Agricultural Crisis in India
India’s Agriculture Crisis Indian is an agricultural country. Even while India’s industrial and services sectors are growing by leaps and bounds and where growth rate of agriculture as below 2% the fact remains that India still lives in villages. Over 50% of India’s population is supported by agriculture. Even industrial and services sectors are invariably entangled with the fortunes of agriculture due to various intricate forward and backward linkages. There have been ominous signs which showed that the Indian agriculture is in crisis.
Unending chain of suicides by farmers in different parts of the country shows that everything is not well with agricultural sectors. Government of India is not sleeping over this crisis. National Commission on farmers has been constituted under the eminent Scientist Dr. M. S. Swami Nathan. He has recommended a comprehensive national policy for farmers to give an all round boost to the sector. However, it is sea sad state of affairs where government is busy in talking about superficial remedies instead of taking the concrete steps which is the need of the hour.
More waivers of interests and rescheduling of loans do not address the real problem, which is’ why caused the farmers’ distress in the first place? ’ The main problem is the poor state of infrastructure in the country. For example, many farmers face a perennial problem due to poor rains in certain parts of the country and there is no proper irrigation to counter this factor. Most farmers are also not aware of the proper cropping patterns.
The problem of faulty crop selection is also one of the major forces that drive farmers to poverty. Thus it is necessary to impart proper education to farmers and further develop infrastructure in rural areas. Developed India is possible with the attainment of growing, advancement of manufacturing and services sector. But prosperous India is possible only with healthy agricultural sector. The pride and confidence in farmers and farming needs to be restored. This alone can help agriculture grow like never before.
