Department of Economics
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Item Open Access Agricultural credit and rural development : A study of the patterns of credit demand and supply in the farm sector of jalpaiguri district in West Bengal(University of North Bengal, 2023) Aich, Partha Sarathi; Roy Mukherjee, SanchariThe term “Development” is a value based and subjective concept which implies revealing untapped potential powers. In general terms, development means revealing favourable changes in set of vector of desirable social objectives which does not diminish over time. Within the comprehensive set development, the term “rural development” is a subset that exposes the overall development of agriculture and allied activities, village and cottage industries, village crafts, physical infrastructure, community services, natural and human capital in rural areas. In particular terms, rural development involves helping downtrodden small scale farmers, tenants and the landless people to seek a livelihood in the rural areas so as to control fruits of rural development. The rural economy of India is predominantly agrarian in character. The agricultural subsector comprises crops cultivation, animal husbandry, dairying, fishing, poultry and forestry whereas small-scale rural industries, rural business and services belong to non-agricultural subsector. The Indian agriculture sector is fraught with several difficulties such as low factor productivity, low capital-labour ratio, long gestation period, small uneconomic land holdings, high vulnerability and risks to natural calamities, non-remunerative prices of farm produce, poor post-harvest infrastructure, high incidence of poverty, prevalence of illiterate and unskilled workforce as well as lack of modern amenities. During the post-independence period, favourable factors that contributed to the remarkable agricultural growth are the increased use of agricultural inputs, technological change and paradigm shift in institutional framework. Among all factor inputs, farm credit is considered as the most vital input for agricultural and rural development. At national level, two events such as the introduction of the new agricultural technology by the end of 1960’s and nationalization of commercial banks in 1969 led to the paradigm shift in institutional credit supply mechanism. However, the nationwide implementation of financial reform measures during 90’s and thereafter resulted in decline of credit flow and squeeze on resource availability for agricultural activities due to strict implementation of Basel norms. In the context of the present research study, a micro-level analysis on the basis of primary data has been conducted in the context of Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal. The district is located in the most northern part of the state and the economy is mainly based on agriculture and tea gardens. Apart from tea production, principle crops are paddy, wheat, maize, potato and jute respectively. Of the total workforce in the state, the share of cultivators and agricultural labourers constitute nearly 17 percent and 26 percent respectively. The majority number of people engaged in cultivation works belongs to small and marginal farmers’ category with average land holding size of 1.24 hectares only. The period of 90’s, saw limited additions to the number of service branches of commercial banks. However, the period beyond 2010-11 was marked by spread of bank branches at statutory and census towns to fulfill the needs and aspirations of needy farmers and small scale entrepreneurs. It has been observed from various previous research studies that much emphasis was put on the operational efficiency of Regional Rural Banks, performance of SHG–Bank linked micro–credit programme, rural poverty and unemployment issues, agrarian indebtedness and so on. But, such academic studies did not focus much in a systematic way into the issues on patterns of credit demand and supply in the farm sector of Jalpaiguri district. Therefore, during the course of research study, emphasis has been put on disaggregated trends of institutional farm credit flow at the national and state level, demand-side factors that account for variations in farmer households’ demand for credit and credit supply patterns from institutional agencies. The present research study has also dealt with various aspects of non-institutional credit market with respect to landholding patterns, farming practices, rural caste-structure and infrastructure set-up prevailing at sampled areas of study district. At the macro level, the period after 2004-05 witnessed gradual rise in rural and semi-rural bank branches accompanied by sharp rise in credit flow to agriculture sector. From 2001 to 2011, 17 major states from western, southern and northern India occupied major share of overall credit outstanding to agriculture between 2005 and 2015 period. On the other hand, in the eastern and north-eastern states the growth of credit outstanding to agricultural sector was negative in the 1990’s followed by moderate rise after the 2000-01 period. The state of West Bengal acts as the nodal state for the entire eastern and north-eastern states. The state alone contributes 40 percent of the entire region’s GDP. The state is home for nearly 72 lakh farm families of whom 96 percent belongs to small