The Much Needed Attention

"Achhe din anne wale hain" (Good days are coming) was the slogan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the 2014 Indian general election. For a farmer in India, it’s yet to come.  Though eight months of time are too short to judge the performance of a Government, what is disturbing is the lack of clarity on policies to revive the farming sector. As per 2012 estimates, with 49 percent of the labor force being employed in the agriculture sector, it remains to be the largest employment source. However, it contributed to only 13.7 percent of the (Gross Domestic Product) GDP.

The above graph speaks for itself. As the Indian economy has diversified and grown, agriculture's contribution to GDP has steadily declined from 1951 to 2011. There is a clear shift of focus from Agriculture to Services. The growth of the economy has been driven by the Services and Industry sector with the support of unlimited supplies of labour, which was mainly drawn from the agricultural sector. Of Course, as the economists argue, economic development would attract a large proportion of the farm labour force from agriculture into other pursuits. This would be possible only when per labour output in agriculture increases to compensate for the shift in labour output to other sectors.

We call ourselves a developing country and if development is to occur, agriculture must be able to produce a surplus of food to maintain the growing non-agricultural labour force. Since food is more essential to life than, the services rendered by traders or merchants. Going by the trend of the growing population and the annual increase in food grain production, the gap between the demand and supply is going to widen.

Will the Government bring out reforms to bring back hope for the farmers? Will they be able to reverse the trend of shift in labor from agriculture to services? Only time will tell!!!