Marketed Surplus Magnitude of a Backward Regional Economy: A Cross-Sectional Study

The current performance of Indian economy is appreciated in terms of the contribution made by secondary and tertiary sectors to the country’s GDP. As a matter of fact, we also cannot deny that India still occupies a back seat in solving issues of rural poverty, regional imbalance, concentration of economic power and other such factors, which act as stumbling blocks in the way of sustainable development. Perhaps, our country fails to recognize that equal treatment needs to be given to agriculture along with other sectors. Agriculture can boost economic development by generating sufficient rate of marketed surplus, which plays a crucial part in improving rural capital on the one hand, and on the other help in eradicating rural poverty and regional imbalance. In this context, the paper focuses on the important factors determining the marketed surplus of rice. The study reveals that it is not the farm consumption and retention, rather the output level of rice, prices and market awareness of the farmer-sellers, which play significant part in determining marketed surplus. The proportion of output being marketed is not even commensurate with the local demand for rice. In order to increase the rate of marketed surplus, the study stresses on effective public investment in the dead part of input services in agriculture, mostly in cases of irrigation and extension services, restructuring of local market system and target beneficial system of farmers’ credit. Utmost attention should be given to promote market awareness of the farmer-sellers and to make market information easily and widely accessible to them. Above all, the study calls for due cooperation from the farmers to satisfy the objectives of such public investment.