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The urban unorganised sector has been a dominant characteristic feature of the developing countries providing livelihood to a disproportionately large number of households for prolonged period. However, enterprises in this sector are often stunted by myriads of problems among which meagre access to formal financial services is a crucial constraint, as access to other enabling conditions often hinges upon access to finance. This article is based on a study of such enterprises in the Northeast Indian state of Assam, where access to finance is relatively limited in general. Using inputs from a customised survey, the article explores the extent to which the accessibility of financial services influences the growth and financial performance of the unorganised sector enterprises in Assam. Tools employed include a customised financial access index, a generalised linear model and an ordered LOGIT regression. The results show that the financial performance of the enterprises is not significantly associated with the extent of their financial access, but their growth is critically dependent on it.

Following Kuznets’ pioneering works, the growth-inequality nexus was stylised as an inverted U-shaped relation. As per that paradigm, economic inequality initially increases when a nation embarks upon a modern economic development process, but later on, declines as the development process cross a certain threshold. The paradigm roughly bears out the experience of the industrialised countries of Europe and North America from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the mid-1970s. The inevitability of the pattern came under question when data from a broader range of countries became available by the 1970s. Then the post-globalisation experience of countries around the world virtually negated the falling part of Kuznets inverted U. Most countries which profited from globalisation in the form of upward shifts of their growth trajectories also experienced a rise rather than a decline in economic inequality. The present paper is a survey of the large and interesting literature on the changing nature of inequality before and after globalisation. The survey finds that inequality across countries has actually declined as a result of globalisation whereas inequalities within countries have almost invariably increased. Apart from usual factors such as bequest and skewed distributions of wealth, the new factors that have accentuated post-globalisation inequality are widening wage disparities, inequalities of opportunities, the onslaught of automation and rent-seeking activities of a section of the rich. The survey also notes how inequality has been moderated in some counties through effective taxes and transfer programmes. After summarising the arguments why growing economic inequality cannot be left unattended, the survey concludes with an outline of the policy choices which are being currently discussed in the academic and administrative circles.

Traditionally the tenancy-inefficiency debate is centred on the incentive problem of sharecroppers that induce them to under-supply inputs and effort in cultivation. The fixed-rent tenants are supposed to be free from this problem as the rents they pay are in the nature of fixed costs and hence do not enter marginal calculations. The present paper argues that even the fixed-rent tenants can have an incentive problem, albeit of the opposite type, if an inter-temporal optimisation framework is adopted. They may be inclined to use production-enhancing inputs like chemical fertilisers excessively so as to maximise returns from the land during their tenure, disregarding the implication of their action for long-term soil health. For empirical verification of the argument, the authors analyse survey data from Assam Plains, where land holders of all size class actively participate in the land lease market. While the sharecroppers have been expectedly found to use land less intensively than the owner operators, the fixed-rent tenants are seen using land much more intensively which can impair soil health in the longer run. Suitable reforms of the prevailing agrarian institutions have been called for to address the incentive problems of both sharecroppers and fixed-rent tenants.

Scheduled Tribes form one of the most disadvantaged segments of the Indian population. The developmental interventions, including the constitutionally guaranteed affirmative action, have had limited success in bringing up the standards of living of these groups. This article focuses on a riverine tribe, the Misings, whose livelihood and developmental challenges are compounded by the recurrent floods and riverbank erosion. It is based on a study of developmental transition of this tribe inhabiting on the banks of the river Brahmaputra and its tributaries in upper Assam. It analyses socio-economic transition process among the tribe driven by the progressive forces of the spread of education and resulting occupational diversification. The levels of progress are found to vary depending on the degree of vulnerability of settlement locations—those bearing the brunt of recurrent floods and riverbank erosion are lagging behind in development attainments. To make the transition process more expeditious and inclusive, institutional strengthening for better delivery of basic services is suggested.

Consolidation of small and fragmented holdings was felt necessary to make holdings large enough for viable use of capital goods, irrigation and various productivity-enhancing practices. However, agricultural operations across all size classes of holdings are now getting mechanised even in areas where this component of land reform remained largely unimplemented. With the emergence of rental markets, agricultural capital goods have now become available for hiring. A farmer, hence, can hire a capital good as per requirement rather than acquiring lumpy machines, which the farm cannot fully utilise. Field investigation in the Brahmaputra Valley has confirmed that these rental markets have enabled even small and marginal farmers to mechanise their tilling and irrigating operations. Rental market participants have also been found to be using production-enhancing inputs and practices. In fulfilling goals meant to be achieved through consolidation of holdings, the rental markets have largely substituted this long-pending agrarian reform.

