Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Interviews | Dr Abhijit Sen, Member-Planning Commission of India, interviewed by Ajay Vir Jakhar and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Dr Abhijit Sen, Member-Planning Commission of India, interviewed by Ajay Vir Jakhar and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Feb 22, 2012   modified Modified on Feb 22, 2012

Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral organisations. In a candid interview, he speaks on a range of issues affecting agriculture, farmers and ordinary people. Talking to him about such issues as subsidies, small land holdings and the overall efficiency of Indian agriculture are Farmers’ Forum Editor, Ajay Vir Jakhar (AJ) and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (PGT). Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission, talks to Farmers’ Forum

PGT:  To begin with a basic question: what are the most important problems that farmers in India are facing; looking at agriculture as a whole?

Prof. Abhijit Sen (AS): The main problems with agriculture – not necessarily the main problems with farmers – are the quality of the land; the quality and quantity of water available and the signs that new technologies are not delivering as much as was expected. There are clear signs, as stated in 11th Plan document, of a technological fatigue…

PGT:  Technological fatigue?

AS: This reflects in the margins that one is getting in terms of increased potential yields or increased savings in costs. These are simply not commensurate with either the investments being made or with achievements in the past. This is the real problem of Indian agriculture. Nature is limited; we have overused it in the past; the only way out, when one has a natural constraint, is by improving the efficiency with which natural resources are used. That is a matter of technology. The problem is that even on technology, we are not doing that well. I think this is the broad question facing Indian agriculture.

PGT:  If you look at farmers…

AS: There are a whole set of other issues that come along. Farmers are interested, first and foremost, in their own incomes from agriculture. Here, there come the issue of the functioning of markets; the prices they get, compared to the prices that consumers pay; the extent to which they can themselves access both technology and inputs that, to some extent, is a function of markets.  It is, however, also is a function of government programmes. When it comes to the farmer, there are a whole set of extra issues. What needs to be highlighted though is the divide between what the better-connected farmer gets and what the poorly connected farmer gets, both in terms of access to inputs as well as in prices.

PGT:  One of major concerns is about the after effects of the Green Revolution but – even before discussing them – why is it that in most of parts of India there has been no significant enhancement of agricultural productivity? We are primarily looking at cereal production, wheat in particular.

AS: When you talk about wheat in particular, it has a limitation and we need to relook at the entire genome and characteristic. Wheat is essentially a winter crop; it likes the cold climate and, in India, is actually suitable only for the northern Indian areas. You can, of course, grow wheat anywhere you like but it is very unlikely to be a crop that is sufficiently profitable compared to other crops for farmers to take it up. So wheat, by its very nature, is a cold-weather crop. The real concern is that in a context of temperatures going up – and given the whole discussion on climate change, it is likely to become even hotter – there is a problem with wheat. There are still areas where wheat can be grown; the entire northern U.P. where yield are low, large parts of northern Bihar and certain areas in Madhya Pradesh, where wheat is grown but again with low yields at present though the quality, often, is much better. Wheat is a very special crop and the important question is why productivity has not generally increased much more, as was expected.

PGT:  It is even lower than in our neighbouring countries.

AS: Yes; lower than what lot of people are getting. This is a valid, genuine, definite question. What one needs to point out is that Indian productivity varies massively across the country for the same crop. There is good productivity for some crops in certain regions but, may be, in very small areas. Wheat productivity in Punjab is comparable to best in the world. Productivity of certain other crops too is comparable to the best in the world but the average yield is low; well below what is possible. There is sufficient evidence available by simply comparing what the best farmers in a region get in terms of yield, which is much higher than what other farmers in the same region get. What the best farmers get is also less than what scientists get in the labs. So these yields gaps are large and the hope about production growth in the future largely comes because these gaps exits. Without these yield gaps, we would have to rely entirely on technology. This gap creates the potential to increase yields even if technology is not improving that much. Output could increase and come closer to the best farmer practice; to the best lab practice. That is why there is hope that India will still get such growth.

