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Sandip Mitra
Sandip Mitra is an Associate Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. His research areas include political economy, financial inclusion, microfinance, poverty, large-scale sample survey, agricultural markets and health economics. He has published in a number of refereed international journals.
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Middleman margins and market structure in West Bengal potato supply chains
Potato farmers in West Bengal sell to local middlemen because they lack direct access to wholesale markets. Middleman margins are large and there is negligible pass-through from wholesale to farm-gate prices. Farmers are uninformed about downstream wholesale and retail prices. This column finds that providing farmers with wholesale price information has negligible average effects on farm-gate sales and revenues, but increases pass-through from wholesale to farm-gate prices.
Financial inclusion for agricultural growth: An alternative approach
Traditional, group-based microcredit has had limited success at enabling farmers to expand the cultivation of risky but profitable cash crops. Evidence suggests that this is mainly because of its mechanisms for borrower selection and enforcement of repayment. This column proposes a new approach that leverages local intermediaries and aligns their incentives with farmer profits, to generate better outcomes for agricultural production and incomes.
Cash Transfer versus In-Kind Transfers: A conceptual framework and preliminary evidence
This project studied the performance of a conditional cash transfer scheme called Mukhyamantri Cycle Yojana, which provides money to purchase a bicycle to every student who is enrolled in standard nine of a government-run/-aided school. The findings show that although the bicycle programme has performed well in terms of coverage rate, and in curtailing direct forms of corruption, a large majority of the beneficiaries stated their preference in favour of receiving the benefits in kind instead of cash.
Political Clientelism and Government Accountability in West Bengal: Theory and Evidence
This project provide a theory of political clientelism, which explains sources and determinants of political clientelism, the relationship between clientelism and elite capture, and their respective consequences for allocation of public services, welfare and empirical measurement of government accountability in service delivery.
Land Acquisition for Business and Compensation of Displaced Farmers
This project addresses the question of how farmers displaced by acquisition of agricultural land for the purpose of industrialisation ought to be compensated. Prior to acquisition, the farmers are leasing in land from a landlord, either a private owner or a local government.
Potato Traders in West Bengal: A Survey of Contractual Relations and Market Structure
This study consists of a pilot survey of a random subset of phorias (middlemen) and larger traders who operate in 72 villages of West Medinipur and Hugli districts in West Bengal and their corresponding potato markets.
Middleman Margins, Credit and Information Constraints: Potato Markets in West Bengal, India
This project investigates how potato farmers in West Bengal sell their crop to local traders, the determinants of farm-gate prices and margins earned by traders. Specifically, it examines the role of asymmetric information regarding prices in neighbouring wholesale markets where local traders resell these potatoes.
Case study on successful land acquisitions in Bihar
This project addresses the question of compensation policies for rural communities that lose their traditional lands and livelihoods to make way for business (e.g., industry, commercial agriculture, urban development). The empirical study surveys households in affected areas as well as neighbouring non-affected areas in order to estimate the income losses for the former and assess the suitability of compensations offered by the government in relation to their losses.