and marginal farmers’ category. The farmers in West Bengal are less creditworthy than southern and northern states while wide inter-district variations exist in credit delivery status. The credit-deposit ratio of the state stands below the national average of 74 percent meaning banks in the state provide less amount of credit than they mobilize savings deposits from the people. In nutshell, Development is a subjective matter and no general consensus can be reached about its proper meaning. The term rural development being a sub-component implies the overall development of rural areas encompassing agriculture, allied activities and non-farm sector. This research study intends to present a critical analysis on various aspects of agriculture and rural development of Jalpaiguri district. The main objective of this research study is to identify the existing institutional and physical infrastructure facilities at rural areas and their potentialities for the future development of rural sector of the study district. The present research study has also been carried out with wider application of different statistical tools and techniques to portray patterns of institutional credit flow to farm sector and farmer’s demand behaviour pertaining to credit sourced from both institutional and non-institutional agents in the study area. With such wider application of statistical tools and techniques on sample data, suitable conclusions with constructive measures have been prescribed for the holistic improvement of rural sector in the study area.Item Open Access A study on socio-spatial variations in learning attainment of students at the primary level of education in West Bengal with special reference to Alipurduar District(University of North Bengal, 2024) Pal, Tushar Kanti; Bagchi, Kanak KantiABSTRACT Since Independence of India, the country has significantly progressed in the areas of access and participation in elementary education. Most of the rural areas have at least one primary school within the 1 km of the habitation. Participation of both boys and girls in elementary education measured in terms of Gross Enrolment Ratio and Net Enrolment Ratio have increased manifold. In case of primary education (I-V), Gross enrolment ratio (GER) rose to 95.12 percent in 2016-17 from 42.6 percent in 1950-51 and Net enrolment ratio (NER) reached 83.62 percent in 2016-17. There has been a commendable progress in the participation of underprivileged and marginalized section of the society in school education compared to the pre-independence period. But such kind of quantitative advancement in education sector of India has not been accompanied by qualitative progress especially in the areas of learning attainment of the pupil of elementary school education. At the international level, India participated in Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) in 2009 and performed very poorly. At the national level, this deplorable condition has been frequently reflected in the reports of Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), Pratichi Trust and National Achievement Survey. At the regional level, a good number of studies by individual researchers have also highlighted this dismal condition of learning attainment of the students on regular basis. Therefore, severe learning crisis is present along with regional variations. If India is to harness the advantage of demographic dividend from its young population, the quality of education must be raised at the desired level. Having identified the research problem in this way, this study focussed on the problems of learning outcome at regional level. The study raised some specific questions. In order to solve these questions, some hypotheses were formulated and later on the study tried to solve those problems logically. To accomplish this task, research methodology along with tools and techniques has been framed. This study used both primary and secondary data. Method of sampling was stratified random sampling and purposive sampling. The study was conducted in Alipurduar, 20th district of West Bengal in order of formation of the district. Since the class 4 is the terminal class of the primary education of West Bengal, so it is expected that the students of class 4 should have learned basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy. So the students of class 4 have been taken into consideration for the evaluation of learning outcome. The study made an extensive review of literature to synthesize past researches on this topic. Since the study focussed on the problems of deficiency in learning attainment of the school going children at the primary level, it looked into the persistent debate over the relative influence of school resources and socioeconomic status of the learner on the learning outcome of the student. The seminal literary work of Coleman (1966) revealed that it was the socioeconomic status of the learners and not the school resources that has an important role in shaping the educational outcome of the learners. The study by Heyneman and Loxley (1983), Rutter (1983) and many others found contrary findings. Their observations were that school resources have dominant role to play on the learning outcome of the students of low-income countries because usually such countries have severe resource constraints. Later on the study by Baker et