With Assam’s agricultural growth stagnating or even registering negative rates in past years, experts have called for an enhanced role of private sector in Assam’s farm sector to boost production.
Experts feel that if the slump in agriculture is not arrested at the earliest, Assam could face an imminent food scarcity in future.
“It is high time that the government got its act together soon to arrest the decline in farm production and do something innovative rather than holding the monsoon and floods responsible every time,” said Gautam Prasad Baroowah, business economist, author and former banking ombudsman of Reserve Bank of India.
Baroowah said that the big corporate houses must be encouraged to cultivate in collaboration with local landlords and cultivators.
“Corporate sector could be allowed to lease and cultivate land on an experimental basis, and where landlords and cultivators could become partners with corporate houses on a selective basis,” said Baroowah. He was speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of an NRI meet, organised in Guwahati by an organisation called the Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters (FASS).
He said that world over a new trend has been growing to buy or lease land overseas to grow crops and feed their people. He cited example of China, which had taken the lead by contracting land in Tanzania, Laos, Kazakhstan, Brazil and others. Baroowah said that Assam could experiment by replicating the land leasing model to corporate houses.
“Assam’s agricultural production is negative now. With introduction of modern cultivation system and equipments by private sector, Assam would be able to boost its farm production,” he added.
According to Barrowah, the tolerance limit of Indian population for inflation is 10 per cent maximum, and in case of Assam, he said that it was around 19 per cent as compared to previous year.
He also brought to light a dangerous trend in Assam which was also adding to the slump in agricultural production. Baroowah said that over the last 50 years, area under tea cultivation has been increasing in Assam and people, who once cultivated agricultural crops, have now taken up tea cultivation.
