The poor management of rivers and rainwater has caused regular floods in the northern districts and drought in the southern districts of Bihar, which has further resulted in unbalanced growth among the different regions of the state in terms of both agricultural and social development. After forming a development-oriented government in 2005, the successful implementation of three consecutive Agricultural Roadmaps (2008 onwards) and two consecutive Saat Nischay schemes (2015 onwards) has tried to establish the regional balance somewhat. However, despite these efforts for agricultural and social transformation, the level of development is not the same across all the districts or regions of the state. Therefore, to understand the root cause of regional imbalance, this study aims to analyse the inter-district disparities in agricultural and social development through the principal component analysis. For this, the secondary data on twelve-twelve indicators of both the dimensions were extracted from the 'Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Planning and Development, Government of Bihar’, and 'State Level Banker’s Committee’ of Bihar for 2021-22. The analysis revealed the presence of a high degree of disparities across regions. Such as, in the case of agricultural development, the districts of the central-east region were in the highly developed category while the districts of the southern region were in the least developed category. Whereas, in the case of social development, the districts of the central region were in the highly developed category while the districts of the southern, and north-eastern regions were in the least developed category. Further, the significant value of Spearman's rho (.645) also describes about the strong positive correlation between agricultural and social development in Bihar. Thus, to ensure regional balance and societal harmony the government should frame the district-specific policies with interlinkages between the agricultural and social development policies.

South Asian countries have witnessed a low-level equilibrium trap due to high population and low per capita income growth. The implementation of the intensive agricultural program in the decade of 1960s has brought some level of economic prosperity, poverty reduction, and food security but has also caused regional disparities in terms of economic, agricultural, and environmental outcomes. The Sustainable Development Goals 10 and 15 jointly advocate the adoption of 'sustainable agricultural practices' to reduce intra and inter-country inequalities. It does not only provide healthy food but also promotes racial equity and environmental justice. Therefore, to measure the level of agri-environmental sustainability among South Asian countries, the secondary data on 11 agri-environmental indicators related to the four dimensions of 'agriculture & and environment' were extracted from the World Bank Database. By using them, the 'Composite Index of Agri-environmental Sustainability' has been calculated with the help of the 'Normalized Inverse Euclidean Distance' method suggested by Sharma (2008) at two-time points i.e. 2010 and 2020. The results indicate that there was the presence of a high level of agri-environmental disparity across the regions. It also reveals that between the years 2010 and 2020, agri-environmental sustainability has decreased in Afghanistan and Maldives and has increased in the remaining six countries. Despite some increase in the index value, the intensity of agri-environmental sustainability was below average in both periods. The significant Spearman's rank correlation rho (.738) also describes that the selected countries have shown relatively low progress in terms of agri-environmental sustainability as their respective ranks are highly correlated between both periods of study. Therefore, the government of South Asian countries should effectively implement sustainable agricultural policies to ensure balanced and inclusive growth in the region.