Here is your paragraph on Natural Resources in India: A Land of Potentialities:
India is blessed with a large variety of natural resources in huge quantities. Many of these still await exploitation.
Whereas nature has been bountiful to India, the inhabitants of this country have not been able to develop requisite technology, in the modem context, to harness these resources.
India is, therefore, often referred to as ‘poorly developed rich country’ or ‘a rich country inhabited by poor people’. Sometimes it is also called the ‘land of the future’ or ‘land of potentialities’.
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India’s huge mineral wealth encompasses a wide range which is supposed to be sufficient enough for developing a modem industrial base. India is particularly rich in the deposits of high grade iron ore, manganese and chromite. Her reserves are said to be adequate with respect to limestone, bauxite, coal and strategic minerals.
Although India’s forest resources are not very large and there is urgent need to increase the area under forests to meet the growing demand for forest products and to maintain the ecological balance, yet they are able to feed many forest based industries like paper, plywood, match box, furniture, resins, lac, etc.
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India has vast resources of both surface and ground water which can be used for irrigation, power generation, industries and for drinking purposes. Only a small proportion of this natural resource has actually been utilised offering us enormous potentialities.
It is estimated that about one fourth of the total cropped area is presently irrigated whereas about half of the total cropped area can be irrigated by making optimum use of the water resources available to us. Similarly only one-fourth of the total water power potential in the country is actually used. Indian rivers offer numerous sites suitable for generating hydroelectricity.
India is one of the leading agricultural countries of the world and agriculture is the most important occupation of Indians. But the overall production and the yields per hectare are very low as compared to that in the advanced countries.
The total production can be increased only by increasing the yields as all the cultivable land has already been brought under plough. This requires intensive use of high yielding varieties of seeds, fertilisers and irrigation facilities.
Of course, the greatest asset of India is its population which is second only to that of China. The poverty stricken, much cursed and ever growing vast ocean of humanity, if properly channelized, could be converted into huge manpower resource and could prove boon, rather than bane, for national development. The only problem is that not many avenues are open due to backward state of economy in the present day context.