ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the intermediate regime, or the state along with its ideological and functional allies, imposes its own articulation of development on agriculture. It discusses how agriculture as a sector of the economy and a way of life for over a quarter of the population and half the workforce of the world’s largest democracy, is shaped by the power and persistence of a relatively small faction of the population. The chapter explains the evolution of Indian agriculture in three phases of development articulation, and new relationships between the state and agriculture. The governance of agriculture is dictated by the development norms of the intermediate regime. For the regime, agriculture has been fundamental to all development (phase 1), the driver of modernisation for development (phase 2), and is now a game of contending alternatives (phase 3). The persistence of technologies, investment patterns and centralised administration is best illustrated in the state’s understanding of and solutions for rainfed agriculture.
