ABSTRACT
Despite the historic image of Bihar as one of several ‘bread baskets’ of India, that appellation no longer seems to ring true. More recently, Yadav, Gupta, and Kumar have demonstrated that agricultural yields in Bihar are among the lowest in all-India; not only on a per capita production basis but also in terms of basic real yields per acre.1 It is this decline in real yield per acre that has contributed to the rapid shift in Bihar’s overall economy, away from agriculture. Since ‘backwardness’ is generally associated with a lack of productivity, and in a state that is predominantly agricultural, at least in terms of the numbers of people occupied by it, agriculture's failure to perform could explain why Bihar has appeared to be so economically backward for so long. Bihar's agricultural sector is the primary component of the rural economy and society, and it continues to operate on the margins of human enterprise. Without increasing returns, not much can be done realistically to develop the state’s overall economy in the long run. us, agriculture continues to define both the long-term potentialities and constraints to development.
