The newly appointed CII president, Venu Srinivasan, today met West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, to discuss issues relating to contract farming.
"We are keen to work with West Bengal to promote its image among other states and also bring back the manufacturing industry in the state. We will also advice the chief minister to allow private sector investments in agriculture", Srinivsasan said addressing the press here.
West Bengal does not allow contract farming. Wherever contract farming had been allowed, be it in the case of Pepsi in Punjab or the ITC e-choupal network in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, it had proved to be beneficial to farmers, said CII officials. "All states should adopt the model Agricultural Marketing Produce Committee(APMC) Act", said Kurush Grant, deputy chairman of the CII eastern region.
Speaking about private investment in agriculture, Srinivasan said "We would like to see private sector players come into contract farming , provide technology and support to agriculturists, so that they can produce better quality crop, better seeds, agronomy support, better use of fertilisers and pesticides to improve productivity and then better quality crop can be taken by the private sector and contractors to market and process into higher value added products".
He added in the same breath that CII did not want to get into the land-ownership issue and upset the entire socio-economic structure. "What we want to do is to help farmers, help employment in the farming sector and help the economy grow by making the farm sector grow through partnership. We can take farmers to politicians and showcase farmers who got success and who want to do it", Srinivasan clarified.
This apart, the CII is also mooting that state governments go for creating transparent land banks. " Various states have got different models of acquiring land and giving it to industries where they are not actually allowed to speculate with the land. I think, therefore it becomes a very fair process where people then cannot accuse the Government or the businessman for conspiring in some way to take agricultural land away. Secondly, there are some clear rules of not taking away wet lands and to protect agriculture. We want these rules to be enshrined so that a transparent land bank is available in states for development of industries," Srinivasan said.
CII has created a task force for coming up with recommendations in this regard. "The report will be ready by July this year and will be submitted to the new government that comes into power", he added.
On the image front, Srinivasan felt that "West Bengal has some image related issues. The reality on the ground is better than the image.One has to get across to the investors and promoters to say that productivity is good in Bengal, industrial peace and relations are good, cost of living is low , educated labor , graduate engineers and managers are available. So, it is really a lack of awareness about Bengal’s image that we need to polish up and get the government to do more promotions".
Another area that Bengal needed to work on is infrastructure, felt the CII president. "I think Bengal hasn’t got a new port. The connecting roads to rural areas are weak. Rural electrification is weak. These are areas where the Government can definitely take some actions and we would be happy to partner Bengal and promoting in other states and exposing our members to see the reality and why people should invest," he explained.
