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Abstract
Although the successes achieved by the adoption of new seed and fertilizer
technology were impressive, especially in regions endowed with public sources of
irrigation, it is often feared--on the basis of field observations and evaluation
studies--that it has led to a widening of interfarm and interregional inequalities.
However, the extent to which the institutional environment of a given region is
responsible for such a development is not adequately appreciated in most of the
evaluation studies of the Green Revolution.
The basic hypothesis to be examined in this paper is: where the institutional
framework (structure of landholdings, credit, and marketing institutions) is more
favourable, small and large farms realize significant productivity gains from
adopting new seed and fertilizer technology. In regions where such a favourable
institutional environment does not prevail, large farms realized proportionately
more productivity gains than small farms. A confirmation of this hypothesis
would imply that the interfarm inequity in productivity gains (widely discussed
in the literature on the Green Revolution) is not as important in the
institutionally well-endowed regions as in the poorly endowed regions.
The above hypothesis will be tested by contrasting the recent experience of
two wheat growing regions--western Uttar Pradesh, which is geographically close
to the northwestern plains (the scene of the Green Revolution), and the
predominantly rainfed eastern Uttar Pradesh, which is located on the IndoGangetic
plains in eastern India.