India’s eastern states, long considered the bad boys of Indian agriculture, are perhaps scripting one of independent India’s biggest turnaround stories in farming.
Official figures show that foodgrains production in eastern India -- historically plagued by low yields and pitiable condition of growers -- rose by a staggering 12 per cent from 2010-2011 to 2011-2012 to 103.2 million tonnes. The percentage would be just about 0.9 in the northern parts of the country during the period.
The grain-producing parts upcountry largely comprise Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, while in the eastern they are West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Picture this from 2010-11 to 2011-2012: rice production in Bihar jumped by almost 95 per cent to an estimated 7 million tonnes, while that in Chhattisgarh rose by around 52 per cent to 6.24 million tonnes. During the same period, production of wheat in Punjab, the dominant foodgrain cultivated in the state, rose by a mere 3 per cent, while in Haryana it rose by just around 3 per cent.
Foodgrain production from the seven eastern Indian states has been higher than the national average growth of 2.2 per cent during the same period (see chart).
Well-known international bodies like the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute have taken note of this transformation in Indian agriculture.
Rice production in particular has been the main driver of this growth as it is biggest cereal grown in eastern India.
In the last two years, the region’s rice production has risen by almost 20 per cent, while the national average growth has been around 7 per cent.
At a time when the country’s yields in traditional grain bowls -- Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh -- are plateauing, the eastern regions are emerging as the new growth engines.
In Punjab alone, paddy yields has been hovering around 58-60 quintals per hectare since 2002-03, while the per-hectare yield of wheat has remained around 42-45 quintal during the same period. The only exception was 2010-2011, when it touched a high of 46.93 quintals.
The rise of eastern India is also spectacular as grain production is falling -- at the expense of cash crops -- in the traditional northwest parts of the country, besides in the big western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Figures show that foodgrain production from 2010-2011 dropped by 25 per cent in Maharashtra to around 12 million tonnes because of 19 per cent shift in area, as most good quality farmlands were gobbled by cash crops like sugarcane, cotton, grapes, pomegranate and banana. A notable exception to this shift has been Madhya Pradesh, where grain production, mainly wheat, has almost doubled in the last two years, making it the country’s third biggest wheat producer after Punjab and Haryana.
Eastern India’s transformation has come on the back of a variety of reasons.
Officials claim the biggest among them is the Centre’s special focus on the area through the “Bringing Green Revolution in Eastern India” programme launched in 2010-2011 Budget with an allocation of Rs 400 crore.
In the last budget too, an allocation of Rs 400 crore was made, while the talk is that it might be enhanced to Rs 1,000 crore in the upcoming budget. “The main focus of the programme,” a senior agriculture ministry official said, “is to provide long-term solution to Indian agriculture by reducing the pressure of producing grains on Punjab and Haryana.”
While that might have been one reason for this shift in Indian farming, but surely that’s not the only one. A strong local emphasis on improving agriculture mainly by the state governments and also subsidies on adoption of new technologies like SRI method for rice cultivation are propelling this change.
“The eastern Indian states always had the potential; it is now that it is being tapped,” notes Prof Ramesh Chand, director of National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research.
The Bihar government, in fact, has constituted a separate cabinet committee on agriculture, which meets periodically to review all the programmes. Some experts also said growing purchase of farm lands in some eastern states like Jharkhand by traditional landowning families of north is also contributing to this trend.
Farm-based industries, which are crucial missing link in the whole, system, have also started taking note of this pattern. The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) is working along with Assocham on a Rs 30-crore project to improve processing, packaging, marketing of horticulture produce in some of the poorest districts of West Bengal and Bihar. This, with the active involvement of private companies.
Philippe R Scholtes, who is Unido director (agri-business development), notes that West Bengal and Bihar grow a large variety of fruits and vegetables in the country, but suffer from poor processing facilities. “It is here that Unido would like to help the poor farmers,” he told Business Standard.
But beneath all the euphoria of the great transformation in east India lies the sorry state of marketing infrastructure and post-harvest facilities in the region.
The model sale price of rice in Bihar, West Bengal and parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh was almost 20 per cent less than the minimum support price of Rs 1,080 per quintal as there was no mechanism to purchase the grain.
In fact, such is the pitiable state that this year state agencies procured grains from January onwards, almost two months after the crop has been harvested by farmers. This is not just confined to Bihar, according to the Commission for the Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). “In fact, farmers of the entire eastern belt -- right from Assam to areas adjoining Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh -- are reeling under the impact of sharp fall in price of rice,” says Ashok Gulati, chairman of the CACP.
Gulati, who took several trips to the region to understand the plight of the farmers, says the government needs to give a package of Rs 10,000-15,000 crore just to improve the marketing infrastructure in these states. “Bihar, which is being credited for being the leader of this new transformation, does not have proper rice mills and farm markets. Also, it has no institutional buying of the grain produced,” he notes. “The real change has to come here, or else the entire benefits accrued over the years in improving production will go down the drain.”
Gulati’s contention: eastern Indian needs a marketing revolution. Reason: if farmers do not get assured returns, their productivity will soon start dropping. This is one point that policy-makers need to focus on, before claiming success in transforming agriculture of eastern India, he adds.
