Articles by Seema Bathla

Increasing public investment in agriculture is not translating into higher rates of growth in private investment in agriculture, output, and farmers’ income. So this article probes the missing elements that might have come in the way by analysing the state-level data from 1981–82 to 2015–16.

The unprecedented shutdown of economic activities led to a colossal loss of livelihoods. To understand the impact of this national lockdown on rural households’ income, the paper empirically examines the determinants of reduction in their income, and the effectiveness of government’s response in mitigating their economic hardships. The study is based on a comprehensive telephonic survey of 2,599 rural households from five eastern states—Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal conducted during the lockdown period, June–July 2020. The econometric results highlight that (i) a number of socio-economic and demographic factors influenced income loss of rural households during the lockdown, (ii) the impact was relatively higher on the migrant labour, though it differed across the eastern states, and (iii) government cash and in-kind assistance under various social protection schemes were timely but requires expansion in both coverage and outreach.

This study aims to understand the drivers that helped India achieve the challenging targets of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty before 2015. Have increased public investments or farm subsidies contributed to reducing rural poverty, directly through various public spending schemes or indirectly through increased agricultural land productivity? Utilising a structural equation to answer this question for the period 1981–82 to 2013–14, it was found that education and agricultural research and development produced the highest marginal returns for promoting agricultural income, while investments in rural infrastructure development and health provisions are the most effective in reducing rural poverty.