ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the emergence of concern with distributional aspects of development, proposes criteria for equitable growth, and assesses the overall performance of Punjab and Haryana in terms of these criteria. It discusses the agricultural sector's direct and indirect influence on the rate of per capita Gross National Product growth as well as its direct and indirect influence on employment and on the "dispersion" of incomes and the "location" of the array of incomes. Increased allocations to agriculture and the rural sector generally are justified on equity grounds because the poor are overwhelmingly rural, because urban productivity and incomes are much higher on average than rural productivity and incomes, and because "rural income and power, while far from equal are less unequal than in the cities." The availability of wheat and rice varieties for major foodgrains was certainly the "critical new element" in Indian agriculture in the period beginning in the mid-1960s.
