Rage
I think it varies from region to region say Maharasthra ,the konkan strip is very rich.Can't speak about vidarbha.Similar in Andhra esp in the coastal belt the coastal belt and esp in West godavari and East godavari the labour costs have gone so high that to hire a labour per day to harvest paddy is ocsting around 450 bucks thats insane charge.The farmers there are slowly moving towards mechanization of agriculture.I think Bimaru states must improve Rage ,remaining other states are I think doin well
'Course it varies, JP. We don't have a standard growth rate or standard rates of mechanisation everywhere.
The point is this: Apart from our traditional bread baskets, Punjab and Haryaana, mechanization of agriculture and husbandry has taken place and is taking place to very considerable extents in several parts of the country- the western states like Maharaashtra for sugar and Gujarat for milk-based industries, the southern states for cash crops, and the northern, central and eastern states for staples.
To give you an example, in the decade spanning 1991-2001, the number of tractors in use more than doubled, and the number of reapers has more than tripled 'tween 1994 and 2001 . You may not know this, but India is the second largest manufacturer of tractors today in the world. As of 2006, India was expected to contribute nearly 10% of the global farm equipment market, which was estimated to be about $66 billion.
The rise in labor wages is, itself, an incentive to mechanize. And the rise in labor wages in the coastal belt and the West and East Godavari has accrued because of income distribution patterns of the Green Revolution- which among others have contributed to almost universal irrigation on acreage across all farm size groups, high rates of allocation between tenure and adoption- indicating that owners have an advantage over tenants (which played out in the adoption of new inputs, in which tenants tended to lag), and the adoption of new capital by rich farmers, which caused poor farmers to either give up their holdings or work on the farms as tenants- under the new capital-infrastructure regime.
In Maharashtra, however- and particularly in Bid, Dhule and Shirdi, what I'm talking about is something entirely different- non-government organizations and private citizens taking the initiative to build dams, canals and simple tube or bore wells at breakneck speed. The phenomenon is widespread. And what has transpired is a near-total revolution of agriculture in the way it is conducted. The results have been better standards of living, daycare centres so that women, who were previously confined to the house, can now go to work and disposable incomes that have tripled in a year and have enabled them to buy mechanised equipment to put to use in agriculture. The 'pilot' scheme has been so successful that NGO's have been lobbying the government to take it to other states. But even so, the citizens seem to be taking the initiative-
all on their own.