, concessional or subsidized credit (Rangarajan
1996). Public policy was thus aimed not only at meeting rural credit needs, but also at
pushing out the informal sector and the exploitation to which it subjected borrowers.
Rural credit policy in India envisaged the provision of a range of credit services, including
long-term and short-term credit and large-scale and small-scale loans to rural households.
The period from 1969 to the present can be characterized as representing,
broadly speaking, three phases in banking policy vis-à-vis the Indian countryside. The
period immediately following bank nationalization was also the early phase of the ‘green
revolution’ in rural India, and one of the objectives of the nationalization of banks was
for the state to gain access to new liquidity, particularly among rich farmers, in the
countryside. The declared objectives of the new policy with respect to rural banking –
what came to be known as ‘social and development banking’ – were: (i) to provide
banking services in previously unbanked or under-banked rural areas; (ii) to provide
substantial credit to specific activities including agriculture and cottage industries; (iii) to
provide credit to certain disadvantaged groups, such as for example, Dalit and scheduled
tribe households.
The second phase, which began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was a period
when the rhetoric of land reform was finally discarded by the ruling classes themselves,
and when the major instruments of official anti-poverty policy were programs for the
creation of employment. Two strategies for employment generation were envisaged,
namely wage employment through state-sponsored rural employment schemes and self-
employment by means of loans-cum-subsidy schemes targeted at the rural poor. Thus
began a period of directed credit, during which credit was to be directed towards ‘the
weaker sections’ of society.
62
The third and current phase, which began in 1991, is that of liberalization.

There has been much recent research on financial liberalization and rural credit in India.6
The main features of the post-liberalization phase are the following:

ƒ Social and development banking ceased to be official policy. The policy objectives
of this phase are encapsulated in the Report of the Committee on the Financial
System, a Committee appointed by the Reserve Bank of India which called for ‘a
vibrant and competitive financial system…to sustain the ongoing reform in the
structural aspects of the economy’. The Committee said that redistributive
objectives ‘should use the instrumentality of the fiscal rather than the credit
system’ and, accordingly, that ‘directed credit programs should be phased out’. It
also recommended that interest rates be deregulated, that capital adequacy norms
be changed (to ‘compete with banks globally’), that branch licensing policy be
revoked, that a new institutional structure that is ‘market-driven and based on
profitability’ be created, and that the part played by private Indian and foreign
banks be enlarged (Reserve Bank of India 1991).

ƒ The expansion of public-sector rural banking was ended, and a large number of
rural branches of commercial banks were actually shut down after 1995 (Table 4,
Figure 1).

ƒ The credit-deposit ratios of rural commercial bank branches fell sharply between
1991 and 2004 (Table 5, Figure 2).

ƒ Inter-State inequalities in rural banking increased, and regions where banking has
historically been underdeveloped suffered the worst (Table 6).7

ƒ Priority-sector advances fell, and, with that, so did the shares of credit to
agriculture, to cultivators owning two hectares or less, and to Dalit and Adivasi
households (Tables 7-8, Figures 3-4) (see Chavan 2007).

ƒ The share of informal-sector credit in the principal borrowed by rural households

is very high (Table 9), and has increased over the liberalization phase.

There was a partial recovery in provision of formal-sector credit to rural areas after
2001. While the supply of rural credit started to increase in 2001, the major expansion in
provision of rural credit, and a clear break from the earlier policy of withdrawal of
formal-sector banking from rural areas, took place since 2004 (Tables 5 and 6, Figures 2
and 3). It is noteworthy that, by 2008, the credit-deposit ratio of rural branches of
scheduled commercial banks went back to the level in 1991. Table 3, which discusses
trends in public investment, shows that the share of agriculture and allied activities in
total public investment also started to increase in 2004-05. Reversal of trends in rural
credit and public investment was made possible because of the space opened by
dependence of the UPA government on the Left parties for its survival.8 The Left, in its
demands, identified collapse of rural credit and decline in public investment as major
causes of rural distress and actively lobbied for expansion of provision of formal-sector
63
credit to rural areas and public investment in agriculture.
It would, however, be pertinent to point out that the actual increase in supply of
credit provided for agriculture after 2001 was less than what the numbers in Tables 5 and
7 suggest. Over this period, the scope of priority sector and indirect agricultural credit
was expanded by including additional activities within their purview. For example, credit
given by banks to non-banking finance companies for onwards lending for agriculture,
loans for construction of ware houses and marketing facilities for agricultural
commodities, subscription to bonds issued by Rural Electrification Corporation, finance
given to agri-business centres, and much of the loans given to State Electricity Boards and
power distribution companies were considered as indirect credit to agriculture (see
Chavan and Ramakumar 2007). As shown in Figure 4, the share of indirect credit in
total agricultural credit increased dramatically after 2001. Correspondingly, share of
credit provided directly to farmers in total agricultural credit declined.

