The Political Economy of Agricultural Policy Reform in India

200 CHAPTER 13

of subsidies would automatically lead to more public investment that serves the farmers. Therefore, it would be useful to think about the agricultural policy reform as a social pact, quantify the resources that would be saved by reforming agricultural policies, and negotiate a plan that spells out how these resources would be spent for the benefit of the rural poor. In negotiating such a pact, policymakers could open more formal channels for involving farmers’ organizations than have been used in the past, such as public hearings in state legislative assemblies. As a basis for negotiation, it might well be necessary to package fertilizer and electricity reform measures with other agricultural or rural development policies (see the section “Strong Political Leadership”). For credibility, such a pact would need to be made part of the budget process. Overcoming a lack of trust is essential to the success of negotiated approaches. The interviewed farmers expressed little confidence that politi- cians and the public administration are truly interested in solving their prob- lems. As one representative of a farmers’ organization pointed out: “We do not look to anyone to solve our problems. . . . [Politicians] are just worried about their vote banks.”1 With regard to the problem of low electricity qual- ity, he said, farmers “have to leave it to God, as no government official is bothered about it.” The sequencing of reforms can play an important role in building trust (see the section “Strong Political Leadership”). If the govern- ment were able to take credible steps first, such as substantially improving the quality of the electricity supply, the feasibility of negotiated approaches would certainly increase. It would also be useful to provide easily accessible, research- based information on the costs and benefits of different policies and packages. As further detailed in the section “Use of Research-Based Knowledge to Promote Policy-Oriented Learning across Discourse Coalitions,” special efforts are needed to make such knowledge credible to members of both discourse coalitions.

Deliberative Democracy

Whereas strategic bargaining assumes that people act only in their own inter- est and that preferences are fixed, an alternative model, deliberation, can be defined as “an approach to decisionmaking in which citizens consider rel- evant facts from multiple points of view, converse with one another to think critically about options before them and enlarge their perspectives, opinions, and understandings” (Deliberative Democracy Consortium 2006). The concept of deliberation rejects the assumption that people only act strategically to pursue their own interests. However, as Fung and Wright (2001, 19) point out: “The ideal does not require participants to be altruistic or to converge upon a consensus of value and strategy, or perspective. Real-world deliberations are often characterized by heated conflict, winners, and losers. The important

1 Interview with representative of a farmers’ organization, Lehragagga, April 2, 2006.

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