A comparative analysis of Bangladesh and West Bengal
Wednesday 12 May | 10:00 am-12:00 pm (IST)
West Bengal in India and neighbouring Bangladesh share international land borders, transboundary waters with similar agro ecology, language and culture, but they have different policies and institutions. These similarities and differences have led to many studies comparing agrarian change and transition in the two places in the context of climate change and beyond. The higher rate of agricultural growth in West Bengal compared to Bangladesh till the end of the 1980s has been attributed to land reforms undertaken in West Bengal. However, these comparative studies rarely go beyond the mid-1990s. Since then, Bangladesh’s agricultural growth rate has surged ahead, while that of West Bengal has stagnated.
Building on recent work, this webinar will aim to compare and contrast the trends in agricultural growth and groundwater irrigation in West Bengal and Bangladesh since the 1990s and identify the role of policies and institutions that supported these transitions.
The webinar will be a 2-hour online event open to the general public and will involve experts from Bangladesh, West Bengal, and outside the region for a comprehensive understanding.
Once registered, participants will receive the link to join the online webinar.
Introduction by Dr. Robyn Johnston, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
Presentation by Dr. Aditi Mukherji, International Water Management Institute (IWMI): Agrarian change and role of groundwater: A comparative analysis of Bangladesh and West Bengal.
Panel Discussion with:
Mr. Arnaud Cauchois, Asian Development Bank (ADB),
Professor Koichi Fujita, Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University,
Dr. Anindita Sarkar, University of Delhi,
Professor M.A. Sattar Mandal, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU),
Dr. Tushaar Shah, International Water Management Institute (IWMI),
Audience questions and answers,
Concluding remarks by Dr. Aditi Mukherji, International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
The session will be moderated by Dr. Marie-Charlotte Buisson, International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
Speaker Profiles
Dr. Robyn Johnston is the Research Program Manager for Water at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). Before joining ACIAR in 2017, she was a Principal Researcher with the International Water Management Institute, including three years as IWMI Representative in Myanmar. She has previously worked with the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and the Mekong River Commission; as Environment Advisor for AusAID; and with the Bureau of Rural Sciences and Geoscience Australia, working on science and policy of land and water management. She holds a BSc (Honours) from Australian National University; MSc (Geochemistry) from University of Leeds; and a PhD from the University of New England.
Mr. Arnaud Cauchois is a Principal Water Resources Specialist with the South Asia Regional Department of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and is currently based in India from where he also works on Nepal and Bangladesh water resources projects. He is a French citizen with over 25 years of experience in researching, planning, designing and implementing water resources projects in South Asia, Central Asia, South America and Africa. Prior to joining ADB, Mr. Cauchois worked for international NGOs and for the European Commission as a water resource expert. His work on irrigation focuses on modernization through the introduction of technical and institutional innovations to improve water productivity and sustainability of large-scale irrigation systems.
Dr. Tushaar Shah is an economist and public policy specialist and an Emeritus Scientist of the IWMI, Colombo and Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. Over the past 35 years, Shah’s main research interests have been in two fields: farmer organizations and water institutions and policies. In both these fields, he has published extensively, and his writings have helped shape national debates and public policies, including grid connected solar irrigation policies under India’s KUSUM scheme.
M.A. Sattar Mandal is an emeritus Professor at the Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU). A renowned academic leader, Professor Mandal has been involved in agricultural economics teaching, research and policy planning since 1973. He was a vice-chancellor of BAU and a member of the Agriculture and General Economics Division of the Bangladesh Planning Commission. Professor Mandal managed many internationally funded collaborative research projects. He advises FAO, CIMMYT, World Fish, the International Finance Corporation, the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture, and various national agricultural research system (NARS) institutes. He has a PhD from London and has further completed postdoctoral studies at Oxford, and holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from BAU.
Dr Aditi Mukherji is a Principal Researcher at IWMI. She works on climate change adaptation and water-energy-food nexus. She has published over 60 peer reviewed research papers. In 2012, she was awarded the Inaugural Norman Borlaug Field Award, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation and given by the World Food Prize Foundation, USA. She is currently a coordinating lead author of water chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment.
Koichi Fujita is a Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University since 2006. He specialises in agricultural economics and rural socio-economic research in contemporary South and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on the issues such as land tenure, irrigation and water management, labor and employment, rural administration and organisations, and rural finance. Since 2015, he has been acting as the Convener of the National Institutes for Humanities project on “South Asian Area Studies” which is a collaborative research project based on a network of six centers in Japan. He also edited a special issue, “Socio-Economic Dynamics in a Tank-Irrigated Rural Area in Contemporary Tamil Nadu, India” in Southeast Asian Studies, Vol.49, No.1, June 2011.
Dr. Anindita Sarkar is an Associate Professor for Geography at Miranda House, University of Delhi, India, since 2005. She has been an active researcher on agricultural sustainability, natural resource management, water management, groundwater markets, rural and urban livelihoods and water-energy-food nexus. She has completed several projects funded by government and international organizations and has numerous publications in refereed journals and as books. Dr. Sarkar specialized in Agriculture and Regional Development in her Masters and holds a PhD and MPhil degrees focusing on groundwater markets and agricultural development.
Dr. Marie-Charlotte Buisson is a Researcher at IWMI, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She conducts rigorous research in Development and Agricultural Economics at the nexus of water, land and food. She has an expertise in the management of natural resources, in the role of policy instruments and technologies and their relations with human behavior, poverty alleviation, food security, and environmental sustainability. Her work is anchored on more than ten years of extensive field research in Africa, South East Asia, and Central Asia. She has a PhD from the CERDI in France in 2012.
