| The reasons given for India's poor agricultural performance range from fragmented land holdings to poor availability of water, and even poor extension services, but not too many blame the scientific establishment. A paper by S Ganesan, an advisor to the Consortium of Indian Farmers Association, however, does just that. The author blasts away at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and begins with saying the ICAR recommends using Endrin for pest control in bananas though it was banned globally and in India two decades ago. While Indian farm sizes are small, the author says they're three times those in China where productivity is higher "" so farm size can't be the reason for poor productivity. He then zeroes in on the number of new crop varieties developed by the ICAR, and points out this has halved between 1997 and 2001 "" there is no data available after that, and none on the efficacy of the varieties released either. During this period, the budgets on agricultural research have more than doubled! In sharp contrast, the Chinese authorities received as many as 2,046 applications for registering new plant varieties between 1999 and 2004. You may or may not agree with the author's caustic comments, and there are lots of them, but it is clear the problem is a serious one. |
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