Disadvantaged Regions and Social Groups: Is There a Way Out?

The decade of seventies brought a sea change in the development thinking in India in line with paradigm shifts in global debates on development process. In fact, scholars in India visualised the need for direct attack on poverty, regional imbalances and upliftment of the disadvantaged groups much earlier in the early sixties. Disillusionment with the strategy of exclusive reliance on 'trickle down' of growth to solve the mass poverty and hunger and associated political costs led government to devise new strategies to make agricultural growth more broad based and equitous, apart from developing integrated rural development through several schemes for employment and income generation. There was a plethora of programmes for agricultural development in the seventies reflecting the changing development thinking of the policy makers nationally and globally. Eighties witnessed few initiatives like technology mission for oilseeds.