Indian Agriculture after the Green Revolution Changes and Challenges Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy Series

From a country plagued with chronic food shortage, the Green Revolution turned India into a food-grain self-sufficient nation within the decade of 1968-1978. By contrast, the decade of 1995-2005 witnessed a spate in suicides among farmers in many parts of the country. These tragic incidents were symptomatic of the severe stress and strain that the agriculture sector had meanwhile accumulated. The book recounts how the high achievements of the Green Revolution had overgrown to a state of this ?agrarian crisis?. In the process, it also brings to fore the underlying resilience and innovativeness in the sector which enabled it not just to survive through the crisis but to evolve and revive out of it. The need of the hour is to create an environment that will enable the sector to acquire the robustness to contend with the challenges of lifting levels of farm income and coping with Climate Change. To this end, a multi-pronged intervention strategy has been suggested. Reviving public investment in irrigation, tuning agrarian institutions to the changed context, strengthening of market institution for better farm-market linkage and financial access of farmers, and preparing the ground for ushering in technological innovations should form the major components of this policy paradigm.

1 Introduction (Binoy Goswami)

2 Indian Agriculture after Green Revolution: An Overview (Kirtti Ranjan Paltasingh, Phanindra Goyari and Kiril Tochkov)

3 Rental Markets of Agricultural Land: Changing Context and Need for Tenancy Reforms (Binoy Goswami)

4 Emerging Factor Markets in Indian Agriculture: Water and Rental of Capital Goods (Anup Kumar Das and Jitu Tamuli)

5 Implications of Credit-insurance Interlinked Contracts: An Evaluation of Crop Insurance Schemes in India (Pravat Kumar Kuri and Arindam Laha)

6 Transition of Agricultural Marketing in India (Rajib Sutradhar)

7 Irrigation in India: The Post-Green Revolution Experience, Challenges and Strategies (Mrinal Kanti Dutta)

8 Technology Adoption in Indian Agriculture and Its Determinants: An Inter-State Analysis (Bibhunandini Das and Amarendra Das)

9 Trade Liberalisation and Indian Agriculture (Smitha Francis,Anirban Dasgupta and Murali Kallummal)

10 Indian Agriculture Through the Turn of the Century: Gathering Stress and Farmers’ Distress (Madhurjya Prasad Bezbaruah and Mofidul Hassan)

11 Shift of Rural Work Force from Farm to Non-Farm Employment: Some Determinants (Upasak Das and Udayan Rathore)

12 Environmental Consequences of Green Revolution in India (Surya Bhushan)

13 Climate Change and Indian Agriculture: Impacts on Crop Yield (Raju Mandal and Hiranya K. Nath)

14 The Way Forward (Madhurjya Prasad Bezbaruah)

Binoy Goswami is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics, South Asian University, New Delhi, India.

Madhurjya Prasad Bezbaruah is Professor in the Department of Economics, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India.

Raju Mandal is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Assam University, Silchar, India.