Table 4 Number of rural branches of scheduled commercial banks, India, 1978 to 2007
Year Branches
1980 14171
1985 25541
1990 33572
1991 34867
1992 35216
1993 35218
1994 35301
1995 35379
1996 35008
1997 33092
1998 32909
1999 32854
2000 32734
2001 32640
2002 32443
2003 32283
2004 32107
2005 31967
2006 30610
2007 30393

Source: Banking Statistics and Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks in
India, various issues.

Note: As has been pointed out by Ramakumar (2009), bank branches were classified into rural, semi-urban
and urban until 1994 using the 1981 Census, between 1994 and 2005 using the 1991 Census, and from
2006 onwards using the 2001 Census. He shows that, because of these revisions in the classification of
branches, the numbers are not strictly comparable across these sub-periods. However, despite this problem,
the overall trends – of increase in number of rural branches until 1994 and a decline thereafter – are clearly
seen in the data.

64
Figure 1 Number of rural branches of scheduled commercial banks, India, 1978-2007

Source: Banking Statistics and Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks in
India, various issues.

65
Table 5 Credit-deposit ratios of rural branches of scheduled commercial banks, India, 1981 to
2007 (percent)
Year CDR
1981 57
1985 69
1991 61
1995 53
1996 49
1997 48
1998 44
1999 43
2000 41
2001 39
2002 42
2003 44
2004 44
2005 52
2006 56
2007 61

Source: Banking Statistics and Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks in
India, Reserve Bank of India, various issues.

66
Figure 2 Credit-deposit ratios of rural branches of scheduled commercial banks, India, 1981
to 2007 (percent)

Source: Banking Statistics and Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks in
India, Reserve Bank of India, various issues.

67
Table 6 Credit-deposit ratios of rural branches of scheduled commercial banks, by States,
1991, 1996, 2001 and 2007 (percent)
Region/State 1991 1996 2001 2007
NORTHERN REGION 48 39 38 60
Haryana 67 44 41 64
Himachal Pradesh 37 27 22 38
Jammu & Kashmir 33 15 15 54
Punjab 44 44 50 56
Rajasthan 66 48 46 81
NORTH-EASTERN REGION 63 49 31 54
Arunachal Pradesh 28 13 15 22
Assam 65 58 32 59
Manipur 101 113 95 132
Meghalaya 50 29 22 43
Mizoram 49 28 51 82
Nagaland 62 48 28 82
Tripura 128 84 35 44
EASTERN REGION 51 40 25 45
Bihar and Jharkhand 48 37 20 39
Orissa 82 60 39 70
West Bengal 44 37 23 39
CENTRAL REGION 52 36 29 49
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh 69 50 39 62
Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal 47 32 26 45
WESTERN REGION 62 48 47 62
Goa 19 15 12 16
Gujarat 60 44 37 47
Maharashtra 75 63 70 92
SOUTHERN REGION 91 78 66 95
Andhra Pradesh 95 86 76 114
Karnataka 88 72 68 88
Kerala 65 54 53 76
Tamil Nadu 102 84 58 90
ALL-INDIA 60 47 39 61
Source: Banking Statistics and Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks in
India, Reserve Bank of India, various issues.

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Table 7 Share of priority sector and agricultural loans in outstanding credit (percent)
Year Priority sector Agriculture
1981 36 17
1985 40 17
1986 41 17
1988 44 17
1991 38 15
1995 34 11
1996 33 11
1997 35 11
1998 35 11
1999 35 10
2000 37 10
2001 33 10
2002 33 10
2003 32 11
2004 35 11
2005 36 11
2006 36 13
2007 36 13

Source: Statistical Tables Relating to Banks in India, Reserve Bank of India, various issues.

69
Figure 3 Share of priority sector and agricultural loans in outstanding credit (percent)

Source: Statistical Tables Relating to Banks in India, Reserve Bank of India, various issues.

70
Table 8 Share of advances to ‘weaker sections’ in net bank credit of public and private sector
banks, 1991 to 2008 (percent)
Year Public sector banks Private sector banks All banks
1991 10 5 10
1992 10 5 9
1993 9 4 9
1994 9 3 9
1995 8 3 8
1996 8 2 8
2001 7 2 6
2002 7 2 7
2003 7 2 6
2004 7 1 6
2005 9 1 7
2006 8 2 7
2007 7 2 6
2008 9 2 8

Source: Chavan (2007), and Trends and Progress of Banking in India, Reserve Bank of
India, various issues.

71
Figure 4 Share of indirect credit in total agricultural advances, 1975 to 2008, percent

Source: Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks, Reserve Bank of India,
various issues.

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Table 9 Shares of the formal and informal sectors in the total principal borrowed by rural households, illustrative list of villages (percent)
Village, District, State, section of the population, year of survey Share of total principal outstanding
borrowed from
Formal sector Informal sector
PANAHAR and MUIDARA, Bankura district, West Bengal, all households, 1995-96 24 76

GOKILAPURAM, Theni district, Tamil Nadu, landless worker households, 1999 22 78

BAGHRA, Giridih district, Jharkhand, all households, 2003-04 28 72

BIRDHANA, Fatehabad district, Haryana, landless worker households, 2003 8 92

DHAMAR, Rohtak district, Haryana, landless worker households, 2003 12 88

ANANTHAVARAM, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, all households, 2005 36 64

BUKKACHERLA, Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, all households, 2005 39 61

KOTHAPALLE, Karimnagar district, Andhra Pradesh, all households, 2005 22 78

Source: Contributions to Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2005) and data from the Project on Agrarian Relations in India, Foundation for Agrarian
Studies.

73
5. The Peasantry Faces a Two-pronged Attack From Falling Commodity
Prices and Rising Input Costs
It is now impossible to ensure adequate incomes among the peasantry if they are
not protected from the ravages of adverse product and input markets. Most peasants are
net buyers of food grain, and thus victims of inflation in food prices as well. The costs of
cultivation have risen steeply, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s. The rise in the
costs of seed, fertilizer, irrigation and the use of machinery has been particularly steep in
the recent period.
As a consequence of India’s joining the World Trade Organization, Indian
agriculture has been exposed, in a new and unprecedented way, to volatility in the
international prices of food and non-food crops and, in the case of several commodities,
prolonged periods of steep declines in prices (see for instance, Ghosh 2005). The most
important policies of the Government of India in this regard are, of course, the removal
of quantitative restrictions on the import and export of a very wide range of agricultural
commodities, including wheat and wheat products, rice, pulses, edible oils and
agricultural seeds, and substantial cuts in import tariffs on crops. New incentives and
support to exports of agricultural commodities will inevitably have an impact on land use
and cropping pattern, as will the decision to ‘decanalize’ and allow and encourage private
agencies in the agricultural export sector.
In addition, the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) announced by the Government
to ensure remunerative prices have not compensated for the actual costs of production
per unit of output for most crops in a majority of States. Further, the very policy of MSP
has not been implemented in most States.
This problem of peasant incomes is particularly intense in the present context of
the removal of quantitative restrictions on the import of agricultural products, the
emphasis on export-oriented production, and the fall in the prices of primary
commodities internationally. It is not fortuitous that the 1990s, the first decade of
accelerated liberalization, was also the first period since the beginning of the ‘green
revolution’ in which the rate of growth of food grain production was lower than the rate
of growth of population in India.9
The Left in India has demanded that the Government ensure that the costs of all
inputs be controlled; that the system of MSP cover all 26 crops covered by the
Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices; that fair and remunerative prices be
offered through a country-wide crop procurement system; that a universal public
distribution system be established; and that the Government reverse the abolition of
quantitative restrictions and raise tariffs on the import of agricultural and agriculture-
related products. In the context of widespread crop damage, low yields and the ruin of
vulnerable cultivators, a new demand is that a Farm Income Insurance Scheme be
implemented rapidly in all disaster areas and subsequently be extended to all districts of
the country and to all crops.
Our survey data from Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra indicate
the near-impossibility, in the present circumstances, of peasant households with two
hectares of operational holdings or less earning an income sufficient for family survival.
The daily per capita median income in the village with the highest median income was
about Rs 24 (see Table 10).

74
The net annual incomes of a substantial section of the poor and middle peasantry
from crop production are negative. The data in Table 12 are new and truly alarming.
The Table shows that over 30 percent of cultivator-households in each of the three
Andhra Pradesh households, 19 percent of cultivator-households in Nimshirgaon (a
village in Kolhapur district), 18 percent of cultivator-households in Mahatwar (a village
in eastern UP), 14 percent of cultivator-households in Harevli (a village in Bijnaur
district in western UP) and 5 percent of cultivator-households in Warwat Khaderao (a
village in Vidarbha) had negative net incomes from crop production.
Annual incomes among Dalit and Adivasi households were substantially lower
than the corresponding incomes among others (see Table 11). In Ananthavaram, a multi-
caste irrigated village in south coastal Andhra Pradesh, the mean annual income from
crop production alone was negative (minus 624 rupees) for Dalit households and Rs
27,892 for other cultivators.
Food self-sufficiency has been a key component of India’s national sovereignty,
and the new trends in the agrarian regime have very serious implications for land use,
cropping patterns and the future of self-sufficiency in food in India.

75
Table 10 Median per capita household annual and daily incomes, PARI villages, 2005-06 (rupees)
Village, region Median per capita household income
per year per day
ANANTHAVARAM, Guntur District, south coastal Andhra Pradesh 7,465 20

BUKKACHERLA, Anantapur district, Rayalaseema region, south-west Andhra Pradesh 5,968 16

KOTHAPALLE, Karimnagar district, North Telangana region, north Andhra Pradesh 5,669 15

HAREVLI, Bijnaur district, Western Uttar Pradesh 4,690 13

MAHATWAR, Ballia district, Eastern Uttar Pradesh 3,164 9

WARWAT KHANDERAO, Buldhana district, Vidarbha region, Maharashtra 7,248 20

NIMSHIRGAON, Kolhapur district, southern Maharashtra 8,792 24

Source: Survey data, Foundation for Agrarian Studies.