al. (2002) and Hanushek and Luque (2003) found that the influence of family background on the learner educational outcome does not depend on the status of development of any country. However, most of these studies were done on developed countries. By conducting an extensive review of literature Chudgar and Shafiq (2010) concluded that most of the researches in South Asian countries focussed on access, drop out, graduation rate, participation of the students in school. Very little attention has been paid to the issue of learning attainment of the learners. On other hand, most of the studies defined the socioeconomic status of the learners narrowly by taking the parental education, income and occupation only. This study tried to address this research gap by focussing on the factors that have potential in influencing the learning attainment of the students. To accomplish this task, the study took into account exclusively family level characteristics of the learners only. Family background characteristic have been broken down into three capitals, namely, human capital, material capital and social capital. This is consistent with the suggestion put forward by Coleman (1988). Three separate indexes of the above mentioned capitals have been constructed from the background information of the learners by using Multiple Correspondence Analysis. In addition to these indexes, gender of the learner, category of school learner studying i.e., government or private and presence of pre-primary schooling experience of the learners have been taken as independent variables. In order to explain the variations in scores obtained by the learners, an achievement test was performed by taking the students of class 4 only. Score obtained by the learners in the achievement test has been used as dependent variable. Finally Multiple Regression has been used to explain the variances in the test scores of the learners. The model revealed that the social capital inside the family along with the material capital has statistically significant effect on the learning attainment of the student. In addition to that, type of school is also another predictor that has statistically significant influence on learners’ learning outcome. The study has also tried to find out the factors behind the school choice of the parents for their children. By using Logistic Regression, the study found that educational level of the mother and financial condition of the family of the learners were the two important deciding factors for the selection of schools by the parents for their children. Since financial condition of the family is an important predictor of the learning outcome of the learners, government should take necessary steps to uplift the economic conditions of the people. On the other hand, since the study found that social capital inside the family have statistically significant influence on the educational outcome of the learners, so school authority must sensitize the parents in this respect.Item Open Access Inequity and marginalisation of tribes in Sub- himalayan West Bengal(University of North Bengal, 2023) Karjee, Sheela; Choudhury, GovindaAs agrarian changes take place rural communities adapt themselves. India Rural Development Report 2013-14 identified that excluding the northern states of India, technology and diversification in rural economy have contributed around 40 per cent of agricultural growth in 2000s. Marginal farmers are now diversifying themselves and also include animal husbandry that acts as insurance during crop failures and provides income when needed. The report also reveals that farmer with insufficient income resort to leasing-in land to increase their income. With this background, the present study has tried to identified the diversification among tribal communities in sub-Himalayan West Bengal through micro-level studies. The present study was performed in two districts of Sub-Himalayan region of West Bengal i.e., Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri districts. We surveyed 400 Scheduled Tribe households using structured questionnaires and also conducted Focused Grouped Discussion in each of the village surveyed. The sample size was selected with 5 per cent margin of errors. The study covered two villages from each district and from each village 100 Scheduled Tribe households were surveyed. The data obtained was then examined using various statistical techniques with the help of M.S. Excel and STATA version 17 software. Based on theoretical and empirical literature four micro-econometric models were developed to examine the proposed hypothesis. First, a binary logistic model was constructed to identify the factors that influences agricultural productivity of ST households to support the hypothesis that there is direct relationship between ST agricultural productivity and access to capital and to make comparison with the non-ST (Others) households. This hypothesis was examined using the unit-level data of NSS 77th round Land & Livestock Holdings at all India level (2019) for 9780 ST households with agricultural landholdings and 11938 non-ST households with agricultural landholdings. The results from the analysis are described below. The outcome of the study was that accessibility to physical capital i.e., landholdings and irrigation facilities, human capital i.e., household size, and age of head