INDIAN ECONOMIC

Economically, India often seems like two separate countries: village India, supported by primitive agriculture, where tens of millions—one fourth of population—live below the poverty line; and urban India, one of the most heavily industrialized areas in the world, with an increasingly middle-class population.

Agriculture (about 55% of the land is arable) makes up some 25% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employs almost 70% of the Indian people. Vast quantities of rice are grown wherever the land is level and water plentiful; other crops are wheat, pulses, sugarcane, jowar (sorghum), bajra (a cereal), and corn.
Cotton, tobacco, oilseeds, and jute are the principal nonfood crops. There are large tea plantations in Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. The opium poppy is also grown, both for the legal pharmaceutical market and the illegal drug trade; cannabis is produced as well.

Fragmentation of holdings, outmoded methods of crop production, and delays in acceptance of newer, high-yielding grains were characteristic of Indian agriculture in the past, but since the Green Revolution of the 1970s, significant progress has been made in these areas. Improved irrigation, the introduction of chemical fertilizers, and the use of high-yield strains of rice and wheat have led to record harvests, and India became an net exporter of grain in the early 1980s.

The subsistence-level existence of village India, ever threatened by drought, flood, famine, and disease, has been somewhat alleviated by government agricultural modernization efforts, but although India's gross food output has been generally sufficient for the the needs of its enormous population, government price supports and an inadequate distribution system still threaten many impoverished Indians with hunger and starvation. An estimated 40% of the population is too poor to afford adequate nourishment regularly.

India has perhaps more cattle per capita than any other country, but their economic value is severely limited by the Hindu prohibition against their slaughter. Goats and sheep are raised in the arid regions of the west and northwest. Water buffalo are raised and there is a large fish catch. India has forested mountain slopes, with stands of oak, pine, sal, teak, ebony, palms, and bamboo, and the cutting of timber is a major rural occupation. Aside from coal, iron, mica, manganese, and ilmenite, in which the country ranks high, India's mineral resources, although large, are not as yet fully exploited.

The Chota Nagpur Plateau of S Jharkhand and the hill lands of SW West Bengal, N Orissa, and Chhattisgarh are the most important mining areas; they are the source of coal, iron, mica, and copper. There are workings of magnesite, bauxite, chromite, salt, and gypsum. Despite oil fields in Assam and Gujarat states and the output (since the 1970s) of Bombay High offshore oil fields, India is deficient in petroleum.