An Analysis on Agricultural Sustainability in India

Sustainability of agriculture is a matter of concern for various stakeholders. The challenges encountered by Indian agriculture are due to agro-climatic/environmental, social and economic dimensions. The sustainability strength comes due to vibrancy of these dimensions. In order to understand the regional and temporal dynamics of these dimensions, a state-level analysis of sustainability was made for two time-periods. The sustainability index estimation was based on the human development index methodology. Data for two time-periods, i.e. 2001 and 2011 were used to estimate the indices. The results revealed that in general, sustainability did not deteriorate over the reference period, although some states gained and some others lost in terms of change in the level of sustainability.