The future lies in the fields

Now that the fun and games are over, the time has come to perform. The forthcoming budget will be an important opportunity to put into pract...

Now that the fun and games are over, the time has come to perform. The forthcoming budget will be an important opportunity to put into practice many of the ideas advocated by many of us and reiterated by the CMP. On agriculture, operational land and water development targets have to be set and given content to in this working and fiscal season. For major crops there has to be an operational policy map.

Take water first. In virtually every agro-climatic region, we know what to do and the reasons on account of which existing programmes don8217;t cover the last mile. We know that from existing canals, with expenditures as low as around Rs 4000 per hectare, water can reach every field. The Advanced Irrigation Programme we had initiated in 1995 had promised a component on distribution. Its precursor in 1988, set off by Rajiv Gandhi, had laid down these targets on maps in terms of fields and areas to be covered and the Planning Commission saw it worked. This time around, this was not done and after a year Finance made the programme in a sense voluntary, by making it a matching high interest loan scheme of the states. The CMP promises higher public investment in water. Now operationalise it.

Caprihan, one of India8217;s finest engineers, had worked out that the last mile in distribution can be covered in over 35 million hectares he identified on the ground. In April, Anil Shah and I had in a press release shown with case studies done by his NGO how it was possible in selected areas in the country. Let us do it now. There is really no excuse.

Again, in every set of three or four districts, we know the ground water that is available and the water that can be harvested. Operational targets have to be set for each and followed through, as the Congress president had laid down at Abu. The loan component for watersheds, groundwater schemes and canal distribution systems at the local level needs to be given coherence. There is a lot of confusion on eligibility, collateral, financial limits and related matters. All the schemes provide for a loan component, so nothing gets done. So-called minor irrigation has to move over to four million hectares a year from the one million at which it is stuck now. Banks and government must effectively partner farmers8217; groups who perform. The new Nabard chief is a dynamic lady and must get the housekeeping in order.

On crops, price policies are a mess and it has to be remembered that the cotton and other farmers who suffered have voted this government to power. This is the year to resolve their problems. The old style drill of declaring prices and government buying are just not working. The government must ensure a return to the farmer, which gives her him enough incentives to invest in a medium-term profile, say three years, and use tariff, monetary and technology policies to operationalise them. The CMP very correctly says that tariff and subsidies in a measured manner will be used and the government will stand as the actor of last resort for this end, if these policies fail. The roadmap for rice has to be firmed up and policies worked out for other major crops. The impact must show up in the kharif season and definitely for rabi.

For diversification, market development, rural credit and support, the CMP says all the right doable things and it would be churlish to find fault. Godspeed is all that can be said. There are three more doables which need urgent attention for widespread rural development. First, an economist-led government knows that there are a number of wrong things going on. Economic policy is not just about incentives but disincentives and taking away resources from those who would misuse the public exchequer for undeserved profit. This is difficult, more so in a coalition government. While political compulsions can be understood, the effort has to go on and the least that one expects are the right signals.

Second, the CMP is very bullish on pet ideas, support to artisan-based industry and technology-based services, but a commission is too far off. The promised fund must be there this year and it must get going on the 112 artisan-based centres identified for support.

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Finally, no deserving poor youngster will be bereft of training for the jobs of tomorrow and crores wasted now must be used for this purpose. As a former vice chancellor of JNU, I am happy that only persons of proven competence will be chosen for national research and educational supervising bodies. A more inclusive political mandate has to be reflected in the next budget, but its sights have to also be squarely on the future. The India of this millennium has to be our goal. The Canadian scholar John Kirton has shown that India is already the fourth largest economic power in the world. We have to show that we will be the third largest soon.