CHAPTER II SURVEY OF NATURAL RESOURCES Natural resources are natural materials or natural phenomena which man utilizes for economic activity. Agricultural land, forests, minerals, falling water, an estuary which contains a harbour and the climate and landscape of a resort town are among the natural resources of a country. The concept of natural resources is culture-bound: what does or does not constitute a natural resource, and the relative importance of different natural resources depend upon such cultural factors as the state of techno- logy, the nature of demand, prices and socio-economic institutions. In India, while very small numbers of primitive shifting cultivators can obtain only a precarious living from vast areas of forest, large population of settled cultivators live next to them on small areas but at much higher levels of living. The advance from hunting and food gathering or primitive, shifting cultivation to settled agriculture is accompanied by an enormous increase in the efficiency of resource use and in the range of natural materials used. Similar changes take place with industrializa- tion. Use of minerals or inanimate energy sources, which is very limited among agricultural peoples, is of central importance in the developed industrial countries. Per capita consumption of natural materials is much higher in these countries than in the under-developed countries which are predominantly agricultural or pastoral. The U.S.A. with only 6% of the world’s population is estimated to account for more than half of the total annual world consumption of natural materials. Efficiency of resource use is also much higher in the developed countries than in the under-developed countries: this is reflected in the higher productivity of agricultural land and of labour employed in natural resource exploitation activities in the former. An indication of the higher productivity of agricultural land is given by the data on yields of wheat and rice in selected developed and under-developed countries (Table 1). Crop yields have been increasing in the developed countries for a century or more as a result of improvements in techniques and management practices, especially use of improved, higher yielding seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Yields per acre of wheat increased by 50% in Denmark between 1885-89 and 1949-51; similar increases took place in the other West European countries. A single technologi- cal advance, such as development of hybrid corn (maize), increased average yield of the crop in the U.S.A. by nearly 50% within a decade— from an average of 23.3 bushels per acre during 1931-35 to an average of 33.1 bushels during 1941-45. Further improvements in seed varieties, intensive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other modern inputs40 THE GAZETTEER OF INDIA and improvements in farm management practices had raised yields pro- gressively to 89.3 bushels per acre by 1969. Similar increases in crop yields with application of modern technology are now taking place in the under-developed countries. Yields of most crops have risen slowly in India duriiig the last 15 years (Table 2). The yield of rice increased from 874 kg. per hectare in 1955-56 to an average of 1,054 kg. per hectare dur- ing 1967-69. The increase was greater in the case of wheat, from 708 kg. to 1,137 kg, in the same period, because the new, high-yielding varieties, introduced since 1966, have proved very successful in the wheat growing areas of northern India. Differences in labour productivity in the natural resources sectors of the developed and the under-developed countries are much greater than differences in productivity of land; average productivity per agricultural worker, as measured by value of output, is nearly 34 times greater in the U.S.A. than in India. ‘Technological Advance: Besides raising productivity of land and labour used in the natural resource sectors, technological advance has been responsible, especially in recent years, for (i) development of syn- thetic substitutes for natural materials, ranging from metals to fibres, and Gi) an enormous increase in the spatial range of exploitation of natural resources. The most notable example of the latter is provided by exten- sion of exploitation of oil and natural gas resources to the offshore areas. Offshore production of both has increased rapidly during the last devade and the recent discoveries in a number of regions, from the North Sea and the Mediterranean to various parts of the Western Pacific, especially the South China Sea, indicate that significant proportions of the world output of oil and natural gas will come in future from offshore sources. Exploitation has been confined so far to shallow, continental shelf areas; but the technology is advanced enough for development of resources located at greater depths. The sea floors may hecome important sources of other minerals also in the not so distant future, Technological advance is often trigerred off by shortages resulting from interruption of supplies, as during a war, or from progressive depletion of supply sources. Development of synthetic rubber, nitro- geneous fertilizers and fibres like nylon have all resulted from war-time shortages of natural materials. Exploitation of offshore petroleum sources is a response to progressive depletion of on-shore oil-fields in major pro- ducing countries, such as the U.S.A., and the failure of new discoveries to keep pace with the rapid growth of demand—7 to 8% a year during the post-war period. On the other hand, there are innumerable exam- ples of mineral deposits ceasing to be worked or crops or other natural products not being produced because of discovery of new, richer deposits, or availability of better or cheaper substitutes. The coal industries ofSURVEY OF NATURAL RESOURCES 41 the U.S.A. and Western Europe have been depressed during most of the post-war period because of progressive increase in the proportion of energy derived from oil and natural gas in these countries. Cultivation of indigo stopped in India after the development of aniline dyes. Abundance or scarcity of natural resources are relative terms which describe'the demand-supply relationship. The latter depends in turn, on such factors as the size of the population and its level of living (demand) and the levels of technology and organization (supply). The expression, “high pressure of population’ on land, used so frequently for India, merely indicates that at the present levels of technology and organization, agri- culture does not provide to the population of the country, food and other agricultural products, commensurate with its demands. A significant change in any one of the variables will change the relationship. Thus, the recent success of the high-yielding varieties of cereals (change in technology) has not merely relieved food shortage but has also changed the long-term outlook for increasing the food output to'meet the increases in demand resulting from growth of population and rise in per capita consumption with increase in income. Accordingly, the natural re- sources of India have been viewed here in relation to the size of the popu- lation (547 million in 1971); its rate of growth (2.3% a year during the 1960's); the present levels af production and consumption of primary products, and projections of these to 1980-81, contained in the Fourth Five Year Plan, Natural Resources in the Indian Economy: As in most other under developed countries, most of the population of India is dependent upon agriculture and other primary activities which consist in direct exploita- tion of natural resources. Nearly three-fourths of the labour force is engaged in primary activities, with 70°% in agriculture‘alone. Agriculture contributes about half of the gross national product; forestry and mining contribute about 1% each, and fishing accounts for about 0.5%. But in contrast to most other under-developed countries in which primary products are the major source of export revenues, India is a net importer of these products. In 1968-69, the value of agricultural and mineral imports was nearly 50°% higher than that of exports (Table 3). Further- more, according to current projections, the values of agricultural and mineral exports and imports will just balance by 1980-81, despite rapid expansion of the exports and stoppage, during the 1970's, of imports of foodgrains. As the following survey indicates. the natural resources of India are varied and provide an adequate basis for building a diversified modern economy. But they are not of such magnitude that exports of primary products could finance economic development in a significant way. The high pressure of population on land limits prospects of exports of agricultural products and deficiencies of petroleum and metallic