Agricuhrol

Adminiwofion

9 (1982) 189-210

TECHNICAL INNOVATION AND PUBLIC POLICY: AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE KOSI REGION, BIHAR, INDIA
E. J. Institute
CLAY

of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton BNI 9RE; Sussex, Great Britain (Received: 22 October, 1980)

SUMMARY

Agricultural development at regional level emergesfrom a review of developments in the Kosi region of Bihar, India, as a dynamic adaptive process, taking dtjficult to anticipate directions. This is because part of the dynamic force has been provided by endogenous technical and institutional change from within the agricultural system, mostly the result of local informal innovative activity. A flexible administrative response to innovation has also contributed to these developments. A major problem in appraising developments in the Kosi region is to establish exactly what has happened and assessits impact. This provides a pointer to areas in which an enhanced administrative and research capacity is required. A flexible development administration and a strong adaptive agricultural research capability have much to learn from monitoring and exploiting the opportunities indicated by technical developments in the region.

EVERYMANS

OBJECTIVE:

INCREASING RURAL

THE

EFFECTIVENESS

OF PUBLIC

INVESTMENTS

IN

DEVELOPMENT

In recent years there has been a notable shift of focus in much rural development research from evaluation to seeking to understand and explain the sources of variation in returns to public investment. For example, studies of the return investments in agricultural research have shown that there are large variations in rates of return. This has led to a search for explanations of such variability in performance (Schuh and Tollini3). Similarly, in research and operational work on irrigation there is a shift of emphasis from evaluation to analysis of management problems of established systems with an implicit objective of raising social returns to public investment (Taylor and Wickhamj). A recent return visit to the Kosi region 189
Agricultural Administration 1982 Printed in Great Britain 0309-586X/82/0009-0189/$02,75 0 Applied Science Publishers Ltd, England,

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E. J. CLAY

of Bihar, India, by the author after a lengthy period of involvement with agricultural research and rural development problems in neighbouring Bangladesh provoked many questions and, it is hoped, provided some insights into the process of agricultural development at the regional level relevant to discussions of how to increase the effectiveness of public investment in agricultural development.

THE

KOSI

DEVELOPMENT

AREA*

The Kosi region (Fig. 1) comprises the three north-easterndistricts of the Indian state of Bihar. These have a combined area of 17 thousand square miles and a population of over eight million people. The region is well defined, being bounded by the Kosi and Ganges rivers and the borders with Nepal and the state of West Bengal. The Kosi has the highest flow and silt load of any Ganges tributary and has wreaked

INDIA

lnternahonol boundary -.-.State boundary --RI&~ / cwxt

Fig.

1.

The Kosi

river

system

and the Kosi its social

region,

Bihar,

India. Project

* A more detailed introduction to the Kosi region, is to be found in Biggs, Hoskinsz3 and Wood.34

structure

and the Kosi Development

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191

havoc in North Bihar for centuries. In the last two hundred years it has shifted its course sixty miles westwards across the present Kosi region in a series of disastrous floods. Apart from a small area of terai (Piedmont) soils, the region consists of meander floodplains of ridges, basins and old channels with more extensive tracts of higher sandy-silt soils. Given the monsoon pattern of rainfall and mean rainfall levels, which fall significantly from north-east to south-west, agricultural potential is determined under rainfed conditions by micro level variations in geo-hydrology. These variations can result in deep-water rice growing within short distances of semiarid upland crops of millets and mesta (a poor quality fibre crop). This topography, with its complex and changing drainage pattern, also presents considerable problems in the design and development of a large-scale gravity flow irrigation system. In contrast, there is almost unlimited potential for the exploitation of groundwater because of the combination of high water tables, rarely more than 3 m below the surface due to continuous recharge from the hills and the river system, and stone free alluvial sediments down to considerable depths (Roy and Sinha28). The social structure of the region reflects the complex and often recent pattern of settlement in reclaimed tracts. There are still many large estates, some exceeding one thousand hectares in size. These estates have traditionally been sharecropped by tenants-at-will. However, threats of land redistribution, the introduction of the tractor and economic opportunities offered by the Green Revolution, discussed below, have led to more direct cultivation with hired labour. Most landlords and large-scale farmers belong to higher caste groups. Backwardcastes, associated with cultivation and cattle herding, are represented in large numbers, and the former constitute a minority of genuine self-cultivating small peasant proprietors. Scheduled castes (untouchables) and scheduled tribal groups, who constitute 16 % of the population and are mostly landless, were brought in to reclaim land and to cultivate by those acquiring legal title. There is also a significant Muslim minority in spite of a considerable exodus of Muslims at the time of partition (after 1947). Immigration continues of backward and scheduled caste people who have been attracted by employment and tenancy opportunities. The typical settlement pattern is not that of nucleated villages but of hamlets occupied by a single caste-kinship group. Nearby hamlets are linked by economic and ritual transactions. For example, families from a labourers hamlet work directly as field labourers, household servants and/or sharecroppers for families in one or more nearby landowning communities. The village, as administratively defined for land revenue collection and census enumeration with boundaries established by the accidents of land settlement registration, often does not coincide with an economically interrelated set of hamlets. The Kosi region is perceived to be a backward area within one of the poorest and politically most unstable states in India. It has only a few small towns and little industry with 94 % of its population being rural (1971 census). However, alongside these problems, the region also has

E. J. CLAY

many of the characteristics of a frontier melting pot. With the coming of the Kosi Project it was recognised as having considerable agricultural development potential. A major multi-purpose river valley scheme, the Kosi Project, involving a barrage and embankments to control the Kosi river, the provision of canal irrigation for an estimated 1.4 million acres and a small hydroelectric station, was initiated in 1954. The canal system opened in 1964. This was followed in 1966 by the introduction of an Intensive Agricultural Areas Programme (IAAP) and a High Yielding Varieties Programme (HYVP), the institutional forms of the first phase of the Green Revolution. The IAAP replicated the original package programme model, pioneered with Ford Foundation support in the early 1960s (Browng). First, it involved the identification of a region of greater potential for intensified agricultural production, usually because of irrigation capacity already existing or being developed. Inside the Kosi region, twenty-one of fifty-nine Community Development Blocks, each with a population in 1971 of around 100,000 in 50 to 100 villages, were selected for inclusion in the IAAP. The basic extension staff of village workers (VLWs) of these blocks was doubled and some additional agricultural specialist posts were created at the block headquarters. The extension structure of the IAAPwas headed by a senior agricultural scientist as Special Deputy Director of Agriculture. The IAAP provided a base on which was built a sequence of other initiatives and special programmes, such as credit for lift irrigation and other forms of agricultural machinery, a land levelling project and a Small Farmers Development Agency. The initial priority in Kosi was the HYVP which involved planning and implementing the physical distribution and extension of high yielding variety (HYV) seed supplies and complementary inputs. The HYVs included the dwarf Mexican wheats and semi-dwarf rices and insignificant quantities of hybrid maize. A Kosi Area Development Commissioner (KADC), a high level administrator drawn from the elite generalist cadre of the Indian Administrative Service, was appointed to coordinate agricultural development activities with the work of the Kosi Irrigation Project. This had its own administrative structure as part of the state irrigation service and was responsible for the construction, maintenance and operation of the flood control and canal system. From 1972, with the creation of a new Kosi Division of the three districts, the functions of the KADC were merged with the many other responsibilities of the Divisional Commissioner, who was in charge of the whole civil administration of the region. The IAAP was extended, in 1970/71, to all 59 blocks in the region and was later superseded by other initiatives such as the Operations Research programme of special projects.

