Environmental issues in agricultural development / edited by H Ramachandran

While we are at the brink of self-sufficiency in food productions we have not yet crossed the hump. Management of Indian agriculture con tinues to be of vital importance. Among other facets of agricultural development, its interface. with environment is being looked at more criti cally in recent times. How vulnerable is Indian agriculture? Can the agricultural growth achieved so far be sustained ? Such questions continue to perturb those concerned with Indian agriculture and not without reason.

This volume addresses various issues in volved in sustainability of our agricultural growth. The central issue is not one concerned with technology or the institutional factors but of goals of maximizing output of a single product (or of a few products) against the maximization of output of resource system, the weights at tached to 'long run', as against the 'short run' etc. In order to appreciate this, the social, economic and political aspects of ecological questions have to be increasingly added to the ones dealing with environmental aspects of ecology. The message that is conveyed by the authors of the papers - ir respective of whether they deal with conceptual or empirical issues is the necessity to look at 1 the linkage between one resource use and another, and understand the implications of programmes and policies relating to one resource/region for others. The volume would be of use to all those interested in India's develop ment and Indian agriculture.