The project report titled “Public Spending on Agriculture in India: 2010-11 to 2019-20,” is out and can be accessed here.

In 2021, the Foundation conducted a research project to analyse the trends in public spending on agriculture in India for the most recent decade (2010-11 to 2019-20). The project was part of a larger study of public spending for agriculture in four countries — Tanzania and Zambia in Africa, and India and Vietnam in Asia — conducted by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

The project team included Abhinav Surya (Doctoral candidate, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum), Deepak Johnson (Senior Research Fellow, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore), Divya S. Devadiga (FAS), Nihira Ram (FAS), and Raya Das (Senior Research Fellow, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi). The project was supervised by R. Ramakumar, Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

India’s agricultural growth was historically dependent on the investments made by the public sector. The green revolution that led to a significant increase in overall agricultural production and productivity was made possible by state intervention in terms of research and development, extension services, prices, credit, and marketing. However, there has been a marked withdrawal of state from these spheres in the period of economic liberalisation. In a way, continuity and change mark the period of liberalisation in Indian agriculture. On the one hand, many features of the long-run path of agrarian change continue into the contemporary agrarian regime. On the other hand, Washington Consensus-inspired policies after 1991 have led to acute adverse impacts on the conditions of life and work in rural India. In this broad context, the study tries to analyse the withdrawal of the state from spending, investing, regulating and intervening in the agricultural sector in the period of liberalization.