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Table 11 Median per capita household annual and daily incomes, Dalit and Adivasi households and other households, PARI villages, 2005-06 (rupees)
Village, region Median per capita household income
Dalit and Adivasi Muslim Other
households households households
ANANTHAVARAM, Guntur District, south coastal Andhra Pradesh 6409 NA 10950

BUKKACHERLA, Anantapur district, Rayalaseema region, south-west Andhra Pradesh 4280 NA 6249

KOTHAPALLE, Karimnagar district, North Telangana region, north Andhra Pradesh 4687 NA 6121

HAREVLI, Bijnaur district, Western Uttar Pradesh 4078 4258 9143

MAHATWAR, Ballia district, Eastern Uttar Pradesh 3036 NA 3254

WARWAT KHANDERAO, Buldhana district, Vidarbha region, Maharashtra 3678 5786 8333

NIMSHIRGAON, Kolhapur district, southern Maharashtra 6011 7420 11388

Source: Survey data, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

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Table 12 Proportion of cultivator-households in individual size-classes of net annual income from crop production, Andhra Pradesh villages, 2005-06
(percent)
Size-classes of ANANTHAVARAM, BUKKACHERLA, KOTHAPALLE, HAREVLI, MAHATWAR, WARWAT NIMSHIRGAON,
incomes Guntur District, Anantapur Karimnagar Bijnaur Ballia district, KHANDERAO, Kolhapur
from crop south coastal district, district, district, Eastern Uttar Buldhana district,
production Andhra Pradesh Rayalaseema North Telangana Western Pradesh district, southern
region, region, Uttar Vidarbha Maharashtra
south-west north Andhra Pradesh region,
Andhra Pradesh Pradesh Maharashtra

Less than 0 5 19
30 36 30 14 18
0-4000 15 13
28 8 10 28 58
4000-8000 15 10
11 15 20 7 10
8000-16000 15 12
12 14 27 12 6
16000-24000 13 8
3 7 9 6 2
24000-50000 18 19
8 10 5 4 4
>50000 19 19
10 8 0 29 1
All cultivator 100 100
100 100 100 100 100
households
Source: Survey data, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

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6. The Depressor Effect on Rural Employment
As is clear from the foregoing, liberalization and globalization imply the
imposition of deflationary policies on the countryside; their depressor effect on rural
manual employment has been profound. The decline of public investment in agriculture,
the decline in direct agricultural extension and information dissemination, and the
consequent decline in agriculture itself have had a direct impact on the number of days of
employment that a hired worker in rural India receives.10
There are not good enough macro-data on the number of days of employment,
agricultural and non-agricultural, per worker per year in India. Not only do the data
from the Rural Labour Enquiries appear intuitively to be incorrect, but it is also well-
recognized that employment data from micro-studies show consistently lower volumes of
employment than Rural Labour Enquiry data. There are, of course, major conceptual,
definitional and methodological reasons for this divergence. This latter observation is as
true now as it was twenty years ago.
The village data from Andhra Pradesh illustrate the scarcity of the means of
employment available today to a hired rural manual worker (Table 13).
The prospects for employment are also disturbing indeed. Let us examine some
factors that traditionally have influenced the volume of employment available to a rural
manual worker.

LABOUR ABSORPTION IN RICE AND WHEAT CULTIVATION

The issues with regard to labour absorption have been summarized in
Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2004). The main conclusions of that paper are that,
with respect to wheat, mechanization has caused a secular decline in labour absorption.
With regard to the cultivation of paddy, there has been, first, a decline in the
employment of labour power per hectare. Secondly, female employment has been
particularly affected by the decline in labour absorption. Thirdly, and as important, there
are no viable technologies on offer today that involve higher levels of labour power input
per hectare in the irrigated cultivation of high-yielding rice.

IRRIGATION
Much has been written on the causal links between an expansion of irrigation and
an expansion of agricultural employment. It is entirely possible that irrigated area
(groundwater- and surface-irrigated) may expand in certain regions and watersheds.
Nevertheless, the question remains: given the nature of policies of so-called structural
adjustment, is it likely that, in the aggregate, the rate of growth of either (i) direct or
complementary investment necessary for the expansion of groundwater irrigation or (ii)
direct public investment necessary for the expansion of surface irrigation (large, medium
or small scale) will rise to levels that are necessary to meet the demand for irrigation (or
provide for sustained increase in employment) in rural India? In an earlier period in
India’s development history, the answer may have been a qualified ‘yes’. Given the record
of sharp decline in public investment in agriculture since 1991 (see Table 3), the answer
now is ‘not under the present neo-liberal regime.’