A GREEN

REVOLUTION

IN

QUESTION

The problematic character of the Green Revolution occurring in the backward rural districts of Purnea and Saharsa was first brought to the attention of a wider audience

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by a field trip report of the late Wolf Ladejinsky. 25 The technical breakthrough to significantly higher levels of land productivity was found to be largely confined to the expansion ofwheat cultivation, even in this eastern traditional rice and jute growing region. The first generation of semi-dwarf miracle rice, a phrase that has fortunately been dropped even from journalistic usage, was substituting for existing varieties to only a very limited extent, because of the need for precise water control and of susceptibility to pests. Man-made institutional inequalitieswere resulting in the beneficial effects of the Green Revolution accruing only to the relatively few, whilst also restricting the potential for agricultural growth. Ladejinskys analysis, drawing on qualitative material from both Kosi and the Punjab, has become part of the general wisdom about the character of the Green Revolution, amplified-but not essentially modified-in many widely read and more fully documented studies. (For example, those of Griffin,22 Dasguptai8 and, specifically on the Kosi region, Clay .I ) A decade later, it is intriguing to ask to what extent the analysis and prognoses of Ladejinsky have been confirmed by developments in the Kosi region, as well as to explore questions prompted by subsequent research. To what extent has there been a Green Revolution and has this been only a single discrete outward shift in the production possibility brought about when the transfer of technological knowledge enabled India to catch up on developments of biological and machine technology elsewhere?

TECHNICAL

CHANGE

IN

AGRICULTURE

If much of the detailed analysis of a decade ago has been confirmed by later developments, the implicit conceptual model of the process of technical change in peasant agriculture, on which so much of the work of that period was based, looks increasingly unsatisfactory. Technical change was perceived virtually as a top down process of making available new ideas, new inputs or improved variants of existing technology. These would disseminate or diffuse with the rates of flow depending on such factors as the organisation of production, larger farms adopting earlier and tenancy impeding change by reducing the returns to innovation for the actual cultivator. All these factors affect the process of technical innovation, but the theory is incomplete-missing out the linkages, feedbacks and, above all,the critical role of decentralised adaptation and innovation that has always been an essential part of the process of agricultural growth. This is much more than the process of trial and error-i.e. of farmers learning how to use a new input-a fact of which Ladejinsky, as a keen observer, was aware. The need for a fuller theory of the process of agricultural growth in which technical change is, to a considerable degree, endogenously determined is illustrated by developments in biological technology, irrigation and the institutionalisation of machine technologies in the Kosi region over the past decade.

E. J. CLAY

The Green Revolution in Kosi has been primarily a wheat revolution. Official statistics indicate that the area under wheat has increased from a little over one hundred thousand acres in 1965/66 to four hundred thousand acres in 1970/71 and to between five and six hundred thousand acres in 1977178. My own eye assessment of the 1978/79 crop in a rapid journey through the region was that the area under wheat had approximately doubled since 1970/71. A more precise estimation is impossible because of inconsistencies in the crop reports from different sources (Table 1). The area under wheat is now equivalent to a third of the acreage of rice, the
TABLE
AREA UNDER SOME MAJOR FIELD

1
(000 ACRES)

CROPS IN THE KOSI REGION

Year

196516 n 0.1 *1376 <0.1x n b 107

1970/l 64 1746 3.7% 425 373 113.9%;

197516 220 1743 12.6% 654 499 131.1% 190 285 66.7% na

197718 329 na na 593 na na 163 na na na

1. Rice Modern varieties Total Modern as per cent of total 2. Wheat Modern varieties Total Modern as per cent of total 3. Maize Modern varieties Total Modern as per cent of total 4. Jute

b 205 b 268

10 254 3.9% 270

Sources: a Estimates of area under modern (HYV) varieties by Agricultural Department Staff. b Estimates of total area from crop reports by revenue administration staff. na = not available.

traditional staple, whilst wheat production is half that of rice, because of higher yields. Most of the wheat area is accounted for by two highly successful second generation dwarf varieties, Sonalika and Kalyansona (Siete Cerros). This also means that wheat production and the local economy are more vulnerable to a biological disaster, if one or both these varieties were to suddenly prove susceptible to some unforeseen disease or pest, such as rusts, which recently devastated wheat in Pakistan. The 1971 census indicates that 47 % of wheat was irrigated, but if all of the estimated Rabi (winter season) irrigated area in 1976/77 or 1977/78 had been under wheat, this would have accounted for only 24% of the estimated wheat crop. Recognising that there is a substantial margin of error in crop or irrigation statistics, it can be concluded that at least half of the wheat crop is wholly rainfed. The wide

