Articles by Barbara Harriss

Anti-Female Discrimination in Nutrients Sharing Barbara Harriss I READ with interest the1 paper "Rural Women, Poverty and Natural Resources" by Bina Agarwal (October 28, 1989) where evidence of anti-female bias in access in India to basic needs, to work, to the means of production and to life itself is set out. I have to say, however, that her summary of my review and evaluation of evidence on intra-family nutriants allocation (p WS47) is cryptic to the point of misrepresentation and that the policy point about targeting households rather than women (p W1S61, note 7) has been somewhat wrenched from context.

In this paper, the advocacy emanating from international research on agricultural growth linkages is subjected to empirical validation in an agricultural district in South India, In part one, the characteristics of non-farm activity are analysed in terms of their material relations with agricultural production. A varied data set covering flows of commodities, money and finance and labour is marshalled to show that industry is not for the most part rurally located, small-scale, labour intensive and based on local raw materials and local final markets. In part two, the implementation of policies designed to favour rural non-farm activity is found to divert resources away from priority targeted sector Our findings reveal the increasing importance of the national market and of regional integration and the likelihood of substantial flows of agricultural surpluses to the commercial, industrial and metropolitan economic sectors, a process supported by public sector mobilisation and allocation of resources.