Indian Agriculture

In this insightful and hard-hitting study, Dr Bhatia starts by outlining the progress made so far in agricultural production and the shortfalls that remain. He lists the problems and challenges that face our planners as also the deficiencies in our planning perspectives. Dr Bhatia develops the latter theme and argues that India's successive five-year plans have adopted a short-sighted developmental model which has neither aided balanced agricultural growth nor increased employment. This is hardly surprising given the absence of a clear-cut policy perspective for the agricultural sector.

The author goes on to delineate an alternative strategy for agricultural development which would assist in the achievement of an accelerated and equitable growth in agricultural production while simulataneously promoting the socio-economic objectives of alleviating poverty and unemployment.