Rajkhowa, P and Chakrabarti, S. (2024).Temperature and children's dietary diversity: Evidence from India. Food Policy. (Link)
Rajkhowa, P. (2024). From subsistence to market-oriented farming: The role of groundwater irrigation in smallholder agriculture in eastern India. Food Security.(Link)
Rajkhowa,P., and Baumüller, H. (2024). Assessing the potential of ICTs to increase land and labor productivity in agriculture: Global and regional perspectives. Journal of Agricultural Economics.(Link)
Rajkhowa,P., and Kornher, L. (2023). Effects of electronic markets on prices, spikes in prices, and price dispersion: A case study of the tea market in India. Agribusiness. (Link)
Rajkhowa, P., and Qaim, M. (2022). Mobile phones, women’s physical mobility, and contraceptive use in India. Social Science & Medicine. (Link)
Rajkhowa, P., and Kornher, L. (2022). COVID-19 and distortions in urban food market in India. Indian Economic Review. (Link)
Rajkhowa, P., and Qaim, M. (2022). Mobile phones, off-farm employment, and household income in rural India. Journal of Agricultural Economics. (Link)
Rajkhowa, P., and Qaim, M. (2021). Personalized digital extension services and agricultural performance: Evidence from smallholder farmers in India. PLoS ONE .(Link)
Rajkhowa, P., and Kubik, Z. (2021). Revisiting the relationship between farm mechanization and labour requirement in India. Indian Economic Review. (Link)
Birthal, P. S., Chand, R., Joshi, P. K., Saxena, R., Rajkhowa, P., Khan, M. T., Khan, M. A., & Chaudhary, K. R. (2017). Formal versus informal: Efficiency, inclusiveness, and financing of dairy value chains in Indian Punjab. Journal of Rural Studies. (Link)
Chakrabarti, S., and Rajkhowa, P. (2015). What is the cost of providing one rupee of support to the poor? Economic and Political Weekly. (Link)
Working Papers
Geographical Location and Profitability of Farmer Producer Companies: Evidence from India (with Mathew Abraham, Andaleeb Rahman, and Prabhu Pingali)
Abstract: Aggregation of farmers in the form of Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) is increasingly being promoted across the low- and middle-income countries to ensure economic viability of smallholder agriculture. FPCs are expected to achieve economies of scale, enhance bargaining power, and improve market access; however, despite these potential advantages, many of them fail to succeed. In this paper, we investigate how proximity to town influences the financial sustainability of FPCs. We further assess how this association is conditional on the organizational characteristics of the FPCs. This paper builds a novel dataset collating financial reports of all registered FPCs in India, in existence between 2019 and 2024. Matching each of the FPCs to its nearest town—to measure market access—and leveraging upon the historical timing of railway construction as an instrumental variable (IV) strategy, we find that every kilometre increase in remoteness reduces the probability of an FPC breaking-even by 12 percentage points. In terms of the organizational heterogeneity, smaller and women-led FPCs are affected more by remoteness, and the negative effect is more pronounced among FPCs with predominantly young or older governing board members. Overall, our findings highlight the inequality among FPCs that arises from their geographical location and organizational structure, with important implications for the sustainability of these aggregation models.
Understanding Climate Risk Attitudes and Sustainable Practice Adoption in Smallholder Systems in Kenya (with Giulia Zane, Marie-Charlotte Buisson and Michael Kinyua)
Abstract:Smallholder farmers are increasingly exposed to climate variability that threatens agricultural productivity and household livelihoods. Sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) are widely recognized as a key pathway for sustaining yields, conserving natural resources, and enhancing climate resilience. While the technology adoption literature has documented the role of structural and socioeconomic constraints, the behavioral mechanisms through which climate risk perceptions shape adoption decisions remain underexplored. A key limitation of existing research is its tendency to conflate two conceptually distinct dimensions of climate risk perception: farmers' beliefs about their own exposure to climate hazards and their subjective worry about climate-related threats. Using survey data from farm households in Kenya's Central Highlands, this study examines how these two dimensions of climate risk perception are associated with the adoption of SAPs. Three main findings emerge. First, subjective climate worry, not beliefs about exposure, is the primary behavioral driver of SAP adoption, and the relationship is non-linear: adoption increases substantially only once worry crosses a high threshold of perceived severity. Second, heterogeneity analyses reveal that the perception-adoption relationship is concentrated among male-managed plots and small farms; for female-managed plots and larger farms, structural constraints and education dominate adoption decisions, and climate risk communication alone is insufficient to trigger behavioral change. Third, not all SAPs respond equally to climate worry: organic input use and soil and water conservation are sensitive to high levels of concern, while resource-intensive practices such as irrigation, no-tillage, and intercropping are not. The findings highlight the need for context-sensitive adaptation strategies that combine targeted risk communication with structural interventions, tailored to farmers' gender, plot scale, and the specific practices being promoted.
