Agricultural Crisis in India: Causes, Consequences and Remedies

Abstract

Abstract More than twenty years of economic liberalisation had adversely affected the Indian agriculture. The most prominent sign of this is in the drastic decline in the growth rate of food grains. Again, if one observes Indian agriculture is currently passing through a period of severe crisis. Although some features of the crisis started manifesting themselves in certain parts of India during the late 1980s, the crisis has assumed a serious dimension since the middle of the 1990s. There is a general perception that unbearable burden of debt and augmented competitions from imports are indicative of a crisis in Indian agriculture. In this paper an attempt has been made to find out the trends in agriculture, causes of the crisis, problems faced by the agriculture sector and at the end some remedial measures are suggested for the betterment of this sector. To overcome the hurdles in this sector especially the farmers in the rural areas should be empowered with credit facilities. For this, policy and programs involving timely and adequate investment in agriculture would facilitate farmers? access to technologies and other relevant help in farming process.