It would, however, be futile to say that just because a yield gap exists, it can be removed without much cost. Had it been that easy, the gap would not exist. Obviously, there are farmers who either have conditions that are not as good as the conditions the best farmers have; or the cost that the best farmer is incurring is too high for the other farmers to incur; or that there are access problems. The best farmer is getting much better seeds and the entire agriculture extension system sometimes only goes to the richest three or four rather than to everybody else. So while everybody is trying to do the same thing, not everyone has access to whatever is necessary. That is the reality. Also, some of the yield comparison, with yields abroad for example, are a bit spurious because India has a larger number of crops than most other places. Besides, there are things like irrigation, which make a huge difference between farmers even within India and there are various types of usage of water and land resources, which vary greatly across farms.

PGT:  Put simply, 60 per cent of the cropped area is still dependent on rain.

AS: It is very unlikely that we will ever be able to give irrigation to 100 per cent of the land.

AJ: Do you think agricultural productivity is going to suffer because of fragmentation of land holdings and because small and marginal farmers are facing problems of economic sustainability? Will it increase with increased fragmentation?

AS: This is an age-old question and is asked again and again. Clearly, there are economies of scale in agriculture, at least beyond a point, like in any other activity. However, the evidence – old, combined with some new evidence as well–suggests something like this: If the yield of any particular crop (wheat or rice) in say Punjab or U.P. is taken and farmers are ranked by their farm size, one may find that, if anything, the larger farmer has a slightly higher yield. It may be insignificant but there is some positive relationship. However, the moment you take the total farm area and the total farm output and divide the total farm output by the total farm area the net sown area of the farm, the tendency is for the small farmers to get a higher value of output per acre of land.

PGT:  That is an inverse relationship between land holding and productivity.

AS: That is an inverse relationship between land holding and the total output; between the yield of a particular crop and of total output, where the tendency is exactly the opposite; one is going up the other is coming down. The question is: how many times do you use the land? What is the cropping intensity? Also, which crops are you growing; what is the cropping pattern? Essentially, what tends to happen is that the smaller farm sacrifices something on the yield side, partly because he has to mix things and tries to make more intensive use of the land by growing as many crops that he can. He also tries to have a greater distribution of crops; add to it some livestock or whatever. When it comes to productivity and effects of fragmentation, at one level, this will have a negative effect but, at another, it is like a farmer becoming a gardener. A gardener will, usually, get much more out of the land simply because he is putting in much more effort into a small patch of land than any farmer would. The difference between these two is that the farmer expects to get a sizeable income from a given amount of land. A gardener is either being paid by somebody else to do this and has no other option. So he actually has to put in a lot of labour.

AJ: What you are saying is that productivity could increase with smaller holding also because of farmers working more hard on their land?

PGT:  Also because of greater cropping intensity and variety.

AS: Yes but over time, if the farmer has greater options – he can go out and do something else – the advantage of the small farm is likely to disappear. The advantage exists because the farmer has to get some income from this small plot, he does not have a choice. Therefore, the economy-of-scale argument still applies but it can be misused. It can easily become an argument saying that these folks can do nothing so give everything to a big organisation; let them grow in an American style and we will get higher output. Nonetheless, it is true that Indian agriculture is now in a situation, given the average farm size, that one must look at ways to improve things wherever possible – and this need not be with actual farming activity – with all sorts of associated activities. There has to be some way in which group efforts must start.

PGT:  Including co-operative efforts…

AS: Yes or any other type of group effort. It could, in fact, be with certain things that farmers themselves do not do as is already happening. In India there is a huge increase in the amount of custom services: people are actually selling a service; the farmers themselves are not doing them individually but are buying it from one seller.