of household were found statistically significant in case of 9780 ST households. For 11938 non-ST, the results obtained was that accessibility to physical capital i.e., landholdings and irrigation facilities; human capital i.e., household size, agricultural training and age of head of household were found statistically significant to determine odds of the high agricultural productivity. When the results of two social groups was considered, the study identified that agricultural training program that was found statistically significant in case of non-ST, it was insignificant for ST households. When comparing the value of odds ratio for common significant independent variables found in case of two social groups, the use of irrigation and household were found to increase the agricultural productivity more in case of non-ST households compared to ST households. The other two independent variables age of head of household and landholdings have almost similar impact. Second, a logistic regression model was constructed to examine and identify the factors that influences rural livelihood diversification to support the hypothesis that there is relationship between rural ST livelihood diversification and its socio-economic factors. This hypothesis was examined using the field survey data for 400 ST households conducted in two different eco-regions of sub-Himalayan West Bengal. The results obtained for 200 ST households residing in forest-riverine eco-region of Alipurduar district was that WPR, landholdings and non-farm income were found statistically significant. But the results for 200 ST households residing in Teesta-Alluvial eco-regions of Jalpaiguri district was that only non-farm income was found statistically significant. Third, an ordered logistic model was constructed to identify the factors influences the level of vulnerability to support the hypothesis that there is relationship between poverty of ST and their socio-economic factors. Using the filed survey data of 400 ST households, the hypothesis was examined. The factors like WPR, landholdings, education of head of household and total income from both farm and non-farm were found statistically significant to influence the level of vulnerability. Finally, multi regression model was constructed to identify the factors influencing rural non-farm wages to support the hypothesis that there is relationship between rural non-farm wages and knowledge and skill formation of ST households. This hypothesis was being examined using the field survey data of 400 ST households in the sub-Himalayan regions of West Bengal. These results showed that years of schooling of household members, WPR and landholdings were statistically significant to influence the rural non-farm wages.Item Open Access Food security and poverty : a case study of tea gardens in North Bengal(University of North Bengal, 2023) Chakraborty, Abhijit; Roy Mukherjee, SanchariFood Security has attracted a lot of interest in the economic literature, especially in recent years1. One of the ways to measure poverty is food security. Since minimum calorie intake is a basis for measuring poverty. Food security on the other hand is defined as “Food security, at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’’2. Thus, if enough food is not available, we would call a certain population food insecure. On the other hand, out of the various measures of poverty the basic needs approach tries to identify the nutritional requirement as per person calorie requirement and then convert it into monetary terms to determine a poverty line(Atkinson 2019). The other method is the capability approach as proposed by Amartya Sen which tries to explain poverty in terms of basic capabilities or functioning. The basic needs approach is an old theory. The poverty literature also identifies the measurement issues under two broad heads one is the direct method and the other is the indirect method. The direct method takes into consideration the shortfall in minimum calorie requirement, whereas the indirect method takes into consideration the income required to satisfy the minimum calorie required3. The minimum calories required for basic sustenance are used as a method for determining poverty lines in many countries4. There is also a vast literature which has tried to identify the relation between food security and poverty(Kakwani and Son 2016). The interest by economists in the hypothesis of calorie intake and its effect on income is central to the efficiency wage hypothesis, proposed by Leibenstein (Leibenstein 1957). The seminal work states that the efficiency of work depends on wages, which comes from nutrition (Dawson, Tiffin 1998) and thereby nutrition will play a major role in the country. Thus, we can claim there is a relationship between poverty and food security. In India, the poverty line is determined using the minimum calorie approach and therefore we state that people falling below a certain calorie norm are considered to be food insecure. The required dietary allowance or the recommended calorie at the poverty line is usually taken from the RDA proposed by ICMR. We use the direct method to determine the extent of poverty and thus food security in our surveyed population. The research hypothesis we propose are: Research Hypothesis • Poverty and food security are related, poverty leads to food insecurity