INDIAN ECONOMY
Dr Itty Benjamin
Structure of India Economy
Indian Economy is a developing economy
facing following problems:
 Low national income and per capita income
 Poverty and inequality
 High population
 Unemployment
 Inflation
Demographic features
 High population growth rate
 High birth rate, infant mortality rate and high
death rate.
 Unfavorable sex-ratio
 High density of population
 Poor quality of human resourse
Problem of overpopulation
 Issue of overpopulation can be examined
from different points of view
 Various issues like unemployment, shortage
of food, low literacy, high employment, low
growth of national income etc point to the
existence of problem of overpopulation.
Population Policy in India
 From the first Plan itself population control was
part of the policy of the government but a
comprehensive policy statement came only in
1975 during rule of Congress (I). This policy
actually backfired.
 The modified policy came in 1977 when Janta
Party came into power.
 In year the 2000, the NDA government announced
National Population Policy. This policy defined
various objectives and fixed targets to be achieved
by specified dates.
Economic Planning
Background
In India planning had begun even before independence. After
independence National Planning Commission was set up
to prepare and implement Five Year Plans.
Each Plan has its own objectives and targets. The basic
objectives like removal of poverty, greater employment
level, higher growth rate have been part of all the plans.
Already 12 Plans have been completed. In many areas our
Plan have made major achievements.
There are many shortcomings of the Plans also.
Agriculture
 For a country like India Agriculture is of prime
importance. It provides employment to a large
number of labour; contributes substantially to the
national income; it is a source of foreign exchange
and important source of raw material to many
industries.
 Agriculture products can be broadly divided into
food-grains and commercial crops.
 Growth of various items have followed different
paths. A limited number of items have shown high
growth but many items remained stagnant leading
to shortages.
Agriculture Finance
 Agriculture needs short term as well as long
term loans.
 The sources of finance can be divided as
Institutional and Non-Institutional sources.
 Over the last few years, institutional sources
are gaining importance over non-institutional
 There is a long way to go before the
agriculture sector is able to get the problem
of agriculture finance sorted out.