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Economic Development in Palanpur, A North Indian Village

Concluded project in the India Observatory

The sixth and seventh rounds of study of Palanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India - led by Nicholas Stern - examine a perspective from seven decades of economic development in this north Indian village.

The village of Palanpur, Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh, India has been the subject of close study by economists since the late 1950s.

The Palanpur story helps inform the wider issues around growth and development in India across the last seven decades. It has the unique advantage of being an independent project with coverage across several decades. The issues which it raises and studies in detail of rural growth and poverty in relation to national growth are constant themes for other countries and the overall study of development. It provides a special opportunity to examine both how the growth and development of a country as a whole influences lives and livelihoods in one village and how forces and mechanisms thought to be at work in the economy as a whole might actually be present and important, is one example of a basic building block for the economy of the village.

The last seven decades cover extraordinary change in India including Zamindari abolition, the green revolution, rising education, changing economic, social and demographic structures, a transformation in communications, more rapid growth (particularly since the early 2000s), and a substantially altered governance landscape in which improvements in access to information and employment guarantee the aim to strengthen civic participation and accountability of public administrators. Understanding the relationship between overall growth and development and the rural economy and society is at the heart of policy discussion, particularly for poverty, in many or most developing countries, and the debate in India is particularly intense.

The seventh round of the study took place under the overall direction of Nicholas Stern. Ruth Kattumuriis a programme co-ordinator and a principal investigator. The study involves close collaboration with researchers in India with Himanshu, Fellow at the Centre for Sciences and Humanities (CSH) in New Delhi and British Academy Fellow, being the lead collaborator in India. Peter Lanjouw, Vrije University Amsterdam (formerly with the World Bank), is a principal investigator. Jean Dreze is among the advisors for this programme.

The first round of analyses are presented as nine analytical papers in India's Economic "Revolution": A Perspective from Six Decades of Economic Development in Palanpur, A North Indian Village. Utilising the data from the current phase of the study, and the historical data, six main research themes have been identified - Poverty, Inequality and Mobility; Income Diversification, Outside Jobs and Migration; Labour, Land and Agriculture; Health, Nutrition, Education and Demography; Gender; Politics, Institutions and Public Action.

This work is supported by a grant from the Department for International Development(DfID) to whom we are grateful.

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Brief History of Palanpur Studies

There have been seven detailed studies of Palanpur between 1957 and 2015, a period that has witnessed a profound transformation of the Indian economy and society, providing a unique opportunity to understand development in India through one village. Much is now known about the structure of Palanpur's economy: the operation of village institutions (such as land, labour and credit markets); the expanding importance - since the early 1970s - of links to the broader Indian economy; the evolution of incomes, poverty and inequality.

The first two studies, conducted during 1957-58 and 1962-63 by the Agricultural Economics Research Centre of the University of Delhi, were designed to throw light on the relevant policy questions at that time such as co-operative credit and seed supply.

The third round of the survey was conducted in 1974-75 by Christopher Bliss(Oxford University) and Nicholas Stern, which resulted in the publication of the first book on Palanpur, Palanpur: The economy of an Indian village. Subsequent surveys were conducted in 1983-84 and in 1993. The second book on Palanpur titled Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades,by Peter Lanjouwand Nicholas Stern, was published in 1998. The sixth round of data collection was led by Himanshuduring 2008-10. The most recent round of data collection was conducted during the first half of 2015.

There is a round of study for each decade since independence making it a unique longitudinal village level study in terms of the continuity and richness of data. Three of the surveys involved long residency in the village (more than eight months in each of 1974-75, 1983-84 and 2008-10) by the principal investigators themselves. There has been continuity of the researchers; Nicholas Stern has been involved with the study of this village since 1974. Thus, there is close acquaintance not only with the household data, but also with the individuals and households themselves, together with the economic, social and political institutions of the village. The time spent in developing in-depth knowledge of the village has allowed high data quality, and a rich narrative of the household histories spanning multiple generations, to be gathered. Data collected in Palanpur provides a unique opportunity to understand development in India through the perspective of one village.