Articles by E Somanathan

Briefly summarising the existing literature on the causes and the characteristics of expected climate changes in India over the coming years, this paper discusses the ways in which these changes might affect the lives of the poor. Rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, and an increased frequency of floods and droughts are likely to have serious effects on rural populations in the absence of policies that actively help these households adjust to their changing geography. Survey data from villages affected by the Kosi flood of 2008 is used to speculate on how households and governments are likely to respond to unexpected weather events. The flood in Bihar rendered much of the land in the area uncultivable and resulted in large-scale unemployment. The state, while effective in providing immediate relief to flood victims, has done little to help the rural population adapt to their changed geography.

Data from a survey of groundwater sales between farmers in the upper Papagni watershed in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka suggests that raising the marginal price of electricity to somewhere near its true cost could substantially mitigate the problem of over-extraction of groundwater. This is a pilot study from a small area, so that results call for larger surveys to more reliably estimate water demand curves. Larger surveys would also enable us to examine additional issues like how efficient is water allocation in surface irrigation systems; do marginal water values vary much more between river basins than within river basins; if not, then the rationale for inter-basin transfers becomes less compelling.

This paper examines the literature on the evolution of local government in eight western European countries in an attempt to find clues to what makes for successful devolution of power to local governments. It appears likely that rising incomes led to a greater demand for local public goods and also helped the citizenry to articulate this demand in a politically effective way. History may have played an important role by delaying, though not halting, the devolution of power to the local level in states which inherited centralised bureaucracies. While some of the pattern of evolution seems explicable, much remains to be understood, in particular why centralised absolutist states evolved so differently in Scandinavia as compared to France, Spain, and Italy.