and food insecurity leads to poverty. • Tea gardens of North Bengal exhibit marked regional disparities in terms of food security and poverty • PDS has helped to address the problems of Food Insecurity in the Tea Gardens of North Bengal. • Other determinants of Food Security show that there exists food insecurity in Tea Plantations Research Questions: • What is the present socio-economic status of the Tea Plantation workers in the selected gardens? • What is the role of the public distribution system in India in mitigating food security? • How has the PDS evolved in the tea gardens? • Is Poverty and Food Security related? • Are the people in Tea Gardens suffering from undernourishment? • What are the other determinants of Food Security? We use household-level data to test the hypothesis. We also determined the other factors that might affect food security. We find evidence that food security and poverty are indeed related. Results also show high incidence of undernutrition among the Tea plantations, which is a core indicator of food security. Our analysis suggests among the various determinants of food security, the most important are household size and education.Item Open Access The economics of pond fishery : a study of North Bengal region of West Bengal(University of North Bengal, 2023) Agarwalla, Kishan; Majumdar, Tamash RanjanFishing is one of the oldest avocations of man, older than even hunting and farming. In the beginning, man used his bare hands to collect/capture fish and other aquatic animals found along the shores of lakes, rivers, and seas. But, as time passed, many changes occurred in the mode and pattern of fishing. Planned fishing operations are believed to have come into force with the emergence of tribal units from family units. The evolution of fishing gears proceeded step by step from the capture of individual fish to catching them in bulk. Subsequently gears progressively larger in size and sophistication came to be introduced. Fish is considered to be exceptionally nutritious as it is rich in easily digestible animal protein for which there exists hardly any substitute. Nutritionists consider fish as a valuable and effective supplement to a high cereal diet. Empirical findings also attest that fish consumption can reduce disability and the incidence of heart diseases (Sen Gupta, 1984). Fishing characteristically enjoys some added advantages over agriculture. As an economic activity, fishing is quick yielding as compared to agriculture, since the former involves a lesser time lag between efforts and results. In the case of most agricultural crops, it takes at least three months to reap the harvest after sowing. By contrast, in fishing output is instantaneous with effort. Further fishing resources unlike agriculture are renewable and replenishable year by year, which therefore forms a self-sustaining "fund" of resources that can be harvested continuously within maximum limits of exploitation (James, 1972). Productivity is also found to be appreciably higher in fishing when compared to agriculture or animal husbandry. As an industry with wide backward and forward linkages, the employment and income generation potential of fisheries has increased unprecedently in recent decades. Technological innovations in fishing, processing, and marketing have given rise to a host of subsidiary occupations related to boat building, net making, fish processing so on; all these leading to industrial diversification and further strengthening of the economy. In recent times, of all, what has particularly enhanced the economic importance of fisheries is its potential in earning foreign exchange. The fishing sector occupies an important place in West Bengal’s economy as a source of cheap but nutritious food, means of livelihood for thousands of the poor, and an important source of foreign exchange earnings. West Bengal ranks as the second-largest fish producer state in the country after Andhra Pradesh. The state also has the distinction of being a pioneer state in India in terms of fish seed production. The fisheries in West Bengal are comprised of both marine and inland fisheries. However, the state is well known for inland fisheries being made up of freshwater as well as brackish water fisheries. Despite having uninterrupted growth of inland fisheries over the years, there is a gross imbalance between the supply and demand of fish to a considerable extent within the state. The shortfall of supply relative to demand is made up by the import of fish from other states, especially from Andhra Pradesh. This necessitates developing and extending fisheries' economic activities in different directions and locations to increase production further to mitigate the shortfall. In the state, about 78% of the fish caught is sold as fresh or chilled food for the population and inland landing centers. About 6% of the catch is used for drying and curing, 13% to produce frozen fish, and 4% to reduce the yield into fish meals. In the wake of changing lifestyles, valueadded fishery products of different descriptions as convenience food are also gaining popularity in the markets. So it can be said that the fishery sector has an important role in the development of the state’s economy. The fisheries sector constitutes an important component of the regional rural economy of North Bengal. As the fishery