Recent Trends and Developments

The Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007–2012) aims to achieve a sustainable growth at a rate of approximately 10 per cent by the end of the Plan period. One of the major challenges in realising this, is the poor performance of the agriculture sector. In the Tenth Five Year Plan period, the sector grew at less than 3 per cent. The sector needs to grow at the minimum rate of 4 per cent to sustain the overall high growth rate of 9–10 per cent. Therefore, the Eleventh Plan Approach Paper calls for ‘regaining agricultural dynamism’. The concerns of policymakers and agriculture experts are to reverse the decelerating growth trends. This is one of the biggest challenges that the country faces today and there are bigger challenges ahead. The share of agriculture in India's GDP has declined from 48.7 per cent in 1950 to 24.4 per cent in 1996–97 and further to 18.7 per cent in 2007. But this sector still employs nearly 60 per cent of our labour force. Only 40 per cent of the land is under irrigation and investment in the sector is stagnating. The agricultural infrastructure is crumbling and farmers' indebtedness and suicides have been subjects of regular socio-political debates.

At the policy level, various working groups and commissions have been formed by the central government to identify the key concerns of the agriculture sector. They are coming up with a wide range of recommendations. The National Policy for Farmers, 2007, pointed out that we need a ‘New Deal’ which will rebuild hope about farming.