Sustainable development goals: current status and pathways for Indian agriculture

This paper discusses the current status of India, especially rural India on relevant MDGs, current agricultural situations and suggests the roadmap to pave way towards pioneering the four directly agricultural related SDGs, viz, “no poverty, zero hunger, climate action and life on land “ and to transform the aspirations of ideal world into reality. The pathways includes improving functioning of Public Distribution System (PDS), introduction of social protection schemes such as cash transfer, health care, and school feeding. Agricultural diversification by including high value commodities, promoting inclusive agricultural trade by linking producers with innovative institutional arrangements like SHGs, cooperatives, FPOs, increasing investment in rural infrastructure and introducing situation-specific programmes like Kudumbashree in Kerala. Food and nutritional security can be enhanced by biofortification, expanding food basket by adding drought tolerant and nutritious millets through PDS, increasing pulse production and conducting nutrition awareness programmes. Agricultural sustainability can be brought about by perfect synchronization of land development, water management and energy efficient technologies. Sustainability can also be promoted by introducing concepts like farmers field school to promote agro-ecosystem, agricultural technologies, coordinating and regulating pluralistic extension system for technically sound and sustainable services, promoting evergreen revolution pathways and practices like zero tillage, organic farming, precision farming, climate smart agriculture in order to beat the exponentially increasing food demand pressure sustainably.