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adaptability of the dwarf wheats has made possible extensive planting under rainfed conditions, exploiting residual soil moisture and the occasional winter shower. This development was not anticipated a decade ago and provides the first example of successful experimentation with-and adaptation of-an exotic technology by local cultivators. A similar rapid expansion of rainfed wheat has occurred in West Bengal and Bangladesh where extension efforts also initially focused on those with assured water from lift irrigation (West Bengal Government,33 Clay14). The only reservation about rainfed HYV must be that production thereby continues to expand under conditions in which output remains vulnerable to inadequate or unusually distributed rainfall. The area under modern (HYV) varieties of rice apparently began to expand quite rapidly during the 1970s accounting for 13 % of total rice area in 1975/76 (Table 1). There are, however, reasons for considerable scepticism about these estimates. No technical breakthrough has occurred to make available more widely adaptable varieties for main Kharif (monsoon) season cultivation: the earlier semi-dwarf varieties, such as TNl, IR8, Padma and Jaya, are suited for irrigated summer cultivation but, due to the closure of the canal for annual repairs and desilting, irrigation in that season is mostly available from tubewells. Lift irrigation has not been widely used for rotations of wheat followed by summer rice, because of timing and the high rates of water losses from the sandy soils on which many tubewells are located. Evidence from elsewhere in the Indian sub-continent has also indicated gross over-reporting of the HYV area by lower level agricultural staff under pressure to fulfil targets that are difficult to verify (Chinnappa, BADC3). During research that covered many parts of the Kosi region in 1970/71, I saw little of the 64 thousand acres under HYV rice reported for that year. Instead, what I and others found was the relatively wider adoption of improved taller photo-sensitive Indica varieties such as BR 34. These varieties originate from earlier Indian research before the advent of the semi-dwarfs and have spread by seed exchange or sales in the local market. These developments are again paralleled in Bangladesh where Mahsuri (Pajam) an Indian-Japonica cross, and Nizersail, an improved Indica variety released in the 1940s have become two of the most popular main Khar$(Aman) varieties. Seed is diffused informally by exchange and market purchase. Official statistics also indicate an initial increase in area under Khauif(monsoon season) rice cultivation with the advent of canal irrigation in the mid-1960s. Further expansion of the irrigated area in the region during the following decade, combined with the considerable expansion of tubewell irrigation, appears to have had little further impact on the total area under rice cultivation, either through increased Kharijseason cultivation or multiple cropping. This could have been anticipated if the irrigation engineers and planners had taken actual land use and agricultural development potential into account in estimating irrigation development possibilities. The relatively high average rainfall already allowed rice cultivation as a broadcast, upland early monsoon (Bhadai) crop or as a transplanted main season

E. J. CLAY

(Aghani) crop, or even as a broadcast deep-water rice crop. Only the highest sandy land is too dry for even a poor crop of upland rice, but these tracts would remain largely outside the command of a gravity flow canal system. In the Khavzfseason the canal therefore provides only supplementary water to existing rice land and this would be critically important only in a drought year such as 1972. If evidence were available on the extent of additional waterlogging caused by the canal system, it might even emerge that the additional land brought under rice cultivation has, to some extent, been offset by continuous waterlogging of lower lying paddy land. Another innovation in cropping practice observed on the recent field trip is the spread of Rubi (winter) maize cultivation combined, as the crop reports confirm, with a substantial increase in total maize area and the use of improved varieties. Much of this Rabi season maize is cultivated in relatively tiny plots by cultivators who would fall within the officially designated classes of marginal and small farmers, with less than 2.5 acres and between 2.5 and 5 acres, respectively. Many are irrigating this cereal crop by hand pump-another innovation. They are typically of the traditional vegetable grower caste, producing maize for their own consumption. The introduction of winter maize, with higher water requirements and a lengthy growing period, but probably very high yields per day in the ground, poses interesting questions for both researchers and extension workers. Under what conditions has cultivator experimentation shown the introduction of irrigated Rabi maize into the cropping rotations to be preferred to dwarf wheat? If maize has a greater potential as a poor mans crop, does this indicate a need for a shift in research priorities towards maize for at least some agricultural research stations? The application of nitrogenous fertiliser on rainfed Rabi season mustard was noted at some sites-again a cultivator innovation that has been occurring spontaneously and widely in Bangladesh. More favourable recent relative prices of oil seeds compared with food grains have probably induced cultivators to experiment, finding that, even on residual moisture, the application of urea as a source of nitrogen can triple and quadruple yields with existing varieties. The widespread adaptive trial and error research by cultivators is only just beginning to be paralleled in formal agricultural research. North-east Bihar, in common with the rest of the north of the sub-continent, has been able to benefit from widely adapted varieties of wheat essentially developed elsewhere. (Kalyansona, under the name Mexipak, was the most successful variety in Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1960s and in the past five years Sonalika has been the most widely sown variety in Bangladesh. See Dalrympler7 for an account of the development of these varieties and the most up to date evidence on the worldwide diffusion of HYV wheat and rice.) In rice, even the most optimistic view reflected in official statistics indicates that the impact of the modern semi-dwarf varieties has been limited. The success of earlier genetic research embodied in varieties such as ADT-27, Mahsuri and BR34, is accounted for by their superiority over even earlier released or traditional varieties in a wide range of conditions at modest levels of input use-say, 40 kg/ha of N and P rather than the 80 to 120 kg/ha envisaged in many extension

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recommendations. The accidental way in which some varieties have been found to fit different ecological niches is perhaps explained by the limited amount of truly basic research that has been done on existing cropping systems, the performance and potential of traditional farmer-named varieties and land races and the impact of earlier varietal improvements. There are few farm management studies and hardly any agronomic studies of improved varieties and of the factors which explain the displacement of earlier varieties-such as improved yield, responsiveness to fertiliser, timing, grain quality, pest or disease resistance. Until extensive studies are undertaken in cultivators fields it will be impossible, for example, to evaluate the genetic improvements reported by research workers. (The problem of evaluating ongoing agricultural research without solid evidence on farm level performance is illustrated by a report on deep-water rice research in Bihar (Saran and Sahaiz9). The reported performance in trials of selections made on the station is not significantly higher than the actual farm level performance of many varieties in neighbouring Bangladesh (Clay et al. 5). Without similar farm field studies in Bihar, it is difficult to evaluate the reported research on varietal improvement.)

IRRIGATION

The most impressive economic development in the Kosi region over the past decade has been the spectacular expansion of lift irrigation, brought about by the local development of the bamboo tubewell: the number of tubewells has increased from less than three thousand in 1969/70 to almost sixty thousand in 1977/78 (Table 3). In sharp contrast, the Kosi canal system has yet to reach even 20/, of the now abandoned original target of 1.5 million acres to be irrigated annually. The canal project has also been beset with problems of siltation and waterlogging, which possibly only further massive investment might overcome, unless there is a further reduction in targetted irrigated area. These contrasting developments provide a classic case study of the combination of circumstances that, across the IndoGangetic plains, have induced those with the resources and accessto credit to invest in privately controlled lift irrigation rather than to rely on surface or even public tubewell systems for the supply of water. The evidence from crop reports and irrigation department statistics is hard to reconcile, but together indicates that the impact on agricultural production of the Kosi irrigation system, so far confined to the area under the command of the Kosi Eastern Main Canal, has been slight. During the initial phase of canal operation between 1965 and 1970 the reported area under main Kharif season irrigation reached almost 200 thousand acres, whilst the total area under rice was estimated to have expanded by almost 400 thousand acres. These estimates are difficult to reconcile. It is doubtful whether the earlier expansion of rice area can be attributed to the extension of canal irrigation, because water was largely made available to

