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Agriculture is a way of life, which for centuries has shaped the thought, the outlook,
the culture, and the economic life of the people of India. Agriculture, therefore, will continue
to be the central to all strategies for planned socioeconomic development of the country.
Rapid growth and diversification of agriculture is essential not only to achieve
self-reliance at national level, but also for household food security and to bring about
equity in distribution of income and wealth resulting in rapid reduction in the poverty levels.
After the pioneering work of T W Schultz in 1964, it was clear that to improve the lot of poor
people in developing countries, the decisive factors are not space, energy and cropland, but
the determining factor is improvement in human quality (Schultz, 1971). The fundamental
and more concrete outcome of the recent research is that an integral part of the modernization
of the economies of high and low-income countries is the decline in the economic
importance of the farmland and a rise in that of human capital—skills and knowledge. As in the
words of Margaret Mead, "The future of mankind is open ended. Mankind's future is
not foreordained by space, energy, and cropland. It will be determined by the intelligent
evolution of humanity". Schultz (1971) pointed out that one of the fundamental mistakes made by
the economists is in understanding the human agents in agriculture, i.e., farm laborers and
farm entrepreneurs, who both work and allocate resources in the production. Mellor (1976)
argued that rural development can only be achieved to a larger extent in conjunction with
large expansion of formal education due to the complementarity of education with new
production inputs, such as High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, etc.
Indian agriculture has been undergoing a rapid change particularly since mid-1960s,
i.e., from the onset of Green Revolution. The traditional agriculture, which was a way of life
for Indian farmers, is now becoming next best industrial activity. Traditional agriculture
was mainly based on the experience transmitted from father to the son. However, with
the developments taking place due to Five-Year Plans, and scientific and
technological advancements and their diffusion in agriculture, traditional agriculture has changed into
more dynamic, challenging and commercialized farming. The share of agriculture in Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) has registered a steady decline from 36.4% in 1982-83 to 18.5% in
2006-07. Yet this sector continues to support more than half a billion people providing
employment to 52% of the total workforce. The most important fact is that the overall growth rate of
the economy is also largely determined by the performance of agriculture and its allied sectors. |
