Book reviews The Dragon and the Elephant: Agricultural and Rural Reforms in China and India

In the last few years, there has been a flurry of books and papers referring to China and India – the two ‘emerging economies ’ – as the Dragon and the Elephant respectively. The edited book under review is one of the latest in the Dragon-Elephant series, and it attempts to apply the above comparative implication to the agricultural sectors in these two countries. The preface begins with the statement that between 1978 and 2005, China’s per capita income overtook India’s at such a rapid pace that it was double that of India’s in 2005. This transformation is attributed to ‘a quarter of a century of reforms’. After 1978, China is argued to have reformed its agricul-ture by moving into the household responsibility system in land use, liberal-izing agricultural prices and creating a free market for agricultural products. As a result, China’s rural poverty fell from 33 to 11 percent between 1978 and 1984. On the other hand, even after a series of reform measures beginning from 1991, India’s agricultural growth has fallen compared to the 1980s, and its record in reducing rural poverty is poorer than China’s. Th