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2
Myriad Challenges Facing the Agriculture
Sector in India: A Perspective
Introduction
Challenges facing the agricultural sector in India now for more than a
decade and half after the mid-1990s have been of a multidimensional character,
which have culminated into a severe crisis. Broadly, the crisis itself has two
dimensions as characterised by an eminent scholar
1
: an agrarian crisis and an
agricultural development crisis. No doubt, the two are intertwined but they call
for independent attention. The agricultural development crisis is reflected in
reduced overall growth accompanied by declining productivity and profitability
which has accentuated the general adversity in the livelihoods of small and
marginal farmers; for the latter the root cause lies in relatively high dependence
of the population on agriculture and the resulting agrarian distress. These twin
dimensions of the crisis become very relevant while studying agricultural credit
as they form the backdrop for answering very many demand-side questions.
The Agrarian Crisis
For an empirical study of the agrarian scene, we are confronted with
two sets of operational holdings data. First, there are the
Agricultural Census
data brought out by the Union Ministry of Agriculture every five years, the
latest one just published being for the year 2010-11. Second, there are the
quinquennium surveys on
Land and Livestock
Holdings
conducted by the
National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). There are significant coverage
differences between the two sets of data. While the NSSO data cover only
individual and joint holdings at the household level, the
Agricultural Census
data go beyond the household level. Apart from covering individual and joint
holdings, the
Census
data cover institutional holdings such as government
farms, farms of sugarcane factories, cooperative farms, and lands managed by
trusts.
For an accurate depiction of the operational holdings at the household
level, the NSSO data on operational holdings are more pertinent though the
Census
data too provide close approximation. In the former data available up
to the year 2002-03, a dominant feature of the agrarian scene that emerges is
the increasing marginalisation of landholdings along with rising fragmentation.
1
Prof. V.M. Rao described so at a seminar organised by the IndiraGandhi Institute of Development
Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, in the context of sub-group deliberations for crystallising ideas on
Report of
the Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness
, Ministry of Finance, Government of
India, July 2007 (Chairman: Prof. R. Radhakrishna).
