Rural development has been recognized as an important strategy for expediting the process of development in developing countries. Rapid rate of population growth, poor level of nutrition, failure of industry to absorb unemployed or underemployed, surplus population of the rural areas and the realization that a prior condition for any development is an accelerated development of the agricultural sector has contributed to this recognition.1 Because of the predominantly agricultural nature of the developing countries, the process of rural development is inextricably linked with the agricultural development. Therefore, in any programme of rural development in the developing countries, including India, agriculture tends to receive the most attention. In India, where nearly seventy per cent of its 840 million population lives in rural areas and where agriculturists and agricultural labourers constitute about seventy per cent of country's working population, the importance of a strong agricultural base for the progress and economic development of the country need not be over-emphasised.