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The distinctive features of fisheries resources, fishers and their geographic contexts, on the one hand, and broad stylized features of the existing lacklustre performance of this sector, on the other, call for specialized and sustained efforts to promote livelihood of usually poor, backward and unorganized fisher communities, which are nevertheless and often the most intimate stakeholder of this sector and its underlying resources. To develop a perspective on intervention strategies for livelihood promotion of most intimate stakeholders – that is, the fisher folk, in a sustainable manner, this paper uses clues from recent economic theories and management tools on property rights, Coase Theorem, stakeholder cooperation and public-private-community partnership in an effort towards resolving the multi-dimensional problems of this sector. It stratifies and brings out the pros and cons of the existing fishing efforts into four categories of models – the traditional marketing model, state-led models of livelihood promotion and fisheries development (including cases of para-statal cooperatives), entrepreneur or leader-driven models, and technology-driven models, through selected illustrations from different parts of the country and covering both marine and inland (including brackish water) segments of fisheries. The paper, after identifying the major ingredients for sustainable livelihood development around fisheries, finally articulates Dr. APJ Kalam’s concept of PURA to recommend a rural entrepreneur-led hybrid model of fisheries development to solicit sustainable and growth oriented cooperation among the suppliers of land (i.e., stakeholders to fishery resources, which are available through Nature), labor (including fishers) and capital (including professionals). The ultimate goal of this paper is to derive inspiration from Coase Theorem and the Japanese model of Keiretsu to empower the producers and suppliers of fish – namely, the fisher folk and to place them at the centre stage of control of rural entrepreneur-led private organizations, wherein the fisher community will not be deemed as mere consumers or vendors of fish, but will enter as dignified co-producer partners with significant shares in residual claim and residual control in those organizations.

By mid-September, 2003 it is becoming clear that Gujarat is likely to experience a bumper crop in the year 2003-04. The State Ministry of Agriculture is looking for some concrete suggestions, advice and policy recommendations to better manage the situation likely to be created by the bumper crop this year. Falling prices in the face of bumper crop can considerably wipe out positive effect on agricultural incomes in the hands of farmers in the State. Short-term measures to avoid such a situation need to be integrated into medium term and long term development strategy for the State agricultural sector. The present paper provides some implementable policy recommendations in this context.

This paper applies the tools of institutional economics – especially those pertaining to informational asymmetry and transaction costs - for studying the credit problems of small farmers in India, who, in spite of a vast network of credit institutions developed over a long period of time under government ownership and/or control, are alleged as not getting a share of formal sector credit commensurate with their statistical dominance. It uses data collected by the Agro-economic Research Centers and Units under the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India from a carefully selected sample of 700 borrower households across the country over a period of three years (1997-1998 to 1999-2000) to provide a preliminary explanation of the various dimensions of a credit package in terms of variation in borrower’s village, household and other loan attributes.

In recent years, the focus of numerous rural credit institutions, which includes lenders from both formal and semi-formal (the micro-finance providers) domains, has started shifting from traditional credit-alone approach to interlinked credit transactions. Under interlinked arrangement, lenders intervene simultaneously with credit as well as in markets of credit complementary services. The argument behind evolution of such interlinked transactions is, in the absence of efficient markets in factor services to cope with the problems such as seasonality, asymmetric information, non-standard factor services, and uncertainty in input supply, adverse price fluctuations and opportunistic behavior of factor suppliers— all typical of poor agrarian societies— interlinked credit seems to provide a good solution. However, in spite of existing theoretical as well as empirical literature on the subject, there is still a lack of persuasive arguments and evidence to establish interlinked transactions as an effective management tool in achieving success in delivery of rural credit, which is a problem in the formal credit sector. The dissertation proposes that the efficacy of interlinked credit ought to be understood in the context of competition among formal, semi-formal and traditional informal credit. Against this backdrop of competiveness, this study attempts to bring out three important aspects of interlinked credit, first, it attempts to determine factors influencing the choice of interlinked credit, second, it demonstrates that, as compared to credit-alone approach, interlinked arrangement improves access to institutional credit, and third, interlinked transaction ensures delivery of credit of adequate amount at better terms and conditions in terms of interest rate and transaction cost. On the theoretical front the dissertation employs an agricultural household model in a general equilibrium format, while for empirical investigation this dissertation makes use of a cross-sectional data set of 600 rural households selected through stratified random sampling spread over six Indian states. The first part of the estimation procedure undertaken in the study follows two-step sample selected ordered probit models to correct the selection bias. The first step captures the determinants of access to credit, and the next step brings out, among the households having access to credit market which factors determine whether a household would opt for minimalist credit, or avail single interlinked credit or go for multiple interlinkages. Another two step model determines factors influencing whether a household could meet its credit demand solely from the formal sector or, partly from formal sector and partly from semi-formal and/or informal sector. Thus, in the first step a binary probit model estimates the probability of access to credit and in the second step ordered probit estimates the response variables in a hierarchical order. The study found corroborative evidence that access to institutional credit along with households‘ profitability of production activities as well as resource endowment are also determined by interlinked credit offerings. Till date scholarly contributions to the field of interlinked credit are confined largely to the domain of informal credit under imperfect market conditions and primarily with only one kind of interlinkage at a time. This dissertation shows the scope of multiple interlinkages across broader institutional settings, which include formal, semi-formal as well as informal segment in a competitive framework. Under multiple interlinkage, credit facility may be linked with as many complementary services such as insurance, input, output and consumption. Estimation is done through seemingly unrelated regression, which accounts for simultaneity because of correlation among cross-equation random errors, which are otherwise not addressed under ordinary least square method. The results show the benefits of interlinked credit such as higher credit off-take,and better terms and conditions such as lower interest rate and less transaction cost as compared to the credit-alone transactions. The research demonstrates to the policy makers the benefit of offering institutional credit in a more general equilibrium framework through offering credit complementary services. It strongly suggests product bundling as a potential marketing strategy for the existing as well as new entrants in the rural credit market.

