Alka Singh

Emerging Trends in the Public and Private Investment in Agricultural Research in India

The paper analyzes trends in public and private R&D investment levels, research capacities and priorities in Indian agriculture. At the national level, the public investment in agricultural R&D has attained significant spurt in the middle of the 2000 decade, and its allocation was quite diversified to address the research needs of marginal production environments. The wet semi-arid region comprising agrarian and poverty stricken states of West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh still continue to under-invest in agricultural research and education. The private investment in agricultural R&D though has responded well to the country’s size of agricultural market and incentives; still there is a dearth of a strong R&D base in the private sector, especially in the small- and medium-sized firms. A leadership role is to be taken by the public sector to harness private sector’s potential and address market failure in R&D.

Institutional arrangements for watershed development programmes in Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, India: an explorative study

This study explored institutional arrangements with regard to government-sponsored watershed development programmes in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, India. The appraisal of structure and role of institutions at different levels revealed adequate representation of various social groups, but the associations among stakeholder institutions as well as various resource agencies were found to be weak. A glance at the component-wise expenditure pattern showed an unequal emphasis and funding support between land–water development and livelihood activities. Responses from beneficiary respondents revealed a strong adherence to socio-economic and political issues by non-governmental organizations as well as technical issues by government organizations during implementation of the watershed programmes.

Capitalizing the Potential of Private Sector in Strengthening Agri-Biotech R&D and Commercialization in India§

The paper has examined the emerging trends in growth and structure of agri-biotechnology product and innovation market in terms of institutional diversity, research orientation and capacities. It has also discussed industry perspective of incentives and constraints in commercialization of agri-biotech R&D. The study has revealed that though agri-biotech R&D industry has shown buoyancy in response to the increasing market-oriented production systems, still there is scope to utilize their potential for enhancing availability of quality seeds/planting materials/inputs, for the challenging agro-climatic conditions. Recognizing pervasive market failure and inertia in agri-biotech R&D industry, the study has advocated a leadership role taken by the public sector in addressing them, with the objective of establishing a fully functional and integrated R&D chain. This demands enhanced public investments and reorientation of public research agenda to generate not only unique public goods but also address research gaps, not much of private interests.

Technological Innovations, Investments, and Impact of Rice R&D in India

This chapter documents the dynamics of India’s agricultural RD productivity in this system has also received the most research attention from the public R&D system. However, it is now time for research attention to be focused on additional technological solutions to enable enhanced productivity in relatively unfavorable rice-based systems. In spite of the country’s improved agricultural research efforts in recent years, the sector is still underinvested. International and national funding investments are required in upstream research processes to provide advanced scientific tools and technology systems to enable scientists to investigate major biotic and abiotic challenges. The emergence of the private sector in rice R&D demands public policy initiatives be directed toward strengthening public–private partnerships, thus further augmenting research resources in the sector.