Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0168/01685.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 33KB | 549 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01685}
$Pretitle{221}
$Title{India
Chapter 7B.   Agricultural Development}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Clarence Edward Pike}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{agricultural
million
government
india
percent
research
agriculture
fertilizers
tons
credit}
$Date{1985}
$Log{}
Country:     India
Book:        India, A Country Study
Author:      Clarence Edward Pike
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1985

Chapter 7B.   Agricultural Development

     Although the private sector has consistently provided some 70 percent of
the investments in agriculture, rapidly growing public expenditures have
played a large part in stepping up agricultural development. In real terms,
annual expenditures on agriculture by government more than doubled between the
1960s and the mid-1980s. Over the same period, however, agriculture's share of
the nation's total development expenditures dropped from 22 percent to 19
percent.

     Growth on the farm front is a major key to progress toward such national
goals as reducing rural poverty, providing an adequate diet for all citizens,
supplying agricultural raw materials for the textile and other industries, and
expanding exports. In consequence, the central government has become
progressively more involved in guiding the nation's agriculture. The central
government provides overall leadership, coordination, and a significant part
of the financing of agricultural programs. Its contributions to five-year
plan agricultural projects grew from around 10 to 15 percent of the total
in the mid-1960s to around 25 percent in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, the
primary responsibility for the design and implementation of agricultural
programs remains with the states.

Research and Education

     Sustained agricultural growth in recent years has stemmed largely from
new technologies and techniques imparted to farmers in an effective way. The
foundation stone for today's agricultural research, education, and extension
systems was laid in 1881, when the British rulers created the Imperial
Department of Agriculture. A second stone was laid in 1889 with the addition
of a small research unit and a third in 1903 with the establishment of the
Indian Agricultural Research Institute in the heart of the Indo-Gangetic
Plain at Pusa in Bihar. Soon thereafter colleges of agriculture were
established at Pune (Poona), Nagpur, and Coimbatore. Because of a destructive
earthquake at Pusa, the research institute was moved to New Delhi in 1936.

     Following independence and the establishment of national planning,
agricultural research, education, and advisory services multiplied, at both
the national and the state levels. One of independent India's significant
achievements has been the successful movement toward a common institutional
and organizational framework for agricultural research, education, and
extension. Operated by the states but guided and partially financed by the
union government, the nation's agricultural research-education capability
had by 1985 become vast and impressive and included state agricultural
universities (see Education, ch. 2).

     The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is the national body
that coordinates research, education, and instruction in extension to
agriculture, animal husbandry, and fisheries. It functions mainly through
cooperative projects in which the union and the state governments are
partners. ICAR, however, directly administers 35 institutes, including the
Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, that carry out research
in fundamental and applied subjects that extend beyond state interests. It
also operates directly several national services, including the National
Bureau for Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, which collects, introduces,
and distributes genetic materials; the National Bureau of Soil and Land Use
Planning, Nagpur, which surveys and maps farmlands throughout India; and the
National Service Centre for Water Technology, which works  with state,
university, and privately run research centers to develop more efficient ways
to use irrigation water. There are ICAR publications for everyone, from
senior officials to barely literate peasants. State research institutions
concentrate their efforts on problems within the boundaries of their
respective states.

     The agricultural universities-of which there were 22 in the mid-1980s-are
the core of advanced agricultural education in India. Largely modeled on the
land-grant college system in the United States, all universities offer both
undergraduate and postgraduate studies in agriculture and related sciences,
conduct research, and carry out training programs for farmers and for
extension workers who, in turn, train farmers. Additional university-level
training in the agricultural sciences is provided by several of the ICAR
institutes. The Indian Veterinary Research Institute at Izatnagar, Uttar
Pradesh, for example, provides training and awards both master's and doctor's
degrees in veterinary medicine. The Central Staff College of Agriculture at
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, provides training programs and workshops for senior
members of the staffs of the agricultural universities of ICAR and of other
government agencies concerned with agriculture.

Agricultural Extension

     Although under British rule the foundations were laid for systems of
agricultural research and higher education in agriculture, the surface was
hardly scratched toward developing a system for transmitting modern
agricultural technology to the countryside. Following independence the first
step toward building an agricultural extension system was to expand the Grow
More Food Campaign, which had been created during World War II. Administrators
and extension workers were exhorted to convince cultivators of the gains in
yields to be obtained from the use of improved seeds, compost, farmyard
manure, green manuring, and better cultivation practices. The rural agents,
often already inundated with other assignments, had little or no training for
the work. Gains in yields were minimal. India's leaders came to realize that
to convert millions of peasants to the use of new farm technologies was a
colossal task.

     To accomplish this task was the prime reason for the inauguration in 1952
of the Community Development Programme. The country was divided into
development blocks, each consisting of around 100 villages and a population
of 60,000 to 70,000 persons. By 1962 the entire country was covered by over
5,000 such blocks. The key person in the program was the village-level worker,
responsible for transmitting to about 10 villages not only farming technology
but also such village uplift programs as cooperation, adult literacy, and
health and sanitation. Each block was staffed with extension workers, though
the villagers themselves were expected to provide the initiative and much of
the needed financial and manpower resources, which they were often not in a
position, or inclined, to do. Although by the early 1960s progress was
apparent, it was equally apparent that the program was spread too thin to
bring about the hoped-for increase in agricultural production.

     The Intensive Agricultural District Programme (IADP), launched in five
districts in 1960 by the union government in cooperation with the Ford
Foundation, was quite a different approach to boosting farm yields. The basic
concept underlying the IADP was that the concentration of scarce
inputs-technical staff, fertilizers, improved seeds, credit, etc.-in the
potentially most productive districts would yield more farm crops than would
a wider but thinner spreading of the same resources. Under technical guidance
provided by American cooperative specialists, the program placed more than
usual emphasis on the importance of organizational structures and
administrative arrangements. For the first time, modern technology was
systematically introduced to Indian farmers. Within a decade the program
covered 15 districts containing 28,0