Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been widely used in measuring agricultural production efficiency. The present paper is to investigate the technical, allocative and cost or economic efficiencies of rice farms in Bihar. The farm level data used in the analysis was taken from cost of cultivation scheme, Government of India running in the state from 45 tehsils of Bihar. Rice is a staple food and consumed by large population of the state, nation and world level. The technical efficiencies, allocative efficiencies of most of the farms were found to be 62% separately for each. Accordingly the degree of cost efficiency was estimated to be only 38.8%. Although, TE and AE being only 62%, farmers are still inefficient to achieve upto the optimal level of output. Given the available technology, farmers may reduce the paddy production cost by 61.2% to produce given level of output at least cost. Tobit analysis was carried out to assess the factors influencing efficiencies revealed that lack of education, quality seeds, and irrigation machinery were found to impact the efficiencies. Government and other policy making agencies have to formulate policies favourable to transform agriculture sector profitable which can attract the educated youth towards agriculture as profession. There is ample opportunities to minimize the cost of paddy production using a given level of technology coupled with proper and timely application of inputs, right combination of inputs with input and output prices to produce a given level of output at least cost. Besides assured supply of good quality seed, irrigation facilities, dissemination of new farming technologies, better education system and financial assistance, marketing infrastructures should be arranged timely so as to enhance the income of rural masses, and to reduce the poverty from the rural areas of the state in general and nation in particular.

This study examined the influence of the respondents’ socio-economic characteristics on their adoption of crop insurance schemes. Discriminant analysis based on the criteria values of standardized canonical coefficient and correlation matrix identified that educational level, farm size, satisfaction level, awareness and access to source of credit were positive discriminators while negative coefficients were obtained for age, income level and number of earning members. Awareness about crop insurance scheme, satisfaction level of farmer respondent with respect to the insurance scheme and access to source of credit were the highest discriminant variables. The study made it amply clear that socio-economic characteristics of farmers exert a significant influence on their adoption of crop insurance schemes. Taking into cognizance the findings of the discriminant analysis it can be inferred that awareness about the schemes and their benefits have to be created among the farmers in order to motivate them to go for insurance of their crops.

In view of increasing demand for Indian Horticulture produce, fresh and processed products in the International market, the export of horticultural crops at all India level has picked up. As India stands second in production of both fruits and vegetables, spices and few plantation crops such as tea and coffee fetching more export value in the International market. The horticultural exports in India have increased after the implementation of NHM scheme. Horticulture production in India has crossed the production of agriculture crops and reached a highest production of 280 million tonnes during 2012. India is exporting horticultural crops mainly to U.A.E., Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. The two major countries that import most of India’s horticultural crops are UAE and Saudi Arabia. These findings were similar with findings of the study conducted by Mittal (2007) stating that fruits and vegetables exports has expanded rapidly in the international market. The number of commodities as well as the number of varieties produced and traded have increased manifold during the past 25 years. There is an overall increase in the demand for fruits and vegetables for consumption both in fresh and processed form. In Karnataka, the growth in export of horticultural crops in quantity terms has increased from 2.03 to 31.98 per cent between pre and post NHM period. Similarly, the growth in horticultural exports in value terms also has increased from 1.92 to 30 per cent between pre and post NHM period. Karnataka state is one among the major states in involved in production and export of horticulture produce in India. The growing demand for horticultural crops such as mango, pomegranate, grapes and processed products has increased in International market. The processed products like pickles, chutney, raisin, have more demand in the international market. This trend has been increased specially after the implementation of NHM scheme.

India is the largest cotton producing and second largest cotton exporting country. India accounting about 26% of the world cotton production. It has the distinction of having the largest area under cotton cultivation in the world with about 11-12 million hectares and constituting about 40% of the world area under cotton cultivation. Cotton is a global crop with high price fluctuation, which depends on the global business cycles. It is a mostly used as raw material for apparel and cloth industry. In addition to production risk cotton farmers encounter high price risk. Thus, it is important to forecast the cotton prices for the benefit of farmers as well as millers who purchase the cotton. The present study is aimed to forecast the prices of cotton of major producing states of India. The time series data on monthly price of cotton required for the study was collected from the AGMARKNET website from January, 2006 to December, 2016 to forecast prices for kharif 2017-18 year harvest months. ARIMA model was employed to predict the future prices of cotton. Model parameters were estimated using the R programming software. The performance of fitted model was examined by computing various measures of goodness of fit viz., AIC, SBC and MAPE. In Kharif season the cotton crop is harvested during December to January. Forecast shows that market prices of cotton, would be ruling in the range of ` 4,600 – 4,900 per quintal (medium staple cotton) in kharif harvesting season, 2017-18.

