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

This book gathers twelve papers that 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-year-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 failures of its mixed economy, without selling off 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.

Bruno Dorin, PhD in economics and postgraduate in agricultural engineering and management, was Director and Researcher of the CSH (1995-2000). He lived 8 years in India where he conducted various research programmes on the contemporary Indian economy and society. He works now for the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD, Montpellier, France).

Thomas Jullien, postgraduate in economics, was Research Assistant at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH, New Delhi) in 1999-2000. He works now for the Institute de Strategies Patrimoniales of the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon (INA-PG, Paris).