Articles by A Narayanamoorthy

This article critiques theMihir Shah Committee report and the articles about it in this journal (24 December 2016). It says that although the report has intended to be an attempt at restructuring of water institutions, it has, unfortunately ended just as an exercise in restructuring “water organisations,” and its contents get reduced to a mere “preface” rather than a serious analytical attempt towards a practical approach to institutional restructuring in the water sector.

This response to "Will the Impact of the 2009 Drought Be Different from 2002?" (EPW, 12 September 2009) says that many of the arguments in the article proposing groundwater as India's prime adaptive mechanism in times of drought are fl awed and lack scientifi c support and that surface irrigation systems make a remarkable contribution to drought proofi ng in India. As such, balanced development of surface water and groundwater is an urgent need.

It was recently pointed out by prime minister Manmohan Singh that "technology fatigue" is the prime reason for the deceleration in agricultural growth. Is this the only reason for the slowdown or can it be attributed to ineffective policies as well?

Though cotton has been cultivated predominantly in many parts of India, its productivity is one of the lowest in the world mainly due to attacks by pests/insects and low coverage of irrigation facility. Despite using pesticides, farmers are unable to control the bollworm, the key pest in cotton, that ravages up to 80 per cent of crop output. Bt cotton introduced in March 2002 for commercial cultivation in India is considered an important variety in protecting the crop from bollworm attack. However, not many credible studies are available focusing on the economic aspects of Bt cotton cultivation using properly designed sample survey data. In this paper, using data collected from 150 sample farmers from two districts in Maharashtra, an attempt has been made to study the economics of Bt cotton cultivation. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of Bt cotton on pesticide use, costs of cultivation, productivity and profit.