Stumbling Agriculture in Bihar: Linkages with Institutional Mechanism and Public Investment

Abstract

The agriculture in Bihar is still grappled with low investment and low input agriculture and therefore besides low productivity, growth in production and productivity of most of the major crops are quite low as compared to other developed states. Though agriculture contributes more than 40 per cent to state domestic product, but it is not attracting public investment in consonance with the demand and output growth. Therefore, successful development of this economically fragile region, having more than 35 per cent population below poverty line, requires new and improved approaches, particularly for agricultural intensification. The presently study is an attempt to examine the status and trend of utilization and expansion various critical agricultural inputs in Bihar in comparison to other developed states. The production function analysis has also been done for the period of 1990-2003, in value of output from agriculture has been considered as dependent variable, while gross cropped area, gross irrigated area, fertilizer consumption, institutional agricultural credit and public expenditure on agriculture were taken as explanatory variables. The results raise the tantalizing possibility that better emphasis on irrigation expansion, use of higher dose of chemical fertilizer backed with greater public investment in agriculture in these fragile regions could actually offer a “win-win” strategy for addressing productivity and poverty problems from the region.