In Republic of Afghanistan international community is facing an unprecedented treat of Narcotic Production and Consumption. The Afghanistan is widely known as the largest producer of the world’s supply of heroin. The threat has gone to the extent that in 2016, it was estimated that 80% of the world’s Opium supply came from Afghanistan. Estimated production has risen by 43% in 2016 compared with 2015 levels, according to latest Afghan Opium Survey figures released by Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Opium is Afghanistan’s largest cash crop. The Republic of Afghanistan is the country where the maximum production of Opium takes place. The problem is a serious concern in the future because it has a tendency to grow more and more as Afghanistan is about to complete the major project which will connect the South Asia, Central Asia and Middle East. This is of New Silk Route, one of the biggest reconstructions happening in Eurasian Content after the disorganisation of Soviet Union. In this context the study would attempt to access the problems of illicit drugs and Narcotic Production in Afghanistan and in what way planners of the country will undertake steps to prevent the illegal trade of Narcotic Business.

Bihar is one of the important pulse growing state of India with productivity of 839.3 kg/ha in 2010-11 which is projected to attain 1461.3 kg/ha by 2050-51, highest in eastern India. With nearly 2.2 million ha of rice fallows, a small technological intervention can transform the rice- fallow to rice-gram or rice-lentil system bringing about pulse revolution. The present study tries to review and analyze the current policy environment and suggests ways and means to improve the pulses production scenario in the country. It advocates, the need to diversify from cereal–based cropping systems to pulses-based cropping system with certain policy decisions like identification of additional rice fallow lands largely in Eastern India, crop diversification, improving seed replacement rate, improved crop production techniques etc. Study also suggests that provisions should be made for easy credit, insurance, attractive Minimum Support Price (MSP) with procurement and appropriate incentives for pulse producers as well as creating necessary infrastructure for processing, marketing and value-addition. This paper analyses status of pulse crop in India as whole and Bihar in particular along with paradigm shift required in policy decision, pulse research, technology generation and dissemination, commercialization along with capacity building of farmers and frontier areas of research and extension.

The present study attempts to capture differences in the level of economic empowerment between male and female members of the same household. The study was conducted in Imphal West district of Manipur taking a random sample of 69 farm-households. The primary male and female members of each household were personally interviewed. A gender neutral economic empowerment index comprising of six indicators was developed for the study. It was found that male respondents had significantly higher empowerment level in four indicators of empowerment viz.; access and control over productive assets; access and control over economic resources; autonomy & mobility and time. If the overall empowerment level was considered, the index for male respondents (0.71) was found to be significantly higher than that of female respondents (0.57). It was also revealed that land holding had a significant association with the empowerment of the female respondents whereas cosmopoliteness had significant association with the empowerment level of the male respondents.

Market integration and prices in horticultural crops such as onion play an important role in determining the production decisions of the farmers and diversification to high value crops. In this context, the study explores market integration and price transmission in selected onion markets using Johansen cointegration, Granger causality and impulse response function. The outcomes of the study strongly buttressed to the co-integration and interdependence of onion markets in India. The impulse response function supported that except Mumbai and Kozhikode, all other selected markets are responded well to standard deviation shock given to any of the markets. One of the possible reasons might be that Mumbai is the largest supplier of onion and Kozhikode is geographically dispersed and is a sea port, where foreign produce may be arriving in a larger quantity. The overall regional markets of onion are strongly cointegrated that allows the private traders and restricts the role of government intervention.

Meghalaya has the one of the largest concentration of scheduled tribe population in India. For absence of data it is not easy to get a precise estimate of scheduled tribe out-migration in the state. Fortunately census of India provides scheduled tribe out-migration data available at district level first time in 2001 census. The pattern of their out-migration however is not spatially uniform. The state has experienced significant rate of total and male tribal out-migration from the central part of the state whereas in term of intra-district it shows just opposite pattern. Large proportions of migrants are migrated in other north-eastern states from Meghalaya whereas Assam has observed about half of the total in and out-migrants from Meghalaya.

Pulses is a major source of protein for a huge section of India particularly vegetarian population. In the present study, an attempt has been made to analyze the trend in production of total pulses crop in India for the period 1950-51 to 2014-15, i.e. past six decades in India. The gross area under total pulses in India was in the range of 19-25 million ha per year over these six decades. The average production of total pulses was in the range of 8 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes per annum over the 6 decades. However, the yield of total pulses was increase over the year. The yield of total pulses was 400 kg/ha during 1950’s which increase to above 700 kg/ha during 2014-15. The compound growth rate of yield over six decades was positive and significant while area and production are non-significant. The decomposition analysis shows that increase in production of pulses during the period 1995-2014 was mainly due to yield effect. Since the supply of resources especially land is limited in nature, productivity of pulses should be boosted up by adoption of improved technologies like hybrid pulses cultivation and various technique of production to meet the future increased demand.