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E. J. CLAY TABLE
AREA IRRIGATED BY KOSI CANAL

2
SYSTEM,

19641978 Hot

(000

ACRES)

Year

Kharif (monsoon season) 10 61 153 265 250 265 172 144 343 223 218 345 346 370

(winter

Rabi season)

weather season

Total (annual) 10 64 179 322 321 289 218 207 458 268 305 419 436 450

196415 196516 196617 196718 1968/9 1969/70 1970/71 197112 197213 197314 197415 197516 197617 197718

y
15 27 39 24 46 56 66 45 87 74 96 80

2 11 30 32 Fi.3) 49 a a a a a

Source: Kosi Command Area Development a Closed for repair and desilting operations. equal the total, due to rounding errors.

Agency, Saharsa. The sum of seasonal

estimates

may not

TABLE RABI
SEASON IRRIGATION

3
IN THE KOSI REGION,

BY SOURCE

1976177 Source Canal State tubewells Private tubewells Other* Total Area (000 acres) 43.2 3.1 95.5 22.9 165.7 % Total 26.1 1.9 58.2 13.8 100.0 Authority,

Source: Kosi Command Area Development (Quoted in Singh3r). Includes both metal and bamboo tubewells. * Includes lift irrigation by pump from open pumps and traditional methods such as swing

water, hand baskets.

existing rice lands. Nor is there evidence of substitution of rice for jute in this period (Table 1). Later, the apparent extension of supplementary irrigation and the spread of modern varieties would, in the absence of any counteracting factors depressing yields, have been expected to have resulted in higher production. Since 1971 the canal irrigated area in the main Kharif season is estimated by the irrigation administration to have doubled (Table 2), but rice area (Table 1) and yields have apparently stagnated. During the Rabi season, when irrigation is essential for even moderately high yields of wheat or maize (in excessof 2 tons/ha), the Irrigation Department estimates that only 80 thousand acres are irrigated by the canal whereas the Kosi Command Area Development Authority attributes a mere 40 thousand acres-26% of the

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seasonal total irrigation area-to canal irrigation. The canal has been closed since the drought year of 1972/73 during the summer (the season with the greatest potential for irrigated semi-dwarf rice cultivation), due to maintenance and desilting operations. In addition, an unknown area of lower lying land has been affected adversely by waterlogging due to the rising water tables. The actual collection of water rates has averaged less than 30 % of supposed current water use except in the unusual circumstances of the emergency when, in 1975/76, it reached 60 %. There is no way of knowing what combination of overestimation of irrigated area, actual non-payment for water used and underestimation of yields accounts for a physical and financial performance that is unimpressive, even without reference to the original inflated estimates of potentially irrigable areas. (As part of the collection in 1975/76 was accounted for by arrears, the 60 % provides no clue to actual irrigated area. As the basis of irrigation statistics is eye estimation by Irrigation Department staff, there is also scope for overestimation (Plant,26 p. 72).) Written and spoken contributions to a symposium on the Kosi Project in Patna, the state capital, in 1979 indicated that there have been deficiencies in the planning, management and organisation of the Kosi project-problems unfortunately common to most major irrigation projects. (The Proceedings of the seminar are available from Dr T. Prasad, Bihar State College of Engineering, Patna. A detailed study of the Kosi irrigation administration reported at the seminar (Pant26) indicated weaknesses and problems common to many other canal projects in the sub-continent (Bottrall).) For example, the original design and estimates of potentially irrigable area reflected crude and outdated assumptions about water duties and not detailed field investigations of cropsoil-water requirements. The target estimate of annual irrigated area-l.5 million acres-did not even take full account of high land out of command, existing waterlogged areas and land not in agricultural use. It was not anticipated that the heavy silt deposition resulting from large-scale flow of water through the system in the main Kharifseason would restrict summer irrigation. (In 1975 a Technical Review Committee subsequently reduced the potential annually irrigable area to just over 900 thousand acres-half of the original estimate-by merely taking account of those physical factors that limit the gross and net command area. An estimate of irrigation potential based on specific crop water requirements and the technical characteristics of the actual system has yet to be undertaken.) The system design also lacked a drainage component to prevent increased waterlogging. Technical weaknesses in design, operation and construction at system or micro level have been compounded by the managerial and institutional problems of the irrigation bureaucracy. It is ill equipped through lack of agricultural or management training to operate an irrigation system, whilst working within a structure of incentives that encourages a preoccupation with construction work and not system management (Pant 26). It is often assumed that the relationships between bureacracy and cultivators work to the advantage of the more influential members of the community, although the 1971 Agricultural Census (Singh31) and a study by Biggs and Burns4 suggest that

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E. J. CLAY

canal water is relatively equitably distributed in terms of holding size. The failure of large-scale farmers to monopolise the benefits of canal irrigation is sometimes explained in terms of their fear of implementation of land holding ceilings. These land holding ceiling maxima are halved for irrigated land and irrigation records could provide embarrassing evidence on ownership. However, many large-scale farmers are investing in tubewells, suggesting other reasons for their limited interest in canal irrigation. Many prefer to acquire irrigation systems under their own control rather than to depend on the canal. Many large-scale farmers also have sizeable and consolidated upland plots which are out of canal command, but ideally suited for irrigated winter crops, wheat and potatoes, that give the highest return to irrigation (Clay l). When Ladejinsky identified the major constraint on the exploitation of the abundant groundwater resources of the region as the capital cost of tubewells, then around Rs. 4000 to 6000 for a 4-in diameter well, local experimentation with a variety of cost-reducing innovations had already brought down the sunk cost of a tubewell to less than Rs. 200. The locally assembled bamboo tubewell, constructed from split bamboos, coconut coire, old cans and pitch, by village artisans, sunk by a simple labour-intensive jetting method and powered by a mobile diesel pump mounted on a bullock cart, presents a classic example of the successful adaptation of a technology to local environment and factor proportions. This development was also no chance occurrence, but the outcome of widespread experimentation in an area with lower cost materials and methods of sinking that finds many parallels in the adaptation of irrigation technology elsewhere (Clay13,16). As important, but less appreciated, have been the institutional innovation (the change in economic relationships that lowered still further the costs of tubewell irrigation) and the role of the development administration, alert to the possibilities of this innovation for accelerating the rate of investment and in broadening participation in the benefits of tubewell irrigation. Before the introduction of agricultural machines, such as the pumpset, tractor, huller and thresher, the major economic transactions between social classes distinguished by assets and ritual status were the supply of labour and animal draught services by the landless or small owner-cultivators and the land and credit made available in return by landlords and rich peasants (Biggs and Burns6). The purchase of indivisible equipment has been associated with the establishment of markets or novel forms of transaction in the services of these machines. Those with the financial capacity to invest-usually of relatively higher status-now sell these services to those unable to acquire their own equipment. The scale of the market in pumpset services is indicated by the changing ratio of pumpsets to tubewells after the appearance of the bamboo tubewell (Table 4). The growth of the market in machine service enabled many more cultivators to sink tubewells, relying on the hiring in of pumpsets. The sinking of bamboo wells on comparatively smaller plots than earlier metal cased wells has also been followed by the development of a market in water.

