INTRODUCTION Agriculture supports the basic livelihood of 495 million citizens and 100.7 million households in India directly (NABARD, 2017). Though the green revolution success made India surplus in food production at aggregate level and net exporter of food grains, it also made the agriculture high input intensive. The economic impact of raise in input prices and uneconomic holdings led to stagnation in income levels of farmers and made the farming non-profitable. The past strategies of governments were also focused on rising output and improving food security. The agrarian distress caused in 1990’s turned quite serious in some years and witnessed a sharp increase in the number of farmer suicides during 1995 to 2004. This period also coincided with the sharp decline in growth rate of agricultural output (Chand and Parappurathu 2012). During early 1980s, farm income per cultivator was just 34 per cent of income of a non-farm worker. After economic reform in India, in 1993-94 relative income of the farmers worsened and reached one-fourth of income of non-agricultural worker (Chand, 2017). There was improvement during 2004-05 to 2011-12, but no change over the 1983-84 level. Again from 2012-13 to 2015-16 witnessed deterioration in relative income of farmers. The NSSO 68th round data on consumption expenditure survey for the year 2011-12 revealed that more than one fifth of rural households with self -employment in agriculture as their principal occupation were having income less than the poverty line. Unless farmers’ income increases substantially, distress cannot be tackled. In view of the above context the government of India has set a goal in 2015-16 to double the farmers income by 2022-23. The goal aimed at promoting farmers welfare, reduce agrarian distress and to bring parity between income of farmers and those working in non-agricultural professions. The goal of doubling farmers income has been viewed as impossible and unrealistic by some experts as it requires growth rate of 14.86 per cent per year for five years which had not even achieved once in the history of Indian agriculture (Gulati and Saini 2016). Similarly, it requires 10.4 per cent of average compound growth rate in agricultural sector to double farmer income in seven years i.e., from 2015-16 to 2022-23. As presented in table1 the average growth in either agricultural or overall GDP (at constant prices) has never been touched double digit in any decade after 1990s. In particular agricultural GDP has not even been registered more than 5 per cent growth during any decade after 1990’s. The composition of farmers income comprises of income accrued from various sources (a. crop income, b. income from livestock, fisheries and diary, c. income from agricultural wages and d. income from non-farm activities). There are hardly any data sources that can give time series estimates of income of farmers from all these sources. Sen and Bhatia (2004) estimated farmers income using the cost of cultivation data which reflects only crop income. At aggregate level time series data on gross value added of crops, livestock’s, fisheries, dairy and farm forestry is available in the farm of agricultural GDP. Therefore, agricultural GDP at national level may be considered as a composite indicator to represent the average farmers income in India. However, the GDP from agriculture is only one possible source though it is not comprehensive (Sathyasai and Bharti, 2016). Therefore, the current study used agricultural GDP as a composite indicator to understand the trends in farmers income. The principal objective of this study is to estimate empirical evidence to assess the possibility of doubling the farmers income in any seven years in Indian context. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data pertaining to overall GDP and agricultural GDP has been collected both at current and constant prices from 1993-94 to 2019-20. Constant prices data is available in different base year periods (1993-94, 1999-00, 2004-05 and 2011-12) which makes the comparison among the different time period difficult. Therefore, the constant prices data has been converted into a single base year series of 1993-94 using splicing technique. A. Splicing technique The splicing techniques was used for conversion of different base year data into single base year. The procedure of splicing technique is as follows If we have two time series data with overlapping observation, one with base year X and other with Y, then to change the base year of X to Y Value Yt+1 = Value Xt+1 *[(Value of Yt)/(Value of Xt)] Where Yt+1= Estimated value of base year Y for the time period t+1 Xt+1= Value of the base year X of the time period t+1 Yt = Value of the time series with base year Y of time period t Xt = Value of the time series with base year X of time period t In other words, value of new series equals the old series multiplied by the ratio of series. B. Estimation of sources of incremental increases Incremental increases in the selected indicators (agricultural GDP, GDP) between two points of period was estimated and sources of these incremental increase were also worked out by sub-periods (1993-94 to 2000-01, 2000-01 to 2007-08, 2007-08 to 2014-15 and 2014-15 to 2019-20). The following formula has been used to estimate the share of sub-periods in the total incremental increase in the selected indicator between base year (1993-94) and terminal year (2019-20). PIi = YiT – Yit PIi = P1YiT - P1Yit, P2 YiT – P2Yit, …………., Pn YiT – PnYit Therefore, share of PnIi = (PnYiT-Pnit)/PYi Where, PIi =Incremental increase in ith indicator/variable between base year and terminal year during the period P (1993-94 to 2019-20) YiT = Quantity of ith indicator/variable during the terminal year (2019-20) Yit = Quantity of ith indicator/variable during base year (1993-94) P1YiT = Quantity of ith variable/indicator during terminal year of the period 1 P1Yit = Quantity of ith variable/indicator during base year of the period 1 P2YiT = Quantity of ith variable/indicator during terminal year of the period 2 P2Yit = Quantity of ith variable/indicator during base year of the period 2 PnYiT = Quantity of ith variable/indicator during terminal year