Indian Agriculture

While the impact of groundwater irrigation on the productivity of crops and other parameters has been well-documented in India, not many studies are available highlighting its role in the value of agricultural output using district-level data. This paper attempts to find out the impact of groundwater irrigation on VAO using cross-sectional data for 189 Indian districts covering three time points: 1990–93, 2003–06, and 2017–20. Both descriptive and regression analyses have been used in this paper. The descriptive analysis shows that VAO per hectare is significantly higher for those districts having a high level of groundwater coverage (>50%) than the districts having less (<30%) groundwater irrigation. The multivariate regression analysis carried out by using yield augmenting and infrastructure variables shows that the role of groundwater irrigation in impacting VAO has significantly and consistently increased over time.

Agriculture electricity supply has been the Achilles heel in the context of electricity policy and subsidy in India. The study summarises all the electricity consumption methods and numbers in the major agricultural states by state electricity regulatory commissions and researchers. Clear disparities in electricity consumption can be seen for some states and crops in the numbers summarised. It highlights the issues with the current methodologies and proposes to develop better methods for estimation of energy consumption in agriculture.

The Indian agricultural sector has long suffered a plethora of structural infirmities that have contributed to the continuing crisis in the sector.

It was argued that economic liberalisation would ensure a favourable shift in the terms of trade for agriculture in India, enabling producers to plough back surplus from cultivation to make long-term improvements on land, and raise agricultural productivity and growth rate. Contrary to expectations, there was no noticeable improvement in the terms of trade for agriculture during the reform period. Moreover, decline in capital formation in agriculture, inadequate expenditure on irrigation and extension services in rural areas, and a dearth of cheap institutional credit, resulted in a slowdown of agricultural growth and heightened livelihood insecurity for a substantial proportion of those dependent on agriculture.