Why Shivraj Singh Chouhan needs to be empowered – like Sharad Pawar and Jagjivan Ram

At the time of Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet had a single Minister of Food and Agriculture – Rajendra Prasad — who went on to be the first President of India. The governments that followed, Nehru’s as well as that of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, also had only one food and agriculture minister. That included the no-nonsense C Subramaniam, without whom neither the Green Revolution nor possibly the White Revolution would have taken place.

During Indira Gandhi’s prime ministerial tenure, “community development” and “cooperation” were made part of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in January 1966. In October 1974, the Ministry of Irrigation was merged with the Ministry of Agriculture, which was henceforth called Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.

The agriculture ministers of this period, especially Subramaniam and Jagjivan Ram, were men of competence who also had the ear of the then prime ministers.

Subramaniam got Shastri to agree to the import of 18,250 tonnes of seeds of the semi-dwarf high-yielding Mexican wheat varieties, Sonora 64 and Lerma Rojo 64A, that literally seeded the Green Revolution. He was also instrumental in the setting up of the Agricultural Prices Commission and Food Corporation of India (FCI) that paved the way for the fixation of minimum support prices (MSP) and procurement of crops, mainly wheat and paddy, at the declared rates. The National Dairy Development Board, too, came into being no less due to Subramaniam. He backed Verghese Kurien’s idea of headquartering the new institution at Anand in Gujarat (away from Delhi’s bureaucrats), with the same fervour as trusting the capabilities of M S Swaminathan and other scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.

All these interventions happened during the mid- and late-1960s, when Subramaniam and Jagjivan Ram called the shots at Krishi Bhawan. The prime ministers listened to them. When Indira Gandhi invited Jagjivan Ram to become agriculture minister a second time in 1974, he insisted on holding the irrigation portfolio as well. He was clear, and she understood, that agricultural progress wasn’t possible without farmers having access to water for irrigating their crops.

Cut to the present times, when the agriculture ministry is a pale shadow of its past. The fragmentation or hollowing out started from around the mid-1970s, when fertilisers (December 1975), rural development (August 1979; it was initially called rural reconstruction), irrigation (January 1980) and food & civil supplies (February 1983) were spun off into separate ministries.

The centrifugal tendencies increased with the establishment of a Ministry of Food Processing Industries in July 1988 and the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority under the Ministry of Commerce in February 1986. The various statutory commodity boards for spices, rubber, coffee, tea and tobacco also function under the Ministry of Commerce. The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) and the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) are, likewise, under the administrative control of the Ministry of Textiles and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change respectively.

The fragmentation has only worsened under the Narendra Modi-led government. An independent Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying came into existence in May 2019 and, more recently, a Ministry of Cooperation in July 2021.

The agriculture ministry, in a nutshell, has been reduced to a shell of its former self. Policy formulation with regard to key farm inputs – fertilisers and water – are outside its purview. Marketing and MSP procurement of foodgrains and cotton are with FCI and CCI that report to other ministries. There are dedicated ministries/organisations for value addition (food processing) and export promotion (APEDA), too. Agricultural research and education are, thankfully, still part of it. However, approvals for commercial cultivation and even field trials of genetically-modified (GM) crops are granted by the GEAC – ostensibly because these are inherently “hazardous” products, whose “release into the environment” requires special regulation.

One can understand the logic for a separate rural development ministry: Agriculture might be rural, but not all that is rural is agriculture. Agriculture is ultimately about farmers and their produce, coming straight from the fields as crops or after being fed to livestock, poultry or aquatic organisms. What’s input for animal agriculture is basically the output of crop agriculture – whether maize, wheat straw, fodder grass, soyabean meal, cottonseed oilcake or rice bran – just as an output of the former (dung) is input for the latter. They need to be viewed as an integrated whole. Policymaking cannot be in departmental silos that operate virtually independently of each other.

The model should be the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the sole federal agency responsible for public policy on farm production and land conservation, food, nutrition, research, marketing, foreign trade and rural development (which extends to supporting entrepreneurship, housing and utilities) in that country. It is headed by a single secretary (read minister) of agriculture, who reports directly to the US President. The USDA also works with two other agencies – the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Environmental Protection Agency – for regulating GM crops based on science and safety of the final product for human, plant and animal health.

In Shivraj Singh Chouhan, India finally has an agriculture minister who, like Sharad Pawar in the previous United Progressive Alliance dispensation, has both understanding and passion for the sector. He’s well-equipped to deal with the two primary challenges that Indian agriculture faces today – climate change (especially heat waves and irregular rainfall patterns) and making farming remunerative in order to retain talent in the countryside.

From reports, Chouhan has already hit the ground running. But to be a Subramaniam, Jagjivan Ram or even Pawar, he needs to be empowered, politically and administratively. And that should come from the top, like it did from Shastri and Indira Gandhi.

harish.damodaran@expressindia.com