Occasional Paper

The dynamism cast by the implementation of MGNREGA in India has been quite encouraging as evident from the burgeoning empirical studies examining the status and outcomes of implementation and performance of the programme, both at micro and meso levels. The programme has been implemented for about eight years and become integral part of social safety net for the large part of the population living in rural areas. Though over the years budgetary provision for the programme is increasing in monetary terms, many of the its performance parameters have shown either stagnation or decline in recent years with varying experience from across the states and districts. It is not surprising that questions are asked about the continuation of the programme itself in its present form with a huge fiscal commitment.

The protagonists supporting the continuation of the programme are divided. While one section says the universal nature of the programme must be maintained in the present form covering the entire country, the implementation part needs to be looked into to make it relevant for the present time. The other section is of the view that the programme must be downsized and implemented in those areas where it is needed and the nature of work undertaken should include more non-farm activities keeping in view the changes in aspirations of rural population.

The current review takes a critical look at select studies unraveling various impacts of MGNREGA both at micro and meso levels beginning from its inception in 2005. These studies have covered relevant performance indicators of MGNREGA across states, highlighting the common and unique issues.  Some of these studies used inter-disciplinary research methods relying on both quantitative and qualitative techniques.

The review highlights the finding of researchers that the programme has been deviating from its desired goal originally set by the planners. Many kinds of leakages are found in the implementation of the programme - be it in giving mandated days of employment or payment of wages or participation of marginalized sections. It is also evident from the existing studies that often the gram sabhas or the official machinery responsible for  the  actual  implementation  could  not  undertake  the  mandated  responsibility  leading  to wastage and siphoning of the public money, and general discontentment.  It is also found that beneficiaries are often taken for a ride for not knowing the nuances of the programme.

Notwithstanding such lacune studies do show that MGNREGA has had some impact on the rural economy. There were evidences of increasing employment opportunity, better wage rate, and flexible working hours. The impact of the programme is noticed in  strengthening rural  institutions like  gram sabhas,  increase in  access  to  financial institutions like banks, better gender parity in wages and employment opportunities for women, construction of essential physical infrastructures in the village, improvement in natural resource base  of  the  village,  and  greater  accountability of  government machinery because of people’s right to work. The review also found that the studies typically acknowledged the potential of MGNREGA as one of the most viable social safety net for rural poor. However, the studies are not clear whether the programme itself has led or has the potential to lead other sectors of the rural economy because of availability of extra cash in the hands of the people.

Copies of GIDR Occasional Paper Series can be available from Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad on payment of Rs. 125 by Cheque/ Demand Draft drawn in favour of GIDR Ahmedabad. Kindly add Rs. 25 towards postage. Enquiries may be sent to: The Administrative Officer, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Near Gota Char Rasta, Sarkhej Gandhinagar Highway, Ahmedabad, 380 060, Gujarat.

The paper examines spatial differences and the change in the share of consumption expenditure on selected food and non-food items during 2004-05 and 2007-08 covering rural and urban sectors for 18 major states in India. The analysis is located in the contemporary debate cover the declining share of food expenditure across almost all income strata, including the poor, in rural and urban sectors in the country. Arguably a part of the shift away from food expenditure is explained by the lifestyle related impacts, recent evidence has highlighted the influence of some of the more compelling factors, such as the increased private cost of health, education and other basic services. The recent inflationary trends are likely to have worsened the scenario with respect to household's ability to meet their basic needs. The analysis, tracing the changes in the average consumption expenditure revealed that: a) whereas the expenditure on food in absolute terms has increased almost universally, the share in total expenditure has declined in most of the states; b) the rural-urban gap in food consumption has increased marginally; c) the share of expenditure in education has decline in the case of nearly 50 per cent of the major states; d) for almost all the states the share of health expenditure has declined in both rural as well as urban areas. Conversely the share of expenditure on other non-food items such as fuel, transport and rent has increased. The changes observed in the expenditure pattern may have significant welfare implications across different segments of the population as discussed in the paper.

