Volume : I, Issue : I, June - 2012

Challenges of Indian Agriculture and Rural Development

Dr. Sangappa. V. Mamanshetty

Abstract :

Indian agriculture is facing a policy paradox. Although several forecasts of the 1990s predicted that India would be a large importer of grains in the years to follow, in fact from 2001 to 2004 India exported around 30 million tons of food grains. It was seeking primarily to liquidate its bulging grain stocks, which reached 63 million tons in July 2002. Whereas India\'s agricultural policy is still rooted in the goal of self-sufficiency in grains, consumption patterns are changing fast toward high-value agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables, livestock products, and fish. The policy environment is lagging behind the structural change occurring in India\'s consumption and production baskets. On another front, foreign exchange reserves, which had reached a rock-bottom US$1.2 billion in July 1991, climbed to more than US$120 billion by the end of 2009-10. Nonetheless, despite comfortable food and foreign exchange reserves and reasonably high growth in gross domestic product (GDP) of about 6 percent annually, India still has more than 250 million underfed people (below the poverty line) and high under-employment. This situation reflects severe problems on the distribution front. What are the reasons behind this paradoxical situation? The answer presumably lies in the neglect of, as well as misallocation of resources in, agriculture and rural development, especially in the later phase of the reform process initiated in 1991. In summary, we suggest five areas for action to put rural India on a higher growth trajectory that would cut hunger, malnutrition, and unemployment at a much faster pace than has been the cases far. The five areas for action are interlinked and would best work if pursued in conjunction. We emphasize investments with a human face that include and reach out to the rural poor and a reorientation of subsidies toward such investments

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Article: Download PDF   DOI : 10.36106/ijsr  

Cite This Article:

Dr. Sangappa. V. Mamanshetty Challenges of Indian Agriculture and Rural Development International Journal of Scientific Research, Vol.I, Issue.I June 2012

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