Trend of Agricultural Production in India in the Post-Reforms Period: A Growth Rate Perspective Chapter 9 | Business, Management and Economics: Research Progress Vol. 2

 

Agriculture is of particular importance in a majority of countries of the world despite their various agendas to achieve the targets of food security and poverty reduction. Indian agriculture’s share of GDP declined to approximately 15% in 2023 compared to 35% in 1990-91. As this has occurred due to the rapid expansion of the secondary and tertiary sectors, it shows that the Indian economy is strongly on the path of development, where the share of agriculture is expected to decline. The current statistics also revealed that employment in the agricultural sector has declined over the years. This can raise questions about the potential of this sector to meet the objectives of providing food security and earning foreign exchange. As agriculture has a historical past with respect to its performance which is expected to have an effect on the present, the objective of this chapter is to analyze the growth performance of the agricultural sector in India in the post-reform period with particular reference to the pre-pandemic phase. Our study has shown that though the growth of this sector has fluctuated over the years and the subsectors have exhibited heterogeneous growth rates over the past two decades, it has steadily recovered in a majority of the cases, thus not compromising with the food availability of the country. Agricultural production has increased in absolute figures over the years, which speaks strongly about an increase in productivity.

 

 

Author(s) Details

Pia Ghoshal
Post Graduate Department of Economics, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata, 30 Mother Teresa Sarani, Kolkata 700016, West Bengal, India.

 

Please see the book here:- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/bmerp/v2/1283

Assessing Some Major Factors of Production and Efficiency Parameters in the Post Reform Agricultural Sector in Indian Economy | Chapter 4 | New Advances in Business, Management and Economics Vol. 9

 

In the Indian scenario, agriculture is the provider of food security and livelihoods and an earner of foreign exchange. Although the agricultural sector has been a prominent sector for development under the policy regimes undertaken by the Government of India and self-sufficiency in food production has been achieved, there is still a major necessity to increase production, as high GDP growth without corresponding agricultural growth could lead to an acceleration in inflation. This article analyses some of the factors affecting agricultural production and the possible set of efficiency parameters that can play an important role in improving the productivity of this sector. The study analyses the performance of institutional credit, net irrigated area, consumption of fertilisers and consumption of pesticides as major contributory factors of agricultural production in the Indian economy in the post-1990 era. Moreover, an increase in the contributory efficiency parameters can also play an important role in increasing the output of a sector. Thus, this study has discussed the importance of some of these factors, like the rate of rural literacy and the rate of rural technical education, the length of road per square km, share of agricultural NSDP to total NSDP in the Indian agricultural sector for the post-reforms period. Adequate food security would insulate the Indian economy from fluctuations of agricultural prices in international markets, and increased cash crop production could act as a generator of foreign exchange. Though the growth of performance of institutional credit, consumption of fertilisers and consumption of pesticides has been quite satisfactory over the years in the post-reforms period, more steps need to be taken to technologically advance the availability of water for agricultural production. Thus, policies in the current time should concentrate more on increasing the efficiency of producers in the agricultural sector of the Indian economy, along with allocating more resources to the sector.

 

Author(s) Details

Pia Ghoshal
Post Graduate Department of Economics, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata, India.

 

Please see the book here:- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/nabme/v9/5855