Convergence and clusters in Indian agriculture

Abstract

Spatial variation has been a pertinent feature of Indian agriculture in all its dimensions the levels and growth of input usage, output, income, productivity, technology, agricultural infrastructure etc. Spatial variation has been one of the developmental concerns of academic researchers and policy makers. Several well-known studies on this issue exist which show that not only has there been wide disparity in terms of level and growth in agricultural performance, the factors determining agricultural performance in different parts of India has also been spatially different (Bhalla and Singh (1997, 2001, 2009), Chand and Chauhan (1999), Joshi, et al. (2006), Chand and Parappurathu (2012), Birthal et al. (2013)). newlineExisting studies have explored spatial variation through the lens of convergence and cluster formation . Several studies (Barro and Sala-I-Martin (1992), Mankiw et al. (1990) among many others) have drawn from Solow growth model and explored convergence across regions. The general idea in this approach is to examine if regional disparities are widening (i.e., diverging) or narrowing (i.e., converging). Two concepts often used in the literature to study spatial convergence are sigma and beta convergence. newline