Despite being the largest producer of sugar in the world, doubts are often raised about global competitiveness of the Indian sugar industry by quarters concerned with future direction of industry’s trade in a liberalized and global framework. The doubts are compounded by several factors like swinging government policy over export and import and widespread controls at different levels of the industry. The objective of the present research is to unveil the true picture about the global competitiveness of this industry and to analyze the factors responsible for its competitiveness. The research questions which are specifically addressed are: 1. Is the sugar industry in India internationally competitive in the domestic as well as in foreign markets? How robust is the international competitiveness? 2. How does the international competitiveness vary across major sugar producing states in Indi a? 3. What is the broad pattern of international competitiveness of the Indian sugar industry in the early 90s? 4. How strong is the competitive positions of India's well known Sugar factories? 5. What are the factors affecting the international competitiveness of Indian sugar industry? Which factors are more important which are the factors within the control of firm and the nation and which are beyond their control? 6. What is the impact of downstream units (utilized by the product of sugar industry as raw material) on the international competitiveness of the Indian sugar industry? Earlier studies on international competitiveness of Indian sugar industry are found to be quite partial and incomplete as they fail to take into consideration the competitive potential of the entire biomass of sugarcane as it passes from the hands of the farmers to the industry for various possible users. They are essential static in nature and refer to a single point in time and thus fail to bring out the robustness of result. This is particularly important when not only the international prices are volatile but also these are subject to fairly large changes in a number of parameters both at home and abroad. The present study is based on domestic resource cost (cost) analyze using a policy analyze matrix (PAM ) framework which is capable of incorporating a large number of policy parameters covering the entire gamut of industrial uses of the bio-mass called sugarcane and thus providing a broader social perspective to the whole exercise. It also enable to judging the robustness of result arrived at through sensitivity analyze. The present study estimates international competitiveness of Indian sugar industry at national state and firm level. For state level analyze six major sugar producing states namely Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu , Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. For firm level analyze sample firms are selected from the states of Maharashtra , Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat of varying sizes and complexity. Following are some of the important findings of the study: • On the import front, the sugar industry in India and in all the major states remains internationally competitive in all the three years - i.e. 1990, 1994 and 1995. Global competitiveness in the domestic market in fact improved in a good crop year {i.e. 1995) over the other two years. • On export front, India and all its major sugar producing states except Karnataka and Tamilnadu are not internationally competitive in sugar in the year 1990. In 1994 only the states of Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra become export competitive. However, the industry becomes fully (i.e. for the country as well as its major states) export competitive during the good crop year of 1995. • All the sample firms except one (Palaj) are also found to be internationally competitive on the import front. • Some good cooperative and private sugar firms like Warana, Balrampur and Simbhaoli are globally competitive; some firms like Gandevi and Sanjivani are marginally non competitive, while a weak unit like Palaj remains consistently and significantly below global competitiveness mark on export front. • Downstream units (distillery, paper and chemical) consistently improve global competitiveness of the sugar industry. • International price of sugar and exchange rate are two international level parameters that have major influence on competitiveness of this industry, but even a large country like India has only a limited control over these parameters. • Cane crushed, sugar recovery rate and cane yield are three parameters that have major impact on competitiveness of this industry and which are within the control of firm and nation. • Non-tradable and tradable items of cane production cost, and cane processing cost including wage bill, interest expenses, cane development expenses and local transportation expenses are some of the items which too have significant influence on international competitiveness of the sugar industry. Interestingly, these are some of the parameters, which are primarily under the control of the firms at the micro level. • Some implications of the present study are: • In sharp contrast to the fear expressed in the earlier literature on India's sugar global competitiveness position {i.e. the results based on the traditional and partial measures), a comprehensive DRCR analysis shows that India as well as its major sugar producing states are in a strong position to face international competition not only In the domestic market but also in the international market. However, not all the states and firms are always likely to be competitive in the international market. Only potentially efficient states and firms which economies on the use of net • non-tradable resources and maximize the production of net tradable resources are going to remain competitive even under adverse conditions with unfavourable movements of such parameters as the exchange rate, international price, cane yield, sugar recovery rate etc. • Through establishment of downstream by - product units and by moving the parameters under control of the government and firms in a favorable direction (e.g. by partly relaxing the repressive regulations in this industry) it is possible to improve the competitiveness of the firms which are not far below the competitiveness mark. • This methodology coupled with sensitivity analysis is capable of isolating the potentially competitive firms from those, which are totally inefficient and do not stand a chance of survival in a competitive environment even with reasonable government support.

