Why East Asia overtook Latin America: Agrarian reform,industrialisation and development

Scholars and policy makers have long debated the causes of the spectacular economic success achieved by the East Asian newly industrialising countries ( NICs ) as well as the lessons that other developing countries can learn from this development experience. Latin America started to industrialise many decades before the East Asian NICs and yet was quickly overtaken by them in the last few decades. This article explores the agrarian roots that may explain the different development trajectory and performance of the East Asian NICs, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, and Latin America. The analysis focuses mainly on three interconnected factors in seeking to understand why the East Asian NICs outperformed Latin America: 1) state capacity and policy performance or 'statecraft'; 2) character of agrarian reform and its impact on equity and growth; 3) interactions between agriculture and industry in development strategies.     

Modules for modernisation: Colonial irrigation in India and the technological dimension of agrarian change

‘Water control’ is central to the political economy of water distribution in large‐scale irrigation in India. The changes in water distribution, irrigation technology, and agrarian development ‐through the introduction of the ‘block system’, technical devices called ‘modules’ and volumetric water pricing ‐ in the Nira Left Bank Canal (Bombay Presidency) in the period 1900–40, are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control: technical, managerial and socio‐political. This analysis points to the crucial, but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management. The debate on the ‘success’ of the block system continues to the present day, but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution. The article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations, and agricultural price regimes relevant to water management problems. It also argues that social scientists criticising present irrigation practices should position themselves within the engineering domain and try to ‘socialise’ the technical bias of the engineering establishment.     

All Paths Lead to Rain: Explaining why Watershed Development in India Does Not Alleviate the Experience of Water Scarcity

Abstract

Watershed development (WSD) projects in India are key to meeting a range of human development goals in rain-fed agrarian landscapes. However, outcomes are often observed to be partial and short-lived. We offer a novel perspective on the reasons. Our analysis shows that the dominant ‘water narratives’ of WSD policy and practice and the lived experience of local people contribute to a naturalisation of water scarcity, resulting in widespread views that WSD is primarily a means for increasing irrigation water supply. We show how this over-simplifies the complex problem of agricultural water use and perversely contributes to a continuing experience of water scarcity rather than its resolution.     

The Limits of Studies in Comparative Development of East Asia and Latin America: the case of land reform and agrarian policies

This paper critically examines the widespread belief that the early implementation of comprehensive land reforms prior to the industrialisation process, coupled with subsequent agrarian state policies channelling the intersectoral transfer of resources, has been a central determinant of East Asia's (mainly Taiwan's and South Korea's) outperformance of Latin America. We argue that, although those agrarian policies should certainly be part of any comparative investigation of the course of capitalist development in each of these two regions, they cannot explain their divergence. The paper contends that the respective scope and timing of agrarian policies has been an expression of the specific contradictions of the early industrialisation process in each region, rather than an autonomous determinant of the course of the latter. Based on insights derived from the Marxian critique of political economy, the paper shows that each region's respective agrarian policies have expressed the differential resolution of the opposition between the rate of profit (industrial capital) and ground-rent (landed property) in the import substituting industrialisation process. In so doing, the paper takes issue with the claim that timely land reforms in Taiwan and Korea have facilitated the subsequent successful turn to an export-oriented industrialisation strategy. An alternative account of the different developmental paths in East Asia and Latin America based on the unfolding of the Marxian ‘law of value’ on a world scale is also provided.     

Reflections on rural violence in Latin America

In recent decades rural violence has escalated in many Latin American countries. Although there is a growing body of literature on the topic, there exist as yet few comparative studies. While there are undoubtedly multiple and evolving causes of violence, this exploratory article focuses on the relationship between sociopolitical violence and agrarian structure and state policy. Particular attention is paid to the impact of agrarian reform and counter-reform experiences on rural conflicts and violence. A contrast is also drawn with countries which have not undergone any significant land reform. The cases discussed are Chile, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and several Central American countries (Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador). The complexity of rural violence is demonstrated and the case for further comparative studies is argued, so as to advance our knowledge on the causes, consequences and resolution of violence.     

