Rejuvenating Indian Agriculture. An Incubation

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Economics - Industrial Economics, , language: English, abstract: Basically India is an agrarian economy. Agriculture has been a way of life and about 16 million families (48.9 per cent of working population) need this sector for their livelihood. But in terms of contribution to GDP the agriculture sector accounts only 14.1 per cent. Since independence contribution from agriculture sector has been showing a declining trend. Indian agriculture is experiencing sluggish growth due to various factors. Such factors include problems related to agriculture profitability, availability of land for cultivation, problems of irrigation, cutting down of subsidies, problems related with agriculture credit, bottlenecks related to agriculture modernization, policy issues, problems of small and marginal farmers, disguised unemployment, issue of income security and sustainability, etc.. These problems have to be addressed with immediate effect. With the increasing population pressure a sustained high level agriculture growth is a pre-requisite for inclusive growth, reduction of poverty and rural development. It is not feasible to achieve higher growths in agriculture sector without incremental productivity and technological diffusion across the country. So rejuvenation of Indian agriculture is vital for sustainable agriculture growth. Since there is a linkage between agriculture and industry an upsurge in primary sector is critical to overall development of the nation. India needs to insist new lifeblood into farmers by removing all the obstacles in the wake of an agrarian economy so that faster growth is possible. This paper is essentially an attempt to elicit the need for rejuvenating Indian agriculture on the verge of raising challenges and tries to point out some policy solution for the betterment of Indian agriculture.