resource can re-generate itself naturally in a time frame that is relevant for human exploitation, its commercial production and harvesting can provide massive scope for regional economic development on a sustainable basis. The development of the fisheries' economic activities in different directions can lead to income and employment generation for the rural population on a significant scale. The North Bengal fishery is mainly comprised of inland fishery resources - the pond fisheries are the more dominating form among all of them. The region is rich in water resources. The total water area available for the fishery sector is at present 41752 hectares. The fishery sector of the region registered 199277 metric tons of fish production in 2017-18, which is 12.8 percent of the total fish production in West Bengal during this period. The Fish production in North Bengal has grown moderately well from 1443 metric tons in 2010-11 to 1742 metric tons in 2017-18. This is perhaps due to the expansion of the area under the pond. The fishery sector of the region has also been undergoing a steady transformation from traditional fishing activity to commercial activity over the years. Despite these facts, the level of production and productivity are far from adequate, leaving a large gap between actual and potential output. The region is yet to tap the vast growth potentials of the production of fish, mainly from pisciculture. Also, the fish marketing system in North Bengal has been discussed here. This study has been conducted here to assess the market efficiencies indicators such as gross marketing margin (GMM) and percentage share of fishermen in the consumer rupee (PSFCR) among other indicators. The highest price spread is supposed to be observed in the longest marketing channel due to the involvement of the highest number of marketing intermediaries. In our sample, Darjeeling has a higher price spread when compared to other districts for most of the species. Thus, the marketing efficiency in terms of GMM is relatively lower in Darjeeling in comparison to other districts of North Bengal. Besides GMM, the percentage share of fishermen in the consumer rupee (PSFCR) has been calculated for the different species at the district level with the objective to make an assessment of the level of marketing efficiency across the districts. Efficiency in production is a way to ensure that the products of firms are produced in the best and most profitable way. To prevent the wastage of resources, efficiency is of great importance for every sector of the economy. The study is to examine the technical efficiency of pond fishery using the stochastic frontier model in the northern region of West Bengal. The estimated stochastic frontier model reveals that investment in labour, organic fertilizers, fish fingerling, and land area can increase the return from fish production. The result shows that technical efficiency ranges from 83 to 100 percent with a mean efficiency of 94 percent implying that average fish farmers in the study area are performing below the maximum possible production level by a shortfall of about 6 percent. The study recommends that the use of labour and organic fertilizers (i.e. cow dung) should be made available, to transform traditional rearing practices into more productive scientific methods. Also, the land area should be extended and more fish fingerling should be used to increase the production of fish in the study area. Aquaculture needs to be integrated with agriculture, piggery, duckery, etc. Nowadays, pisciculture activity is mixed with piggery or duckery activity for better viability of the pisciculture scheme. The product of the piggery or poultry may be utilized for manuring the water of the ponds or tanks. These will provide basic nutrients to the water, which also helps in maintaining the food chain of the fish. No extra expenditure for manure or supplementary feed will be required. In this study, the level of technical efficiency of the pond fishery in North Bengal has been estimated using the CCR and BCC DEA models. In the Uttar Dinajpur district, the minimum and maximum TE scores were estimated as 37.50 percent and 100 percent, respectively. On average, the TE score of the sample fish farmers in this district was estimated at 85 percentItem Open Access Microfinance institutions (MFIs) and Self Helf Groups (SHGs) linkages : A study on the role of some selected Self Helf Groups of Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal(University of North Bengal, 2023) Aich Sarkar, Manik; Bagchi, Kanak KantiItem Open Access Indo-saarc trade: problems and prospects In the context of globalization (1985-2018)(University of North Bengal, 2022) Das, Dilip Kumar; Mukhopadhyay, Deb KumarItem Open Access Enquiry into the causes and consequences of rural urban migration in West Bengal with special reference to Coochbehar District(University of North Bengal, 2022-11) Majumdar, Sujit; Bagchi, Kanak KantiItem Open Access Examiation of complementary and competitive aspects of trade relations between India and Chaina(University of North Bengal, 2022-09) Tamang, Karan; Bhuimali, AnilItem Open Access Enquiry into the living conditions of slum dwellers in Siliguri Municipal Corporation Area with special reference to health and education(University of North Bengal, 2022) Das, Madhumita; Bagchi, Kanak Kanti