79
Table 13 Average days of employment by type of employment, manual labour households, Andhra Pradesh Villages, 2005-06
Village Male workers Female workers
Agriculture Non-agriculture Total Agriculture Non-agriculture Total

ANANTHAVARAM, 64 42 106 65 0 65
Guntur District, south coastal Andhra Pradesh
BUKKACHERLA,
53 5 58 67 1 68
Anantapur district,
Rayalaseema region, south-west Andhra Pradesh
KOTHAPALLE,
44 69 113 73 20 93
Karimnagar district,
North Telangana region, north Andhra Pradesh
Source: Survey data, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

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NON-AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT
An important lesson from rural development experience in India and elsewhere in
the less developed countries is that schemes for large-scale employment of hired manual
workers or large-scale schemes for self-employment are necessarily state-driven and state-
financed. The withdrawal of the state from state-sponsored employment schemes through
the 1990s and early years of this decade is clear from Table 14.
The major change in this regard came after the passage, under pressure from the
Left, of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) by the present
Parliament. The NREGA seeks to provide a guarantee of up to 100 days of employment
per household. The scheme was introduced in 200 districts of India in 2005-06. In April
2008, the program was extended to the rural areas of all districts in the country. The
most important difference between the NREGA and previous wage employment
programs is that the NREGA seeks to provide a guarantee of 100 days of employment per
household to any rural household that demands it. Where employment is not provided
within 15 days of a demand for employment, the scheme provides for an unemployment
allowance to be paid to the household that demanded work.
Data show that in 2007-08, the second full year of NREGA, about 1400 million
person-days of work were generated in the 330 districts in which it was in operation in
the year (Table 14). This was much higher than the work generated under previous wage
employment programs. Data also show that, in 2007-08, on average, about 43 days of
work were provided to households that participated in the program. The evidence
suggests that in many areas where NREGA has been operational, the prospect of
employment-generation under the scheme helped raise agricultural wage rates (Mehrotra
2008, Dreze and Khera 2009). It is also noteworthy that of the total employment
generated under the program, the share of employment gained by women was 48
percent, by Dalit workers 31 percent, and by Scheduled Tribe workers 24 percent.
Although NREGA represents an important gain for the rural work force, we must
also remember that the program provides a very limited guarantee of employment, and
that it has been marred by serious obstacles and problems (Karat 2005, Gupta 2007).
The implementation agencies, for example, have a restricted portfolio of works that can
be undertaken under the scheme (Karat 2008). Banks have been reluctant to open zero-
balance accounts for workers who participate in NREGA. In many cases, the piece-rates
under the program are low and, as a result, most workers are unable to do enough work
on a sustained basis to earn the statutory minimum wage (Karat 2008). The nature of
work provided and the Schedule of Rates are such that they typically discriminate against
women workers who, on average, earn substantially lower wages than male workers
(Karat 2008; ISWSD 2007). The unemployment allowance is seldom paid and, as a
result, the goal of providing a guarantee of 100 days of work per household has not been
achieved in practice. Evaluations have pointed out that, in most States, implementation
of the scheme is fraught with problems such as delays in the payment of wages, a lack of
work-site facilities (particularly for women), and corruption in the execution of work and
maintenance of records (ISWSD 2007, Dreze and Khera 2009).

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Table 14 Person days of employment created through wage employment schemes in rural areas,
1990-91 to 2001-02, selected years
Year Person days of employment under different wage
employment schemes
(in millions) Index
1990-91 874 100
1996-97 804 92
2002-03 748 86
2003-04 856 98
2004-05 912 104
2005-06 1116 128
2006-07 905 104
2007-08 1437 164
Source: Economic Survey, different years and Mehrotra (2008).

Notes: In 1990, the main wage employment schemes were National Rural Employment Program (NREP)
and RLEGP. These were combined to form the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY). Later the Employment
Assurance Scheme was introduced. In 2001, JRY was modified to Jawahar Rozgar Gram Sidhi Yojana
(JGSY). In April 2002, all wage employment schemes were combined into the SGRY (Sampoorna
Grameen Rozgar Yojana).

LEAVING LAND FALLOW

In situations characterized by rising costs, falling harvest-time prices, the absence
of information through extension services on alternative crop-cultivation opportunities,
and cutbacks in formal sector credit, cultivators may decide simply to leave land fallow.
We have some documented cases of such shutdown in the boro season in West Bengal in
2002 (see Rawal, Swaminathan and Ramachandran 2002), in Rayalaseema in Andhra
Pradesh in 2005-06 and large tracts of land left fallow even in the Gang canal region of
North West Rajasthan in 2007. This decision to leave land fallow was a direct
consequence of the adverse impact of current policies on cultivators of different classes.

