The Indian Economic Journal

Despite being one of India’s wealthiest states, Maharashtra has the highest number of farmer suicides. Research links farmer suicides to monsoon failure, drought and a lack of social security. To make the state drought-free by 2019, the state government launched the ‘Jalyukt Shivar Scheme’ on 26 January 2015. According to the State Economic Survey 2019–20, the programme has spent ₹9,488 crore on 6.28 lakh works in the 5 years since its inception, has eliminated drought in 19,655 villages, and has stored 26.52 TMC of water. However, regardless of the government’s assertions, experts and non-government organisations question the scheme’s efficacy and scientific validity. After the 2019 state assembly elections, the new Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi Government discontinued the scheme. Nevertheless, examining the scheme’s implementation and effectiveness would shape future policy and watershed project execution. The study has assessed the farmer’s perceived effectiveness of the scheme.

To assess the beneficiary farmer’s perceived impact of the scheme, the Jalyukt Shivar impact assessment scale was developed. Confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha ensured the validity and reliability of the scale. Structural equation modelling shows that public participation is a significant predictor of the irrigation impact of the scheme, and irrigation impact mediates the outcome of agriculture and environmental impact, socio-economic impact and impact on women. The findings reveal that the programme remained a supply-side initiative in the absence of people’s participation. For the watershed project to achieve its goals, the study advocated active public participation at all stages of its implementation.

JEL Codes: Q15, Q18, Q25, Q28, R58

The article examines what type of individuals face violence in India. We specify and estimate a probit model where the probability that a person would face violence depends on several individual, regional and institutional variables. The empirical application of this model on the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data set for the year 2011–2012 reveals the presence of an important interaction between economic and ethnic factors. We find that violence against a ‘backward’ social group increases when it becomes upwardly mobile. In the case of forward castes, a reverse pattern is seen. Among ethnic measures, fractionalisation turned out to be the most important one in our study. Polarisation turned out to be statistically significant only when regions affected by violent separatist or political movements were treated with a dummy variable. Interestingly, as predicted by Esteban and Ray (2011), the Gini coefficient based on consumption did not turn out to be significant. Among other variables, political activism, access to sanitation and the number of adult males in a household were important determinants of susceptibility to violence. Ongoing feuds in the village and radical or separatist movements in a state also increased susceptibility to violence.

JEL Codes: Z13, Z18, D31, D74

Insufficient availability of family labour is a major hurdle in farm operations in India, which compels farmers to use hired agricultural labour. Given the importance of manpower in farm operation, the use of hired labour in agriculture is expected to play a vital role in agricultural development. Hence, the present article aims to examine the role of hired agricultural labour in crop production in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam in North East India. The study is based mainly on farm-level data collected using a multi-stage sampling technique from 237 field crop-cultivating households. Analysis using simple statistical tools depicts that a large majority of farmers of all size classes depend on hired labour for different farming activities. The extent of use of hired agricultural labour is more for larger farmers relative to smaller farmers. Further, larger farmers hire agricultural labour more or less equally for all types of activities, while small and marginal farmers hire such labour mostly for activities requiring group efforts. Tobit regression analysis depicts a significant role of hired agricultural labour in improving cropping intensity and crop diversification, but the fragmented nature of the market for agricultural labour calls for government intervention.

JEL Codes: Q12, Q13

In this article, a humble effort has been made to check the volatility transmission from European stock markets (FTSE100, DAX30, CAC40 and SMI20) to the Indian stock market (NIFTY50) to determine whether there is any opportunity for portfolio managers to diversify their portfolio. Various statistical tools and econometric models, such as vector autoregression (VAR) and dynamic conditional correlation (DCC)-multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (MGARCH), are used to detect the volatility transmission from the European market to the Indian market. The FTSE100 and the NIFTY50 have been found to have bidirectional causality. VAR results suggest that only the DAX30 and SMI20 (Germany and Switzerland) markets have an impact on the Indian market. Finally, using DCC-MGARCH, the researcher found that information spillover takes place from all European countries to India over a longer period of time, but portfolio diversification between the London market (FTSE) and the Indian market (NIFTY) and German market (DAX) with Indian market (NIFTY) is possible over a shorter period of time.

JEL Codes: C01, G1, G17

This article explores the impact of the institutional environment on the ability of economic growth to generate stable employment in West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries. Using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model on panel data from 1996 to 2021, we find a positive correlation between economic growth and stable employment in the short and long term. Services and industry are the primary sources of stable jobs in the long run. Furthermore, institutional factors speed up employment adjustment to equilibrium during economic shocks. Specifically, controlling corruption, government efficiency and regulation quality enhance economic growth’s impact on stable job creation. Therefore, pursuing a structural transformation of the WAEMU’s economies and enhancing the institutional environment is imperative to ensure job stability.

JEL Codes: C23, E24, J2, O55

This article examines the link between development outcomes and both political concentration and religious polarisation, analysing how the state’s decision-making process operates within the framework of fiscal federalism, with a focus on the Indian states. To evaluate the effects of religious diversity, coalition governments and political concentration on human development, composite indices such as the ‘fractionalisation index’ and ‘polarisation index’ have been constructed. A dynamic panel-data model is applied to explore the causal relationship between political concentration and development outcomes. The results demonstrate a significant inverse relationship between religious polarisation, diversity and human development, along with a notable influence of political concentration on human development.

JEL Codes: D72, O53, Z12, O15

Rapid technological advancements and FinTech initiatives in the recent past have been facilitating the transformation of financial and payment services across the globe. The present study examines the status of digital payments, digital payment environment and digital financial inclusion among the BRICS countries. The digital payment trends in the BRICS countries for the period 2011–2021 through the access and use indicators of digital payments are compared. There exist significant differences between the BRICS countries and the developed countries for both the access and use indicators of digital payments, which requires the respective governments and central banks of BRICS countries to take necessary steps to achieve the goal of digital financial inclusion.

JEL Codes: E42, E58