India's rural problems

Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy. It is the largest and most important sector from the standpoints of relative share in national income, supply of food and raw materials, trade, public sector outlay, employment and demands for the products of other sectors. However, agriculture is the most backward sector of all. The major weaknesses of Indian agriculture comprise slowness and unevenness of its growth, insufficiency of its capacity and modernisation, inadequacy and ineffectiveness of the land reform measures and the grinding poverty of the landless agricultural labourers.

Agriculture is to claim maximum attention in the Eighth Five-Year Plan. Nearly half of the total Plan outlay is likely to be on its development in the coming five years. Greater stress is to be laid on rural development for opening up the rural economy to involve more rural people in the development process. Democracy has to seep down to the grassroots level.

Problems of the rural sector, including those of agriculture which has diverse aspects, have been viewed in this book from the standpoint of economic development. Every possible attempt has been made to provide information up to 1990. For instance, a write-up on village panchayats and a note on the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana and another on the Eighth Plan Approach Paper are incorporated in it.

The should interest the book administrators. the bankers. the co-operators, the planners and the legislators apart from the research scholars.