Accelerating Growth through Globalization of Indian Agriculture

Renuka Mahadevan (The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)

Journal of Economic Studies

ISSN: 0144-3585

Article publication date: 1 April 2002

284

Citation

Mahadevan, R. (2002), "Accelerating Growth through Globalization of Indian Agriculture", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 175-176. https://doi.org/10.1108/jes.2002.29.2.175.1

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited


This book has two main parts. The first part of six chapters focuses on the globalization of Indian agriculture and the second part of six chapters presents case studies on various Indian states’ agricultural sector performance, highlighting the problems and prospects for each state and discussing what globalization in agriculture means for these states. The authors discuss globalization in the context of three components – improvement of productive efficiency by ensuring the convergence of potential and realised output, increase in agricultural exports and value‐added activities using agricultural produce, and, finally, access to domestic and international markets that are overly protected. In particular, the chapters on trade policy reform since 1991 and that on protection measures are well documented, enabling readers to understand India’s commitment to WTO and this sets the stage for the case studies in the second part.

The case studies based on various states were carefully selected to reflect varying levels of agricultural development in similar agricultural products as well as specialisation in different agricultural products. The analysis is then used to throw light on the following important issues: Does globalization have more impact on regions with well‐developed markets? What specific policy measures should be introduced in regions with less developed markets to “catch up” with well‐developed markets? How far may the globalization process narrow the income gaps between more and less developed states? Such state‐specific analysis has widespread relevance and paves the path for potential comparative work on a regional or cross‐country basis in other agricultural economies and states in China, Australia, Europe and the USA. This sort of work can also be replicated in the analysis of the manufacturing and services sectors.

Although there is a good balance between the two parts of the book, the second part in particular is more informative and interesting. This is strongly reflected in the way the comparative analysis was undertaken, using a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative tools to support the arguments put forth. These include decompositional analysis of the cost of cultivation, determinants of productivity growth, analysis of potential and actual yield related to the concept of technical efficiency. It is noteworthy that computation of technical efficiency was undertaken using the recently developed stochastic frontier methodology, known as the random coefficient approach. The data are used also highly disaggregated at the firm level. However, the Cobb‐Douglas model used is restrictive and some justification for not using the more flexible translog function should at least be provided.

Still, as academic readers interested in policy making, nothing should please us more, as well written book not only is clear in its objectives but makes a very genuine effort towards understanding how globalization and trade policy reforms can be made to work for the agricultural economy of India.

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