By
Express News Service - HYDERABAD
11th May 2013 11:38 AM
The change in agricultural practices in the Telangana region and the
quagmire of debt and distress as studied by Dr Vamsicharan Vakulabhranam
received recognition for the first-ever Amartya Sen Award for 2012,
instituted by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR).
His doctoral thesis on ‘Immiserizing growth: globalization and agrarian change in Telangana, South India between 1985 and 2000’ at University of Massachusetts examines the relationship between liberalization and agrarian distress in the region.
The faculty member at the University of Hyderabad sums up the findings of his study which could not be carried in full in this paper previously:
The four strands of work that have been cited by the ICSSR selection panel for this award are: the work on agrarian distress in the context of Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in the 1990s, the structure and logic of rising inequality in India and China since the 1990s, the deeper relation between economic development and inequality by analysing the Asian experience, and the work on strengthening commons and cooperatives, as alternatives to the present system.
“I started my work on agrarian distress in the Telangana region from year 2000 for my Ph.D thesis at the University of Massachusetts. I spent more than a year in four villages in Warangal and Mahbubnagar districts to make sense of the growing distress phenomenon and the sudden occurrence of the tragic farmer suicide phenomenon since 1998.
“I found through data analyses that Telangana agriculture was going through two major paradoxes in the 1990s. First, it was witnessing what I called immiserizing growth, ie, agricultural output was growing rapidly even as the entire agricultural community was going through consumption declines. How is this possible? Second, in the 1970s and 1980s (especially after 1983), Telangana farmers shifted to non-foodgrain crops (such as cotton) even as the prices of non-food crops were rising relative to food crops during that period. But in the 1990s, even as non-food crop prices began to decline vis-a-vis food prices, still Telangana farmers were growing more non-food crops.
I termed this as anomalous supply response. On the surface, Telangana farmers were not behaving rationally. “In reality, Telangana farmers were forced to behave the way they did because of a whole host of factors. First, agricultural liberalization had reduced prices of output for farmers (because of an agricultural recession worldwide) even as cut downs in subsidies increased the input prices. This is the “ price scissors” effect. Second, with liberalization policies, the institutional credit (e.g. from banks) had not grown proportionately with the rising needs of farmers.
Third, Telangana farmers had to dig a lot of tubewells at a great private cost for their irrigation needs since they did not have much access to canal irrigation. Fourth, the Green Revolution technologies (HYV seeds, Chemical fertilizers tubewell irrigation) that were imported into Telangana region were beginning to show diminishing returns. As a result, Telangana farmers had to rely heavily on informal moneylender-merchants (who were also largely from the Telangana region) who began to dictate the cropping pattern through a crop collateral. “As the moneylendermerchants demanded a cropping pattern that was oriented towards non-food crops, Telangana farmers were forced to comply.
As Telangana farmers were forced by the market intermediaries to grow more non-food crops even as the prices were declining, they had to pay out a bigger part of their output for their loans. This explains the two tragic paradoxes. So, these tragic paradoxes and the suicide phenomenon were products of agricultural liberalization policies, slowing productivity of green revolution technologies and irrigation related discrimination to the Telangana region.
His doctoral thesis on ‘Immiserizing growth: globalization and agrarian change in Telangana, South India between 1985 and 2000’ at University of Massachusetts examines the relationship between liberalization and agrarian distress in the region.
The faculty member at the University of Hyderabad sums up the findings of his study which could not be carried in full in this paper previously:
The four strands of work that have been cited by the ICSSR selection panel for this award are: the work on agrarian distress in the context of Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in the 1990s, the structure and logic of rising inequality in India and China since the 1990s, the deeper relation between economic development and inequality by analysing the Asian experience, and the work on strengthening commons and cooperatives, as alternatives to the present system.
“I started my work on agrarian distress in the Telangana region from year 2000 for my Ph.D thesis at the University of Massachusetts. I spent more than a year in four villages in Warangal and Mahbubnagar districts to make sense of the growing distress phenomenon and the sudden occurrence of the tragic farmer suicide phenomenon since 1998.
“I found through data analyses that Telangana agriculture was going through two major paradoxes in the 1990s. First, it was witnessing what I called immiserizing growth, ie, agricultural output was growing rapidly even as the entire agricultural community was going through consumption declines. How is this possible? Second, in the 1970s and 1980s (especially after 1983), Telangana farmers shifted to non-foodgrain crops (such as cotton) even as the prices of non-food crops were rising relative to food crops during that period. But in the 1990s, even as non-food crop prices began to decline vis-a-vis food prices, still Telangana farmers were growing more non-food crops.
I termed this as anomalous supply response. On the surface, Telangana farmers were not behaving rationally. “In reality, Telangana farmers were forced to behave the way they did because of a whole host of factors. First, agricultural liberalization had reduced prices of output for farmers (because of an agricultural recession worldwide) even as cut downs in subsidies increased the input prices. This is the “ price scissors” effect. Second, with liberalization policies, the institutional credit (e.g. from banks) had not grown proportionately with the rising needs of farmers.
Third, Telangana farmers had to dig a lot of tubewells at a great private cost for their irrigation needs since they did not have much access to canal irrigation. Fourth, the Green Revolution technologies (HYV seeds, Chemical fertilizers tubewell irrigation) that were imported into Telangana region were beginning to show diminishing returns. As a result, Telangana farmers had to rely heavily on informal moneylender-merchants (who were also largely from the Telangana region) who began to dictate the cropping pattern through a crop collateral. “As the moneylendermerchants demanded a cropping pattern that was oriented towards non-food crops, Telangana farmers were forced to comply.
As Telangana farmers were forced by the market intermediaries to grow more non-food crops even as the prices were declining, they had to pay out a bigger part of their output for their loans. This explains the two tragic paradoxes. So, these tragic paradoxes and the suicide phenomenon were products of agricultural liberalization policies, slowing productivity of green revolution technologies and irrigation related discrimination to the Telangana region.
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