Evaluation of agricultural technology development and review of commercial product development revealed that only a small percentage of the new products have succeeded in the market. For instance, the numbers of varieties released are for more than the ones actually adopted by the farmers. Analysis of the reasons for success or failure of the technological products showed that the major factor was a poor understanding and non-integration of the consumer needs by the people involved in the new product development. The term integration refers to the processes of bringing the preferences of the internal and external consumers together, and finding alternative ways to satisfy them. This process of integration can be referred as Client-Orientation, conceptualized with four dimensions, namely [1] generation of information from the consumers, [2] responsiveness to needs of the consumers, [3] interfunctional coordination, and [4] provision of information to the consumers. If client orientation and product success are assumed to be positively correlated, then, the process which increases the client orientation of the people involved in the product development need to be spelt out. Two objectives were set viz, [1] to understand the client orientation in the new product development by studying biotechnological agri-inputs and [2] to explain the influence of organization specific factors on client orientation. Multiple cases have been studied in the present investigation. The organizations were classified into four groups namely [1] Private Commercial, [2] Private Noncommercial, [3] Public Commercial, and [4] Public Noncommercial. The study included various products like development of brassica, rice varieties and biofertilizers using biotechnological means. I have concentrated the study on the process of developing biofertilizer, to compare different organizational variables by controlling for the influence of product related factors. Major findings of the study are: Generation of information from the c0n.rumer.r: [1] when scientists involved in developing new product communicate directly with the consumers, it is more likely that the product will reflect the preferences of the consumers; [2] There is no strong evidence of using formal mechanisms to generate information in the early stages of product development across the organizations. Scientists initiate the process based on the review of literature and their own assumptions about the consumer needs. However, later in the process of evaluation, farmers are included for validating the assumptions about the product attributes made earlier, [3] The scientists in product development teams depend on one or very few information gate keepers within the organization for client related information, [4] High commercially focused organizations use formal mechanisms of information generation in later stages of the product development for fine-tuning the product attributes according to the needs and likings of consumers. Responsiveness to needs of the consumers: [1] There may be poor responsiveness when the scientists have resolved the problem in their mind. That is, scientists may have preconceive solutions which may prevent them from giving due weightage to the preferences of farmers, [2] Organizations with high commercial focus do not take into account just the technical parameters of the product, but evaluate its performance based on consumer acceptance along with the technical attributes. The research focused organizations on the other hand might give greater weightage to technical attributes rather than field performance. Inter-functional coordination: [1] Mutual accountability of different groups/teams of scientists involved in new product development is much higher in the organizations with high commercial focus, [2] Several process contribute to mutual accountability, such as team rewards, cross disciplinary linkages in the process of development of products as well as in the validation at farmer level. Provision information to the consumers: [1] Scientists establish linkages with farmers for provision of information mainly through intermediate functions, like marketing or extension, [2] Commercially focused organizations‘ plan their information provision mechanisms to the consumers more systematically than less commercially focused organizations, [3] High commercial organizations use their own organizational channels for dissemination of information and low commercial organizations depended more upon the governmental or external channels. Reliance on subsidized channels reduced the pressure in less commercially focused organizations to get closer to the clients. The framework of client orientation developed in the study is indeed useful for planning new product development process. There is a need for developing systematic linkage with the consumers from the early stages of new product development for focusing and fine tuning the product attributes on the needs and likings of the consumers. There is a need for developing systems to institutionalize the process of information generation from the consumers to maintain continuity and effective utilization.