Copies of GIDR Occasional Paper Series can be available from Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad on payment of Rs. 125 by Cheque/ Demand Draft drawn in favour of GIDR Ahmedabad. Kindly add Rs. 25 towards postage. Enquiries may be sent to: The Administrative Officer, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Near Gota Char Rasta, Sarkhej Gandhinagar Highway, Ahmedabad, 380 060, Gujarat.

The program, Krishi Mahostava (KM) as launched in Gujarat in 2005 seeks to bridge the distance between technology and the farmers such that it expedites the process of technology diffusion among farmers in different parts of the state. The important challenge was to move from providing recommendations that are more generic in nature to those required for the farm and farmer specific situations. The central thrust of the program could be stated as: a) creating awareness by providing exposure to the new techniques, scientific ideas, crops and farm practices; b) transfer of specific technology suitable for the soil type, availability of eater, crop- mix, and households resources as well as preferences; c) introducing the farmers to a host of government schemes and providing subsidized inputs to poor farmers; d) bring producers, input- suppliers, marketing organizations and also policy makers and the scientific communities on a common platform in order to attain greater convergence across different players within the sector; e) to consolidate the efforts of the various actors/agencies to move towards a technology- driven growth in agriculture to help the farmer across class, communities and regions.

Since its launching, the KM continues till date as per the original design of the programme. It consists of three important features, viz. Krishi Rath (a mobile extension centre); Krishi Mela (agriculture and extension fair); and Krishi Shibir (farmers' training programme).Whereas the Krishi Rath covers all the villages, the Krishi Mela is organized at the taluka level and the Krishi Shibir, is organized by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) at the district level. Every year the KM-activities start before monsoon. It is important to note that the agriculture scientists and experts take active part in all the three activities of the KM. The month- long program begins on the day of Akshay Tritiya, by deploying as many as 100,000 personnel from across18 government departments in the estate. The Krishi Rath provides on the spot information, advice, and audio-visual demonstrations to farmers who visit this mobile exhibition.

While well designed and well-spread, KM raises a couple of important issues especially with respect to the mode in which it is actually operationalised. For instance, an important concern that emanates from the design of KM is about the periodicity (i.e. once in a year in every village), the follow-up, and the synchronization with the existing machinery of extension services at the taluka and district levels. Similarly, there could be issues about the selection of the thrust areas of extension messages and the farm specific recommendations, which perhaps, may call for several rounds of consultations/ counseling. Lastly, there may still be concerns over inclusion of the resource-poor farmers who generally stay behind those having large land holding, access to water, and practicing commercial farming.

In this context the present study seeks to explore some of these issues through a fairly conducted rapid enquiry of the awareness, outreach, and adoption of the recommended practices covered by the KM across the districts of Gujarat. This is primarily an exploratory study aimed mainly at examining the coverage rather than the actual impact of the interventions. The study was conducted during August-September, 2010 covering one village in each of the 25 districts in the state.

The major objectives of the study include: a) Examining the extent to which households from different segments of the village communities are aware about the programme; b) Analyzing how effective is KM programming enerating awareness on new techniques, inputs and crops; and c) ascertaining the extent to which the awareness about KM has also translated into actual adoption of the new technologies.

Purposive sampling method was used and data was collected by using the participatory research approach.“Beneficiary Assessment Method”-a qualitative assessment of the impact of KM on beneficiary farmers was attempted. From each district one block was selected and from the block one villages was selected. Thus the survey was undertaken in 25 villages of Gujarat. Total60 samples from each district were stratified in order to include households from different classes. The information at the field level was collected through structured questionnaire method. In order to supplement and ratify the information obtained from the farmers through the primary survey, the opinions and suggestions of officials and experts involved directly with the KM were also sought. Expert Opinion Method was used to understand the impact of the programme and suggestions to improve it. Personal interviews were conducted with the help of an unstructured questionnaire with the government officers and scientists.