The challenge of locating land-based climate change mitigation and adaptation politics within a social justice perspective: towards an idea of agrarian climate justice

Abstract

The global land rush and mainstream climate change narratives have broadened the ranks of state and social actors concerned about land issues, while strengthening those opposed to social justice-oriented land policies. This emerging configuration of social forces makes the need for deep social reforms through redistribution, recognition, restitution, regeneration and resistance – book-ended by the twin principles of ‘maximum land size’ (‘size ceiling’) and a ‘guaranteed minimum land access’ (‘size floor’) – both more compelling and urgent, and, at the same time, more difficult than ever before. The five deep social reforms of socially just land policy are necessarily intertwined. But the global land rush amidst deepening climate change calls attention to the linkages, especially between the pursuit of agrarian justice on the one hand and climate justice on the other. Here, the relationship is not without contradictions, and warrants increased attention as both unit of analysis and object of political action. Understanding and deepening agrarian justice imperatives in climate politics, and understanding and deepening climate justice imperatives in agrarian politics, is needed more than ever in the ongoing pursuit of alternatives.     

Rural migration and agrarian reform in Russia: a research note

This study focuses primarily on trends in rural-urban migration in Russia and the former Soviet Union. "New data suggest that a historic shift in migration patterns is underway in Russia, a change that may have profound long-term effects on agrarian reform and the nature of the Russian countryside. We begin with a short review of past rural migration trends and the rural demographic situation, in part using archival data for an oblast in central Russia. We will then present new data on rural migration. Finally, we assess the implications of rural migratory trends for agrarian reform in Russia."     

Issues in population pressure,land resettlement,and development: The case of Nepal

This analysis considers the question of whether resettlement schemes really relieve population pressure or help achieve a better regional balance between population and resource distribution in a manner consistent with Nepal's national objective of agricultural growth with social justice. The 1st part of the analysis discusses population pressure, followed by the conceptualization of ecodemographic relations and sociodemographic relations. The 2nd part of the analysis considers Nepal's agrarian economy along with a case-study examination of its contemporary resettlement project in Chitwan district. Finally, information is presented from a field survey conducted in Chitwan in 1979, which support the assertions that: the sociodemographic relations -- not population pressure as such -- are the primary roots of agrarian development problems in a country like Nepal; and resettlement schemes, when implemented without due consideration of the pervasive sociodemographic relations, are a deficient technical fix to imbalances in ecodemographic relations. Nepal provides a typical example of ecodemographic imbalances in the regional distribution of population and resources. Although the Hill and Mountain regions make up almost 60% of Nepal's total population, they share less than 30% of the total land under cultivation. The Tarai region, which is the northern extension of the Gangetic Plain in India, occupies over 70% of the cultivated land and supports only slightly over 40% of the population. As the case study illustrates, development strategies such as land resettlement are invariably formulated and implemented as a technical solution within the framework of ecodemographic relations. Little attention is directed to addressing the social dimension of these programs, i.e., the structual problems directly associated with the existing sociodemographic relations. Development, or land resettlement in the present case, is not simply a technical issue concerned with land reclamation and its management. It is also a social issue, because the sociodemographic relations determine significantly the direction (or directions) that resettlement programs take. When development policies make little effort to tackle the underlying forces of these relations, resettlement schemes result in the reconstitution of class divisions and disparity in the ownership of resources in newly resettled areas.     

Rwanda: an agrarian developmental state?

This article investigates Rwanda’s agricultural policies and institutions as a historically contextualised response to exceptionally adverse developmental circumstances. Using the agrarian question as an analytical point of reference, the article argues that it is extremely difficult to identify how increases in productivity and income in smallholder agriculture can be achieved without forceful state action and a sustained injection of resources. In light of this, entirely right-congruent governance is caught in a dilemma about the extent to which the government overrides peasants’ own agency and the extent to which the agrarian strategy produces a sustained and stable transformation in agriculture. Rather than making a defence or condemnation of the government’s strategy, the article argues against pre-emptive judgements of an agrarian strategy that can only discernibly attain success over a long period. What the article does do is insist that there is development potential in the current strategy, not simply a disaster in the making.     