PGT:  Including somebody who is providing the services of a tractor or somebody who is providing a combined harvester or whatever…

AS: That is on the private side. On the co-operative side, there are the self-help groups. In Andhra Pradesh that has many self help groups – not the traditional co-operatives – the SHGs have become a part of a lot of combined activities like pest control measures and things of that kind. There is a potential for the actually producer companies to come up or old-fashioned co-operatives to come up to provide the economies-of-scale in the post-harvesting side. It is absolutely essential that the Indian government thinks in terms of how to aggregate small farmers so that collectively they can get the economies of scale.

AJ: One major problem is that agriculture machinery is very expensive and farmers with small holdings would find it unviable to buy machinery today. Do you think the government of India and the Planning Commission will come up with such initiatives where it would be cheaper to collectively finance machinery for collective units rather than for individuals? Right now, if you take a loan, the rate of interest is the same for a collective outfit and an individual. A differentiation between the two would help.

PGT:  Also, if you look at the Nabard’s rules, they are not really conducive for such purchases…

AJ: In my village the co-operative society is associated with IFFCO that hires out water tankers, rotovators, tractors, and ploughs and seeds. This is very good because the farmers do not need to buy them. Machines could never be optimally utilised because of the small land holding.

AS: There is also the more fundamental issue about government policies. The government policy has largely been to have schemes that are run through the state agricultural department. The state agricultural departments send them to their extension wing, which is basically a set of people who go to the farms but see the same people again and again.

AJ: They do not even go nowadays.

AS: Quite right. Those that do go meet the better off people and it is the same group that benefits. Today, there are special schemes for small farmers and one thinks that there will be something for the small farmer; some subsidy perhaps but eventually many such schemes end up by giving birth to a set of fake small farmers, who grab the benefits.

PGT: So there is a huge amount of corruption and it becomes a governance issue.

AS: In the case of extension work, the reach is insufficient in terms of number of extension workers and their ability to move: the simple ability to go to the farm continuously or the willingness to do so has gone down massively. The larger issue is whether the government can really be thinking in the old fashioned way: that something special has to be done for small farms and small farmers. Should it not say that it would do things differently: subsidising such activities that small farmers do collectively; encourage them. That is what is necessary; focus subsidies on small farmers, not just because they are small but actually to subsidise group activities.

AJ: The Budget for NREGA is around Rs 40,000 crore. The Right to Food will reportedly cost Rs 1,20,000 crore. The Budget for the Agriculture Ministry is Rs 15,000 crore. Do you think this expenditure is justified? Rather than invest around Rs 1,00,000 crore on the Right to Food, India could invest that in increasing agricultural productivity, helping 55 per cent of the population, which lives in the villages, to become self-sufficient. Don’t you think that approach is better than the one India is taking now?

AS: Let me make the point in a slightly different way. There are two subsidies: one is the food subsidy of about Rs 60,000 crore that will probably go up to Rs 75,000 crore, which is a very large chunk of money. What does this money do? Most of this money, presumably, is to make food cheaper for some people. The argument is that by making food cheaper, the market for food is being increased and the nutrition that people receive is being improved. So subsidies are being given to consume rice and wheat – limited only to rice and wheat – but also huge subsidies are being given to produce rice and wheat. The fertiliser subsidy is also of a similar amount of about Rs 60,000 crore. So, on the one hand, the government spends huge amount for production (most of it goes to rice and wheat) and, on the other, once it is produced, the government procures it for the public distribution system but finds that it cannot sell it at those prices. Wherever it tries this APL (above poverty line) thing, it does not sell. So it as to cut the prices. Here is a fundamental problem for a whole set of these basic cereals.

It is even worse for millets (jowar and baajra), which the government cannot procure: when it does procure, it rots because there is no provision for storage. The point is, in many cases, the cost of production for the farmers is quite high. The MSP (minimum support price) tries to cover that cost and, at times, becomes too high. In other words, there is a major problem of growing enough food at a price that enough people will be able to afford. Subsidies are not a good way of addressing this problem. Subsidies add up to a huge amount and you are absolutely right: between these two subsidies – leave aside NREGA for the moment – they add up to more than Rs 1,20,000 crore, whereas, the total expenditure of the ministry of agriculture is about Rs15,000 crore.

