Interim Budget 2019: Farm spend doubled in Modi govt years; is that enough?

Agriculture generates only 18% of gross domestic product but sustains 600 million people--half of India's population

In a year of already failing rain and declarations of impending drought, government data on the crisis-ridden agriculture sector that sustains more than 600 million Indians--or half the population--appears to reveal ever-increasing spending.

India’s agriculture budget doubled over five years to Rs 57,600 crore in 2018-19 under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, three times that of the last United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government budget in 2013-14, with the highest increase of 79% over the previous year coming in 2016-17. As a proportion of the total budget, however, the NDA’s allocations for agriculture were largely