One of the most celebrated and feared concepts in the world today are risk which is the product of uncertainty. Many studies said, risk and uncertainty are often used interchangeably as they are the same thing, but it is not true. While risk can be measured and estimated but uncertainty cannot. Uncertainty regarding complete unawareness of the future and there is no amount of technical adjustment or mathematically delicacy that can change our basic ignorance of the future. However, risk and uncertainty cannot be separated because where there is uncertainty, there is risk. The probability of risk can be measured precisely, while that of the uncertainty can only be measured through the subjective likelihood depending on the marginal utility of an individual. Probably, no single model is the best at farm level, but the use of, MOTAD with compromise programming, marginal utility of money and Linear programming (LP) technique seems to offer a more powerful analytical instrument for agricultural systems modeling with respect to risk, uncertainty and decision-making, respectively.

Climate change and global warming poses threat to the living beings. The developing countries like India, are facing the problem of producing sufficient food for the ever increasing population. Apart from cereals, pulses are the main constituent of the Indian food platter. The present study was undertaken to find out the impact of change in climatic variables, viz. temperature and rainfall on yield of Pigeon Pea by using district-level panel data for Gujarat from 1980-2011. An increase in temperature was found to have a negative impact on the yield of crop whereas rainfall had a favourable impact.

Unequal access to resources, employment and income along with its trend of steady magnification results into multiple social and economic depreciations. The issue of income inequality at macro level, i.e. national and state level has been well focused whereas analysis of micro-level disparities in this aspect has yet to be explored significantly. The development plans, at presents, rely on decentralized planning processes where the micro level sectoral and spatial variation of income should be given importance. Purulia district is one of the most backward districts in West Bengal in perspective of all the dimensions of human development accompanied with the income inequality at a considerable magnitude. The present study attempts to assess the intra-district income inequalities between different social, ethnic and religious classes. The study analyses the profiles of income distributions of different competitive classes carefully. It also plotted the relative deprivation curve. The result of the analyses has been critically discussed for an amicable conclusion.

This study examines the long-run relationship between foreign direct investment outflows, exports and aggregate measure of GDP in India for the time period 1980 to 2014. In order to assess the long-run relationship, ARDL/Bounds testing approach to cointegration has been applied. At the end of the analysis, VAR Granger causality/Block exogeneity Wald test has also been applied to test for the causal relationship between the variables of interest. The results indicate that all the variables are cointegrated when FDI outflows have been taken as a dependent variable. The positive and statistically significant coefficient of export suggests that FDI outflows and export complement each other, both in the long and short-run. GDP is found to have a negative but statistically insignificant impact on FDI outflows. The dummy that is used to incorporate the shift in policy after the economic reforms of 1991 is found to have a positive but insignificant impact on FDI outflows. The results of the Granger causality test indicate a unidirectional causality running from exports to FDI outflows. A similar type of causality is found between exports and GDP running from GDP to exports. The results of the Granger causality test also suggest that there exists chain relationship among the variables i.e., GDP causes exports and exports, in turn,causes FDI outflows. It can be also inferred that export is a precondition for Indian firms to conduct overseas FDI operations.

Indian economy since ancient time’s agriculture has been backbone of occupation for Indian people. Near about 70% of population in India is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood and despite concerted industrialization in the last six decades, agriculture still occupies a place of pride. It contributes a sizable percentage to the domestic product as also to exports. More than two-thirds of the work-force is engaged in agriculture and large many depend upon it being engaged in trade in agricultural products, agro-based industries etc. Being the largest industry in the country, agriculture provides employment to around 60% of the total work-force in the country. The present paper deals with inter-district disparities in rural agricultural sector in West Bengal and its impact on agricultural development through a (cross- sectional study) inter-temporal analysis of 18 districts. Cluster of districts of rural economic have been prepared for selected 10 indicators, in the period of time 1990-91, 2000-01 and 2010-11. The analysis reveals that extreme disparities continue to persist with respect to the availability of economic indicators in rural areas at the district level. The pattern of districts in terms of development of rural infrastructure has also remained broadly unchanged. West Bengal agriculture should promote diversified and export oriented agriculture. Particular attention needs to be paid to the backward districts for more balanced regional development. This calls for increased investment in rural infrastructure by both the public and private sectors.

