Last week, I participated in a workshop at Oxford honoring the late Uma Lele. The workshop made me appreciate what a creative, dynamic, and consequential agricultural economist she was. It also gave me an opportunity to stay at Christ Church College, and think about universities, tradition, excellence, and access to education.
Oxford is amazing. Walking through the college, with its towers, corridors, and dining hall, I felt as though I was in the world of Harry Potter. I tend to be proud of the great thinkers who went through Berkeley, but Oxford makes me humble. John Locke, Adam Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen Hawking, Lewis Carroll, and Oscar Wilde studied or taught at Oxford. Oxford maintains tradition but is able to adapt; within its ancient structures, its researchers coming from all corners of the world contribute to the cutting edge of knowledge.
It was appropriate to celebrate Uma Lele’s life at Oxford, since the transition from tradition to modernity and growth was an essential element of her work.
Uma was born in India, moved to the United States, and received her Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell when she was only 24—the first woman to do so. I remember Uma’s frequent smile, colorful saris, and quiet demeanor. She was not imposing physically, but intellectually. She was very inquisitive, creative, and persistent in pursuing improved economic research, policy, and inclusion. Her career evolved: she began as a highly technical economist, became an influential policy adviser and evaluator at the World Bank, and later emerged as a mentor, institution-builder, and sage. She consistently emphasized several themes throughout her career.
First, to respect markets but not to idealize them. Her early research on grain markets in India showed that prices paid to farmers and those paid by consumers reflected mostly the costs of doing business—with not much monopoly profits. This research led her to support market forces, emphasizing that markets need to be well-regulated and supported by infrastructure and effective institutions.
Second, agriculture can be an engine of economic growth. When agricultural productivity gains reach small farmers and rural workers and enterprises, they generate demand and income that contribute to growth and rural development.
Third, development projects should recognize constraints. Utilized well, existing capacity will build the capacity of the future. Money cannot substitute for people, knowledge, and effective organizations. Development requires sequencing, consistency, and persistence. It is the cumulative result of many investments and reforms, with each stage establishing a foundation for the next. The impact of aid depended less on the amount of money provided than on continuity, local ownership, and sustained investment in people and institutions.
Fourth, the macroeconomic conditions constrain agriculture. Agricultural policy cannot compensate indefinitely for inappropriate macroeconomic policy. Exchange rates, interest rates, trade policies, and general fiscal conditions may either encourage or constrain agricultural growth.
Fifth, gender differences matter and society gain from women’s empowerment. Economic and structural reforms affect women differently from men. Effective social transformation requires providing women with access to education, employment, assets, and economic and political power.
Uma was one of the first major economists to recognize the limitations of the structural-adjustment programs promoted by the World Bank. She opposed simplistic reforms that liberalized markets without establishing the institutions to support them. She also objected to uniform policies imposed from Washington.
Uma also found that much aid loses its effectiveness because it serves the interests of donors rather than recipient countries. She argued for reforming project evaluation. Evaluations should be an independent research effort whose results should be published. Both project design by donors and execution on the ground should be evaluated.
Uma did more than study women’s empowerment—she practiced it. She encouraged research on gender, mentored young economists, and created opportunities for women and scholars from developing countries. Uma became the first woman president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. When she began her career, women were rare in agricultural economics. Today, women constitute a large share—and frequently the majority—of students in agricultural economics classes, and many have become leaders of our professional associations. Uma did not accomplish this transformation alone, but she was one of its pioneers and major driving forces.
I’m sure that Uma would be very pleased from the incredible job of the organizers[1] who used the workshop to help up-and-coming young economists to reach their potential and to present creative papers on topics of interest to Uma. Some of the papers will appear in Agricultural Economics[2]. Several papers provided insights on the economics of gender. The papers made clear that while women have been making progress, there is still a significant gap in earnings between men and women in agriculture, and there are still significant discriminations in terms of access to credit, quality of land, and other opportunities. Several of the papers built on exciting new research on empowerment of women. These concepts are being quantified and there is evidence how empowerment increased women’s earnings, agency, and self-esteem. But new opportunities are also costly in terms of time and efforts. The papers also emphasize that while there are several common patterns, there is significant differences across locations and comparative studies are valuable. Research also showed that you must think of agricultural productivity, women’s role, income, and time allocation within a dynamic framework. Learning and changing economic and demographic conditions affect economic outcomes and policies must adjust. The rural reality is changing with the penetration of digital tools on one hand, and with random shocks that some associate with climate change.
The organizer built a useful mechanism of feedback that will result in better papers, some of them will be published in the journal Agricultural Economics. I enjoyed the workshop because I realized that after many years as an Agricultural Economist, there are many more topics that I need to learn and that the contributions of scholars from the South will increase and largely shape the direction of the discipline.
While I was in Oxford, new students began arriving. Many came from other countries, including a large number from Asia. I also had the impression that many came from affluent families. I realized again that education is an important export industry for England. However, leading universities like Oxford mostly attract talented students whose families can afford the cost. At the undergraduate level, much of the special value of an elite undergraduate education does not come from the teaching, but from the personal and professional networks students build and the reputation of the institution. At the graduate level, access to elite programs is even more consequential. High-quality mentoring and research facilities at the graduate level are scarce. For reasons of both equity and efficiency, these limited opportunities should go to the most promising students, not simply to those who can afford them.
Uma’s own life demonstrates what can happen when exceptional talent is given access to a leading university. A young woman from India entered Cornell, earned her doctorate at 24, and went on to influence the World Bank, African development policy, agricultural research, international organizations, and the agricultural economics profession, as well as to provide opportunities to women and scholars from developing countries.
[1] Cheryl Doss, Sangeeta Bansal, J.V. Meenakshi
[2] Agricultural Economics is a journal of the International Agricultural Economic Association, who’s President, Jill McCluskey, was present at the event.
