Copyright © Universal Multidisciplinary Research Institute Pvt Ltd 90 South -Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (SAJMS) ISSN:2349-7858:SJIF:2.246:Volume 5 Issue 1 IRRIGATION AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT: A SOCIO- ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF UTTAR PRADESH Amit Singh & Sanjay Kumar Upadhyay 1 Abstract Agriculture sector occupies a vital role in the overall economic development of the state. It contributes about 28.8 percent to the total GDP and half of the state population depends on agriculture sector for their livelihood. However, agricultural sector is suffering from lack of capital, lack of fertilizer, lack of irrigation facility, and lack of marketing facility. There is need to improve the use of managerial efficiency of agricultural inputs which plays an important role for increasing agricultural production, productivity, income, andemployment. Irrigation is one of the most important agricultural input that contributes significantly for enhancing the productivity as well as production level of agriculture sector. Therefore, irrigation should be play a significant role in growing agricultural crops, increasing agricultural production, raising agricultural income, and protecting plants from frost. It is noticed that lack of irrigation facility is the major problem face by this sector since farmers are facing the problems of access to proper irrigation facilities inspite of using high cost irrigation inputs. As a result, farmers are bearing high cost. It is also observed that farmers are suffering from unavailability of own resources for irrigation purpose across the social groups as well as regional disparities in Uttar Pradesh. Most of the farmers of backward regions and lower segment of society are using rental inputs for irrigation purpose. The government has brought several reforms in irrigation sector for agricultural development. But, irrigation institutions have been failed to provide low cost inputs and efficient irrigation technology to the marginalized section of farmers. Therefore, there is a need to provide irrigation inputs at subsidised to small and marginal farmers. The purpose of this study is to analysethe trends of irrigation andagricultural development in Uttar Pradesh by using primary and secondary data. Key words: Agricultural development, irrigation inputs, irrigation technology. 1 Research Scholar,Department of Economics,Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh