Transforming Indian agriculture: is doubling farmers' income by 2022 in the realm of reality?

Abstract

Indian agriculture is essentially monsoon- and market-dependent, and suffers frequent distresses posing threat to the welfare of farmers as well as interest in farming. Declining farm productivity and income have serious implications on rural prosperity and overall economy. Hence, increasing the real farm income, i.e. nominal (actual) income adjusted to inflation has become a priority for the state and policy planners. The Government of India, in its budget 2016–17 proposed to double the farmers’ income by 2022 (marking the 75th year of Independence) by addressing the agrarian distress and crisis. Indian agricultural databases lack farmer income series. Nevertheless, it has been estimated from survey data that the farm income growth, currently hovering around 1%, has declined since 2011–12 (ref. 1). We discuss here the farm income trends across holding sizes and states, as well as disaggregated sources of farm income using the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data for 2003 and 2013 (ref. 2). The potential pathways integrating science and technology (S&T), institutions and policy to double the farmers’ income are explored.