The Dynamics Of Institutional Change And Rural Development In Punjab India

Monograph on the role of rural area local government institutions in rural development in the punjab, India - examines the dynamics of institutional frameworks, measures development by agricultural production, rural welfare (incl. Health, education, employment, nutrition, etc.) and income distribution levels, and describes agricultural management, agricultural planning, land utilization, farm technological change, etc. Diagrams, flow charts, references and statistical tables.

For many years, agricultural development in Punjab symbolised one of the most successful experiments in rural development. However, this success story seems to be going astray. The crux of the problem, this volume suggests, is that externally driven modernization to meet national food needs pushed Punjab into highly specialized production of wheat and rice, resulting in over-utilisation of natural resources with adverse environmental consequences that jeopardizing the long-term viability and sustainability of the agrarian economy. Stagnating productivity, reduced farm size, falling household incomes, depleting groundwater resources, are only a few of the problems that characterise Punjab’s agriculture today. The book establishes clearly that rural development implies more than transformation of traditional agriculture. Apart from ensuring efficient use of limited resources to sustain agricultural production, rural policy should encompass promotion of non-farm activities, investments in social and economic structure and civic amenities.

This book aims to examine how the pattern of growth in the agricultural sectors has contributed to equitable growth and to assess the relevance of the relationship between agriculture and equitable growth in Punjab-Haryana for other states in India and for other low-income countries.

The first of an eight-volume series, The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences, this book analyzes the trends in the published literature of agricultural economics and rural sociology during the past fifty years. It uses citation analysis and other bibliometric techniques to identify the primary journals, report series, and monographs of current importance to the developed industrial countries as well as those in the Third World.