Write a note on Indian ‘Tractor Industry’.
Answers
Tractors in India is a major industry and significant contributor to its agriculture output gains.
In 1947, as India gained independence from British colonial empire, the level of agriculture mechanisation was low. The socialist oriented five-year plans of the 1950s and 1960s aggressively promoted rural mechanisation via joint ventures and tie-ups between local industrialists and international tractor manufacturers. Despite these efforts, the first three decades after independence local production of 4-wheel tractors grew slowly. By the late 1980s tractor production was nearly 140,000 units per year, and a prevalence rate of less than 2 per 1,000 farmers.
After economic reforms of 1991, the pace of change increased and by late 1990s with production approached 270,000 per year. In early 2000s, India overtook the United States as the world's largest producer of four-wheel tractors. FAO estimated, in 1999, that of total agricultural area in India, less than 50% is under mechanised land preparation, indicating large opportunities still exist for agricultural mechanisation.[3]
In 2013, India produced 619,000 tractors accounting for 29% of world's output, as the world's largest producer and market for tractors.[1][2] India currently has 16 domestic and 4 multinational corporations manufacturing tractors.