Articles by Mihir Shah

In this response to Chris J Perry and M Dinesh Kumar’s critique of the authors’ co-authored paper, “Water and Agricultural Transformation in India: A Symbiotic Relationship —I” by Mihir Shah, P S Vijayshankar and Francesca Harris (EPW, 17 July 2021), the authors seek to respond to a distortion of their views as well as what they claim is a ridiculing of powerful solutions to India’s water and agrarian crises.

An argument for twin propositions is presented in this two-part paper: (i) that solving India’s water problem requires a paradigm shift in agriculture (Part I), and (ii) that the crisis in Indian agriculture cannot be resolved without a paradigm shift in water management and governance (Part II). If farming takes up 90% of India’s water and just three water-intensive crops continue to use 80% of agricultural water, the basic water needs of millions of people, for drinking water or protective irrigation, cannot be met. This first part argues that the paradigm shift in agriculture requires a shift in cropping patterns suited to each agroecological region, a movement from monoculture to polycultural crop biodiversity, a decisive move towards agroecological farming, and greater emphasis on soil rejuvenation.

This article provides a response to the critique of the Report Submitted by the Committee on Restructuring the CWC and CGWB, by M Dinesh Kumar et al (“New ‘Water Management Paradigm’: Outdated Concepts?” EPW, 9 December 2017). Their critique misrepresents what the report says, and is part of an ongoing attempt to thwart reforms in the governance of India’s water sector, which, in crucial respects, has remained unreformed for the last 70 years. Without these reforms, however, India’s water crisis will only deepen by the day.

A close examination of Bihar's recent growth experience reveals several paradoxes. These are paradoxes only with reference to certain orthodox positions widely held in development economics. Resolving these paradoxes helps formulate a more incisive understanding of what bottlenecks lie in the way of eliminating poverty in Bihar and opens the way for working out solutions to the problem.

Among the various axes of inequality in India, regional disparities have acquired greater salience in recent times, with demands being made for special status for certain states on this basis. What has been completely overlooked in the process is that regional backwardness in India is a moving frontier with the most intense forms of poverty and deprivation getting increasingly concentrated within enclaves of backwardness, especially those inhabited by adivasi communities. This paper reports on a recent exercise within the Planning Commission that tries to capture this dynamic of regional backwardness in India.