"Green Revolution and Redistribution of Rural Incomes: Pakistan's Experience"--a Reply (Communication‪)‬

In view of the significance of technological break-through and the changing pattern of income distribution in the process of economic development, I recently published an article [1, pp. 173-205] which dealt with the redistributive impact of the Green Revolution technology on rural incomes in Pakistan. Basing my judgement on the available empirical evidence, I argued that the Green Revolution in Pakistan was accompanied by an improvement in rural income distribution. Of course, I also implied that there existed no room for the opposite, but generally prevalent, view that rural income inequalities had worsened with growing dependence on the Green Revolution technologies. In a comment on my article [3, pp. 47-56] Professor Mahmood Hasan Khan (hereafter referred to as M. H. Khan for the sake of brevity) has alleged that most of the conclusions of my study are erroneous because (1) I have concentrated on evidence from a few districts of the Punjab but generalized it for the country, (2) I have been eclectic in the use of available evidence, and (3) I did not use even elementary statistical methods to test the representativeness of the averages arrived at in my study. Apart from these general comments, he also raised numerous small points questioning the validity of my arguments in each of the sections of my study.