Effect of High Yielding Variety of Seeds in the State of West Bengal: An Empirical Quest

The paper studies the effect of High Yielding Variety (HYV) of seeds on agricultural yield for the state of West Bengal and, in turn, goes ahead and prepares a postmortem of why, if so, the Òmiracle seedsÓ failed to deliver in West Bengal, as is so often claimed. The results indicate that the impact of HYV seeds on yield in the state, over the period of 1970-2004, depends critically on the estimation techniques. The OLS estimates tend to suggest a positive impact, while the GLS estimates indicate exactly the opposite. If we are to take the GLS estimates, which are robust to heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation, to be reflecting the reality, we can conclude that small scale farming had a positive and significant impact on yield and was, perhaps, also the reason behind the miracle seeds doing more harm than good with regard to yield, however insignificant the final impact might have been.