Impact of Infrastructure on Agricultural Development of Punjab with special reference to Roads and Markets

The study is an attempt to analyze the contribution of infrastructure and other factors to agricultural output over time covering all the districts of the Punjab state. The secondary data were collected on area, production and prices of major crops and infrastructure variables for TE 1984 and TE 2012. Based on the step wise regression, it was found that out of all variables like irrigation, credit, cropping intensity and roads turnrd significances during TE 1984, the road variable which was represented by length and quality was indeed an indicator of the development of transport facility and road were important element of agricultural infrastructure. The coefficient of road length was highest valued (285.361) during 1981–84 period and significantly impacted the value of agricultural output; indicating the rural roads played a significant role in improving the connectivity of the agricultural sector with urban markets for buying and selling of goods and services. During TE 2012 long term maintence of roads, fertilizers, regulated markets and irrigation were found to be significant and the value of coefficient of road length was 29.634 road maintance 167.439 during the said period highlighted that only roads were not sufficient to improve the agricultural production but it was sum total of all the institutional variables because of their complementarities and not the roads alone that determined the aggregate productivity. The findings of the study clearly suggest that besides other infrastructure variables, market and quality of roads also play a major role in enhancing the value of agricultural output. The need is not only to increase the length of roads but their maintenance is much more imperative in the Punjab state.