The Hindu Business Line : `Technical study vital to help agri labour get jobs'

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Madurai Feb. 19 Agricultural growth in the country in future will depend on factor productivity and to secure and sustain this growth, great stress must be laid on technical training and education in order that the labour in agriculture is absorbed in non-agricultural sector, according to Prof D. K. Srivatsava, Director, Madras School of Economics, Chennai.

In recent years, the growth in industry and services have been in double digits. However, the growth rate in agriculture, around 2.5 per cent, is low and suffers from both output and price volatility. The differential growth rates have resulted in massive structural changes in the economy, with significant implications in terms of employment, poverty reduction and income disparities in the country.

While the economy has moved away from agriculture, the movement of population from rural areas to urban areas has not been on a comparable pace. There has been an increase in the workforce in the manufacturing and the tertiary sectors, yet, the main policy challenge has been the absorption of the large workforce released from agriculture.

This would call for strategies for education and technical training, he said in his inaugural address at the two-day national seminar on `Indian Agriculture at Cross Roads' organised by the School of Economics, Madurai Kamaraj University, here on Monday.

Drawing attention to the agreement under the WTO provisions, Prof Srivatsava further said that the agreement has significant implications in three major areas such as exports, market access and domestic support to agriculture. Efforts are on to strike a balance between agricultural trade liberalisation and the desire of the member countries to pursue legitimate agricultural policy goals, including non-trade concerns, he said

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