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INNOVATION TABLE

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IRRIGATION

EQUIPMENT

AND OTHER

AGRICULTURAL AREA

MACHINES

IN THE KOSI

1965166 1. Tubewells: State tubewells Private metal Private bamboo Total 2. Pumpsets: Diesel powered Electric powered Total (Ratio of private tubewells to pumpsets) 3. Tractors 4. Threshers Sources: 1965166, 1970171, Command Area Development na = not available.

1970/71

1972173

1977178 193 5211 50187 55591 22087 1148 23235 2.38 na na 1917/X3: Kosi

200 200 336 63 399 0.50 394 63 1972173: Agency.

3867 1438 5305 2693 435 3128 1.70 1034 260 Biggs and

354y 19500 23044 nas nas 6589 3.50 1446 400 Burns4;

The development administration has also played an important role in facilitating the spread of locally developed tubewell technology. The bamboo tubewell was first championed by the Special Deputy Director of Agriculture in Saharsa District, using the package administration extension staff to promote the innovation. This was initially in the face of considerable scepticism and opposition from engineers (with inflexible textbook notions of the appropriate technical specifications of tubewells) and from credit agencies committed to targets for self-financed investment in more costly metal tubewells. The intervention of the Kosi Area Development Commissioner was required in 1970/71 to adjust the fine print of centrally funded credit programmes to allow owners of bamboo wells to purchase pumpsets on credit, where loans had previously been restricted to investment in a metal cased well of approved specification and pumpset. In the drought year of 1972/73 the first Kosi Divisional Commissioner was responsible for making credit available on a large scale for bamboo tubewells to small farmers, thus extending the benefits of innovation to some degree outside the large farmer group that had been the first to exploit the new low-cost technique. The number of wells rose from fifteen hundred in mid-1971 to over nineteen thousand a year and a half later. This example of a flexible and positive response to local innovation is, to some extent, a reflection on the quality of the staff involved in the early years of the Kosi Area Development. It also underlines the importance of providing an administrative structure in which regional or project administrators are given the authority to modify the specifics of the component programmes in the light of local experience, whilst working towards the broader development objectives of the overall programme. This is, however, not necessarily an argument for administration by generalists, but is one for delegation of authority to a decentralised regional

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administration staffed by a cadre that is not personally committed to specific department projects. (An invidiousprofessional rivalry between groups such as the engineers, agriculturalists and generalists bedevils development administration in Bihar. This rivalry owes much to the direct recruitment of a separate elite generalist cadre, instead of drawing into the central administration professionals from any of the specialised groups at a middle level, on the basis of performance criteria. Irrigation and agriculture would not be such backward castes, attracting, to a considerable extent, the less successful students, if these professions offered some prospects of promotion into high administrative positions.) These developments have had little impact on the activities and perceptions about appropriate irrigation strategies of departments with established programmes and interests. At the 1979 Patna seminar there was minimal discussion of the implications of developments in groundwater irrigation. Many irrigation engineers simply responded to the poor performance of the Kosi project by stressing difficulties outside their control at the micro farmer end of the system. The engineers solution to the silt problem was another massive civil engineering project-a high dam at Varakh Chatra in Nepal-and soil conservation, also in the hills. Yet the willingness of cultivators to invest in dry season irrigation and the apparent limited importance of Khavifirrigation imply that there would be gains from reorganising the existing system. First, more water should be delivered in the dry season when it could give the highest return. Secondly, canal flow can contribute to managing water table recharge, complementing groundwater development. In the light of the success of the bamboo tubewell, the implementation of a small but costly programme for sinking large diameter public deep-tubewells in the Kosi region since 1971 is indefensible (Table 3). The high water tables (over most of the region, less than 3 m below the surface just before the monsoon rains) make it hard to understand the technical rationale for deep-tubewells unless these were sited only on exceptionally high tracts or on the less permeable terai soils in the north-east. This has not been the case: the wells have been shared between the three districts. The capital cost of two hundred deep-tubewells exceeds the cost of the total stock of over 50 thousand bamboo tubewells. The installed public tubewells, with a mean Rabi season irrigated area of 23 acres, account for only 2.3 % of the seasonal total (Table 4). In spite of a technical capacity to command about 75 acres a season, assuming ideal location and investment in an expensive system of lined channels, this poor performance is little different from the disappointing experience elsewhere that resulted in the de-emphasising of public tubewell development during Indias Fourth and Fifth Five Year Plans (Clayr3). The decision to proceed with public investment in deep-tubewells, allocating a small number of wells to each district-and thereby, incidentally, raising the investment costs of an already doubtful programme-+an perhaps best be explained in terms of the pressures to distribute public investment across the whole state. The siting of the one well which I had a chance to observe, on a 24-acre plot belonging to

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a former zamindari family, is also consistent with experience elsewhere: public investments whose sitings are open to influence are used for purposes of political patronage and private gain with resulting suboptimal location and performance. It would be unfortunate if the interests of (large) minor irrigation organisations requiring additional allocations to public sector tubewell programmes were to outweigh the strong economic case against excessive investment in a widely inappropriate technique. Except where geohydrologic conditions restrict the choice of technique to structures drawing upon deeper groundwater, private tubewell irrigation is likely to be both more efficient and less inegalitarian within the existing socio-economic structure.