LAND USE AND CROPPING PATTERN

It is entirely possible that cropping pattern in some areas may change, in the short
or medium term, towards crops that are more labour-absorbent per hectare than crops
currently grown. Such changes in cropping patterns may be a result of spontaneous forces
of commercialization and crop diversification; in future, however, they may increasingly
be responses to niche-market and export demand, and controlled directly by Indian or
multinational corporate interests. Such changes in cropping pattern must be evaluated
not only with respect to their immediate impact on employment and farm incomes but
from a broader perspective on land use, food security, and the preservation of our
biodiversity. Thus, if over a large tract (part of a block or sub-district, say), the cultivation
of gherkins or cherry tomatoes replaces food grain or a diverse range of other crops, that
change must be evaluated in terms not only of short-term gains in income and
employment, but also in terms of its impact on land use, food self-sufficiency and the
environment and biodiversity.

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7. International Corporations and Indian Agriculture
The new trade and patent regime leaves the field of agricultural research at the
mercy of multinational corporations, thus weakening public-sector national agricultural
research systems and open-access international research institutions. Further, this regime
infringes on the rights of farmers and indigenous plant breeders and threatens to lead, in
the words of India’s leading agricultural scientist, ‘from biodiversity to genetic slavery’.
A significant new aspect of globalization and the agrarian economy is the new
intervention by US corporations in agricultural policy and policy-making institutions.
The new Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), formally called the ‘US-India
Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Teaching, Research, Service, and
Commercial Linkages,’ seeks to tie the agrarian economy of India to US corporate
interests.11 The KIA is to support certain activities related to agricultural research,
education and extension that will help bring an ‘evergreen revolution’ based on
‘environmentally-sustainable and market-oriented agriculture.’ Specifically, the KIA
focuses on ‘capacity-building’ for education (including curriculum revision), food
processing, biotechnology (particularly aimed at making transgenic crops the focus of
Indian agricultural research) and water management (with emphasis on precision and
high-tech agriculture).
The agreement does not cover any funding for agricultural research and
education by the United States Government. In fact, while the Government of India has
already pledged Rs. 3500 million for the activities proposed, there has been no
commitment from the United States. Documents available in the public domain make it
clear that private funding from agribusiness corporations for research in public
institutions in India will be linked to patent rights and licenses on products that emerge
from such research.
India’s agricultural research infrastructure and institutional setup expanded
greatly in the post-independence period and is unmatched across most less-developed
countries. In addition to a number of central institutions under the umbrella of the
Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), there are a large number of State
Agricultural Universities, Colleges and other institutions of higher learning. India has
more than 7000 agricultural scientists and more than 40,000 agricultural extension
workers. One aspect of KIA is that it is to be a means by which US agribusiness
corporations gain access to this institutional setup and pool of scientists and technological
personnel.
KIA is to be designed and monitored by a governing board that has, as members,
representatives of major US agribusiness and retail firms. The US side includes, among
its eight members, representatives from Monsanto and Walmart and other business
organiations.
It is clear that an important objective of KIA is to bring a patent-protected regime
of commercial agriculture to India that will, first, attempt to meet the demand for
tropical agricultural products in the developed world, and secondly, to ensure large
returns to multinational agribusiness firms through patent rights on biochemical farm
inputs.

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8. The Public Food Distribution System Has Been Set Back by Decades
As a result of economic liberalization, major programs of food security were
reversed.12 Three key objectives of economic reforms – and these are stated explicitly in
many policy documents including different Economic Surveys – have been to reduce
food subsidies, to leave distribution to the market and to restrict public systems for food
distribution by means of policies of narrow targeting.
Specifically, the central government introduced a policy of narrow targeting of
the public distribution system (PDS), one of the pillars of food security policy in India.
The PDS is a rationing mechanism that entitles households to specified quantities of
selected commodities at subsidized prices. In most parts of the country, up to 1997, the
PDS was universal and all households with a registered residential address, rural and
urban, were entitled to rations. In 1996-97, a new system, the Targeted PDS, was
introduced.
The implementation of the Targeted PDS led to the large-scale exclusion of
genuinely needy persons from the PDS. Recent evidence from the 61st Round of the
National Sample Survey, conducted in 2004-05, make it clear that a large proportion of
agricultural labour and other worker households, of households belonging to the
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, of landless and near-landless households, and households in
the lowest expenditure classes, are excluded from the PDS today. Swaminathan (2008b)
defines households without a ration card or with an APL (Above Poverty Line) card as
those effectively excluded from the PDS and those with a BPL (Below Poverty Line) card
or an Antyodaya (‘poorest of the poor’) card as those effectively included in the PDS.13
By this definition, the data show that there were only four States out of 27 (Tamil Nadu
excluded) in which two-thirds or more of agricultural labour households were effectively
included and 33 percent or less were effectively excluded from the PDS. These States
were Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir and Tripura (Table 15). The all-
India data indicate that 52 percent of agricultural worker households were effectively excluded
from the PDS. The effective exclusion was 71 percent in Bihar and 73 percent in Uttar
Pradesh.
The exception is Tamil Nadu, which is the only State to have a universal system
of PDS with rice available at Rs 2 a kilogram (reduced on 15 September 2008 to 1 rupee
a kg) to all card-holders.

