The India growth story is enviable. Despite plaguing problems, India has emerged stronger and resilient to the global crisis so far. India is expected to be the world's fastest growing economy by 2018, according to Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research arm of the Economist magazine. India, the second largest growing economy will overtake China as the fastest growing major economy with an average of eight per cent in the...

Both sides will have to rise above politics and focus on the water crisis, which requires difficult and bitter solutions.  As the long hot summer sizzles, one's thoughts in Lahore and Amritsar turn to water. It is scarce on both sides of the border. When the British finally and fully took over the Punjab in 1849, their thoughts turned to the possibility of engineering for agriculture. In the 1860s, they...

A good monsoon forecast strengthens prospects for India to cut sugar imports, free up grain exports and buy more gold as rains boost supplies in the world’s leading consumer of most farm commodities. Annual monsoon rains from June to September are key to firing up growth and farm output and limiting inflation in India, which ranks among the world’s top producers and consumers of sugar, wheat, rice and edible oils and...

The growth rate of agriculture was three per cent and that of manufacturing was 4.5 per cent during the first three decades after independence. The growth rate for agriculture has slipped to 2.8 per cent while that for manufacturing has increased to 6.4 per cent during the last 15 years. Farmers continue to commit suicides across the country. The groundwater level is declining. The country has to import wheat, edible...

A meticulously researched book by A. Vaidyanathan, Agricultural Growth in India: Role of Technology, Incentives and Institutions, is an illuminating scholarly work. Thinking about it one realizes the dismal and declining state of Indian agriculture and the poor governance at both Central and state government levels that has brought it to this sorry pass. A valuable compendium of data and analysis of Indian agriculture since Independence, it is a valuable...