Theoretical and policy making contributions of research on agricultural economics: a success or failure or neither?

Abstract

This paper discusses following five issues by briefly considering the historical context of agriculture, innate biological nature of production process in agriculture, and initial conditions that agriculture inherited at the time of Independence in 1947: (1) Strengths and weaknesses of major research in agricultural economics, (2) Strengths and weaknesses of agriculture, (3) Impact on the political will of India to develop agriculture more rapidly, (4) Changes required in research in and policies for agriculture and those in other major branches of economics for more rapid sustainable development of agriculture, and (5) A brief epilogue on the title of the paper.