Developing rural India: plan and practice

To discover how India's crucial food problem can best be solved, four agricultural economists review the successes and failures of agricultural planning in India for the past twenty years.
Professor Mellor discusses the evolution of rural development policy since 1947 and appraises the effects of each of the five-year plans. His co-authors present detailed analyses of rural development in three different areas the problems of technological change and water management in Raipur District, central India; the trading patterns and organization of the grain merchants of Sholapur District, western India; and changes in income, consumption, and investment during a ten-year period in the village of Senapur, northern India. Throughout, the authors stress the methods to be employed for a successful approach to rural development, both in India and elsewhere.
The authors view agricultural development within the larger context of the social and industrial transformation acutely needed to solve the problems of rural poverty. Political and economic development in India, it is shown, depend very much on developments in agriculture. Although the increase in food production has been sufficient to match the population expansion, the authors conclude that by the end of the Third Five-Year Plan agriculture had still failed to play the leading role required for over-all economic growth. Particular attention is therefore given to the nature and evolution of recent developments that promise rapid growth in agricultural production.
In a concluding section, Professor Mellor considers the future: the potential for self-sustaining growth in agricultural production, the prospects for food self-sufficiency, the outlook for relieving rural unemployment, and the nature of the next round of problems to be faced.