Long on promises

But the fine print indicates that the finance minister has not matched his words and the targets he has laid down with appropriate actions and financial allocations.

Issues like irrigation, diversification into horticulture and other sectors, rural credit and farm research are among several cases in point. The Budget has fixed a target of extending assured irrigation to 10 million hectares in four years under the Bharat Nirman project.

This sounds almost utopian, considering that the growth of irrigation has decelerated""partly because the easily irrigable areas have been exhausted but more importantly because no new medium or major project has been launched since the 7th plan (which ended in 1990).

The Budget also talks about covering 3 million hectares under micro-irrigation systems like drip and sprinkler irrigation by 2007. This, too, seems a tall order because only Rs 400 crore has been set apart for this purpose, against the estimated requirement of Rs 10,500 crore for the remaining two years of this Plan.

As for the proposed National Horticulture Mission, the funding requirement for 2005-06 has been projected by the agriculture ministry at Rs 2,015 crore. The Budget has allocated all of Rs 630 crore.

Likewise, the Budget has talked about the need for revamping the cooperative credit infrastructure but has not proposed any concrete measure to do so. Of course, it has correctly diagnosed that the cooperative credit infrastructure is in a shambles.

By way of remedy, Mr Chidambaram has alluded to the task force's recommendation of special financial assistance to sick cooperative banks to wipe out their accumulated losses and strengthen their capital base.

Though he indicated acceptance of the report, he has not spelt out any action.

Agricultural research and education has also not got much from the Budget, except for the announcement about setting up a national fund for strategic farm research with a lordly sum of Rs 50 crore.

Much of the existing farm research and education network suffers from fatigue, and needs revitalisation assistance. The parliamentary standing committee on agriculture in its recent report recommended a one-time catch-up grant of Rs 1,000 crore for this network.

But this has been overlooked in the Budget.