State-led or market-led green revolution? Role of private irrigation investment vis-a-vis local government programs in West Bengal's farm productivity growth

Pranab Bardhan, Dilip Mookherjee and Neha Kumar

Journal of Development Economics, 2012, vol. 99, issue 2, 222-235

Abstract: We estimate the role of private investments in irrigation in farm productivity growth in West Bengal, India between 1982 and 95. Using a state-wide farm panel, we find that falling groundwater costs generated significant growth in value added per acre for farms. These resulted from investments in minor irrigation which was stimulated by tenancy registration programs implemented by local governments. This helps account for substantial spillover effects of the tenancy reform on non-tenant farms noted in an earlier study. Hence the West Bengal Green Revolution of the 1980s benefited from complementarity between private investment incentives and state-led institutional reforms.

Keywords: Land reforms; Tenancy; Irrigation; Agricultural development; Public–private linkages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H44 H54 O12 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438781200048X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: State-led or Market-led Green Revolution? Role of Private Irrigation Investment vis-a-vis Local Government Programs in West Bengal’s Farm Productivity Growth (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:99:y:2012:i:2:p:222-235

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.06.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().