AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN UTTAR PRADESH: A STATISTICAL EVALUATION

Uttar Pradesh is the agricultural powerhouse of India. Being predominantly agrarian, the economics of Uttar Pradesh is enormously influenced by agriculture which is the means of sustainment of almost 65% of its total population. Inevitably, the economic growth and development of the state is heavily dependent on the development of agriculture sector in UP. It has been noticed that despite putting in similar efforts over the years, the pace of development in agricultural sector varies significantly in various parts of the state. This is, what has impelled us to carry out work to evaluate spatiotemporal disparities in agricultural development in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Using composite index of development, all the districts of UP are ranked categorized into various levels of agricultural development for three different time points.The work also has been done to identify model districts and potential targets for all the least and less developed districts of the state.