Description:
The book titled Resources, Technology and Sustainability—An Analytical
Perspective on Indian Agriculture is the reflection of my research on agricultural
economics for the last thirty years. Although I have research interest in diverse
fields of economics, namely, economic growth, public economics, child labour, the
major focus of my works has remained on natural resources, agriculture and sustainable growth. In the days of my student life in college and university in 1970s
and 1980s, the low productivity, low capital investment and technological backwardness in agriculture were the subjects of major concern for farmers, agricultural
sector and for the economy as a whole and this attracted me to be engaged in
research on this field. The existing literature suggested that the productivity in
traditional agriculture could not be increased without a technological breakthrough.
At the beginning, I started my works with the objective of suggesting policies
towards increasing productivity in agriculture. The frontline research in this field at
that time published in renowned International Journals prompted me to undertake
doctoral research on ‘Adoption of Modern Technology in Agriculture’. I started my
work in late 1980s in the Department of Economics, University of Calcutta, under
the supervision of my respected teacher, Prof. Asis Kumar Banerjee. Professor
Banerjee, one of the finest teacher in economics, with commendable grip over
economic theory and quantitative economics, advised me to keep in mind that a
good research must be based on sound theoretical framework and I was trained and
guided accordingly. Many works were going on in the same line in the Indian
context but hardly any of them had any theoretical backup.