Prioritizing Demand-Driven Agricultural Research for Development in India

India has shown an impressive economic growth of about 8 percent per year in the last decade. But the coexistence of impressive growth with widespread poverty and hunger is a real worry and a serious challenge. It is attributed to the lagging and highly volatile growth rate in agriculture, a dominant sector of the Indian economy. Agriculture is the key to economic development of India. The growth in the agricultural sector is highly unstable and has not exceeded the target growth rate of 4 percent per year. The higher investment in the Five-Year Plans in and for agriculture by the government, particularly after 2004, has not yielded commensurate returns. The agricultural input, service, and supply delivery system is clogged. Agriculture therefore needs serious special attention, more than it has received thus far, particularly in the context of emerging complex challenges of climate change, energy crisis, global economic shocks, and so on.