AJ: As a farmer organisation, we think these expenditures will never benefit the nation in the long run. We believe that fertiliser subsidies are not actually meant for the farmers but meant to keep the prices low for consumers. Farmers will be happy to take fertilisers without subsidies provided they get higher prices for their products.

AS: Whatever it is, the point simply is that it comes back to that technology problem, which is, can we expect farmers to produce a sufficient quantity of food or at least this food at a price that the mass of people can afford.

AJ: There is another issue: in my village, there is no person advising me or any other farmer. There are 6,00,000 villages in the country. If the government appointed an M.Sc. or B.Sc. for each village and trained him, the total cost would not exceed Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 12,000 crore and it could actually roll out extension services over a period of four or five years across the country through one officer at the village development office in every village. The cost would not even be 10 per cent of what is being spent but the Planning Commission does not propose such a thing.

AS: No, no, it is not that we do not propose such a thing. I think the Planning Commission, more than any other organisation, has posed the issue of subsidy against better use of the subsidy money. It is also the Planning Commission, which has been trying to put extension back on rails. There is a view that the Planning Commission does not reject that if you take an agriculture graduate, give him a sarkari naukri (government job) and place him in a village, he will be about as useful to the village as a primary school teacher, who is on a government salary. So it is more than just an issue of appointing these people; it is more than just a matter of spending money. It is spending that money usefully.

PGT: To change tack; over the last few decades excessive emphasis has been laid on the two major cereals, rice and wheat (in terms of strategies and  programmes to enhance production) and not enough has been done for coarse cereals, which are far more hardy, less dependent on irrigation and far more nutritious. Not just all the millets but even the non-cereal foods.

AS: That would have been a right statement to make about 10 or 15 years ago. Since then, a number of things have happened. First, one of the areas in which massive expenditure is being made –and I am sorry to say, even in this area it is not very clear that expenditure is being done properly –is horticulture. In fact, after the Rashtriya Vikas Yojana, the horticulture mission is the largest expending item in the Ministry of Agriculture. Second, there has been a considerable shift in bank financing, away from traditional agricultural things to all sorts of other areas. Third, there are real growth stories over the last 20 years in milk, in some horticulture products and in meat and fish. Not just marine fish but with freshwater fish. These are where the growth has come and this growth has come about because of solid inputs. The ICAR laboratories have done considerably more work on things other than just rice and wheat. In fact, some think that rice and wheat have been de-emphasised a bit too much.

PGT: Coming to food inflation, why has the government been unable to control or put an effective check particularly on the prices of high-protein  products, not only food and vegetables but also dairy products, in the recent past? There has been consistently high food inflation in the last few years. How much of it do you attribute to change in people’s eating habits? To people becoming relatively prosperous, eating less rice and wheat and eating other fruits and vegetables etcetera…the so-called demand side factor?

AS: I belong to a generation and of a mentality who would admit a problem and say that I cannot give an answer till I have the valid ability to do so. I will tell you what the problem really is. The problem is that our statistics on horticulture or livestock are very poor while our statistical ability to talk about rice and wheat and the major crops is much better. On livestock and on horticulture our statistics are, at best, late and, at worst, at any point in time, hopeless. We do not know what we have grown in the last three months or four months. Therefore, for the purpose of inflation control, one does not know the supply side. On the demand side too, the data comes with some lag and what the demand data shows simply does not match up with the supply data.

