The Political Economy of Agricultural Policy Reform in India

POLITICS OF ELECTRICITY SUPPLY TO AGRICULTURE 143

and are summarized in Table 10.2. As indicated in Chapter 3, specific terms or phrases are often used as a metaphor for an entire story line. Those words or phrases are marked in italics in Table 10.2. In interpreting the table, one has to keep in mind that the positions represent “ideal types,” as explained in “The Role of Ideas” in Chapter 6. Individuals may hold positions that fall in between these ideal types. One also needs to consider that political parties (other than the communist parties) often adopt different discourse strategies before and after elections (see Chapter 9).

The core beliefs about the role of the state and the market identified in the study on fertilizer supply appear equally relevant to the politics of elec- tricity supply to agriculture. They are summarized at the beginning of Table 10.2. The specific beliefs reported here were triggered by questions referring to the agricultural situation in general, electricity subsidies to agriculture, the energy-groundwater nexus and the related groundwater–surface irrigation water nexus, and power-sector reforms.

The Agricultural Situation and the Role of Subsidies As with fertilizer subsidies, the two discourse coalitions differed in their interpretations of the agricultural situation in general and their framing of the major problems. Although both discourses are concerned with rural pov- erty, the market-oriented paradigm attributes it mainly to slow agricultural growth rates. The GoI’s 10th Five-Year Plan, for example, emphasizes the decelerated agricultural growth rates as a disturbing trend and continues to criticize policies of the states that have tried to increase production by subsi- dies rather than by public investments (GoI 2002, 514–515). Likewise, a flagship publication on agriculture by the World Bank (2004c, xiii) begins: “Fostering rapid and sustained agricultural and rural growth and development remain the key priorities of the Government of India.” Like the report of the Planning Commission, this report contrasts subsidies with investments: “Bold action from policy-makers will be required to move away from the existing subsidy-based regime and instead invest in building a solid foundation for a highly productive, internationally competitive, diversified agricultural sector” (World Bank 2004c, vii). The argument that subsidies stifle public investments, and hence con- tribute to slow growth, is central to the story line of the market-oriented dis- course and is found in numerous publications that can be attributed to this discourse (see, for example, Gulati and Narayanan 2003; World Bank 2003b). In the welfare-state-oriented story line, the major problem is described as an agrarian crisis, and farmers’ suicides are seen as its major indication. In this story line, the crisis is attributed to unfavorable relations between input and output prices, which lead to indebtedness, and subsidies are considered as a legitimate and necessary instrument of relief. As a representative of a

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