A long haul

The National Development Council (NDC), which met in New Delhi on Tuesday to deliberate on issues facing the farm sector, has broadly endorsed the strategy chiselled out by the Planning Commission. In the process, it has kept agriculture in the Centre's plate, though it is primarily the states' responsibility. In fact, the plan of action approved at the meeting has been cooking ever since the mid-term review of the 10th Plan, over two years ago. However, there is no indication of when the plan is to become operational.

The fresh Central assistance of a headline-hitting Rs 25,000 crore is subject to two crucial provisions, both of which will require time to be put in place. The first and more critical one pertains to the ratio in which to share the additional funding cost between the Centre and states. This has been left to be worked out later. Indeed, going by the plea made at the meeting by the Bihar chief minister, that the Centre should put in Rs 9 for every rupee spent by a state, this issue is unlikely to be sorted out soon and to the states' satisfaction. The second rider pertains to the preparation by the states of district-wise agricultural development plans. This, again, is going to take time, especially in the laggard states where it is needed the most and where the potential for quick growth exists.

There is no denying the fact that agriculture needs fresh investment for its revival. While in the early 1980s, over 4 per cent of agricultural GDP went into this sector as public investment, leading to high growth, this figure dropped to under 2 per cent by the mid-2000s. Though private investment has taken up some of the slack, it has gone largely into relatively high-value produce such as livestock, fisheries, poultry, horticulture and the like""all of which are more lucrative, leading to the relative neglect of an area like foodgrains. It is only to be expected then that all the newer sectors have been showing robust growth while the foodgrain sector, including cereals, pulses and edible oils, has been stagnating.

The other components of the revival strategy for the farm sector should also not be expected to begin delivering results any time soon. For, the action on most of the aspects that can have an immediate bearing on output has been left to the states though, of course, for the obvious reason that agriculture is a state subject. These include boosting the availability of improved seeds, revamping the paralysed extension system, rejuvenating the cooperative sector and reforming the marketing laws. The Centre, on its part, is to set up a food security mission and augment the funding of rural infrastructure and irrigation development programmes, besides experimenting with changing the delivery mechanism for subsidies, notably the fertiliser subsidy. These are the measures which innately have a long gestation period before showing results. In fact, a proposal like having a food security mission may not serve any purpose at all, considering the track record of other missions on crops like pulses, oilseeds and maize that have been in existence for years without showing any visible impact. Having stated all these caveats, it is a matter of relief that the government has woken up to the need for a revival programme for agriculture; even if some of the action points will take a long time to deliver results, the first step has been taken. It is imperative now for the Centre to focus on result-oriented implementation of the strategy.