India is home to incredible diversity in plant and animal species and is ranked among the richest areas of biodiversity in the world. Unfortunately, much of this diversity is being eroded at an alarming rate, largely due to habitat destruction and invasion by alien species. In the hilly regions…

This policy note summarizes the findings of two literature reviews on the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change and the scope for community-based adaptation. It also outlines the framework used to guide these analyses and the other papers summarized in this series.

Assets are an important means of coping with adverse events in developing countries but the role of gendered ownership is not yet fully understood. This paper investigates changes in assets owned by the household head, his spouse, or jointly by both of them in response to shocks in rural…

This paper investigates whether this increase in the opportunity cost of agricultural labor incentivizes farm owners to adopt labor-saving agricultural technology. Using a regression discontinuity design and new Indian agricultural census data, this paper finds that NREGA causes a shift of…

This study was undertaken to assess farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for various climate-smart interventions in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The research outputs will be helpful in integrating farmers’ choices with government programs in the selected regions. The Indo-Gangetic Plain…

This policy note summarizes research that explored the perceptions of agricultural households in rural Bangladesh about climate change and their choices of coping mechanisms and adaptation strategies.

The Green Revolution bypassed the state in its first wave in the 1960s and 1970s. Subsequently, during a short interval in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the agricultural growth rate reached almost 3 percent per year, one of the highest in the country, though over a smaller base. Even this…

India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) employs about 50 million men and women every year and offers an important opportunity for in-vestigating the link between public works spending and the politi-cal allocation of funds. First of all, MGNREGS is derived…

Understanding the role that aspirations play in promoting growth requires an understanding of where aspirations come from and how they can be raised through policy. A recent IFPRI report, “Aspirations in Rural Pakistan: An Empirical Analysis,” uses the 2012 Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey…

The United Nations declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming. Although many forms of production were once family-based, agriculture is now one of the few that are still dominated by families. Because family farms are so prevalent, making them more productive could help combat…

This paper illustrates how the evolution of input/output policies in the food-grain sector in Bangladesh have been the result of interaction between various interest groups such as agricultural/rural and industrial/urban groups. The interaction between the diverse viewpoints and responsibilities…