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face to face
The declining share of
agriculture doesn’t
mean that the absolute value
of agriculture id dropping. It
only means that the overall
size of the economy is
growing. All you have to do is
to plot over time the share of
agriculture of few agriculture
dependent countries in last
100 years. Sometimes, I think
we need to put those graphs
in Indian newspapers to show
that we are following the
trends that have already
happened globally.
economy over time. This is normal and expected. It
has happened in US, Europe and Japan. Infact in
Japan, the agriculture GDP is now close to 1 percent.
The share of employment from agri-based sector is
close to 3-4 percent. It drops not because the
agriculture is not an important subject in absolute
terms but because in relative terms, the size of the
economy begins to grow. What happens is that the
when overall industry sector begins to grow,
employment rate goes up.
When the people say that the share of agriculture is
dropping, you should say it is good. If you look at the
poor Sub Saharan Africa, their share in agriculture is
60 percent. So if that would have been the case in
India too, then it meant that other sectors are not
growing. The declining share of agriculture doesn’t
mean that the absolute value of agriculture id
dropping. It only means that the overall size of the
economy is growing. All you have to do is to plot
over time the share of agriculture of few agriculture
dependent countries in last 100 years. Sometimes, I
think we need to put those graphs in Indian
newspapers to show that we are following the trends
that have already happened globally.
It will eventually lead us to economies where
situation would be that if you are working outside
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BioVoiceNews | August 2016
the agriculture or within it, the relative returns
would be equal. So if one is a farm labourer or the
worker in a non-agriculture set up, the wages would
be same. The equalization of wages would thus mean
that we have reached the overall balanced growth.
There are marginal farmers in India who don’t
have any other livelihood apart from
agriculture. They seem to be suffering in the
modern times. Your comments.
It may be true in few cases but then over period of time
the things have begun to change. For small farms, the
migration, remittances, service sector employment etc.
I think we are not accounting for all the source of
incomes. If I travel to a remote village in Orissa and list
out all sources of income, I can see that there are
increasingly other sources of earning money by farmers
apart from farming. The sole dependence on
agriculture is changing and there are diverse sources
that are increasing. So when overall you add up the
sources, the story changes.
Government has launched many new schemes
such as Krishi Bima Yojna and Soil Health Card
in last few years. Do you think these will help
farmers?
Maintaining agriculture productivity is one of the
primary means for people to grow out of agriculture.
So the moment agriculture income improves, they
are able to invest in their children’s education, house
and thus paves a way to move out of agriculture. If
you are not investing in increasing agriculture
income, then you are moving the problem from rural
poverty to urban poverty. But if you are investing in
it, there is huge chance that you are allowing rural
people to shift to urban areas with better education
and money.
Look at the people of my generation. We have all
come from the agricultural background. The green
revolution had tremendous effect on many parts of
the country including Adhara Pradesh from where I
come from. Back then, due to green revolution, new
crops were adopted, the incomes increased resulting
in people like us getting money and opportunity for
education. In India, we had a period 1985-2000
when the investments were low. But now we see the
more investments.
Inclusion of horticulture, pulses and other food
crops in the overall focus in happening which is
great. Oilseeds production has increased even in dry
belts of Madhya Pradesh even moving to Gujarat