Despite a large number of studies going into the issue of income and developmental disparities across states in India, the possibility of resource curse being at the root of some states persistently lagging in development has rarely been probed. The present paper is aimed at filling this void in the literature. Economic common sense and writing of some eminent development economists suggest that regions endowed with resources should be in the advantaged position to grow fast and develop quickly. In reality, however, regions endowed richly with natural resources have often tended to lag– a phenomenon that has given rise to the resource curse hypothesis. Countries/regions rich in natural resources can be cursed if the easy and abundant resource revenue breeds moral hazards causing institutional weaknesses that allow rent-seeking and other anti-developmental processes to flourish. In the Indian context, persistent lagging behind of the resource-rich states of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Jharkhand, and Bihar hints at resource curse casting a spell over these states. Using panel data on 17 major Indian states at decennial intervals from 1981 to 2011, evidence for probable resource curse has been explored while controlling for some common determinants of development. Results confirm evidence in support of resource curse dragging overall development attainment in most of the resource-rich states. On a positive note, however, it has been found that development attainment across India has advanced progressively, especially in the post-reform decades.

Policy approach to rural development in independent India has evolved through various stages. Limited success of different initiatives prompted setting up of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) as statutory local self-governing bodies for securing faster rural development through greater grassroots empowerment. After a couple of decades of the 73rd Constitution Amendments that instituted the PRIs, it was felt necessary to ask whether PRIs had succeeded in percolating power to the grassroots, and if so, whether such empowerment expedited the pace of development in villages. In pursuit of this composite question, a field investigation was carried out in six carefully selected villages in Assam in 2012. Development attainments and improvements in such attainments have been found to be higher in the villages where institutions of grassroots empowerment have taken deeper roots. The study makes a case for deepening of the grassroots empowerment process for expeditious overcoming of the backlogs in rural development.

Technological uplift is imperative for enterprises to achieve and sustain competitiveness in terms of both cost and quality of products. While the literature on technology adoption is voluminous, studies focused on adoption related issues concerning rural, nonfarm, and informal micro-entrepreneurs in developing economies are few and far between. In view of significance of these enterprises in employment and income generation at the lower end of income distribution in developing countries, a study of factors influencing adoption of modern technology in such enterprises assumes importance. Using firm-level data collected through a primary survey, the present paper analyses the determinants of adoption and extent of deployment of weaving technologies in the handloom micro-enterprises in rural areas of Assam. The results of the Cragg's Double Hurdle model reveal the significance of financial inclusion, availability of family labor, and social network on adoption and extent of deployment of weaving technologies. The presence of proper market linkages also appears to be crucial for adoption and use of such technologies in the rural areas. The study urges for a comprehensive policy framework to tackle the existing bottlenecks related to access to credit/capital, market linkages, and extension services to promote the technology adoption among the rural micro-entrepreneurs.

From its initial drafting to its eventual passage in the Indian Parliament and beyond, the National Food Security Bill has been extensively debated with a lot of animation by activists, economists, politicians and even corporate leaders. This article presents a brief summary of the debate in the backdrop of a discussion of the general issues related to food security and India's past record of food grain management. Since the Bill has now been turned into an Act, it is suggested that the focus of attention should now shift to its implementation mechanism and suitable measures to mitigate the apprehended undesirable consequences of the proposed nationwide food security programme.

This paper makes an attempt to estimate the public and non-public good component values of Kaziranga National Park (KNP), a World Heritage Site in the northeast part of India, using contingent valuation method and individual travel cost method respectively. Such a decomposition of total value of an environmental amenity into public good and non-public good components can have significant implications for conservation policies. The results of our analysis led us to conclude that the conservation efforts in terms of resource allocation for KNP are by no means excessive as it amounted to only 3.52 % of total willingness to pay that was estimated in a very conservative way. The estimated consumers’ surplus, a proxy for use values of the park, turned out to be 8.86 % of estimated total economic values, and we suggest a same share of conservation outlay be recovered from the users. A relatively smaller proportion of current user charges in total conservation expenditure (5.87 %) provide a justification for an upward revision of the user charges for a better and more effective conservation in view of the ongoing deterioration of the heritage site from various sources.

In the post-reform era, quality delivery of the services has acquired centre point of the service industry around the globe. The banking sector being purely a service-related industry has been influenced more by the issue of providing quality service. With the entry of private banks, the banking sector has gone through many transformations including the way services are extended. In a backward state like Assam, this has arrived a little late, but the changes are gradually visible. The chapter captures the service quality standard of the Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) and also for the different bank groups in order to make a comparison. The SERVPERF scale is used to study the replies of the customers in two cities, Guwahati and Tezpur, and some econometric tools are used to analyse the data. The study reveals that the private sector banks are far ahead of the public sector banks in terms of quality of service. The private banks influence the service quality of the SCBs the most among all the bank groups. Overall, the public sector banks, which are the dominant market players, will have to work hard to catch the level of the private banks.

Rising demand for rubber in general, steep rise in the price of syn-thetic rubber and reduced supply from some traditional big pro-ducers contributed to sharp rise in the price of natural rubber in the last decade. This opened up an opportunity for countries like India to increase their rubber acreage. With the scope for area ex-pansion in traditional locations becoming limited, India ventured into extension of rubber plantation to non-traditional areas such as the northeastern part of the country. For farmers in this region, who typically possess small land-holdings, this initiative has come as an opportunity to enhance and diversify their livelihood. Though adoption of rubber by farmers in the region has been impressive, concerns about longer term viability of rubber in such non-traditional areas often arise. Based primarily on a sample survey of rubber growers in Goalpara in northeast India, the present work attempts to address such concerns.