The politics and bureaucratics of rural public works: Maharashtra's employment guaranteed scheme

Abstract

The Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme stands out among rural public works programmes in developing countries for its size, longevity, the generosity of its funding arrangements, and the political sophistication of its design. Its mission is highly ambitious: to supply employment flexibly and rapidly by opening and closing public works in response to local, unpredictable weather variations in a poor agrarian economy. We explore the political factors that account for changes in its performance over more than 30 years, and identify the political lessons for the design of similar programmes elsewhere.     

Agricultural Commercialisation and Food Security in Rural Economies: Malawian Experience

This paper contributes to the debate on the nutrition-related outcomes of cash crop adoption by using a model with essential heterogeneity and a semi-parametric estimation technique. The model explicitly frames non-separability between production and consumption decisions of farming households providing an original test of separability. The empirical application is run using Malawian data. The results imply rational anticipations and decision process of agrarian households relative to the crop portfolio choice, disparate strength of market barriers faced by the farmers, non-separability between production and consumption decisions and a weak transmission from agricultural incomes to higher food expenditures and better diet.     

Agrarian reform and structural change in Latin America: The Chilean case

Agrarian reform has been a central political issue in Chile during the last decade although less than 30 per cent of the country's population is agricultural. The Christian Democratic government elected in 1964 in tiated a land reform over rightist opposition with the pirmary objective of eliminating the traditional latifundia and granting land to some 100,000 peasant families. Only one‐fourth of this goal had been met in 1970 when a coalition of socialists, communists and other leftist parties elected socialist Salvador Allende president. The new government's programme promises a ‘transition to socialism’ including a far more profound and sweeping agrarian reform than the one begun by the previous administration. Realization of such an agrarian reform poses difficult political, social and economic problems. In this article we attempt to define the major issues and to analyse policy alternatives facing the new government.     

Phases of Irrigation Development in Asian Tropics: A Case Study of the Philippines and Sri Lanka

Using data for the Philippines and Sri Lanka during the last five decades, we examine three phases of agricultural development experienced by the rice sector in insular countries in tropical monsoon Asia; the first was based on land opening, the second on new irrigation construction and the third on increasing the efficiency of the existing irrigated land base. We show that these sequential shifts were induced by changes in the relative profitability of the three major means of land development for increasing food production. Rehabilitation, water management improvement and better maintenance, which are important means of irrigation development in the latest phase, are under-invested, despite their high rates of return.     

The origins of bureaucracy: an anthropological perspective

Many decades have passed since the first appearance of Max Weber's seminal study, in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft , of the origins and characteristics of bureaucracy. His analysis was, naturally, dependent on the existing knowledge of his day; but the growth and maturity of archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines have shed much new light on the historical and social contexts in which bureaucratic organizations emerged. This article, using Sumerian civilization as a case in point, summarizes much of what we now know about the conditions under which bureaucracy first originated and flourished. In so doing, it identifies several major human developmental and social transformations—the hominid revolution, the agrarian revolution, and the urban revolution—which played vital roles in the evolution and expansion of the bureaucratic form of organization.     

Land consolidation as a factor for rural development in Moldova

This article draws on data from several recent surveys in Moldova to examine the question of land consolidation within the process of agrarian reform. It suggests that larger individually owned farms produce higher family incomes than smaller ones and thus farm augmentation makes a positive contribution to the well being of the rural population. Also, for farms of a given size, productivity increases as the number of parcels decreases. The article then proceeds to discuss the actual use of various market mechanisms for land consolidation, including leasing as well as buying and selling of land. According to various surveys, farms with leased land are in fact larger than farms that rely on owned land only. The article argues that land consolidation leads to better economic performance, while land leasing is actually used as a market mechanism for consolidation, which benefits both lessees, through increased farm incomes, and lessors, through income from lease payments for their land.     