The study was conducted in Bengaluru rural and Ramanagara districts of Karnataka to assess the resource use pattern and efficiency in finger millet production. The sampling frame consisted of 30 rainfed and 30 irrigated finger millet producers in each district totaling to 120 farmers. Farm household survey was carried out to collect the primary information from the selected finger millet producers by using the pre-tested interview schedules. Cobb-Douglas type of production function (per hectare) was used to assess the resource use efficiency in finger millet production. Results indicated that, there was significant difference between rainfed and irrigated finger millet production in use of human labour, seeds and fertilizers. The regression co-efficient of human labour (0.11), bullock and machine labour (0.10) and fertilizer (0.15) were found to be statistically significant at one per cent in irrigated situation, whereas in rainfed situation, human labour (0.31), fertilizer (0.04) was statistically significant at one per cent, seed (0.08) was statistically significant at five per cent. The allocative efficiency was estimated by using the geometric mean levels of the output as well as inputs. The ratio of marginal value product (MVP) to marginal factor cost (MFC) under rainfed situation in case of human labour, bullock and machine labour, seed, FYM and fertilizer was 0.68, 0.05, 0.77, 0.07 and 0.46, respectively indicating that, there is no scope for using additional units of the factors and expenditure or use of inputs should be reduced to optimize the production system. Whereas, in irrigated situation,ratio of MVP to MFC was less than one in case of human labour (0.35), bullock and machine labour (0.39), seed (0.69) and irrigation (0.47), indicating that an expenditure of one rupee on human labour, bullock and machine labour, seed and irrigation gives only ` 0.35, ` 0.39, ` 0.69 and ` 0.47, respectively. It is evident from the study that, inputs are not optimally utilized in finger millet production. Hence, farmers should be educated regarding the sustainable use of recourses which helps in increasing the returns and reduces cost as most of the resources are over utilized in finger millet production.

The institution of private enterprise does not produce growth at an even pace; rather economies observe alternating periods of expansion and contraction giving rise to recurrent business and trade cycles where the growth of production, real incomes and spending fluctuates. Policymakers, investors and economic agents have avid interest in predicting the future course of economic activity and growth rates. Monetary aggregates, exchange rates and structural macroeconomic models have been traditionally used to forecast the direction of economic activity, however, all these have been shown to be problematic and unstable. The present study uses an indicator approach to portend future changes in the level of economic activity. The study has identified from a set of financial indicators, those indicators which register some significant aspect of the performance of the economy and thus have the ability to forecast changes in economic climate. Most of the research is done for the developed countries which are characteristic of free market economy where fluctuations in business activity are driven by endogenous factors. Similar studies for emerging market economies are lacking. The present study identifies from a wide array of financial variables those variables which can predict cyclical fluctuations in U.S.A., which is a free market economy and in India which is steadfastly proceeding towards a free market economy post liberalization that is, after 1991. The study then determines the lead of various variables in predicting recessions and provides the best model with highest predictive content for the world’s largest economy, U.S.A. and the world’s second fastest growing economy, India.

The present investigation was conducted on price behaviour of soybean in selected district of Southern Rajasthan. For workout the trend, secondary data was collected from 2000 to 2014 from publish government sources. Four markets were selected from four selected district namely Pratapgarh, Chittorgarh, Bhilwara and Banswara. Exponential trend for annual wholesale prices was found to be best fit for all the markets. The time element alone explained 89.3% to 93.0% variations in annual wholesale prices in the selected markets. The result of compound growth rates revealed that wholesale prices of soybean recorded significant growth rates in selected markets of Southern Rajasthan. The compound growth rates ranged from 9.91% per annum in Banswara to 10.08% annum in Pratapgarh market. The extent of intra year price rise varied from 15.62% in Banswara to 17.52% in Nimbahera market. In majority of the markets, the extent of intra year price rice was from 15 to 18%. The smaller magnitude of coefficient of variations (4.57% to 5.61%) indicated that there was greater consistency and smaller variability in the monthly prices of soybean in the selected markets of Southern Rajasthan.

The study was carried to analyse the influence of emergence of allied activities (AA) and non-farm activites (NFA) on agricultural transformation across the dryland and irrigated regions of Karnataka. The multi-stage random sampling technique was used to identify the respondents. Four districts namely Chitradurga, Kolar, Hassan and Mandya, corresponding to four different agroclimatic zones in Karnataka were used as the study area. Agricultural transformation index was developed using the Principal component Analysis for the study. This index was used as dependent variable for working out the multiple regression analysis to study the cause-effect relationship between agricultural transformation and the economic parameters associated with emergence of AA and NFA. The study showed that irrespective of the irrigation pattern existing, the dry land as well as the irrigated regions showed a positive agricultural transformation with the emergence of NFA.