Headwinds and opportunities in rural India

Rural India 'critical' to election results

Mahatma Gandhi was a great advocate for rural India, once noting that, "if the village perishes India will perish too."

India's economy has transformed since his death in 1948 - then agriculture was 50% of GDP and now it is 15%. Yet, according to the agricultural census of 2011, 60% of India's population - and therefore its voter base - is rural and largely reliant on agriculture. A ‘green revolution' in the intervening decades saw sharp improvements in yields for rice and wheat. Production kept pace with rapid population growth, banishing major food shortages. More enterprising farmers in some States subsidised fertilizer and government intervention in food procurement contributed to this success. The...