You should remember while planning to create the agricultural sector, the Planning Commission has generally kept four broad goals in view:
(a) Increase Agricultural Production: The ambition has always been
(i) to bring more land under cultivation,
(ii) raise the per hectare yield via intensive application of such agricultural inputs as irrigation, improved seeds, fertilisers, etc. and therefore
(iii) bring about enhanced agricultural production.
(b) Increase Employment Opportunities: Aside from increase in production, the agricultural sector has to produce extra employment opportunities and offer scope for increasing the incomes of the poorer sections in our villages.
(c) Decrease the Pressure of Population on Land: Another fundamental goal of planning in the agricultural sector has been to decrease the number of people working on land, on the assumption that there are too many people working on land. The excess labour on land should be shifted to secondary and tertiary sectors, rather in rural and semi-urban regions.
(d) Decrease Inequality of Incomes in the Rural Sector: The Government should eliminate the exploitation of tenants, and should distribute excess land among small and marginal farmers in such a manner that there would be some amount of equality and justice in the rural regions.
All these four goals are generally followed in all our five year plans but in practice, agricultural
planning in India has come to depict increase in agricultural production, namely, the achievement of the first objective; all other goals have either been avoided or given lower priority.