Household Welfare Effects of Integrated Aquaculture–Agriculture in Peri-urban Wastewater Wetlands: Evidence from India
Abstract:Integrated aquaculture–agriculture (IAA) offers a promising pathway to improve household welfare in wetland-dependent communities, yet rigorous evidence on its economic impacts remains scarce, particularly in peri-urban, wastewater-fed systems. This study estimates the welfare effects of IAA participation among households in the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW), India — the world's only large-scale, formally functioning wastewater-fed aquaculture system and a Ramsar site. Using propensity score matching and an inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) approach, we find that IAA participation is associated with significantly higher monthly expenditure, and higher productive asset index relative to comparable non-participating households. Results are robust to hidden bias, omitted variable bias (Oster's δ bounds), and falsification tests. Adoption is driven by accumulated aquaculture experience, labour endowments, land ownership, and pond leasing, but not by demographic characteristics, suggesting that IAA is broadly accessible in principle yet constrained in practice by productive endowments. Qualitative evidence from 38 key informant interviews reveals that ecological degradation, tenure insecurity, cooperative non-registration, and intermediary market power collectively constrain IAA farming systems. The findings highlight IAA as both a welfare-enhancing livelihood strategy and a potential conservation incentive in a wetland system under acute urbanization pressure.
Work in Progress
Community-managed water governance in Odisha.
Advancing climate resiliency in agriculture systems in Chhattisgarh.
Sustaining Circular Livelihoods: A Qualitative Analysis of the Wastewater Aquaculture Value Chain in the East Kolkata Wetlands. (Link).
Making Rapid Strides-Agriculture in Madhya Pradesh-Sources, Drivers and Policy Lessons (with Ashok Gulati and Pravesh Sharma) (Link)
Unleashing Bihar's agriculture potential: Sources and drivers of agriculture growth (with Anwarul Hoda and Ashok Gulati) (Link)
Transforming agriculture in Odisha: Sources and drivers of agriculture growth (with Anwarul Hoda and Ashok Gulati) (Link)
Gulati, A., Rajkhowa, P., Roy, R., and Sharma, P. Performance of Agriculture in Madhya Pradesh. In: Gulati A., Roy R., Saini S. (eds) Revitalizing Indian Agriculture and Boosting Farmer Incomes. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer. (Link)
Hoda A., Gulati A., Jose S., and Rajkhowa P. (2021) Sources and Drivers of Agricultural Growth in Bihar. In: Gulati A., Roy R., Saini S. (eds) Revitalizing Indian Agriculture and Boosting Farmer Incomes. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer. (Link)
Hoda A., Gulati A., Wardhan H., and Rajkhowa P. (2021) Drivers of Agricultural Growth in Odisha. In: Gulati A., Roy R., Saini S. (eds) Revitalizing Indian Agriculture and Boosting Farmer Incomes. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer. (Link)
Birthal, P. S., Chand, R., Joshi, P. K., Saxena, R., Rajkhowa, P., Khan, M. T., Khan, M. A., and Chaudhary, K. R. (2017). Formal versus informal: Efficiency, inclusiveness, and financing of dairy value chains in Indian Punjab. In: Mani G., Joshi P., Ashok M. (eds) Financing Agriculture Value Chains in India. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer. (Link)
Leslie Verteramo Chiu and Pallavi Rajkhowa (2023). How soybean FPOs can use futures contracts to manage risk (Link).
Pallavi Rajkhowa and Leslie Verteramo Chiu (2023). Soybean value chains and market efficiency: Lessons from a field visit to FPOs in Latur (Link)
Pallavi Rajkhowa. (2021). Using personalized digital extension services to improve agriculture performance. In Rural21 (Link)
Ashok Gulati and Pallavi Rajkhowa (2016). From plate to plough: Some Punjab lessons for Odisha. In Indian Express. (Link)