Pushing rural demand

That would depend on income generation through efficient, fair and transparent marketing of the farm produce, which the government needs to ensure

At a time when the country’s ec­onomy is in the doldrums, sta­ring at a contraction due to the Covid-19 crisis, agriculture is the only major sector that has shown adequate resilience to buck the downturn. More importantly, while the other sectors are likely to take time to recover, agriculture seems set to continue to grow uninterrupted. The reasons are many.

For one, the area under pre-kharif (zaid or summer season) crops has ex­panded this year by over 35 per cent due to sufficient residual soil moisture left by the last year’s extended and 10 per cent surplus monsoon. Beside, this year’s