Dispatches from Charleville

Last week saw a very interesting and engaging session on the eco-system of agriculture in our country, especially in the light of the highest ever budgetary allocation of one hundred and forty thousand crore to agriculture. The allocation is also significant for the following reasons: after many years, the budget of agriculture has exceeded that of the fertiliser ministry and the bulk of the budget (about 80 crores) will be a direct transfer to the 126 million marginal and small farmers in the country under the flagship programme PM Kisan. This comes at a time when production figures are at an all-time high but farmers' income is not. Thus, even with an annual production of 285 MT of food grains, 315 MT of horticulture, 185 million litres of milk, and 84 billion eggs, the incomes are not growing as the markets will typically follow the laws of demand and supply – and enhanced production without a direct income support to farmers will not lead to the transformation of rural economy!

PM-Kisan will address some of these issues even as direct transfer will ensure that farmers visit their bank branches to access their funds. If the banks are proactive, they may encourage the farmers to make use of the funds to contribute their seed capital to the many FPCs that are being promoted across the country to facilitate forward integration of primary commodities to aggregators and markets. This also provides the necessary cushion and security to farmers to move from cereals to livestock and High-Value Agriculture which can contribute to the increasing demand for protein intake in the country as incomes improve and diversify across the country.

But let me first talk about the structure of the session and the panelists. We had Pawanexh Kohli from the National Centre for Cold Chain Development who was also a key member of the Dalwai Committee team which gave the recommendations for Doubling Farmers Committee, AR Khan from NABARD, and Mr. Kulkarni from Jain Irrigation systems to speak on micro-irrigation, fertigation, and protected cultivation. As many participants had worked in or are still in the agriculture sector, the discussion was engaging and meaningful.

Your columnist led the discussion by first explaining the concept of an ecosystem – just as a single swallow does not make a summer, piecemeal interventions of policy, budgetary allocations, and announcement of MSP do not constitute even agriculture policy, let alone the ecosystem. An ecosystem would not only have policies backed by programme budgets, but also institutional mechanisms to give effect to policy announcements – whether of MSP or of farmers insurance. There are two additional factors: the role of technologies and markets. Is our technology system robust enough to offer solutions which were earlier dependent on human intervention (and discretion)? It was generally felt that while technologies were in place, institutional willingness, especially at the level of the state governments was perhaps not in top gear.

NABARD pointed out that while the roll-out of short-term credit through KCCs had retained its momentum, the significant feature was the relatively higher offtake of long-term agricultural credit, which indicated significant capitalisation of agriculture. The most interesting point was the change in the composition of farmers income. Cultivation of cereals (conventional agriculture) was no longer the mainstay of the farmers' income. The contribution from High-Value Agriculture, livestock, poultry, wages and salaries, and non-farm incomes were substantially higher. Till a few decades ago, we did not have micro-irrigation, and protected cultivation and so it did not make sense to propagate it especially as the markets were not ready to offer a competitive pricing model for the farmers. Today, thanks to the support for micro irrigation available under MIDH and PMKSY, most high-value horticulture crops – grapes, pomegranates, bananas, vegetables, and all poly houses opted for this technology. Many sugarcane farmers were also moving towards this technology but the real water guzzler, paddy growers were not because of the provision of free water and electricity. This was more of a political economy issue.

Pawanexh Kohli argued that the focus should be on the 'chain' rather than the cold storage. While India had its fair share of cold stores, we lacked pre-coolers, refrigerated vans, rural roads, grading and sorting centres, and a transparent system of quality verification of stock at the level of the rural mandis. He also pointed out the fallacy of creating more physical infrastructure – what was needed was 'information' and networks which could facilitate transactions across the country and beyond. Agriculture markets had to be integrated – and though the Centre was pushing ahead with reforms on marketing, contract farming, and land leasing, the states were hesitant to go full steam ahead.

The Induction Training Programme had a very interesting session on state capacity and governance with Devesh Kapur from the John Hopkins University. He spoke of the great achievements of the Central and (to some extent) state governments, but also the challenges to governance at district and sub-district levels. Our issues in governance were not so much in the policy space as they were with regard to implementation. And the staff shortages at the block and the Police station level in almost all the cutting-edge departments from development to revenue and law and order were quite high. Moreover, when we speak of policemen or health professionals or teachers per million, we included the data from the urban centres as well. True, there is concentration of population in urban areas, but one reason for this concentration is the ever-increasing disparity between the facilities available in the urban areas. Together with his research Centre, the Academy will carry out an empirical study on vacancy positions and infrastructure bottlenecks on the ground levels. This could also lead to some out-of-the-box, technology-driven solutions to the issues.

(Dr. Sanjeev Chopra is Director, LBSNAA, Mussoorie, and Honorary Curator, Valley of Words: Literature and Arts Festival, Dehradun. The views expressed are strictly personal)