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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Needed policies, not just promises

Needed policies, not just promises

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published Published on Sep 15, 2009   modified Modified on Sep 15, 2009

The Prime Minister’s Independence Day address to the nation was particularly disappointing this year.

The Prime Minister has said, yet again, that "the country needs another Green Revolution". But what’s distressing is that his government has not even formulated a draft strategy for such a revolution in the last five years, let alone launch it. Why? Largely because the agriculture minister has not shown the slightest interest in a "Second Green Revolution" (SGR).

The Prime Minister reiterated the United Progressive Alliance’s goal of achieving four per cent annual growth in agricultural production and committed that "we will achieve this target in the next five years". But the same Prime Minister had made the same commitment in his I-Day address five years ago, and, we actually achieved four per cent only in one of those years.

There is widespread consensus in the agricultural development and policy-making community as also the agricultural research and development community that some of the key ingredients for an SGR should be:

Developing new techniques of agronomy and production through maximum use of biotechnology;

Increasing all-round priority to the so-called "coarse grains" — which Dr M.S. Swaminathan rightly calls the "new grains". These cover the many varieties of millets and pulses. They consume little water and can, therefore, grow well even in rain-fed areas which are 60 per cent of our cultivated area. Surprisingly, these grains grow better without chemical fertilisers. Whereas 4,000 litres of water is needed to grow 1 kg of rice using the First Green Revolution (FGR) technology, only 1,000 litres is needed for 1 kg of millets even if that rainfall is sporadic. The "new grains" are also adaptable to a wide range of ecological conditions and are pest-free. Furthermore, millets are storehouses of nutrition compared to wheat and rice, with double the calcium content and way ahead in protein, fibre, iron and other minerals. Yet, we have made and continue to make huge investments in highly water, power, chemical, fertiliser, pesticide and subsidy-intensive FGR technologies with an obsessive focus on wheat and rice. Consequently, over 1966-86 rice output doubled and wheat trebled. However, since then, crop yields, water fertiliser and pesticide productivity have been falling, and soil salinisation and pest susceptibility have been rising steeply, increasing unit production costs, subsidy payments and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, production of millets and pulses has actually decreased by 10 per cent, largely due to a fall in cultivated area by as much as 48 per cent. Why? Because of highly distorted government policies. This is particularly ironic because the production cost of millet is far lower than those of rice and wheat and the subsidy needed is extremely low. Therefore, if we really want to "weather proof" our food security we must reverse this situation urgently.

We must also immediately include millets and pulses in the PDS (public distribution system), ICDS (integrated child development services) and mid-day meal programmes. This will enhance in quick time our "nutritional security" which is so bad today.

As regards water, we are over-exploiting groundwater due largely to the massive water needs of the FGR technology and huge delays in surface irrigation projects. Bringing all our irrigation projects to completion quickly is crucially important and the backlog so great that the finance ministry and the Planning Commission should, as a penalty, sharply reduce the non-plan outlays of states whose irrigation projects are lagging behind.

The FGR was massively a product of modern agricultural research and development. However, once self-sufficiency in wheat and rice was achieved by around 1975, research and development outlays virtually stagnated for a whole decade. Then, from 1985 they actually started declining. So, the research and development budgets of ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) and the agricultural universities must be tripled immediately. Concurrently it is imperative to redesign the organisational and managerial practices to provide maximum operational autonomy to these institutions. Finally, the performance of the top leadership of ICAR needs a searching review and early upgradation. Otherwise, the Prime Minister’s call that "our scientists must devise new techniques to increase the productivity of small and marginal farmers" will not be operationalised.

The Prime Minister says at one point: "It is our ardent desire that not even a single citizen should ever go hungry". Yet recent six starvation deaths in Orissa, 10 in Madhya Pradesh and 15 each in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh were reported.

The Prime Minister’s "appeal" to the business community to "join the government’s efforts to ensure inclusive growth" is touching. But it is like getting the tiger to protect the deer. For this is the community which the Prime Minister himself recently accused of underpaying taxes if not paying any tax at all, and of hoarding and black marketing.

In the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and even to some extent Rajiv Gandhi, the August 15 address to the nation was a skilful mix of enthusing and uplifting the people and telling them what the government of the day had achieved, with a garnish of some upcoming promises. It was not just a list of promises and empty homilies. The part of the present Prime Minister’s speech debunking the contention of the Bharatiya Janata Party that taking special care of our deprived sections amounts to appeasement and that it is the government’s duty to care for them has a prime ministerial ring which makes the nation proud. Let us hope that there will be many more such statements in the Prime Minister’s August 15 address next year.


Ashok Parthasarathi, The Asian Age, 14 September, 2009, http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/opinion/needed-policies,-not-just-promises.aspx
 

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