About the Book :
The genesis of Agro-Climatic Regional Planning (ACRP) in India in its present form can be attributed to late Prime Minister Shri Rajiv Gandhi. The late Prime Minister, while reviewing the work of the Ministry of Agriculture suggested, in May 1987 that the programmes of Agriculture and Rural Development needed to be reoriented along area specific lines. This idea was operationalised by the Planning Commission with the launch of the ACRP project in mid 1988. The ACRP approach differs from traditional planning in three fundamental ways. One, it begins with area specific resource mapping instead of hierarchical imposition of priorities and programmes. Two, the Central thrust of the approach is long-term resource efficiency, or sustainability which is achieved by pushing the production possibility frontier without jeopardizing inter-generational growth prospects. Finally, the ACRP approach strives to strike a balance between regional priorities and national concerns. One of the significant attainments of ACRP has been the creation of a countrywide network of Scientists, Economists, Planners and other subject Experts working together on an innovative approach to agriculture planning. This is perhaps the only such attempt at creating a nexus between research and administration for planning. The outcome of the project so far has been a large body of research papers, produced variously by the Central Support Cell (ARPU)at Ahmedabad, the Zonal Planning Teams across the country and a large number of consultancy studies by leading institutions of the country. These are in the form of Profile and Strategy reports, sectoral studies, models and area specific plans for agriculture & allied sectors. This set, in two volumes, attempts to consolidate and present important aspects of this large volume of work. Volume One elaborates the concept of ACRP and its applications at the zone, state and district levels. Volume Two deals with amplification of ACRP through themes and cases. These include land and water resource mapping, space specific sustainable output generation possibilities, yield gaps across crops and agro-climatic zones/subzones, strategy formulations suiting local conditions, while accounting for ongoing structural changes, rural urban linkages.
About Author :
D. N. Basu was economics Adviser (Housing, Urban Development and Water Supply) to Planning Commission and in-charge of the ACRP Project when he expired in July 1995. He did his masters in Economics from ISI Calcutta and his Postgraduate Studies at Harvard University, USA. Before joining the Government, he pioneered the Operations Research Group (ORG), where he had carried out extensive studies on cropping pattern and water modeling for the Sardar Sarovar (Narmada) Project. As a Senior Consultant to Planning Commission, he has launched the Agro-Climate Regional Planning Project in 1988. His personal vision and dynamism was responsible for the wide recognition of the ACRP paradigm as the sustainable development option. As advisor, he was the prime mover behind the Megacity project, the State Finance Commissions, and initiated policy measures for privatising urban infrastructure, particularly in the areas of transport system and water supply. He has contributed to many journals as an Economist. He authored two books namely, The Macro Economics Framework (including Consumption Patters) for Long Range perspective for India and Impact of Agricultural Development on Demographic Behavior.
Prof. S.P. Kashyap, is currently the Director of Sardar Patel Institute of Social and Economic Research, Ahmedabad. During his long academic career, he has contributed extensively in the areas of agriculture and rural development, spatial and scalar dimension of industrial development in India, regional analysis and planning. He has participated in several collaborative research studies conducted by global organizations, and is a member of editorial committees of several journals and of research advisory committees of several academic bodies. He has written a number of books and published many research papers in Indian and foreign journals.
G.S. Guha teaches Ethics, Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Post-Graduate Department of Philosophy, Ranchi University, Ranchi. He earned his Master degree in Philosophy from Delhi University in 1980 and Ph.D. from Jadavpur University in 1988. He taught at the undergraduate level in a constituent college of Ranchi University from 1981 to 1989 and then joined the Post-Graduate Department. He was awarded the Visiting Associateship of the UGC during 1994-96 in Jadavpur University, Calcutta, where he worked out An Inquiry into the Cases of Pain and Suffering, which is an analytic work dealing with the clarification of nature and meaning of important concepts such as pain, suffering and evil. He was also awarded UGC's Major Research Project (1997-2000) on Applied Ethics in Indian Context, which has been now shaped in six volumes, under the series: Practical and Professional Ethics. Dr. Guha has fifteen papers to his credit, two of them were presented in International Congress.
