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This paper proposes a method of estimating spatial bilateral price index numbers from cross-section consumer expenditure data on different items using Engel curve analysis. A simple technique is developed by which it is possible to find a method for estimating a set of consumer price index numbers for a group of consumer expenditure items (both goods and services) for which only expenditure data are available. The main assumption of this technique is that the Linear Expenditure System (LES) is the correct and actual description of the complete demand system of the particular population of which we are interested to find the price index. The usefulness of the procedure is that it overcomes the problem of data inadequacy, a problem that is still prevalent in various databases, especially in the developing countries and it is easy to implement. To illustrate the method, ICRISAT VDSA database (which is in the public domain) of consumer expenditure is used and the spatial consumer price index number for non-food group for four villages of Andhra Pradesh is calculated for four years with one particular village taken as the base. The main limitation of the method is that violation of LES assumption can lead to inconsistent results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'financial inclusion' has become a central trope that legitimates a wide range of contemporary development practices. By constructing a new object of development - the 'financially excluded' - it facilitates the expansion of an increasingly corporatized microfinance technocracy. The present paper problematizes the underlying binaries of inclusion/exclusion and formal/informal finance upon which this narrative is based. Through an examination of the 2010 Andhra Pradesh microfinance crisis, it demonstrates key contradictions within the discourse and practices of commercial microfinance. In so doing, it demonstrates why the narrative of financial inclusion and its correlate notion of 'consumption smoothing' are inadequate tools with which to conceptualize the political economy of contemporary agrarian change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total Factor Productivity (TFP) measures the growth in output which is not accounted for by inputs. Data Envelopment Analysis which forms the basis for the computation of Malmquist TFP index is used in this paper to study the performance of different river basins in Andhra Pradesh state, India. The results indicated that average technical efficiency of all the basins is only 66%. In all the basins there was a decline in growth of agricultural output during the first two decades, viz., 1979-1980 to 1988-1989 and it had picked in the last decade (1999-2000). All the river basins have TFP change greater than 1 indicating progress in agricultural productivity. Out of the 40 river basins, 14 river basins have technical efficiency change less than 1 indicating decline in TFP growth whereas all the basins have technical changes greater than 1 implying that there is shift in production frontier over years. In general, within the TFP, technical change contributed more than technical efficiency change. Looking at the future options for increasing the agricultural output in the river basins, it is important to focus on improving the TFP growth compared to increasing the quantities of physical inputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]