Indian Agriculture in the Globalization Era: The Performance and Determinants

Abstract

There is a general consent on the desirability of economic reforms in India, though the opinion is divided on sequencing, pace, implementation and impact. A continuous debate is taking place in this regard particularly in view of benefits and costs of globalization. The debate has become highly polarized, as there are two camps of scholars arguing in favour and against of economic reforms. In brief, the performance of Indian economy under the reforms as executed until now shows a mixed picture of notable achievements and failures. On the achievement side, increasing trade openness and inflows of FDI, stability in inflation and current account BOP, accretion of foreign exchange reserve, reduction of poverty and increasing economic growth are most important. On the failure side, growing fiscal deficit with revenue deficit, declining tax-GDP ratio, infrastructural bottlenecks and its regional variation, low human development and social sector expenditure, falling growth of agriculture and jobless growth, particularly, rural employment are mainly imperative. But it is to be noted that every thing may not be attributed to the reforms program only. Keeping in above view, present paper seeks to examine the performance of Indian agriculture and their causes and determinants thereof during the era of 1990s.