Solving the farm riddle

Traditional policies have failed to make agriculture attractive

The second advance estimates of national income for the current financial year that were recently released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) made a sobering read. For 2018-19, the overall growth of gross domestic product (GDP) has been pegged at 7 per cent compared to 7.2 per cent in the first advance estimates. But one of the most worrying aspects was the data on agriculture growth. Growth in gross value added (GVA) in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector has decelerated from 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of the fiscal to 4.2 per cent in the second, and