Growth in the Context of Underdevelopment-Case of Dryland Agriculture

Case of Dryland Agriculture Introduction A SUBSTANTIAL breakthrough in dryland agriculture is a key component in the agricultural strategy proposed for the Eighth Plan [Planning Commission, 1990]. This is important not only for sustaining agricultural growth over the coming decades but, even more, to locate agricultural growth processes in vast areas which have remained largely stagnant so far. Nurturing growth processes in such areas is a delicate and time- taking development task. While the generation of new technologies for dryland agriculture is a formidable enough challenge to be faced, the effective adoption of these technologies by the masses of peasants to support a steady and viable growth process is immeasurably more so. Changes of such an order are in the nature of thoroughgoing transformation in rural societies covering individual attitudes and behaviour, community structures and the network of hierarchies and relationships influencing their economic performance.