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Radio and Technology Adoption During India's Green Revolution

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Radio and Technology Adoption During India's Green Revolution Radio and Technology Adoption During India's Green Revolution: Evidence from a Natural Experiment Srinivasan Vasudevan∗ December 23, 2018 Abstract This paper examines how the introduction of regional radio broadcasts affected the adoption of high-yielding varieties (HYV) of rice and wheat in India during the Green Revolution. To identify the causal effect of radio on technology adoption I exploit the staggered expansion of regional radio in different parts of the country. Using an annual district-level administrative dataset from 1966 to 1978, I find that introduction of radio led to an immediate and persistent increase in the adoption of HYVs of rice but a gradual and transient increase in adoption of HYVs of wheat. The impact on HYVs of rice, a spatially heterogeneous technology, was large and persisted over the years because it faced significant barriers to spatial diffusion. The impact on adoption of HYVs of wheat, a spatially homogeneous technology, was transient as districts without radio caught up through spatial diffusion. Overall, this paper demonstrates that radio can be effective at popularizing profitable agricultural innovations, especially ones that are spatially heterogeneous. ∗World Bank (email: [email protected], phone: +1-608 515 9789). I thank Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Bradford Barham, Norihiko Matsuda, Laura Schechter and numerous seminar participants for helpful com- ments. All remaining errors are my own. 1 1 Introduction Technology diffusion requires the dissemination of knowledge about the existence, prof- itability, and optimal use of a new technology. In his seminal book on diffusion of in- novations, Rogers (2010) argues that mass media can rapidly inform large populations about the existence and merits of a new technology, thus playing an effective role in facilitating technology diffusion. Still, important questions remain unanswered: Under what conditions can mass media diffuse a new technology? What kinds of technologies are better diffused by mass media? Despite the growing literature that estimates the impact of mass media on various socioeconomic outcomes, to the best of my knowledge there is no rigorous empirical study of the role of mass media in technology adoption. This paper attempts to address this gap in the literature. In this study, I examine how the introduction of radio broadcasts affected the adoption of high-yielding varieties (HYV) of rice and wheat in India during the Green Revolution. HYVs of rice and wheat were introduced on a national scale in India in 1966. The adoption of these HYVs along with increased use of fertilizer, pesticide, irrigation, and multiple cropping led to the Green Revolution. Cereal production in- creased from 72 million tons in 1966 to 108 million tons in 1971 (Evenson, Pray and Rosegrant, 1998). From the brink of famine in the mid-1960s, India became self-reliant in food production by 1978. The government-monopoly radio service played an important role in the dissemina- tion of information about HYVs. Radio was the main medium of mass communication during the 1960s and 1970s. Television was restricted to a few large cities and newspa- per readership was low given the high levels of illiteracy. Anecdotal evidence suggests radio was particularly effective in the dissemination of HYV rice. For example, Kujur et al. (2009) report that radio was so instrumental in popularizing ADT-27, the local HYV of rice, in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu that the variety came to be known as \Radio Rice." My identification strategy relies on the staggered expansion of regional radio broad- 2 casting to different parts of the country. Under the national five-year plans, the expan- sion of the radio network was based primarily on meeting population coverage targets, i.e., the proportion of the population covered by radio broadcasts. Because of resource constraints the expansion was slow and spread over several years. Further, there were additional delays in the planned expansion due to factors such as political instability and external conflicts. I exploit these gaps and delays in the expansion of the radio network to identify the impact of radio broadcasting on adoption of HYVs. To the best of my knowledge this is the first study to exploit such a natural experiment to study the effects of radio exposure on technology adoption. My estimation uses a fixed-effects approach and uses variation in radio coverage within a district over time and between districts in a given year. Observable district characteristics such as population, literacy, and agricultural characteristics are known to have dictated the expansion of the radio network under the five-year plans. These characteristics may have also driven the pattern of HYV adoption. To rule out any spurious correlation, I non-parametrically control for trends in these district charac- teristics. Using an annual district-level panel dataset from 1966 to 1978, I find that intro- duction of regional radio broadcasts, containing farm programs, had a large impact on adoption of HYVs of rice, as measured by the fraction of the cropped area, which per- sists throughout the above period. The magnitude of the effect is large, approximately 25 percent of the mean level in the 1978. The results suggest radio induced farmers to primarily switch from traditional varieties of rice rather than from other crops. The effect on adoption of HYVs of wheat, however, was transient, rising during initial years and then dissipating as districts not exposed to radio caught up. There was no such catch up in the case of HYVs of rice. What explains the immediate and persistent effect on HYVs of rice and gradual and transient effect on HYVs of wheat? Initially introduced rice HYVs were not resilient to variations in soil and water conditions. As a result they had to be to tailored to local conditions. A large number of locally-tailored rice HYVs were released over the 3 years with no single HYV dominating nationally. Since the rice HYVs were spatially heterogeneous the knowledge/experience of farmers in other areas had limited value in making adoption decisions. Wheat HYVs, on the other hand, were a far more spatially homogeneous technology. Two wheat HYVs dominated the national market for wheat seed throughout this period. Information about wheat HYVs would have diffused more easily given the stability of wheat varieties over time and space. As a result, radio broadcasts were not necessary to adopt the wheat HYVs and districts without radio were able to easily catch up. I perform two sets of placebo tests to confirm the validity of these results. There is no effect of receiving radio coverage in the following year on current adoption of rice or wheat HYVs. During this period there was expansion of another type of radio station that focused entirely on entertainment. These radio stations did not broad- cast any agricultural content. I find that there was no effect of introduction of these entertainment radio stations on the adoption of wheat or rice HYVs. I also examine the effect of radio coverage on use of complementary inputs (irrigation and fertilizers) and on crop yields. There is a negative effect on the proportion of cropped area that is irrigated, presumably because radio caused a faster increase in the cropped area than the irrigated area which faces supply-side constraints since irrigation is publicly provided. There is no effect on fertilizer use. There is no effect on wheat yield and some evidence of an increase in rice yield. This suggests that while targeted informational interventions, such as regional radio broadcasting, can increase adoption of improved seeds, higher crop yield potentials can be realized only if constraints on adoption of complementary inputs are eased as well. I provide suggestive evidence that there is a complementary effect between govern- ment extension services and information dissemination through radio. Using a three- year household panel survey data, I find that radio coverage had a smaller impact on adoption of HYVs than agricultural extension programs in early years but a larger impact in later years. This suggests that agricultural extension might be effective in initiating technology adoption but radio was far more effective in subsequent popular- 4 ization. I also find that radio coverage had a larger impact on adoption by literate and land-owning households, those most capable of adopting the new technology. The insights from this paper are relevant to the newly emerging literature that examines the role of information and communication technologies (ICT), especially mobile phones, on the diffusion of agricultural innovations in developing countries (see Aker (2011) for a review of this literature). The results of this study suggest that heterogeneity in the technology should be a key consideration in devising the strategy for information dissemination. Given their ability to finely target information, mobile phone and Internet communication may be able to diffuse highly heterogeneous technologies. This paper contributes to the large and multi-disciplinary literature on the effect of information on adoption of agricultural innovations. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was lot of enthusiasm for using radio to promote rural development, captured in the highly influential book by Schramm (1964). Dissemination of agricultural information and instruction of farmers was an early focus of development communication. An initiative promoted by the UNESCO involving communal listening of radio farm program, called \Radio Rural Forums", generated a lot of evidence
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