Agriculture Needs Holistic Attention: Pre-Budget Roundtable for Agriculture
A Holistic approach to agriculture, a coordinated effort from both central and state governments, a better rural infrastructure with a roadmap to get basic needs of farmer done, these are the expectations from the budget of a high level panel that had put forth their views during a pre-budget roundtable to agriculture organised by BW Businessworld. Find the highlights of the session:
‘Gross Value Added (GVA) from agriculture is more dependent on how other factors will behave’, said Abhijit Sen, former member of planning commission of India (now Niti Aayog) during a pre-budget roundtable on agriculture. He added that it must be the government and other stakeholders who have to work upon various growth factors by different ways, post two years consecutive droughts there was a perception that next few years will be good with production. It has worked but prices kept falling and it remained below two, we should expect it to remain same around that for the coming year as well. Adding to his tune, Prabhakar Kelkar, Vice President of Bhartiya Kisan Sangh said, everything is encircled around how the government decides MSP but it is more important to ensure how they can reach to ground level and can benefit the farmers’.
It was an optimistic approach by Nilabja Ghosh from the Institute of Economic Growth and Suresh Pal, Director of National Institute of Agriculture Economics & Policy Research. Pal was more optimistic and putting it in a clear version, he said, it is more optimist approach that can give a better outcome for the upcoming budget where we can capitalise upon a better GVA than a low 2.1 which we had achieved this year. The panel was on one page that raising the income of farmers’ is more important for government & that might be a major cause of renaming ministry to ‘ministry of agriculture & farmers’ welfare.
Doubling farmers’ income may be a visionary statement rather than a mission but needed to have more broad implications in farming community, said Nilabja Ghosh. Putting it out from mediators’ mouth and serving it to the farmer needs a broad spectrum approach, I feel the government has done enough for this but there is a lot to be done for the same, said Suresh Pal, while forcing for the requirement of more strong policy measures for a stronger economic growth. It is more important for the government to focus on R&D, an area which is lacking in terms of budget from last few years said Pal. It is a rather serious observation by Pal that agriculture credit has a target of 10 lakh crore or even higher but what reaches down is an area of concern. A corporate investment in input & support system will be a more serious challenge which is a must for improvement in farmers’ condition.
Another serious issue arise during discussion was what government has learnt from a marginal loss in rural areas, Prabhakar Kelkar said ‘there is a common distress point among farmers’. Interim relief is more emphasised on MSP and a budgetary provision for it, which will definitely secure farmers’ interest. He said "lesser the incidents of distress selling below MSP’s get, better the electoral advantage be for union government. It is still a matter of deep discussion that agriculture remains a state subject and it creates a real problem. There are less than 10 per cent farmers able to sell their produces in MSP or better prices. Making plans like 80 thousand crore irrigation plan is not sufficient. One has to make sure with a master plan how you can take the infrastructure development to benefit farmer."
Abhijit Sen said, Agriculture remains a state subject and provincial governments spend more of their agriculture budget to maintain their departmental functioning. He said, "when additional allotment to budget has been more to states for the same, the amount had been wasted’. He agreed with Kelkar on how a coordinated effort is more required to take agriculture as a better policy effort rather than a report caulking on budget. The other important point raised during the discussion was how & what will be the quantitative term for the upcoming budget? The answer is common, "A holistic approach to how Agriculture can be seen and is it performed". Nilabja was more confident that this is gettable through a well-planned roadmap. While Prabhakar Kelkar is more concerned about more on words than ground efforts. Suresh Pal has directed the panel to a more comprehensive dialogue when he raised the other measures like market volatility and lack of expertise in farmers that may act as a barrier. Abhijet Sen though has a more concrete vision when he said it’s the quantity which is less & acts more like page fillers for various budgets for a long time. ‘It will not be a different story this time’ said Abhijit.
