Economic and Social Upgrading in Agriculture Sector: A Case of South Asia

Abstract

Agriculture sector is central to economic development of South Asia in which more than forty percent people relied for their livelihoods. The paper adopted the parsimonious method proposed by Bernhardt and Milberg [1] to analyze the economic and social upgrading of the agriculture sector taking five countries of South Asia-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka during the period of 2003-2017. Findings revealed the discrepancy in social and economic upgrading of South Asia within the agriculture sector. However, the region experienced the overall upgrading of the agriculture sector. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were categorized into economic upgraders while Nepal fell under intermediate case. Likewise, Pakistan and Nepal were categorized into social upgraders and other countries were categorized into intermediate cases. Robustness test showed the exact same categorization for Pakistan only. Both symmetric and asymmetric methods yielded the same categorization of countries, but the method of Kaplinsky and Readman [2] led to a significantly different diagnosis except for Pakistan. From the view point of policy, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India should pursue policy actions to upgrade social aspects of agriculture sector too, while Nepal should mainly be concerned with agricultural production and exports. Pakistan as an upgrader in both social and economical aspects of agricultural sector should equally prioritize both aspects to maintain the balance.