The World Bank and India's irrigation reform

The decisions to be taken on canal irrigation in India during the next five years will have repercussions well into the next century, and the World Bank's role in those decisions will be substantial. Yet the Bank's approach to improving existing canal systems and designing new ones fails to match the components of the approach with their environments. This paper suggests that in a wide range of social and physical environments the Bank's proposals are likely to give little net benefit compared with alternatives. An alternative way of thinking about irrigation improvement programmes would emphasise operational procedures and the information ‘system’.     

Surviving in Rondônia: The dynamics of colonist farming strategies in Brazil’s Northwest frontier

The modernization of Brazilian agriculture beginning in the mid-1960s led to the massive out-migration of family farmers from Brazil’s traditional “farm-belt” in the subtropical South. The tropical forestlands of the Northwest frontier (Rondônia) were opened through a government program, POLONOROESTE, to absorb this displaced agrarian population. The results of this land settlement program have been disappointing. Agricultural production in Rondônia, emphasizing low-yield annual cropping and casual cattle ranching, has been accompanied by high rates of deforestation. Colonists migrating to Brazil’s Northwest frontier confront numerous obstacles to establishing and maintaining a viable farm. This article explores how colonists adapt to the changing factors of farm production. These factors occur at three levels: environmental, institutional/structural, and household level. Based on colonist household surveys, three principal and overlapping farming strategies were observed and their financial performance evaluated: annual cropping-only, coffee production, and cattle ranching. Three case studies are presented that illustrate how these strategies change over the short-term in ways that tend to favor temporary land uses.     

Aspects of local government and politics in china: 1955–58

This study, based on work in six villages, seeks insights into the likely effect of the introduction of prospective land‐, water‐, and crop‐management technologies, being researched at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi‐Arid Tropics, on the existing village labour‐use patterns in one major relevant region: peninsular India. Explicit attention is given to the similarities and differences between small and large farms and their relevance to the adoption of the prospective new technologies.

Regional variation in labour utilisation reveals a tremendous employment‐creating potential in the existing tank and well irrigation systems in the Alfisols of peninsular India. The prospective technologies should increase employment, compared with existing technologies, by at least 100 per cent in the Alfisols and by over 300per cent in the deep Vertisols— but with some increase in the seasonal variability of labour demand. Given the existing availability of labour, there will be, with the improved watershed technologies, major farm labour bottlenecks. These should eventually generate increased wage rates and employment potentials. However, even temporary adverse effects on the timelessness of operations could be critical to the success of a double‐cropping and/or intercropping technology aiming at greatly increased yields. This would create demands for selective mechanisation, for example, of threshing.     

Making Land Rights Accessible: Social Movements and Political-Legal Innovation in the Rural Philippines

In recent years, rule of law and legal reform has grown to be a major concern of national governments, international financial institutions, development agencies and donor organisations. Part of this concern has focused on expanding access to justice for the poor. However, little effort has gone into understanding the role of justice sector institutions in shaping the opportunities and limits of redistributive justice. Little attention has been paid to the actual workings of obstacles entrenched within the justice sector to land reform, for example. Instead, pro-market scholars cite difficult legal problems as a reason to turn away from state-led land reform and toward market-oriented land policies. Yet as this paper shows, a closer look at the details of dynamics around land reform in the Philippines suggests that political-legal problems associated with implementation of the agrarian reform law can be overcome under certain conditions. It is argued that for rural poor claimants it is important to have access to a support structure for political-legal mobilisation, particularly an alternative ‘rights-advocacy’ outreach network, and also to adopt an integrated political-legal strategy. An integrated political-legal strategy is one that is capable of activating state agrarian reform law, exploiting independent state actors' pro-reform initiatives, and resisting the legal and extra-legal manoeuvres of anti-reform elites. However, such a strategy appears to have limits as well.     

Women's labour force participation and child care in Romania

This article examines market-led agrarian reform (MLAR) and its variants in the form of voluntary land transfer schemes under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines. Analysis of MLAR variants in the Philippines offers a preview of what is likely to happen when the MLAR model currently being pushed by the World Bank is implemented in the real world: Not only do MLAR and MLAR-like schemes fail to promote redistributive reform, they also undermine potentially redistributive state-led land reform policies.