Agriculture: A sad story of agricultural input pricing.

The rupee lost 16 per cent value against the dollar last fiscal year. It has lost another 16.4pc so far in 2018-19.

In the last fiscal year, domestic prices of petrol and high-speed diesel increased 26pc and 29pc, respectively. Their prices have surged 18pc and 17pc, respectively, since the beginning of 2018-19.

The rupee depreciation and the increase in oil prices resulted in a sharp rise in the rates of agricultural inputs in both 2017-18 and 2018-19. Since the rupee's value began falling and oil prices started rising in the second half of 2017-18, the agriculture sector's growth remained subdued and grew only 3.8pc last year, according to provisional estimates.

Governments love to incentivise the crop output, but seldom introduce and implement plans for promoting local industries engaged in the production of seeds, insecticides and pesticides

Now 2018-19 is the first fiscal year in which we are witnessing a fuller impact of the rupee depreciation as well as the increase in oil prices. Their lagged impact will be felt by the agricultural sector in the next fiscal year too even if the rupee's value and oil prices remain intact until June.

Initial estimates put agricultural growth during this...