Agricultural development has long been seen as an important factor in the development process. The development literature now contains a dozen or so models of early economic growth.

Agricultural policy is a major concern of most governments. Developing countries want more output to feed a growing population and even faster growing industrial work force. Developed countries seem most concerned with keeping agricultural prices constant. These objectives have been used to justify many forms of government intervention in national and international agricultural markets. Implicit in these interventionist policies is the view that the market system, by itself, cannot be trusted to regulate the production and the distribution of food for such vital matters the invisible hand is too unfair in its dealings and too erratic in its motions, especially in view of sharp year to year variations that the vagaries of the weather and other factors outside the range of human control can provoke in the world agricultural output.

The process of recession in developed market economies has once again made unemployment of the labour force an object of primary concern. Governments have been called upon to reaffirm their commitment to full employment as one of the supreme policy goals. In some cases growing segments of the public, impatient with the slow resorption of unemployment in the economic recovery, have demanded that the government assume in full its responsibility for achieving full employment by becoming an employer of last resort. At the same time, however, theoretical and empirical research by economists on the labour market adjustment exemplified in the papers selected for the volume, has increasingly cast doubt on the ability of economic policy to affect permanently the rate of employment.

Equal employment policy for women stands at an historic juncture in the developed countries. Equal pay and equal employment opportunity policies thus are high priorities on the political agenda in the developed economy. While the development of policies in advanced countries is at varying stages, the issue has moved from a concern whether to expand the employment opportunities of women to a preoccupation with how best to accomplish this change. As a consequence of this weightened interest in policy implementation policy-makers and other concerned with women workers are grapping with the difficulties and dilemmas that arise in the selection of specific goals and concrete means for achieving women's labour market quality.

The Royal Commission on agriculture was appointed in 1926 to examine the condition of agriculture and rural development in India. The valuable studies carried out by that commission resulted in its commendable recommendations, some of which hold good even today. During the last half century the country has witnessed considerable changes in agricultural condition which have a far-reaching impact on the economic situation in the country. It is being increasingly realized that the problem of agriculture and rural development, is the problem of developing and utilizing human resources. The development and utilisation of the human resources implies ensuring all the people of the right kind of nutritious foods appropriate health services and facilities for acquiring the needed knowledge and skill. Every individual in the country will have to be provided with adequate opportunity to acquire the appropriate knowledge, sill and aptitude to enable him to lead a healthy and purposeful life and also to contribute to the social and economic development of the country. The human resource of our country is vast numerically. This resource is required to be developed qualitatively and utilized. Development, therefore, has to concern itself with the development of the whole person and all persons. Human resource development is, therefore, considered as the key to agriculture and rural development.

The main bottlenecks in Indian agriculture are in adequate financial support for agricultural and rural development programmes and out-moded administrative procedures. Unless these bottlenecks are cleared no amount of training in planning, management and administration will solve the riddle of agricultural development in India.

Rising land productivity is the only solid and enduring basis for rural economy to achieve a continuous increase in production. A rise in land productivity can take place in many ways. One such possibility lies in increasing multiple cropped areas either by introducing new crops or by expanding area under exiting ones. The underlying assumption is that every unit of the incremental cropped area gives some additional output although small, so that output per acre of not sown area rises even if it my or may not give in increase in output acre of gross cropped area. It is, therefore, in the fitness of things that the future thrust in Indian agriculture goes interalia, in the direction of increasing multiple cropping. In this connection, it is relevant to pose the question how are the prospective gains of rising cropping intensity going to be shared by various farm size group? In particular, what is the future of small farms in the matter of cropping intensity? For locating a meaningful answer to this question. We must look to the experience of the past and the interim changes that are taking place at present. This book presents a vivid and penetrating analysis of land management in rural economy in ending rural poverty and unemployment.