Given the significant decline in agricultural production in Kerala in the last few decades, this paper elucidates how government policies and protective practices have created distortions in the agricultural market, hampering the growth of agriculture in the state. The distortions in the input market, namely, land, irrigation and the agricultural credit system as well as in the output market, namely, price and procurement, created by the restrictive policies and practices are discussed in this paper. The paper shows that disincentives generated by the successive governments in Kerala through imposing artificial barriers on the freedom of farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs resulted in the collapse of agriculture in the state.

This study was conducted by Lekshmi R Nair, Centre Manager, CPPR-Centre for Comparative Studies and D Dhanuraj, Chairman, Centre for Public Policy Research.

Click here to read the study A Stagnant Agriculture in Kerala: The Role of the State

Dr. Lekshmi Nair

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Dr Lekhmi Nair was Research Consultant with CPPR. She has a PhD (Economics) and MPhil (Applied Economics)  from JNU/CDS Trivandrum and a Masters in Statistics.

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