environmental degradation, agriculture in South Asia has the important and difficult task of creating the pre-conditions for overall economic development. It has to increase food production and reduce poverty and malnutrition.
2) Agricultural Growth
Food situations in South Asia has shown some improvements after the mid-seventies, in contrast to the stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa (Chart 1). The 'green revolution' which used to apply only to wheat, started to effect rice as shown in Table 3. The benefits of the technological innovation were felt in those most poverty stricken areas with the densest populations in eastern India and Bangladesh.
Irrigation is famous for the leading input for 'green revolution', and in South Asia it is impossible to talk about irrigation without 'private tubewells'. In Punjab, an advanced agricultural area, private tubewells were used to supplement water in government canal systems. They also made a great contribution towards popularizing the 'green revolution' technology in rice sector in eastern India. South Asian ecological conditions required a large scale canal irrigation networks compared with East Asia, which resulted in intolerable inefficiency and corruption (2) Private tubewells supported their defective system, and were especially indispensable for growing rice which requires much water.
Private tubewells had mainly been installed by rich farmers. A 'water market' where groundwater was sold to poor farmers nearby had been developed in areas with small and fragmented fields such as exists in eastern India and Bangladesh. The 'water market' enabled poor farmers who couldn't invest in tubewells to adopt new rice technology.
However there were some problems. According to my research in Bangladesh, the water charge is about 33 40% of the gross revenue of crop production, and the internal rate of return for investment in tubewells is approximately 70% annually (3). It can't be said 'exorbitant profit' because it is more or less the same level as that of the other investment opportunities in the