THE

DISTRIBUTIONAL

IMPLICATIONS

OF TECHNICAL

CHANGE

Because the available studies on the distributional impact of technical changecanal irrigation (Prasad2), tubewells and tractors, (Clayr2, Biggs and Burns4)-as well as the agricultural census evidence, all date from the early 1970s it is only possible to make qualitative inferences about the implications of more recent developments. The lower cost of tubewell investment and the availability in selected blocks of credit from the Small Farmers Development Agency are reported to have allowed a wider group, including those with secure title to holdings in excess of 23 acres, to participate in the benefits of technical change. In the blocks close to Purnea District headquarters there is a visible increase in the productivity of small peasant proprietors of the vegetable grower castes. The continuing tension and bloody conflicts between sharecroppers and landowners in other parts of the region, where each harvest still forces the administration to bring in reinforcements of armed police, are a reminder that the landowning small farmer with a hectare of land is a special case. The 1971 Agricultural Census in fact showed 60% of cultivating households as holding less than 1 ha (Table 5). Evidence on the impact of technical change up to the early 1970s also unambiguously showed that the larger peasant
TABLE
DISTRIBUTION OF LANDHOLDING HOUSEHOLDS

5
LAND IN THE KOSI REGION

AND OWNED

1951-1971

Landholding size (acres) Less than 2.5-49 4.9-9.9 10.0-14~9 15.s29.9 3OG Total Source: Adapted from 2.5

Per cent 1951 68 20 > 9 2 1

of landholding
1961 34 31 24 9 7 3 100

households 1971 60

Per cent 1961 5

of land
1971 14

100 1951,

100 information by Biggs

100 and Burns.4

100

1961, 1971 Census

E. J. CLAY

proprietors were the major beneficiaries of technical change. Nor should the important role of local innovation and adaptation of technology obscure the fact that the pattern and consequences of innovation reflect the existing distribution of assets and income streams, capacity to pay and to gain access to resources. Some of the literature on the bamboo tubewell has emphasised the potential benefits of this innovation to the small cultivator (Dommen,r Appu) without offering quantitative evidence. The experimentation that lay behind this development was largely carried out by large landowners interested in reducing the cost of investment and extending tubewell irrigation on their fragmented holdings. Few cultivators with less than one hectare are likely to own a plot of the minimum size of about one acre needed to justify investment in a bamboo tubewell (Clay1 ). The available excess pumping capacity of larger landowners able to obtain credit or raise the cash to buy a pumpset also limits the number of those who can rely on hire services. The burden of proof lies upon those who would see a single cost-reducing innovation as likely to substantially broaden the group directly participating in tubewell irrigation. The spread of machine threshing perhaps illustrates, better than any other recent development, the problematic character of induced innovation, especially for the really poor-i.e. the landless agricultural labourer. Farm management studies indicated that a typical package of innovations increased output at 1970/7 1 prices by 104 %, expanded the employment of agricultural labour by 36 % and raised labour income by 46 %. The package of innovations included tubewell irrigation and partial mechanisation of land preparation, with the introduction of dwarf wheat as the major change in cropping rotation (Clay). But the estimate of the potential benefits to agricultural labour assumed the maintenance of share payments in kind at existing rates for harvesting and threshing by traditional methods which accounted for over 40 y0 of the additional payments to labour. However, most farmers with upwards of approximately 10 tons of wheat production, possible on an irrigated plot of 3 to 4 acres, were having serious problems in getting the crop threshed after harvest by traditional methods. There is a risk of crop loss from Kal Baisakhi thunder storms which can damage the standing crop and spoil the unthreshed grain. At threshing time there is also competing demand for bullocks to prepare land for the early Khavifjute and rice crops. The farmers with tractors or those relying on tractor hire who had reduced the number of their draught animals had also restricted their capacity to cope with the increased threshing problem by traditional methods. Returning to the Kosi area after eight years, I found that earlier apprehensions about the possibility of widespread mechanisation of threshing that would have such a serious impact on labour incomes were justified. Not only had machine threshing spread very quickly during the last five years, according to informants: but a custom threshing market had also developed for cultivators without their own threshers. These threshing machines are usually powered by the diesel engines of pumps or tractors and typically have a capacity to thresh about 2.5 maunds (almost 1 tonne)

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during an 8-h day, the operation requiring two labourers. Large landowners, I was informed, have machines for their own use, whilst many smaller farmers with excess threshing capacity have, as I saw, entered the custom service business, set up by the roadside. The custom service charge was reported as 1/14th by weight, substantially more than the cost of threshing with hired labour (1/16th and l/24) but, of course, also saving in the use of bullocks. It was not possible to quantify the extent of this new phenomenon which has occurred since 1973 when there were already 400 threshers in the region. However, the existence of over 22 thousand diesel-powered pumpsets, used primarily to irrigate Rabi wheat, already provides enough potential power to thresh the whole wheat crop. The widespread complementary investment in hulling equipment-again to be powered by diesel pump engines-noted earlier (Clay) also exploits spare machine power capacity and probably substitutes for hired female labour in rice processing and grinding wheat in the homes of the wealthier landowners. Quantification of the impact of these innovations on the rural poor must await further study, but previous farm management studies indicate that work equivalent to between 10 and 16 man-days per tonne, according to whether wheat is threshed with bullocks or manually, as well as up to 60 kg of labour income in kind per tonne of output, are lost through the mechanisation of threshing. The mechanisation of post-harvest operations epitomises the problematic character of technical change where the path of innovation reflects the economic interests of that minority of large farmers who constitute the potential market for agricultural machinery. It is hard not to be impressed by this example of robust rural capitalism in the making: innovation breaks a bottleneck and reduces risks of crop loss whilst exploiting spare machine capacity. The additional investment in a thresher of about Rs. 2500 could be recouped by a 20-acre farmer in 2 years from reduced labour costs without attempting to value the reduction in risk, saving on management costs and bullock requirements. (Assume 20 acres under rice at only 15 maunds per acre and 5 acres of wheat yielding 30 maunds per acre, and value output at Rs. 50 a maund. Manual labour costs in threshing would amont to Rs. 3 per maund (l/16) or over Rs. 2700 over two years.) The development of custom hire at prices that bring no saving in threshing costs suggests that the inducement to innovate was the technical bottleneck in threshing, not rising labour costs. As in the case of the earlier development of pumpset and tractor markets, farmers are responding to economic incentives by technical and institutional innovation. However, in some circumstances, the innovation is likely to be at the expense of the agricultural labourers, unless they can combine to defend their position.