The demand data from the National Sample Survey – that has lags – shows slow movement rather than any sharp increases. In the last three years, essentially since the beginning of about 2009 to most of 2011, there has been a massive increase in prices, led really by foods, vegetables, poultry, fish, dairy products and such others. In this group of products, vegetables is a story of fluctuation and spikes rather than any sharp increase. The sharp increase is really in milk, meat, egg and fish. How much of this is due to a sudden spike in demand, which we do not have the data for? The latest data from NSS is for year 2009. How much of the rise in prices is because supply might have gone down? The supply side statistics is wrong but one knows that prices have gone up. On that basis the story can be told one way or the other. I certainly would not take upon myself the responsibility to say that any such story is going to be the real story. I would have to say, I do not know.

PGT:  Do you think that food inflation is going to come down as the government has suggested time and again? The deputy chairman of the Planning Commission recently acknowledged that because the government has gone wrong over and over again, it has actually affected its credibility.

AS: It has…

PGT: The government kept saying that wholesale price index would come down to whatever: three per cent, four per cent; six per cent or eight per cent. It refused to do that. Where do you see food inflation going?

AS: There are patterns in this that are important: on the inflation front, things have been very bad for the last three years at least. It is not just in the last three years; from about 2004-05 or 2005-06, inflation rate for food has been going up. For 10 years before that, food prices were actually low and were, in fact, in relative terms, coming down. What is interesting is that food prices were stable or coming down in real terms in a period where output growth was low. They have been going up in the period where output growth is high! This is the first big mystery.

Yet it can be explained by the fact that exactly the same pattern is observed in the movement of food prices in the world as a whole. The movement of prices in India and the world was relatively similar but this opens up another question. Indian agriculture is hardly open to trade; it is relatively insulated compared to other sectors. So, how is it that what is happening in our prices seems to be parallel to what is happening in world prices? That big question is: Are people in a position to influence prices able to see that in a situation where world prices are high, the government would be unable to do anything about prices by importing the items? So that window, which is open to government, with which it can actually put down prices immediately, is being closed off?

PGT:  The classic case of pulses (daal); there is just not enough of it available in the market.

AS: Daal is a classic story. India’s output had not increased for the last 30 years but daal prices should have been rising faster than other prices over most of that period. In fact, daal prices, relative to other prices, were falling for some of this period, including the period from mid-90s to the mid-2000s. The point is that there is, on the one hand, the paradox about output and prices moving in unexpected ways. On the other, there is this paradox that world prices seem to be affecting us, although we are relatively insulated. These realities have to be accepted. They also show some of the problems that the government is facing and why the government is not being able to do anything about it. In this context, a number of things are being said: that ‘marketing is poor; or, if you open up more; if you have more storage space; or more markets open up somehow prices will go down. Theoretically yes but the fact is that it is not as if India’s infrastructure was any better when inflation was low. The infrastructure is much better today especially because of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana that has actually transformed parts of rural India massively. Roads are, more than anything else, the infrastructure for marketing.

PGT: Why is there an apparent lack of co-ordination among different departments of the government: the agriculture ministry, food and civil supplies department, consumer affairs department, commerce ministry, finance ministry in their inability to devise early warning systems to prevent the spikes?

AS: This is a general problem of the government and it gets particularly worse in the case of food management. Two things have happened. First, there was a time when food management was simple; all that was needed was to look at cereal prices. If that one price was controlled everything else seemed to be controlled. The world has become a far more complex. People are now looking at a much more diversified basket and the more diversified the basket is, the more difficult it is to manage.

The second is about what one can control: which is cereals. This activity was messed up. The Food Corporation of India’s job was simply to buy where it was relatively cheap; where there were relative surpluses; and sell where it was relatively more expensive; where there were deficits. So one loved wheat and rice from Punjab, took it to the South and that is the way FCI worked; as an instrument of market stabilisation. Things have got a totally different shape today. The FCI tries to carry food to where the poor are: so it takes food and dumps it in Bihar, where there is a potential for growth and ends up reducing the incentive for the Bihar peasant to produce more. It is not actually supplying it to where the deficit really is, say Kerala, which is a relatively rich state with few poor people but which does not grow any wheat. As a result, it ends up not even using the mechanisms for stabilisation.

