日本財団 図書館


Constraints on Growth and Strategies for 21st

Century with Regard to Population,

Water Resources, and Food Production

 

Akihiko Ohno

Associate Professor,

Faculty of Economics, Osaka City University

 

1. Economic Development and Agriculture

 

1-1 "Population and Agriculture" and Economic Development

 

The population of India rapidly expanded from 363 million in 1951 to 932 million in 1996, with the scale of the increase in a 10-year period during the '70s and '80s exceeding the population of Japan (125 million, estimated in 1995). How to cater for these people is an important issue for the management of the economy. On the issue of "population and food", however, it is insufficient to discuss only the relationship between the two. The issue must be considered within the paradigm that involves the mutual impact between itself, and economic development. Especially in India, the issue is closely related to resource mobilization of development funds, and therefore, significantly affects the progress of economic development.

Resource mobilization of funds for development is a crucial political objective for developing countries in order to achieve economic take-off. The newly industrializing economies (NIES) and Southeast Asian countries employ strategies of relying on foreign capital in forms of direct investments and/or loans, whereas China mobilized resources domestically through exploiting agricultural. India, however, has not applied the Chinese style of resource mobilization, though India attempted to take the same heavy-industry oriented path. This was because agricultural production activity. in India is left dependent on the market. Looked at from a different viewpoint, while China established a capital accumulation mechanism in the early stage of economic development through political reforms of ownership structures, as represented by the people's communes and state-owned enterprises, India has not made sufficient reform on the land ownership system, leaving the ownership structure almost unchanged since those days before its independence. Part of the reason agricultural exploitation, as employed in China, was avoided in India is that one of the major components of the Congress, which had long been the ruling party, was the wealthy farming class known as Zamindar.

 

 

 

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