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Table 15 Distribution of agricultural worker households by possession of ration card, all
States, rural areas, 2004-05 (percent)
State Included in Public Excluded from Public All
Distribution System Distribution System
Andhra Pradesh 71 30 100
Arunachal Pradesh 11 89 100
Assam 31 69 100
Bihar 29 71 100
Chhattisgarh 54 46 100
Goa 39 61 100
Gujarat 62 38 100
Haryana 49 51 100
Himachal Pradesh 47 53 100
Jammu & Kashmir 68 32 100
Jharkhand 33 67 100
Karnataka 70 30 100
Kerala 53 47 100
Madhya Pradesh 51 49 100
Maharashtra 50 50 100
Manipur 4 96 100
Meghalaya 61 39 100
Mizoram 15 85 100
Nagaland 0 100 100
Orissa 60 40 100
Punjab 23 77 100
Rajasthan 32 68 100
Sikkim 58 42 100
Tripura 67 33 100
Uttar Pradesh 27 73 100
Uttaranchal 43 57 100
West Bengal 47 53 100
All - India 48 52 100
Source: National Sample Survey 2008, cited in Swaminathan 2008b.

Note: ‘Excluded’ indicates a household with either no ration card or an above-the-poverty-line ration card;
‘included’ indicates a household with either a below-poverty-line or Antyodaya (‘poorest-of-the-poor’)
ration card.

Targeting has affected the functioning and economic viability of the PDS
network adversely and has weakened the public food delivery system. (The impact has
been severe in a food-deficit state like Kerala – a state renowned for its well-functioning
PDS before the introduction of targeting – where there has been a sharp decline in the
quantity of grain sold through fair-price and ration shops.) Further, the Targeted PDS
has failed to achieve the objective of price stabilization by means of a transfer of cereals
from surplus to deficit regions of the country.
While the size of subsidies – including food subsidies – is frequently criticized by

85
the ‘reformers,’ in reality, aggregate food subsidy has declined in recent years. The food
subsidy, as defined in the Government of India’s budget (the operational deficit of the
Food Corporation of India), remained at an average of 0.6 percent of GDP from the
mid-Sixties to the end of the 1990s. Between 2002-03 and 2006-07, the food subsidy bill
shrunk in absolute terms, from Rs 24,176 crores in 2002-03 to Rs 23,828 crores in
2006-07 at current prices. As a share of GDP, food subsidies fell from 0.99 percent in
2002-03 to 0.5 percent in 2007-08.
In the last few months, the situation has changed; stocks of food grain with the
Government have risen. In December 2008, rice and wheat stocks with the Government
of India were 29.8 million tonnes against a buffer stock requirement of 16.2 million
tonnes, that is, a surplus of 84 percent. The rise in stocks is the combined outcome of
increased procurement and reduced distribution.

Table 16 Central budgetary support for food subsidy, current prices, 2000 to 2007
Year Food Subsidy As percent of
(in 10 million rupees) GDP
2000-01 12010 0.57
2001-02 17494 0.77
2002-03 24176 0.99
2003-04 25160 0.91
2004-05 25800 0.83
2005-06 23200 0.66
2006-07 23828 0.62
2007-08 25425 (budgeted) 0.54
Source: Government of India, Economic Survey, different years

After the recent general elections, the Government of India announced that it
would draft a new National Food Security Act. The Government of India’s proposal for
legislation as elaborated in a note circulated to all state governments has been criticized
by the Left opposition in the Parliament as continuing the policy of exclusion and narrow
targeting, of over-centralizing policy decisions with regard to food, and of allocating
insufficient grain through the public distribution system.14
The policies of large-scale exclusion of households from the PDS and continued
cuts in allocation of food grain to States thus remain unchanged. It is clear that the
objective of ensuring food security to all continues to be off the agenda of the Central
Government.

9. The Impact of the Left on National Rural Policy Over the Past 4.5 Years
Has Been Limited, But Significant and Distinct
First, continuous agitations by the Left in Parliament and by means of direct
action slowed down the sharp decline in public expenditure and the rapid dismantling of
the structure of public banking.
Secondly, the most important nation-wide development intervention of the

86
present government, the National Rural Employment Guarantee program, was directly
the result of Left intervention and pressure.
Thirdly, the most important legislation directly affecting the right to livelihood of
the Adivasi people, the Scheduled Tribe and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of
Forest Rights) Act, was spearheaded by the Left in Parliament, and would never have
become law without the attention to detail of the Left MPs, and without the struggles for
forest rights of Left-led mass organizations.