AJ: What you are saying has been said before about American aid. That food aid actually could be counterproductive for increasing agricultural productivity because it kept prices low and served as a disincentive for farmers for growing more.

AS: It could be. The basic thing is very simple; a minimum support price and then a ration price, which is low, with the government buying at a higher price and selling at lower prices, giving a huge subsidy. Whatever its arguments, this system could, in one shot (suppose there was no cash problem) deliver something both to the farmers as well as to the poor, provided two things worked: First, the MSPs worked and the farmers got the MSP. Second, the ration shop worked. That is, the poor got the cheap food. If both of them worked together that would be fine. The problem is that the PDS is probably working in some states like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The MSP is probably working in Punjab and Haryana. In Bihar neither is working.

PGT:  You talked of the government having limited scope to, say, import; to act and influence prices but we seem to be systematically goofing up in the manner in which we are exporting and importing. Take two examples: In 2009, we were exporting sugar at Rs 12.50 per kilogram up till about March-April. About eight or nine months later we contracted for imports and whenever India contracts for imports, world prices shoot up. Onions are a classic case. What happened in 2010? There was a 10 per cent drop in output and one saw a huge spike with prices going up 300 per cent or 400 per cent. Why is India unable to use import and export in a rational manner?

AS: That is a good question and is generally related to India’s failure to: get its act together across ministries and it is exacerbated by the fact that there is a very poor knowledge. Around November 2010, prices were falling. It looked as if one knew prices would really come down and then, suddenly, in the first week of December or the last week of November there was his huge rise in prices, limited first to onions and then, across the board. One did not know what hit the prices and one did not have any information that this onion price hike was coming. Till that point everybody was talking of a good crop (nahi-nahi iss saal ka to badhiya crop): so that is the data problem.

PGT:  This is a huge problem and what you are saying is what we have is a highly inadequate system of market intelligence.

AS: The system of basic statistics on some of these crops is poor; the system of having advance knowledge of what is likely to happen. In the whole business of forecasting crops, forecast is almost zero. I would also admit that even with the best information the co-ordination between departments would be pretty poor. It is bound to be so where information is weak because, in a situation of ignorance, some people will push for things. Obviously, the onion seller will want onion exports to be open and the buyer will want a restriction on this and there will always be a pressure. Which way will the wind blow? It will differ from ministry to ministry: agriculture will listen to farmers slightly more than the food ministry. It also depends on which ministry gets its views across; which is actually the way politics works.

AJ: There is another thing of interest. The Constitution of India provides for district planning committees (DPCs) but not for a Planning Commission. Yet the Planning Commission works but the DPCs do not. It has been suggested that the DPCs be formed and made to work and advise – from the bottom up – the Planning Commission and the state governments. One wonders who is responsible for setting them up: the state governments or the central government? The point is that the DPCs need to be working so they can actually send information (to farmers).

AS: Again, on this there has been a fair amount of movement in the last four to five years. It is far from perfect but the fact is that even in 2005-2006 many states had no DPCs. You must give Mani Shankar Aiyar his due: he was the first minister of panchayats to ensure that certain constitutional provisions were actually on the ground. Now, almost every state has DPCs; almost every state has had its panchayat elections; and that there are frameworks by which the DPC is constituted. Unfortunately, the DPCs are not quite the planning mechanism that they were supposed to be but are really thappa maro (rubber stamp) mechanisms. They are, however, there. Adequately strengthened on the capacity side, they have the ability to advice on technical matters. The DPCs can become what they were expected to be but are not at the moment. Again, some states are much better than others where things are very bad. In the case of agriculture, in the 11th Plan, partly as a result of an NDC decision there was the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, which had only two requirements of states. States would not get money under RKVY if they did not implement these two. One was that they could not cut their agriculture expenditure as a share of total expenditure from what it was. The second was that every district would have to have a district plan.

