Surinder Sud: Water woes

FARM VIEW

A year after the PM announced the setting up of a national rain-fed area authority, it has yet to be constituted.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the setting up of a national rain-fed area authority in his address to the nation on the Independence Day last year, it was viewed as a move to simultaneously address two major issues confronting the agriculture sector. These are deceleration in farm production and the farmers' distress leading to a spurt in suicides. Both these issues are, in a way, inter-related. Most of the farmers forced to take the extreme step are the tillers of rain-fed lands, where agricultural productivity is low and crop failures are frequent. Their bid to switch over to input-intensive cash crops with the help of borrowed money only adds to their woes as the indebtedness goes on mounting to beyond their repayment capacity.

The deceleration in agricultural growth is also largely due to the plateauing of crop yields in the irrigated areas and lack of any productivity growth in the rain-fed areas which account for over 60 per cent of the total 142 million hectares of cultivable land. Indeed, these vast rain-fed tracts seem to hold the key for raising production through measures such as rainwater harvesting and water-shed management.

It is, therefore, regrettable that the proposed rain-fed area authority is yet to be constituted, even as the next Independence Day is round the corner. Of course, the action on setting up the authority has not been totally missing. On the contrary, many more meetings have been held on this subject than were really required to implement this proposal. These meetings included those at the highest level of the agricultural co-ordination committee headed by the prime minister himself. Yet, there has been no final decision yet on either the precise structure of the authority or which ministry should have the administrative control of it. The matter has now been referred to a group of ministers that is likely to further delay the setting up of the authority.

What is worse, two senior ministers "" Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh "" have now locked horns over who should head this authority. Interestingly, a bid made to tackle this issue by suggesting that both of them could be co-chairmen of the authority has not met with any success. The problem is that while the agriculture ministry has technical expertise for rain-fed area development but lacks funds, the rural development ministry has funds but lacks the technical competence.

The net result is that the fate of an important proposal that can potentially change the face of Indian agriculture, reduce poverty and boost economic growth is hanging in the balance. Also, the production potential of vast natural resources in the form of rain-fed land (85 million hectares), wastelands (55 million hectares) and forest lands (67.8 million hectares) and the rainwater that falls on these lands remains under-tapped, much to the detriment of poor farmers and forestry-dependent communities.

Indeed, at present, the official programmes that have direct or indirect relevance to rain-fed area development are spread over several ministries, causing a good deal of confusion, besides over-lapping. These include the ministries of agriculture, rural development, water resources, panchayati raj and environment and forests, among others.

Besides, most of the developmental works allowed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act relate to soil and water conservation, drought-proofing, irrigation expansion and land development, all of which have a bearing on the rain-fed area development. Furthermore, most of the funds available with the rural development ministry for this scheme have to be channeled through the panchayati raj bodies. And, to add to the confusion, a sizeable chunk of land that needs to be treated for rain-water harvesting and conservation to improve water availability for rain-fed agriculture belongs to the forest departments or panchayats.

The obvious purpose of creation of the rain-fed area development authority is to harness the synergies between the programmes of all these ministries. For this, the authority would need to have a high-level representation from all these ministries and a technically competent person as its chief executive officer who is at least of the secretary rank. The apex level governing council should preferably be headed by somebody who can ensure inter-ministerial co-ordination. From this view-point, the authority should ideally be under the prime minister or, alternatively, the Planning Commission. Such an arrangement alone can ensure proper inter-ministerial co-ordination and allow the new body to achieve its objective of harnessing the rainwater to improve the production potential of rain-fed areas.