of the period n PnYit = Quantity of ith variable/indicator during base year of the period n RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The trends in overall GDP and agricultural GDP both at current and constant prices and the contribution of different time periods to incremental increase were analysed for the period under study (1993-94 to 2019-20) and same were reported. Table 1 presents decade wise compound growth rate of overall and agricultural GDP at 1993-94 constant prices. It is clear from the table 1 that the decade of 2004-05 to 2013-14 was found to be the best period with highest average compound growth rate of 9.31 per cent per year in overall GDP. The recent past of 6 years i.e., from 2014-15 to 2019-20 (pre corona period) has also witnessed significant compound growth rate in overall GDP at about 7.24 per cent per year. It is not out of the context to mention that the Central Statistical Office (CSO) has modified GDP estimation procedure during 2015-16 and the new series of GDP estimates were published. It has been noticed that under the modified GDP estimation method informal sector output estimation witnessed significant changes which was not the case until 2014-15 (Nagaraj and Srinivasan 2016). As a result of it, new series of GDP estimates from 2015-16 are over estimated by 3.5-5.5 per cent which were heavily criticised by several economist like Nagaraj (2016); Subrahmanyam (2019). Therefore, the compound growth rate of GDP shown in the table 1 for the period 2014-15 to 2019-20 are based on the official GDP estimates using modified estimation method which were not really comparable with GDP growth rate of previous two decades (1993-94 to 2013-14). If had the previous GDP estimation procedure was followed for the period 2014-15 to 2019-20,the compound growth rates of overall GDP in last six years would have been much lower than what is reported in Table 1. The average compound growth rate of agricultural GDP which is considered as acomposite indicator of farmers income was highest during the period 2004-05 to 2013-14 (4.8 % per year). The special focus given to agricultural sector soon after new government came into power during 2004 in terms of increased investment in agricultural infrastructure through Rastriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), initiation of National Agricultural Policy (NAP) with an objective of achieving a high and sustainable growth in farming by implementing various policies related to agricultural development and also increased flow of institutional credit to the farmers contributed immensely to agricultural growth during this decade. Similarly, agricultural GDP at constant prices has grown at least 3.7 per cent per year during 2014-15 to 2019-20. However, this growth rate is highly inadequate to double the farmers income by 2022-23, as targeted by the government of India in 2015-16. Any number that is to be doubled in any 7 years period should increase at compound growth rate of 10.5 per cent per year (Chand, 2017) but the actual registered average growth rate in the first five years (2015-16 to 2019-20) was less than 4 per cent per year. Under these circumstances the achievement of doubling farmers income by 2022-23 seems to be far away from the reality. Further the percentage increase in overall GDP and agricultural GDP at current and constant prices (1993-94) between every seven years during the period 1993-94 to 2020-21were examined to understand the level of increase in GDP in the previous time periods (Table 2 and 3). Accordingly, the changes (%) in overall GDP and agricultural GDP for four periods of seven years each (1993-94 to 1999-2000, 2000-01to 2006-07, 2007-08 to 2013-14 and 2020-21) were computed to understand how GDP and agricultural GDP grown in each seven years over the past three decades. In the first seven years period (1993-94 to 1999-2000), the agricultural GDP has increased by only 19.31 per cent at constant prices although it was 84.30 per cent at current prices. The highest percentage increase was achieved during 2007-08 to 2013-14 (33.61%) among four time periods of seven years each in three decades of period under the study. In the same period agricultural GDP at current prices was more than doubles due to significant growth during this period because of special emphasis given to agricultural sector. The percentage increase in agricultural GDP at constant prices in the recent past seven years (2014-15 to 2020-21) was only 27.01 per cent as against the targeted 100 per cent. During the same period at current prices agricultural GDP has not been doubled. Similar trend has been observed in overall GDP growth. The long-term trends in agricultural GDP (Fig. 1) clearly shows that at current prices GDP has been doubled during 2007-08 to 2013-14. Further it may be noted from Fig. 1 that agricultural GDP at constant prices during the year 2019-20 was about Rs. 6.23 lakh crores, rose from 3.12 lakh crores in 2003-04. This imply that it took about 17 years to double the agricultural GDP at constant prices by 2019-20. Thus, the long-term trend in agricultural GDP clearly points out that it can’t be doubled in real terms during any seven years of period. The incremental increase in agricultural GDP at constant prices between 1993-94 to 2019-20 was 3.85 lakh crores. Out of this incremental increase the maximum share was contributed by the best performed period of 2007-08 to 2014-15 followed by the recent period (Fig. 2). As the agricultural GDP in this study considered as an indicator of farmers income, the other sources of aggregate farmers income other than gross value added (GDP) such as income from non-farm sources were not considered in this study. Therefore, the trends in the agricultural GDP does not reflect the actual trend of farmers income. However gross value added in agriculture (crops, livestock, diary and fisheries etc.) constitutes major share of farmers income. It is also reported that the non-farm income sources were also not sizable in rural India (Vatta and Budhiraja, 2020). Under these trends it may be concluded that farmers income in the recent past seven years have not been doubled but grown only by less than 30 per cent.