Is Agricultural Development the Cornerstone of Structural Change of the Indian Economy?advanced Discourse Upon the Indian Economy-Period 1950-2020

ABSTRACT: Irrigational investment has remained a debatable issue despite irrigation’smassive impact upon civilization since ancient days. After the Industrial revolution, if weobserve the structural change of the world towards industrialization (Kuznets, 1966,1971),mainly because of the terms of trade tilttowards the finished goods, out of given land area,debate emerged whether to use land optimally for industrialization or towards irrigation topromote agricultural development. Obvious debate raised regarding land use and that createdthe debate: whether to retain self-sufficiency in food - the leftist agenda or to attainspecialization in finished good and import food from the peripheral countries at the least costto attain highest benefit from gain in terms of trade - the rightist agenda in a developedcountry’s parliament (Mydral, 1956; Singer, 1998; Prebisch-Singer). Definitely historicaldevelopment process has assimilated the two extreme goals. Draught days felt needs forirrigation and loss in competition felt need for specialization in finished goods. So, aDemocratic Capitalist Welfare Economy kept both the routs open towards food selfsufficiency as well as specialization in manufacturing finished goods. Examples are thehistorical development process of 13 Developed Countries like USA, UK, Germany and 4Developing Countries like Argentina, Egypt etc. (Kuznets, 1971). Here we are in a discoursecorresponding to the Indian Economy that agricultural growth without structuralchange/transformation leads us to ‘Hindu rate of Growth’ whereas structural transformationleads us to high rate of growth about which, agricultural growth is just a bi-product. From thisangle we are going to focus upon the importance of irrigation and structural change onagricultural development of India.