Dynamics Of Rice Economy In India: Emerging Scenario And Policy Options

Most of 726 million rural populations in India is dependent on agriculture. Rice is the staple food of nearly 65% of the total population in India. The production of rough rice reached 135 million tonnes (89 million tonnes of clean rice) in the TE 2002 from 32.3 million tonnes (20 million tonnes clean rice) in 1950-52, primarily due to the fact that agriculture is in the dynamic path in transforming traditional mode of production to modern agriculture. The paper traces the growth path of rice production along the time scale and analyses the trends and growth at disaggregate level. It shows that the inverted bowl shaped pattern of production growth experienced in during past couple of decades has been a matter of concern for sustainable and likely to threaten the food security. Clearly, the gain due to modern rice technology has been discriminatory against the resource poor areas, which is also dominated by small and marginal farmers. Productivity ranges from a less than 2 tonnes/ha in rainfed areas to as high as 5.85 tonnes/ ha in irrigated tract in Punjab. The paper attempts to characterize the typology of the change and argues in favour of a likely shift of production base from well-endowed irrigated areas to less well-to-do rainfed areas in India. The shift is justified as the recent changing policy environment designed to divert prime cereal crop lands in favour of crop diversification in several prosperous areas, is likely to affect food security in the country. The reform is also essential in agricultural R&D investment. A new look regionally differentiated R&D policy on rice-plus system (as against the rice-only system) is advocated with special emphasis on resource-rich but poor utilisation areas. Development of modern varieties resilient to biotic and abiotic stresses should be supported by policy intervention to ensure its equitable distribution among the stakeholders. The strategies recommended for the rainfed areas include that the region with low yield and low yield gap requiring "Yield-increasing technology", for the low yield and high g^p areas the strategies on "Appropriate technology, adaptive research and Reaching out to farmers" while the "Higher input efficiency and agricultural diversification" is needed in the high yield and low gap areas. Appropriate intervention on efficient implementation of the developmental programmes, is likely to accelerate the desired growth rate of rice production at a level higher than that of population growth, else the problem of food insecurity will loom large. [NABARD OC Paper No.47]