28
originating in agriculture and allied activities. Second, 15 out of 28 states had
in this period growth rates of 3% or less per annum; seven states have had
growth of 2% or less in agriculture; important amongst these low-growth states
were: Punjab, Maharashtra and Kerala. Finally, some of the states showing
exemplary agricultural growth rates ranging from 8.0% to 14% per annum
were: Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland; 10 states
out of 28 had growth rates of 4% or more.
As alluded earlier, the period since 2004-05 has seen some revival in
agricultural growth following a series of policy initiatives. As the Mid-Term
Appraisal of the Eleventh Five Year Plan (Planning Commission 2011) has
assessed, the recent revival in agricultural growth, though it shows a picture of
annual fluctuations due to the vagaries of nature, appears a trend and reasonably
enduring and also broad-based sectorally and regionally. As the earlier Table
2.5depicts the aggregate growth scenario, the average annual growth of 3.72%
during 2004-05 to 2010-12 appears quite impressive and close to the national
five-year plan target of 4% growth in agriculture. It is all the more so because
in this seven-year period, there were two – one with low growth (2008-09) and
another with severe drought (2009-10) – years afflicted by depressed growth.
As the aforesaid plan document (Planning Commission 2011, p.63) writes,
“since monsoon rainfall in 2009-10 was much more unfavourable than in
2004-05, this suggests that near doubling of overall output growth between
these two periods cannot be attributed to weather alone”.
As shown in Table 2.11, it is the diversification in agriculture that is
providing a push to the GDP growth scenario in the sub-sector ‘agriculture
and allied activities’. The ‘horticulture’, livestock and fisheries sectors have
shown average growth of over 4% during the period 2005-06 to 2009-10, and
significantly, the annual growth rates in them have shown no fluctuations and
instead they have registered steady growth, unlike in crops.
Equally significantly, the broad-based recovery is seen in state-wise data
(Table 2.12). Overall agricultural GSDP has registered over 4% growth per
annum during 2004-05 to 2011-12 in 19 states out of 28; in fact, eleven of them
have enjoyed over 5% growth per annum. Although year-to-year fluctuations
are much larger at the states-level, as many as 18 states have recorded
acceleration in growth during 2004-05 to 2011-12 as compared with growth in
the preceding five-year period. Also, amongst the best performing states with
9 to 10% average growth have been Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra which
during the previous decade had faced much stress leading to a large number of
farmer suicides, states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and the dry