THE

TENURIAL

QUESTION

AND

KOSI

KRANTI

Ladejinsky and others (Appu, Hoskinsz3 Franda) have seen the character of tenurial relations as the key to the agrarian problem in the Kosi region. Harvest-time

E. J. CLAY

violence is still commonplace between landlord and sharecroppers, especially from scheduled tribal communities, such as the Santals, who have more social cohesion. These problems are not the Green Revolution turning red but the continuation of troubled agrarian relationships that go back more than a century, institutionalised in the way parts of the region were settled by tribal and scheduled caste groups dominated by higher caste families who obtained legal titles to the land (Hoskins, Wood34). It is also true that sharecroppers without legal title cannot participate in the benefits of technical change and that the increased profitability of selfcultivation, as well as fears of implementation of land holding ceiling laws, may have led to evictions. Nevertheless, as long as there are widespread estates of hundredsand even thousands-of acres, the technology of cultivation and management problems make the continuation of sharecropping by verbal agreement likely, as rental agreements would quickly establish tenant occupancy rights. The Kosi Kranti (revolution) project represented a response to this perception of the agrarian problem: it argued give security of tenure to the sharecropper and enable him to begin to benefit from the possibilities of more intensive cultivation. The project envisaged the organisation of the sharecroppers to come forward to be recorded as tenants, thus achieving security of tenure. The programme was undertaken by a strengthened revenue administration under a specially deputed Additional Collector in the six notoriously troubled blocks of the old Dharmpur Pargana. (A Pargana was an administrative unit for raising land taxes. See Franda2 for a detailed account of the background and objectives of Kosi Kranti.) The obstacles to implementation are considerable. Attempts to register sharecroppers may lead to pre-emptive evictions as, to safeguard capital, landowners would accept the disruption and loss of current income. An administration sponsored drive to register sharecroppers would also have to face the enormous powers of obstruction which the law gives to the landlord. As previous moves to enfranchise tenants have demonstrated, delaying tactics in the courts can halt-and therefore effectively defeat-the move towards reform (Ladejinskyz5). An attempt to take away or restrict the recourse to law by landlords may provoke the use of extra-legal methods of defending their interestsand the ensuing violence could lead to the curtailing of reforming action. There can be little doubt, however, that this important pilot project will explore the limits of what is possible in terms of redistribution within the existing political system. Insofar as the project achieves some gains in education (awareness of the possibilities of group action, when at present there is scarcely a literate scheduled caste or Santa1 labourer or sharecropper in North Bihar), a basis is created for future group action and the struggle for rights. (Other uplift activities, such as the Musahri Project in Muzzafarpur District (Frandai), are a beginning in making the landless and former sharecroppers aware of the possibilities for group action, quite apart from the success or failure of many of the specific activities in the project.) An objection to the focus on the tenure problem implicit in Ladejinskys work and

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Kosi Kranti is that this takes little account of the even worse plight of the landless agricultural labourer. Whatever the limitation of existing data on land occupancy, it would seem that more than 30 y0 of households in the Kosi region have no other land than homesteads (Biggs and Burns4) and half of the population relies on agricultural labour as its major source of income (Table 6). Tenurial reform, combined with an
TABLE
COMPOSITION

6
ACCORDING TO

OF ECONOMICALLY ACTIVE POPULATION OCCUPATION IN THE KOSI REGION 1961-1971

1961 (OOas) Cultivators Agricultural labourers Others Total Source: Adapted 1.001 605 373 1979 from (%I 50.6 30.6 18.8 100.0 return (000S) 909 960 213 2082

1971 (%I 43.7 46.1 10.2 100.0

Per cent change -9.2 +58,7 - 42.9 +5.2

1971 Census

by Biggs

and Burns.4

emphasis on support for the small farmer, will extend the economic opportunities of many who are in the middle deciles of the population in terms of income and assets. There is, however, a real possibility that the rapidly growing numbers of the landless will be little benefited-and possibly made worse off-by the process of economic and social change.

CONCLUSIONS

The changes in the past decade in the Kosi region are perhaps slight when set against the expectations aroused by the Kosi project and the later selling of the Green Revolution. Nevertheless, since the inception of the Kosi project, public investment and the planned introduction of technical change, complemented by the local innovation and adaptation of new technology described in this paper, have resulted in substantial economic growth. The successful exploitation of some technical innovations has depended on the emergence of new market relationships. The brutal breaking of other institutional relationships is also occurring where this is in the economic interest of the innovator. Threshers and hullers and self cultivation (by mechanisation) imply a reduction in, or elimination of, activities critically important to the landless and former sharecroppers. The Kosi region is on the move and, taking a longer historical perspective, the pace of transformation has been considerable. To focus only on the substantial conservative elements that still exist within such a society and on the economic advantages for landlords of maintaining exploitative relationships, such as bonded

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E. J. CLAY

labour, consumption loans and sharecropping, is to underestimate the longer term significance of the dynamic and aggressive rural capitalism that is slowly transforming the region. Of course, where new technical possibilities for increasing incomes are embodied in an inappropriate technique, the initial outcome may appear as the rejection of change and a sticking to old ways. But, as the developments of the last decade in the Kosi region have shown, the more inventive and far sighted, with the entrepreneurial talents to exploit the opportunities implicit in the new technology, will adapt, experiment and innovate, and where they succeed others will quickly follow. As few of the largest landowners are showing themselves to be innovators and the 20th century equivalents of the Cokes (of Norfolk in Great Britain) of an earlier agricultural revolution, the implementation of ceiling legislation and tenure reform would probably both speed up the process of change and spread the benefits of agricultural growth more widely. However, as the case of machine threshing indicates, this may be a growth strategy that will benefit half the population little or at all and could be at their expense. The record on planned interventions to bring about this transformation is not only mixed, but is difficult to quantify because of unreliable statistics. The actual impact of the canal system, the full extent of the increase in production brought about by the spread of new varieties and crops, cannot be inferred with any certainty because of the inconsistencies and ambiguities of the data available. The distributional impact of the bamboo tubewell is still a matter for largely optimistic speculation. More recent developments in machine technology, such as the thresher, have not been documented. The changing land occupancy and tenurial situation or the extent of landlessness can only be inferred with caution from data of doubtful reliability. Was there really a massive increase in the concentration of land between 195 1 and 196 1 and a reversal of this trend over the next decade? (Table 5). The statistics may be more explicable in terms of factors that bias the returns, such as the fear of tenancy reform or implementation of ceiling legislation, than in terms of real changes. There was also an apparent large increase in the numbers of agricultural labourers between 1961 and 1971, whilst the labour force increased by a surprisingly small 5.2 / Again, whilst other evidence confirms the reality of considerable landlessness in the region, have there been such large changes as are suggested by the statistics? The existing evidence is only sufficient to indicate the direction of change and the quantification of the process of agricultural change and its economic and social repercussions must await future research. A major problem in appraising developments in the Kosi region is establishing exactly what has happened, in even the broadest terms, to technology and output, quite apart from determining the socio-economic impact of change. Additional resources urgently need to be invested, not merely in problem diagnosis but also in monitoring technical developments within the region. The role of monitoring in river basin planning is developed further by Biggs7 This needs to be combined with a

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flexible administrative capacity and a strong adaptive agricultural research capability to learn from-and to exploit-the opportunities indicated by the direction of developments, which have been set in motion by major interventions such as the installation of an irrigation system and the introduction of new agricultural technology.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

S. D. Biggs, B. H. Farmer, B. B. Schaffer, G. R. Wood and the Editors of this Journal have made helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, but the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author. A travel grant from the British Council made possible the visit to Bihar in 1979.

