Second, what do we mean when we say farm incomes have to improve? Fifty seven per cent of the population describes itself as earning a living primarily from agriculture and that means crop output — typically, foodgrain output. India’s failure is that this figure hasn’t declined. Instead of ensuring that people stay in agriculture, we need to ensure people get out of agriculture, in the sense of crop output. Commercialisation and diversification, away from crop output, and employment creation through off-farm activities will ensure that agriculture grows by 4 per cent, the target set by the Draft Approach Paper to the 11th Plan. It is important to note that when the Approach Paper says that agriculture must grow by 4 per cent, what it really means is that agriculture and allied activities must grow by 4 per cent — agriculture proper can’t conceivably grow by 4 per cent. This is known and people often argue that jobs must be created in rural industries, a la China, given that India has witnessed a failed industrial revolution. However, what is often not stated is that in Great Britain, the industrial revolution was preceded by an enclosure movement that led to privatisation of land and the opening up of land markets. This took various forms and it is impossible to generalise about a process that varied regionally and spanned a range of centuries from the 12th to the 19th. But as a general proposition, it created land markets and allowed agricultural land to be used for non-agricultural purposes.

... contd.