Catapulting Indian Agriculture for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Indian economy has now become one of the fastest growing economies of the world. With the attainment of 9% growth rate in the last fiscal, it is now in position to target double-digit growth rate for the future. But frequent rise in the inflation rate is a grave cause of concern. Inflation rate going beyond 6% has not only worried Indian policy makers but the foreign investors in the Indian market also. Mostly it has been the Indian experience that inflation has gone up due to rise in international crude oil prices but this time it is very uncommon that in spite of considerable decline in oil prices, inflation has gone unreasonably high. Although Reserve Bank of India and Finance Ministry have taken all fiscal and monetary measures to control the inflation but still it seems uncontrollable some times. Due to this, consumers are experiencing problems in managing their expenses and the cost of home loan that caused boom in construction industry and recovered the economy from once recessionary trends, is also becoming immanageable. This definitely is going to have cascading effect on all indicators of economic growth.

Our Finance Minister has pointed out it several times that this inflation is primarily short supply triggered inflation. The short supply of agricultural produce; wheat, sugar, oilseeds and pulses. Inflation in these commodities taken individually is much higher than overall inflation. People on the helm of the policy making have cited a number of times that agriculture is now biggest challenge. It is a paradox that India has 43% arable land and 60% of the population is dependent on agriculture but there is short supply of essential commodities. The share of agriculture in total GDP is now just 19%, which means there is a lot of disguised unemployment in agriculture sector. On the other hand if we compare China with India, China has got only 13% of land as arable land and 45% of the population dependent on agriculture. The share of agriculture in Chinese GDP is 12.5%. There was a time when people were apprehensive that with only one-seventh of the arable land and one-fifth of the global population, who will feed China? The architect of Chinese Economic Reforms, Deng Xioping said “ Chinese people will feed themselves” and China has been successful in doing that.

If we look at Indian scenario, the arable land is declining due to increasing population and industrialization. Agricultural produce is getting imported to curb inflation caused by short supply of agricultural produce. Custom duty is reduced to facilitate import of these commodities resulting in decline in government revenue leading to fiscal deficit. To make India economic superpower it is essential to sustain economic growth of at least 9% for at least a decade and it is also true that to sustain this economic growth rate, a sustainable growth rate of 4% in agriculture is also essential.

But under the WTO provisions, all kinds of subsidies are to be abolished, which makes it tough to achieve a sustainable growth rate of 4% in the agriculture. By 2050, India’s population is projected to be 1.5 billion that itself is going to pose a challenge to feed this population with the given resources and means of farming. With the present constraints and limitations Indian agriculture needs to be revamped to help India remain competitive and also to provide sustainable competitive advantage to the Indian economy. It has been seen in the past that Indian economy flourishes when there is good crop. It speaks a lot about the dependency of economic growth on agriculture.

Keeping above significant facts in mind, researcher proceeds further to study, how Indian agriculture can be made robust to go hand in hand with the economic growth of the country, making Indian corporate more competitive and providing sustainable competitive advantage to the nation. To study the farming practices of leading economies of the world like USA, EU, Japan, China and India and to suggest measures to convert India’s present day family farming into surplus farming to entrepreneurial farming so that dependency of 60% of India’s population is minimized considerably, like various developed nations.

The research is Exploratory in nature. Primary and Secondary both kinds of data are to be used. The primary data collection method has to be interview of responsible persons in policymaking, research organizations and professionals in agribusiness. Secondary data will be collected from various journals subscribed by ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research, National Institute of Agricultural Marketing etc.) and various sources on Internet. The Sampling Method for collecting primary data will be Non-probability-Judgmental Sampling. Data is to be analyzed using appropriate statistical techniques.

KEY WORDS: Indian Agriculture, Economic Growth, Sustainable Competitive Advantage and WTO.

Title of the Paper: Catapulting Indian Agriculture for Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

A R Mishra

Assistant Professor

Institute of Technology and Science

Mohan Nagar,

Ghaziabad (UP)-201007

0120-2657258/ 59/ 60

Mobile: 09810258386

Residence: F-3, Plot No. 139

Radhey Shyam Park

Sahibabad, Ghaziabad-201005

Phone-0120-3245190

E-mail: