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Mission 2022: The Challenges of Doubling Indian Farmer Incomes in Five Years -Vishavjeet Chaudhary and Gursharan Singh

-TheWire.in

Raising productivity, reforming land policies and solving the remunerative price mess will require massive amounts of public investment and political will. Is the Modi government up to the task?

The Niti Aayog recently came out with its ‘Three Year Action Agenda’ – a plan that covers a time period that is politically crucial as it leads up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In its chapter on agriculture titled ‘Agriculture: Doubling Farmer’s Incomes’, the economic think-tank has put forth a four-point action plan to double the incomes of India’s farmers.

Although there is nothing radically new in what has been suggested by the Niti Aayog, the measures proposed are in the right direction if the farmers’ incomes have to be doubled. However, various experts have cast a pall of gloom over the claim that is indeed possible to double incomes by 2022-23. This is primarily because agricultural growth in the post-reform period, barring a few exceptional years, has been stagnant and has historically failed to meet the target set by the government. For example the average annual rate of growth in agriculture and allied sector during the period from (1991-92 to 2013-14) comes at 3.2% – lower than the targeted 4%.

The four point action plan includes the following measures: 1) Remunerative prices for farmers by reforming the existing marketing structure; 2) Raising productivity; 3) Reforming agriculture land policy; and 4) Relief measures. It is important to see how these actions will double the income of the farmers’ and to what extent the government is serious about it.

An intimate dissection

At the outset it is important to highlight the current state of Indian agriculture, thus setting the context for our quest to double farmer income.

It must be noted that agriculture and allied activities remains the main livelihood for more than half of the Indian population. The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011, released in 2015, also indicates that out of 24.39 crore households in the country, 17.91 crore lived in villages and are more or less dependent on agriculture. Further, the Economic Survey of 2015-16 highlights that the share of agriculture in employment was 48.9% of the workforce while its share in gross domestic product (GDP) was 17.4% in 2014-15 at constant (2011-12) prices. Additionally this year’s Economic Survey projects the growth rate for the agriculture and allied sector for 2016-17 to be 4.1% on the basis of the first advance estimates of the Central Statistics Office. With this backdrop it is interesting to dissect the Niti Aayog’s four point action plan.

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