Author : P. S. Vijay Shankar
Cross-country comparisons show that the impact of GDP growth originating in agriculture on poverty reduction is twice as much as that of GDP growth originating outside. In India, rainfed agriculture (including animal husbandry) is emerging as a major constraint in raising overall agricultural growth. Rainfed areas in India are spread over in some 200 million hectares and constitute 62 percent of the total geographical area of the country. Spanning several agro-ecological regions, the rainfed areas represent the geography with the largest concentration of poverty and backwardness.
The key thrust in agricultural policy until now has been to indiscriminately extend the water-intensive Green Revolution technology to these areas that have a significantly different natural resource configuration. This has led to several catastrophic ecological consequences, such as loss of soil fertility, groundwater depletion, loss of bio-diversity and an increase in climate change vulnerability. At the same time, lack of inadequate support for rainfed agriculture in terms of support price, availability of inputs, credit, market access and agricultural research has caused widespread desperation. The most visible aspects of this desperation are farmer suicides on the one hand, and the rising tide of left wing extremism on the other. In rainfed agriculture, we need a radical shift away from the current paradigm derived from the experience of the Green Revolution.
P.S. Vijay Shankar,
Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS),
Bagli, Madhya Pradesh
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