Macro Structural Perspectives in Indian Agriculture

Indian economy is still predominantly agricultural. But a marked deficiency of literature on Indian agriculture, however, persists. Most works on agriculture would rely rather on per-conceived assertions than on per-conceived assertions than on empirical analysis. Further, they fail to analyse the structural similarities and differences between regions within a comparative perspective. The present volume is attempt to make up for this deficiency. The author has tried to build up a macro-structural perspective of Indian agriculture by inter-relating some of his recent studies on various aspects of Indian agriculture. These studies shed new light on such phenomena as the growth of agricultural labour population, the inter-relationship between the pattern of land distribution, tenancy and farm efficiency, mode of cultivation and its relation to production; the influence of various economic factors on the cropping pattern, etc. These studies, based on voluminous secondary data for the country as a whole and West Bengal in some particular cases, reveal that certain popularly held views about the macrostructure of Indian agriculture do not stand critical empirical validation. The book, therefore, will be of much interest to planners, economists, the students of agricultural economics and economics of development.