Question

for which reasons adequate development in agriculture field is not achieved in india?
PLEASE ANSWER IN 20 LINES​

Answer 1

Answer:

Agricultural Development in India:

The term ‘Green Revolution’ refers to a sus­tained and continuous increase in agricultural pro­ductivity or a yield per acre take-off in traditional agriculture.

The stress is on intensive rather than extensive cultivation so as to raise productivity per hectare. It signifies a shift to the agricultural production function and the consequent increase in land productivity, i.e., yield per hectare.

The new strategy has two broad components the mechanical (or technological) package and the biological package. The former refers to the use of tractors, combines and other forms of machinery primarily as substitutes for labour. The latter refers to the raising of yields through the use of improved plant varieties such as hybrid corn or the new vari­eties of rice developed at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.

Because of the dramatic effects on yields of some of those new varieties the phenomenon is often referred to as the Green Revolution. But these new varieties raise productivity (yield) if they are combined with adequate and timely supply of water and addi­tional usage of chemical fertilisers. The main im­pact of biological package is to raise yields.

The stress is on using improved plant varieties in com­bination with fertilisers and pesticides to raise yields of rice or wheat. The founding of the Inter­national Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CINMYT) in Mexico and IRRI in the Philippines marked the beginning of a truly international ef­fort to develop high-yielding varieties (HYV) of grains suitable to the tropical conditions found in most of the LDCs.

The result has been a steady stream of new, high-yielding and other improved varieties of wheat and rice that have found growing accept­ance in most Asian countries.

This was supported by a rapid increase in the use of chemical fertilisers. By the 1970s, chemical fertilisers were in widespread use in India, Brazil and other countries. Unlike machinery, chemical fertilisers are highly divisible because they can be purchased in any quantity. Moreover, the applica­tion of a small dose of fertiliser is likely to raise productivity appreciably.

A key component of the biological package is water. Improved plant varieties using more chemical fertiliser lead to dramatically higher yields only when there is an adequate and timely water supply. In India, rainfall is often inadequate or comes at the wrong time. As a result efforts to raise yields have focused on measures to extend irrigation systems so that crops are not dependent on the vagaries of the weather.

The increased inputs from the biological packages has made possible steady expansion of agricultural output. By contrast the main function of the mechanical packages is to release surplus labour and food for transferring the same to more productive activities.

The Indian Experience:

In the mid-1960s, the Government of India adopted a new agricul­tural strategy which goes by different names seed-fertiliser-water technology, modern agricul­tural technology, or Green Revolution. In fact, the ‘Green Revolution’ has been the most important single technical advance in agriculture in India during the plan period.

It refers to the breeding of high-yield varieties of wheat and rice and their introduction into traditional agriculture so as to achieve a sustained or continuous breakthrough in agricultural production. This is really a yield per acre take-off in agriculture inasmuch as it seeks to raise productivity per acre by cultivating the same plot of land more intensively.

Thus, in India, traditional farm practices and technology are being gradually replaced by mod­ern practices and technology. Modern technology is based on the use of chemical fertilisers, pesti­cides, high-yielding varieties of seeds including hybrid seeds (such as IR-8, Tinen-3, TN-1, ADT-7, etc. in case of rice, and the new Mexican varieties such as Rajo, Sonara 64, Kalyan and P.V. 18 in case of wheat) and the extensive use of electric power, implements and machinery (such as trac­tors and threshers as also irrigation). Thus, mas­sive programmes of mechanisation and irrigation were undertaken in the mid-1960s.

The new technology is ‘highly divisible’— usable on small peasant plots as readily as on large ones. It is yield-increasing rather than an acreage- expanding (that is, labour-saving) change. To ob­tain the needed water, where water from large irri­gation projects has been unavailable, many In­dian farmers have installed tube-wells with institutional credit.

Those who did not get such wells locally, use bamboo tubes wrapped with wire rather than steel tubing. By contrast, traditional technol­ogy relies on a pair of bullocks, a plough, the use of farmyard manure and seeds of poor quality.