Agrarian Crisis in India

Contents: Preface. I. Macro dimensions of agrarian crisis: 1. Agriculture in the reforms regime/D. Narasimha Reddy and Srijit Mishra. 2. Capital formation in Indian agriculture: national and state level analysis/Ramesh Chand. 3. Agricultural credit and indebtedness: ground realities and policy perspectives/S.L. Shetty. 4. Managing vulnerability of Indian agriculture: implications for research and development/Suresh Pal. II. Farmers' distress: a few states in focus: 5. Farmers' distress in a modernizing agriculture--the tragedy of the upwardly mobile: an overview/V.M. Rao. 6. Agrarian distress and farmers' suicides in Maharashtra/Srijit Mishra. 7. Farmers' suicides and unfolding agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh/S. Galab, E. Revathi and P. Prudhvikar Reddy. 8. Agrarian transition and farmers' distress in Karnataka/R.S. Deshpande. 9. Distress, debt, and suicides among farmer households: findings from village studies in Kerala/K.N. Nair and Vineetha Menon. 10. Agrarian crisis in Punjab: high indebtedness, low returns, and farmers' suicides/Karam Singh.

"For more than a decade, Indian agriculture has been marked by deceleration in growth and distress of farmers. This crisis is structural and institutional in nature, with farmers' suicides symptomatic of deep-seated maladies that have engulfed the agricultural sector. This book brings together for the first time a detailed analysis of this crisis in all its dimensions.

The complexity of the issues is unravelled by addressing both the macro context and the regional-level manifestations of the agrarian crisis. The macro dimensions include detailed analysis of structural, institutional and policy changes; institutional credit, and state of agricultural research. Case studies of five states--Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Punjab, which experienced high and unusual incidence of farmers' suicides and agrarian distress--present the micro-perspectives. These case studies not only bring out the diversity of conditions prevalent in the states, but also highlight the common problem of failure of public support systems in agriculture. The methods used range from models of explanation based on data from national surveys to discussion of state-specific situations seen through farmer household surveys.

Providing a comprehensive picture of the state of Indian agriculture at the turn of the twenty-first century, this book will be useful to researchers, policymakers, civil society organizations and students of Indian economy, polity, and society." (jacket)