Promoting Sustainable Development in Less-Favored Areas Development Strategies for Semiarid South Asia John Kerr Home to nearly 300 million people, the South Asian semiarid tropics cover mainly southern interior areas of India and small parts of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Poverty levels are high and literacy rates low.
With productivity greatly limited by low, variable rainfall, lack of irrigation, and poor soils, the semiarid tropics contrast sharply with the irrigated areas of the Indo-Gangetic plain, which was the cradle of the Green Revolution and remains the region's breadbasket. Nonetheless, infrastructure and access to markets and services are relatively good compared with Sub-Saharan Africa, in part because South Asia's high population density reduces the per capita cost of infrastructure. Since nearly all of the South Asian semiarid tropics lie in India, this brief focuses on that country. Raising agricultural productivity is essential to stimulating economic development, reducing poverty, and protecting natural resources in the Indian semiarid tropics. Three-quarters of the population lives in rural areas, and their livelihoods depend on agriculture.