As a result, unlike in the 9th and 10th plans, states have not cut back on agriculture spending. Agriculture spending, even by the states, has been going up, which is one intention. The second intention, which is the district plans, is yet to be implemented. Every state produced for every district – as was the condition – a pharra (a piece of paper) that was the district plan. Some were good, some very bad but what is worse is that decisions being taken at the state level (and despite the local sanctioning committees) reflect the views of people in the capital more than views of the people in the districts.

PGT:  Top down rather than bottom up…

AS: Yes, decision making was supposed to go down and it has certainly gone down to some extent from Delhi to the state capitals but not gone below that level. That is what one should really try and ensure. It needs to be remembered that the greatest opponents to panchayats and to DPCs and all of this is the local MLA and the local MP.

AJ: There is a major problem facing farmers: the concept of ATMA (Agriculture Technology Management Agency), which is actually run by the district collectors). The DC is not even accessible to the opposition MLAs in states. So there is no way farmers can access schemes through the DCs because the central government is funding the ATMA scheme through the DCs. The last thing on the collector’s mind is agricultural productivity. He has so many functions that he cannot even fulfill his other executive functions. This is an issue that, as a farmer organisation, we would like to put to you.

AS: The ATMA (scheme) is a reaction to a collapsed extension system. The idea was to actually get as many different players on to the extension activity as was possible. It could be the KVK, it could be some progressive farmers; some good NGOs. Unfortunately, despite that what obtained was a talking shop where decisions were only taken when the district magistrate was around or there was some strong enough CEO or district agriculture officers, who could take decisions. In the second round of the ATMAs, it has been decided to have a block component. So there will now be a subject matter specialist at the block level. The point is, all this is scratching on the surface of a problem, which can only be solved by the states. I mean, the central government cannot actually get extension going in the states.

AJ: We have a saying ATMA ka tow paramatma murr gaya (ATMA’s God is dead)…

PGT:  One last question: what could the Budget contain that will be beneficial for Indian agriculture as a whole and for farmers as well?

AS: Let us face it; almost every Budget in the recent past has started off with about 10 paragraphs on agriculture. It says Rs 100 crore here; Rs 50 crore there and there is a lot of that money that is not in the Budget. The Nabard is expected to do something; the banks are supposed to do something; but the Budget gives a lot of verbiage to agriculture. At the end of the day after so much talk, the amount going to agriculture is relatively small. This is a general pattern and I do not have any reason to doubt that this year’s Budget will basically conform to this. Where this year’s Budget is different, however, is that it is the first Budget of the 12th Plan. So, hopefully, one will see something in this Budget that reflects some 12th Plan concerns.

PGT: It is also a Budget at a time that the rate of growth of the economy has slowed down; where food inflation is not under control; where the international economic situation has perceptibly worsened.

AS: Absolutely! It is a Budget that is under pressure to be a fiscal consolidation Budget. However much the Finance Minister talks about growth concerns having to be met, given the conditions, expenditures will not go up too much. It will have to be essentially in terms of whether or not, within a limited increase in expenditure, one can have something that works better. 
 

Farmers' Forum, 19 February, 2012, http://farmersforum.in/agriculture-farming-india/crisis-in-agriculture-of-technology-fatigue-rich-poor-farmer-divide-governance-and-growth/


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

Im4Change.org हिंदी वेबसाइट का परिचय. Short Video on im4change.org...

Im4Change.org हिंदी वेबसाइट का परिचय. Short Video on im4change.org...

"Session 1: Scope of IDEA and AgriStack" in Exploring...

"Session 2: Farmer Centric Digitalisation in Agriculture" in Exploring...

"Session 3: Future of Digitalisation in Agriculture" in Exploring...

Objectives | About Us | Workshops | Disclaimer
share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close