The first is a quasi-experimental approach that uses
Bangladesh as a control. The second uses the fact that the land reform was implemented
more intensively in some areas than in others to identify the effect of the change in
tenants’ share on agricultural production. The two approaches provide similar estimates,
showing that the tenancy reform increased sharecropper yields by between 51 and 62
percent. These estimates imply that the tenancy reform explains more than a quarter of
the subsequent growth in agricultural productivity in West Bengal from 1979 through
1993. In that period, the rate of agricultural productivity growth in West Bengal rose
from one of the lowest among Indian states to one of the highest. In the past decade,
however, growth has slowed, for reasons not yet examined.