More than twenty years of economic liberalisation had adversely affected the Indian agriculture. The most prominent sign of this is in the drastic decline in the growth rate of food grains. Again, if one observes Indian agriculture is currently passing through a period of severe crisis. Although some features of the crisis started manifesting themselves in certain parts of India during the late 1980s, the crisis has assumed a serious dimension since the middle of the 1990s. There is a general perception that unbearable burden of debt and augmented competitions from imports are indicative of a crisis in Indian agriculture. In this paper an attempt has been made to find out the trends in agriculture, causes of the crisis, problems faced by the agriculture sector and at the end some remedial measures are suggested for the betterment of this sector. To overcome the hurdles in this sector especially the farmers in the rural areas should be empowered with credit facilities. For this, policy and programs involving timely and adequate investment in agriculture would facilitate farmers? access to technologies and other relevant help in farming process.
Women are discriminated against in the labour market by engaging in low-paid and low-status jobs and paying lower wages than that of their male counterparts for similar work. This paper analyses gender inequality in the rural labour market in Odisha in comparison to the agriculturally advanced state of Punjab and all India. The paper uses data from Reports on Employment and Unemployment in India published by the National Sample Survey Office over the period from 1972-73 to 2011-12. Data on wages have been collected from various issues of Rural Labour Enquiry Report on Employment and Unemployment of Rural Labour Households, published by Labour Bureau of India. Based on these data, the paper finds that even with agricultural development and technological change, gender-based wage differential persists and there is a need to reduce the wage disparity between male and female by enforcing the laws and regulations on equal pay for equal work. The planners, policy makers and development practitioners in India are required to formulate appropriate policies, programmes and strategies for generation of additional employment for females and removing gender-disparity in work allocation and wage payment in rural labour market.
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