Indian agriculture in a globalizing world

Over a long period of time, roughly from the mid 1960s, Indian agriculture prospered basically under an autarkic trade environment. Any attempt to globalize Indian agriculture, either unilaterally under its own Structural Adjustment Program or under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA), would therefore, have significant repercussions on its agricultural trade balance, cropping patterns, and overall welfare of consumers and producers. To empirically map all these effects, the starting point would be to find out how competitive is Indian agriculture vis-à-vis global markets. This paper therefore presents indicators of competitive/comparative advantage with respect to major Indian agricultural commodities just prior to the signing of URAA. Thereafter, it spells out the various commitments India has made in terms of market access, domestic support, and export competition in the URAA, how it liberalized its agricultural markets during 1995-2001, and what the consequences of this liberalization have been so far, basically on the trade of those commodities.