10. Some Concluding Notes

In conclusion, there are three features of the current situation that we shall
highlight. First, the major force on the Left in India considers the Indian state to be the
organ of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and landlords, led by the big bourgeoisie, who
are in increasing collaboration – as a junior partner or subordinate ally – of imperialism.
This is the view of the state that informs this paper, and we cannot emphasize enough
that nothing in the present situation has undone landlordism as a fundamental barrier to
agrarian and general social progress. By this view, the agrarian question has been, since
Independence, and remains, the major national question in India. Any resolution of the
agrarian question requires revolutionary change, including agrarian reform that targets
landlordism, moneylender-merchant exploitation and caste and gender oppression in the
countryside. Neo-liberalism has not lessened the tactical or strategic importance of this
contradiction; recent developments have sharpened the contradiction rather than blunted
it.
Secondly, since 1991, state intervention and the part played by imperialism in the
countryside – that is, the class policies of the state in rural India – have taken qualitatively
new forms. As we have seen, state policy has acted as a vast depressor, reversing policies of
administered agricultural input costs and output prices, scaling down public investment
in rural physical and social infrastructure, dismantling the institutional structure of social
and development banking, withdrawing quantitative restrictions on the import of
agricultural products, restricting the public distribution system, and undermining
national systems of research, extension and the protection of national plant and other
biological wealth.
Thirdly, globalization does not flatten out all local landscapes – the problems of
the uneven development of capitalism have been accentuated under neo-liberalism. In the
present situation, we need to study the common features of imperialist globalization and
the transformation of rural societies – including the impact of globalization and
liberalization – in specific situations.15
The current situation thus raises a crucial issue for those involved in the
movement for radical, progressive rural change in less developed countries. The solution
to the agrarian question involves both direct class struggle in the diverse conditions of the
Third World countryside (in the Indian context, it involves the struggle against
landlordism, moneylender-merchant exploitation and caste and gender oppression) as
well as the struggle against the new onslaught by imperialism and domestic bourgeoisies.
How the links are to be made between the different aspects of the struggle for agrarian
change is a crucial issue of theory and practice for the future of democratic movements in

87
the Third World countryside.

ACKOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to John Harriss, Paul Bowles, other participants at the Conference on
‘Globalization(s) and Labour: China, India and the West’ organized by the University of
Northern British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, and two referees, for
comments, and to Madhura Swaminathan for data, comments and much help with this
paper.

NOTES
1
A detailed evaluation of the legislation is in Ramachandran and Ramakumar (2000).
See also Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2002), Hirashima (2000).
2
For a discussion of the problems of the NSS database on ownership and operational
holdings of land, see Rawal (2008) and Bakshi (2008).
3
The village with the lowest concentration of ownership of land holdings, Dungariya in
Rajasthan (row 8), is an Adivasi village in southern Rajasthan. The data from this village,
where the development of the productive forces in agriculture has been relatively low,
show that while differentiation in the distribution of holdings among the peasantry does
exist, it is of a lower order than elsewhere.
4
The All-India Kisan Sabha (or Peasant Union) is the largest organization of the
peasantry in India. It has over 20 million members.
5
While private investment rose in the 1980s and 1990s, it was by no means adequate.
The share of agriculture in aggregate capital formation fell from 14.6 in the 1970s to 7.1
in the 1990s (Thulasamma 2003). It follows that the situation with respect to the
expansion of irrigated area (and the lack of access of small cultivators and the landless to
irrigated land) is a serious and disturbing aspect of the present situation.
6
Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2005) and the references in Chavan and
Ramakumar (2007).
7
See Chavan and Ramakumar (2007) and Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2005).
8
The following parties comprise the Left in the two Houses of the Parliament: the
Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the All India
Forward Bloc, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party.
9
The rice economy of India has been particularly stagnant over the past two decades (see
for instance, Surjit 2008).
10
For a detailed discussion of neoliberal economic policy and rural employment, see
Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2004).
11
On this, see Rawal (2006) and Purkayastha (2006).
12
For the data in this section, see Swaminathan (2008b); see also Swaminathan (2000).
13
In 1997, the Public Distribution System was changed to Targetted Public
Distribution System under which subsidized food grain are provided only to those
households that were given BPL (Below Poverty Line) cards. Above Poverty Line
households have a smaller entitlement and are provided food grain without any subsidy.

88
14
See the Resolution adopted at the National Convention for the Right to Food and
Against Price Rise 26 August, New Delhi.
[Link]
15
In an important paper, T.J. Byres has argued against ‘determinism’ with respect to
globalization, and of ignoring (as did dependency theory in an earlier period) the
‘specificities and substantive diversity’ of capitalist development in specific areas (Byres
2002).

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
V.K. Ramachandran is with the Social Sciences Division, Indian Statistical Institute,
Kolkata, India.

Vikas Rawal is with the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, India.

91