Agricultural Incentives in India : Past Trends and Prospective Paths Towards Sustainable Development

Contents: Abbreviations. Introduction. I. Promoting food security: the Indian challenge: 1. Food and nutrition security in India: the micro-level dimension/Abusaleh Shariff. 2. Agricultural subsidies: a global view/P.C. Bansil. 3. Fertilizer subsidy in Indian agriculture: some issues/S.S. Acharya. 4. Political economy of water pricing: some lessons from India/A. Vaidyanathan. II. Productivity and competitiveness revisited: 5. Productivity gains in Indian agriculture: formation and distribution/Bruno Dorin, Nathanael Pingault and Jean-Marc Boussard. 6. Pseudo productivity, Pseudo surpluses: the social and ecological impact of globalization of industrial agriculture/Vandana Shiva. 7. The product-specificity of Indian input subsidies: scope and effects on equity and competitiveness/Bruno Dorin and Thomas Jullien. 8. India in world agricultural trade: before and after Marrakech/Bruno Dorin. III. Future scenarios and prospective modeling: 9. Food production and demand projections for South Asian countries: policy implications for Indian agriculture/Rajendra Singh Paroda and Praduman Kumar. 10. Agriculture production system and environmental sustainability: lessons from long term manurial experimental trials/Bhuban C. Barah. 11. Price policies and agricultural supply: the responses of producers in Haryana/Veronique Alary and Daniel Deybe. 12. Exploring land use options for sustainable food production: methodological framework/P.K. Aggarwal, N. Kalra, S. Kumar and A.K. Vasisht. List of contributors.

"This book gathers twelve papers which sustained the discussions and conclusions of an Indo-French seminar organized by the centre de sciences Humaines (CSH, New Delhi) on 3 and 4 April 2000 at the India international centre (IIC, New Delhi).

The objective of this meeting was rather ambitious and sensitive: to debate the relevance and sustainability of a nearly forty-years old system of public incentives to Indian agriculture, mainly subsidies to water, electricity and fertilizers.

The sensitivity of the subject, as also its pertinence, is rooted in the difficult challenge that India had to take up since the early 1990s: to liberalize and open to the world its domestic market in order to bypass some inefficiencies or failure of its mixed economy, without selling of in the process its decision-making independence, as well as some social and environmental objectives peculiar to the sub-continent or to the world community." (jacket)