The Tamil Nadu government has set a target to treble or quadruple farmers’ per capita income within five years and to improve agricultural productivity by 35 per cent.
In her introductory remarks at the first meeting of the State Planning Commission at Chennai on Tuesday, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa said the first four years of the 11th Plan registered an overall negative growth of 0.51 per cent in the primary sector. For this year, the government has set a foodgrain production target of 11.5 million tonnes for 2011-12 as against the last year’s 8.53 million tonnes.
"There needs to be greater focus on reviving the primary sector. Agricultural production can be improved by addressing the productivity gap and through value addition. We have also set for ourselves a goal of increasing the farmers’ per capita income by two to three hundred percent within five years,” the chief minister said.
The government plans to achieve this through effective dissemination of advanced technology to improve productivity, farm-based interventions for mixed farming and by convergence of schemes to ensure integrated farm development.
“Our current emphasis therefore is on a farm-based and habitation-based approach to planning, scheme development and implementation,” she said, adding that the Tamil Nadu Village Habitation Improvement Scheme (THAI) would be a paradigm shift in this direction. The THAI scheme is aimed at creation of urban-standard amenities in villages and improving the standard of living of the rural population.
During the 11th Plan period, Tamil Nadu set itself an average growth target of nine per cent. But the growth rate in the primary and secondary sectors is below the national average. As a result, the state's cumulative growth rate was 7.8 per cent in the first four years of the 11th Plan.
The economic growth in the state is being propelled by the service sector only, which the chief minister said would not be sustainable in the long-run. There is a need to make the primary and manufacturing sectors the main drivers for achieving higher growth, she said.
The chief minister also said the critical bottlenecks in infrastructure development should be removed to sustain higher growth in the services sector so as to achieve an overall growth of above 10 per cent.