Economic Reforms, Nature and Poverty

Recent studies show an increase inpoverty in the wake of the 1991 economic reforms. Explanations for these findings range from insufficient reliability of the NSS data base to 'nature' or bad harvest and only indirectly to the reforms. This paper re-examines these hypotheses using the same data source combined with official macro estimates on net cereal availability, changes in cereal stocks, PDS allocations and offtakes of cereals.