Is The Policy Coming

Technology in a sense is there. Seeds for cotton, oilseeds, hybrid wheat and the HYV paddies are available. You can always improve and you must always support it but if the economic incentives and the bazaar is not there, technology will remain on the shelf. The National Commission is brief but emphatic on the fact that if the economic climate and the technological choices are not available in an integrated manner, both will hang separately. It becomes difficult for a certain kind of policymaker to accept this strategic proposition, since to him there should not be any sectoral priorities in macro or financial policies. Reform means acceptance of international market prices as indicators of efficiency, even when they emerge from severe distortions abroad. You can read the nuances of a Stiglitz or an Amartya Sen but changing tariff rates and priorities in credit flows is another matter.

Interestingly, the National Commission of Farmers’ last two reports are in a techno-economic mould. Small farmers should not be subjected to experiments in the area of crop diversification without first linking the farmers with the market for the new commodities, they say, and again, while import of wheat, pulses, sugar, and oilseeds may have been necessary during 2006 to prevent an undue rise in prices, we should avoid the danger of making this a habit. To them, the first important requisite is opportunity for assured and remunerative marketing for dryland farm products like pulses, oilseeds, millets, vegetables, fruits, milk and meat.

The Commission, quoting our Millennium study, laments that agriculture profitability has fallen by 14.2 per cent during 1990-91 and 2000-2001. There has been a deceleration in input use, mainly because of inadequate expansion of public infrastructure and less favourable input prices in the 90s. The deceleration in input use after 1996-97 to them is a cardinal sin and policy can remedy matters almost immediately. It wouldn’t do to procrastinate.