Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Agricultural sector in India has experienced major policy shifts from the traditional cultivation practices to modern cultivation practices in respect of all the crops and allied activities. During the early phase of independence, the traditional cultivation practice was not able to feed up the large population size of the country making a major part food insecured. At that time, agriculture sector was dependent upon the vagaries of nature and the facilities of multi-purpose seeds were not available. Mostly the procured seeds by the farmers could not support in growing productivity in the sector. It was thus the scenario that compelled the then Government at the Centre and the associated policy makers, scientists, among the others, to think for drastic policy measures to solve the food insecurity problem through making the farming practices less nature dependent as well as one time seed options. It was thus the revolution that happened in the mid 1960’s in the name of green revolution made it possible to increase total agricultural production as well as productivity of land through modern agricultural practices where high yielding varieties (HYV) seeds were used, irrigation facilities patronized by the government’s initiatives were started, fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides were used, etc. But the productivity could not be increased to the certain height to cater rising population pressure. It was thus necessary to make reforms in the land holdings. The land reform program was started in the early seventies, plots were fragmented to make the intensive use of labour forces, tenancy acts were amended, among others, which further led to increase in the productivity and aggregate quantity of production as a whole. There was a huge revolution in the agriculture sector in India.
But, to have multiple cropping in a given year and to facilitate purchasing capacity of different modern agricultural inputs in the short run as well as long runs there were scarcity of funding. The commercial banks were nationalized in 1969 and 1980 to provide credits to agriculture and allied sectors as priority basis so that the dependence of the farmers upon the village money lenders would be minimised and surplus in the production process could be maximized. In the post liberalized phase, there has been further growth in the sector supported by importing advanced capital goods, foreign capital inflow through foreign direct investment (FDI) channels and opening of new export channels have made the sector to prosper more. The role of different institutional supports through public institutional interventions in the huge growth performance of the sector cannot thus be ignored. As per the data of the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) the total GDP accountable to the agriculture sector in 1950-51 was around Rs. 5118 crore which reached Rs. 131108 crore in 1991-92 and jumped to Rs. 3087623 crore in 2019-20. The increase was about 24.6 times in the pre-reform phase of forty years and 22.5 times growth in the post-reform phase of thirty years. It is thus evident that the traditional means of agricultural practices could not be able to generate such gigantic growth rates of the agriculture sector in the country; major policy shifts through institutional interventions was the key to the success.