Contemporary Issues in Sustainable Development

The Case of India

Tanika Chakraborty, Deep Mukherjee, Sarani Saha

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781032233543
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000330632
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Social Sciences

This book analyzes different perspectives around sustainable development, risk management and managing demand across various sectors in India. Diverse theories and analytical methods from various disciplines, as well as case studies, are brought together to present an in-depth study.

The book discusses the challenges of achieving sustainability, the role of quantitative research to assess current scenarios, and the role of policy making to bring improvements in the Indian context. It examines the socioeconomic ways of pursuing sustainable development in the areas of agriculture, climate change and energy; the environment and natural resources; health and society. It also analyzes important quantitative models for sustainability policy analysis and provides case studies to understand the practical implementations of the models.

This book will be a great reference manual that covers a whole gamut of analytical techniques that are useful for students, research scholars and practitioners of economics, environmental studies, development studies, sociology, South Asian studies and public policy, among others.

Part I
Agriculture

1 Risk and risk management in agriculture

Thiagu Ranganathan

Risk is like love: we all know what it is, but we don’t know how to define it.

– Joseph Stiglitz ¹

1.1Introduction

Risks that affect economic activities have been a key area of study in various disciplines of social science. Agriculture is an economic activity that is fraught with varied risks. The role of these risks in agricultural production and its impact on farmers’ welfare have been topics of key interest in academic and policy circles. This chapter provides an overview of various issues related to risk and risk management in agriculture, with examples from the Indian context. The prominence of risk is high in agriculture as compared to other economic activities for various reasons. First, agriculture is highly dependent on the vagaries of weather. The production cycle in agriculture is long and this means that agricultural production is vulnerable to weather-based vagaries during this long production cycle. On the marketing front, the interval between production decisions and marketing is typically higher, and the sale prices at the end of the production cycle might not be on the lines that are anticipated during the production. Sometimes, there is a greater difficulty in forming an expectation of prices and adjusting supply in agriculture than in other economic activities. Inputs like seeds, fertilizers and pesticides are also not amenable to storability and availability, and the prices of these inputs also fluctuate at crucial times. Given such prominence of risk and risk management in agriculture, it becomes imperative to discuss this while exploring aspects related to sustainable development.

The remaining chapter is structured as follows: Section 1.2 explores the nature and sources of risk in agriculture. Section 1.3 describes the models of decision-making under risk and measurement of farmers’ attitudes towards risks. Section 1.4 describes the implications of risk and farmers’ risk attitudes on the adoption of new technologies. Section 1.5 summarizes the typical formal and informal risk management strategies of farmers.

1.2Nature and source of risks in agriculture

Production in agriculture is dependent on various weather variables. Rainfall, humidity, temperature and other weather variables affect yields of crops. Extreme events like hailstorms could also have a significant impact on crop production (Hardaker et al., 2015). These weather variables could also destroy the existing/stored farm stock. Production is also affected by plant diseases, pests and insects. A lack of timely availability of inputs and high inpu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Agriculture
• Part II Energy and climate change
• Part III Environment and resources
• Part IV Health
• Part V Society and policy