The study shows that the KM program depicts a better scenario in the sense of bringing the knowledge and the technologies into the doorsteps of the farmers in Gujarat. However, there exists wide discrepancy between the awareness and the adoption of the farm technologies. It was observed that the aspects determining adoption of a particular knowledge or technology is not only the interest of the particular person, but also the availability of means to adopt it. It was also observed that large and medium landholding households showed improving knowledge and adoption of new technologies than others. This shows that the adoption of new technologies was mainly concentrated among the large and medium farmers compared to small and marginal households. Thus the benefits of the program mostly cornered by the large and medium farmers.

Thus the study suggests that there is a need to look in to the questions of follow up and synergic linkages with the larger extension systems other than Krishi Mahotsav. Essentially, the programme may contribute towards revitalizing the larger systems of extension with which farmers keep connected on a regular basis. This issue of course, needs further probing as it was not part of the present enquiry.

Finally, the requirement for information services is increasingly becoming more nuanced and location/farm specific. This is particularly so in the wake of the increasing issues of climatic vulnerability, food insecurity and unsustainable resource-use. It is therefore, high time that the future models of extension services are better equipped with more nuanced rather than focusing on the messages/recommendations that are generic in nature. While Krishi Mahotsav could perform the latter task, it should keep reminding us that the more complex tasks are yet to be addressed with care and long term commitments.

Copies of GIDR Occasional Paper Series can be available from Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad on payment of Rs. 125 by Cheque/ Demand Draft drawn in favour of GIDR Ahmedabad. Kindly add Rs. 25 towards postage. Enquiries may be sent to: The Administrative Officer, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Near Gota Char Rasta, Sarkhej Gandhinagar Highway, Ahmedabad, 380 060, Gujarat.

This paper examines the impact of libralisation induced trade reforms in agriculture on the status of women as well as food security and livelihood sin India. The analysis tries to depict macro scenarios and capture micro level realities through specific case studies on Indian agriculture in the wake of trade reform policies at the instance of WTO. This is important in the light of the fact that agricultural trade still constitutes only a small segment of the domestic production and market in India. Never the less, the impact of trade liberalisation, at least till now, are fairly localized and intensive covering specific communities in a micro setting. Infact, gainer sand losers from trade liberalization constitute different segments of the farmers, especially, women farmers and workers. Never the less, it is often over looked that the gain for one segment as arising from liberalization does not compensate for the loss suffered by the other segment, majority of whom being women. Blanket acceptance or rejection of the new opportunities and threats is neither feasible nor desirable given the historically, politically and economically defined boundaries for policy making and negotiations. The need therefore to safeguard their interests, which not only needs corrections in trade negotiations but also, necessitates restructuring agricultural sector so as to enhance environmental as well as livelihood and food security benefits among a large mass of poor producers and consumers.

Given that agricultural trade till now constituted a small proportion of India's agricultural GDP, its impact on the overall growth, even in agriculture, is limited. Much of India's agricultural growth continues to be influenced by factors such as climatic, technological (including management of land and water resources), and relative prices of inputs and outputs. What is however, pertinent is that the trade has resulted in significant impact on selected crops and location sowing mainly to the steep fall in prices on the one hand, and volatility on the other.

More than the lower prices, volatility in prices creates major impediments for evolving a strategy of sustained growth in agriculture. The analysis therefore, has tried to raise some of the critical issues pertaining to the interface between AoA-framework and developmental concerns of a large agrarian economy like India. The central argument of this paper, that women's empowerment should be part of the larger agenda of restructuring of Indian agriculture; safeguarding the interest of poor producers/consumers, especially women should be attempted primarily within the framework of the domestic policies, which in turn should shapeup India's commitments under the multilateral trade regime.

Copies of GIDR Occasional Paper Series can be available from Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad on payment of Rs. 125 by Cheque/ Demand Draft drawn in favour of GIDR Ahmedabad. Kindly add Rs. 25 towards postage. Enquiries may be sent to: The Administrative Officer, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Near Gota Char Rasta, Sarkhej Gandhinagar Highway, Ahmedabad, 380 060, Gujarat.