REFERENCES

1 APPU, P. S., Unequal benefits from Kosi development, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 (16 June, 1973). 2 APPU, P. S., The bamboo tubewell, a low cost device for exploiting ground water: Economic and Political Week/y, 8 (1973). 3 BADC (Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation), HYV Tusk Force Reports, 1974-75 and 1975-76, Dacca, 1976. 4 BIGGS, S. D. & BURNS, C., The changing rural economy of north eastern India, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 1973. (Typescript). 5 BEGS, S. D., The Kosi Area Development Project. In: The Kosi Symposium; The Rural Problem in North East Bihar: Analysis, Policy and Planning in the Kosi Area, (Joy, J. L. & Everett, E. (Eds)), 1976. 6. BIGGS, S. D. & BURNS, C. Transactions modes and the distribution of farm output. In The Kosi Symposium: The Rural Problem in North East Bihar: Analysis, Policy and Planning in the Kosi Area, (Jov. J. L. & Everett. E. (Eds). 1976. S. D., Monitoring for replanning purposes: The role of R and D in river basin development. I. BIG& Paper prepared for Seminar on River Basin Planning, May 1980. Centre for Development Studies, University College of Swansea; Wales, 1980. A., Common weaknesses in the planning, organisation and management of large 8. BOTTRALL, irrigation projects. Paper presented at the Pool-fact evaluation of a water resource project: A svmnosium devoted to the study of the performance of the Kosi Proiect, Bihar College of Bngmeering, Patna University, Patna, 22-25 January, 1979. 9. BROWN, D. D.. Agriculturaldevelopment in Indias districts, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass., 1971. 10. CHINNAPPA, B. N., Adoption of the new technology in the North Arrot District In: Green Revolution? Technology and change in rice growing areas ofTami1 Nadu andSri Lanka, (Farmer, B. H. (Ed.)). Macmillan. London. 1977. 11. CLAY, g.J., Innova&, inequality and rural planning: The economics of tubewell irrigation in the Kosi region, Bihar, India, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Sussex, Brighton, 1974. 12. CLAY, E. J., Equity and productivity effects of a package of technical innovations and changes in social institutions: Tubewells, tractors and high yielding varieties. Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics. Vol. 30(4) (1975), pp. 75-87. 13. CLAY, E. J. Choice of techniques: A case study of tubewell irrigation. In: The Kosi Symposium: The Rural Problem in North East Bihar: Analysis, Policy and Planning in the Kosi Area, Soy, J. L. & Everett, E. (Eds), 1976, 14. CLAY, E. J., Ten years ofdwarfwheat production in Bangladesh, Bangladesh Journal of Agricultural Economics, l(1) (1978).

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15. CLAY, E. J., CATLING, H. D. & HOBBS, P. R. Yields of deep-water rice in Bangladesh. International Rice Research Newsletter, 3(5) (1978) pp. 1 l-12. 16. CLAY, E. J., The economics of the bamboo tubewell, Ceres, 13(3) (1980) p.43-7. 17. DALRYMPLE, D. G., Development and spread of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in the less developed countries. Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 95, US Department of Agriculture Office of Cooperation and Development, Washington, 1978. 18. DASGUPTA, B., Agrarian change and the new technology in India, Report No. 77.2, UNRISD, Geneva, 1977. 19. DOMMEN, A. J., The bamboo tubewell: A note on an example of indigenous technology, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 33(3) (1975). 20. FRANDA, M., Agrarian reform in North Bihar: Operation Kosi Kranti, American Universities Field Staff Reports 1978, No. 6, Asia, 1978. 21. FRANDA, M., JPs Musahri Project, 1978, American Universities Field Staff Reports 1978/No. 8, Asia, 1978. 22. GRIFFIN, K., The political economy of agrarian change, Macmillan, London, 1974. 23. HOSKINS, M., Land-holding and development in the Kosi Area. In: The KosiSymposium: The Rural Problem in North East Bihar: Analysis, Policy and Planning in the Kosi Area. Joy, J. L. L Everett, E. (Eds). 1976. 24. joy,j, L. & EVERETT, E. (Eds), The Kosi Symposium: The Rural Problem in North East Bihar: Analysis, Policy and Planning in the Kosi Area, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. 25. LADEJINSKY, W., The Green Revolution in Bihar-The Kosi Area: A field trip, Economic and Political Weekly, 439) (27 September 1969). 26. PANT. N., Some aspects of irrigation administration. (A case study . of ANS Sinha the Kosi Project), _ Institute of SocialStudies, Pama, 1979. 27. PRASAD, P. H., Economic benefits of the Kosi Command Area, ANS Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, 1972. 28. Rev, A. K. & SINHA, S. Groundwater resources of Bihar with special reference to the problems of planning and development for irrigation purposes, Geological Survey of India, New Delhi, 1968. 29. SARAN. S. & SAHAI. V. N. Chenab 64-117. a oromisine deeu-water rice varietv for Bihar. India. International Rice Research Newsletter, 3(5) (i978). W I 30. SCHUH. G. E. & TOLLINI. H. Costs and benefits of agricultural research: The state of the art. Staff Working Paper No. 360, World Bank, Washington, 1979. 31. SINGH, R. P. Agricultural transformation in Kosi Region, North Bihar, India, Department of City and Regional Planning, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 1979 (Mimeographed), 1978. 32. TAYLOR, D. C. & WICKHAM, T. H. Irrigation policy and the management of irrigation systems in South East Asia, Agricultural Development Council, Inc. Bangkok, 1979. 33. WEST BENGAL GOVERNMENT, Wheat, Calcutta, Directorate of Agriculture, 1975. 34. WOOD, G. R., The legacy of the past-The agrarian structure. In: The Kosi Symposium: The Rural Problem in North East Bihar: Analysis, Policy and Planning in the Kosi Area. Joy, J. L. &Everett, E. (Eds), 1976.