Tractor Gets Green Signal

Now that the sector is flowering ahead of spring, the overseers are striving for better-quality fruits. The NDA government is preparing to give greater push to several of the rural development programmes to sustain the growth momentum, as agriculture—­after three years—looks set for a 6 per cent growth. Ahead of the February 1 budget presentation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has followed up on his New Year-eve promise to mitigate the hardship caused by demonetisation; thus came an interest waiver on farm loans for November and December. Up ahead, more reform measures are being fine-tuned to improve rural infrastructure and incomes, particularly of landless and manual labour.

Moving away from the debate on poverty yardsticks, the government is relying on the socio-economic census and a 35-parameter baseline developed to identify and assess deprivation. These include literacy, human development and access to infrastructure and services.

The authorities have found this the ripe junction to make a difference. “The socio-economic census has given us the details of the deprivation of every household,” points out Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, rural development. “We are using it to find out families without a house, homes without an educated person, households that are dependent only on manual casual labour. Our core focus will be augmentation of skill and livelihood.”

Pegged on the socio-economic census, Mission Antyodaya has 50,000 gram panchayats (out of 2.5 lakh gram pan­chayats) and 1 crore households that are to be part of a special focus for eradication of poverty under the national rural livelihood programme. The census had revealed India having 5.37 crore households of landless and manual casual lab­our. The fact that 5 crore households are participating in NREGA is seen as a proxy for poverty, given that those with other livelihood would not be undertaking un­s­killed work under the right-based emp­loyment programme.

Sinha says the effort now is to reduce the pool of unskilled labour by at least two crore by 2019 and help raise their level to skilled and semi-skilled work so as to help double the income of households in rural areas. This move is apart from the PM’s promise to help farmers double their income, which is still to see the light of day. “If we use our resource systematically and in a saturation mode, we can help move more people up the skilling ladder,” the secretary adds. “It can help in diversification of livelihood, achieve higher agri productivity through irrigation facilities, augment farm mechanisation and the service sector, besides manufacture jobs.”

To achieve the objectives of poverty eradication and rural development, all the ministries and the state governments are being involved to pool up resources to ensure better outcomes in health, education, sanitation and other government-run programmes. There is a proposal to monitor the outcomes at the household and gram panchayat level using the 35 parameters as the baseline to formulate a development index for gram panchayats, based on living standards.

For all the industrialisation and surge of the service sector, rural economy in India remains no less vital—it continues to sustain around 60 per cent of the population. It’s another matter the share of agriculture in the GDP has been shrinking rapidly. Rural economy is a market that has been helping the corporate chalk double-digit growths even as the urban market is expa­nding, but at a slower pace or even got stuck in some cases. Rajat Kathuria, chief executive of policy-oriented research organisation ICRIER, says farming cannot sustain the number of people it does now. “But, the year agriculture does well, our economy does well, too,” he adds. “This shows its continuing importance. So the focus has to be on both farm and firm.”

All the same, successive governments have been slow in implanting farming reforms, be they related to land or marketing of agri produce. The present regime is working to overcome this shortcoming. NITI Aayog has identified certain short-term reforms the cabinet has cleared after presentation to the PM. “We are now going to the states to urge them to implement the reforms,” says Ramesh Chand, member of the policy think-tank that has succeeded the Planning Commission. “It is because of their reluctance to implement reforms that agriculture is not progressing.”

Substantiating, the agro economist poi­nts out that only one-third of the states notified the new APMC Act though two-third did amend the law related to agricultural produce marketing. “Even they have not notified for the entire produce; it’s just for two or three commodities.”

On various forums, Chand has been vocal about a slow pace of rural and agriculture reforms despite meetings with state representative and ministers. So, is lack of resources a constraint? ”Resources are not needed for reforms,” he puts it bluntly. “Willpower is needed to phase out the arthias (middlemen). Maharash­tra showed that when they denotified fruits and vegetables despite opposition from the middlemen. The results are there for all to see.”

Beside continuing dependency on monsoon and risks due to climate cha­nges, Indian farmers face prospect of not getting right remunerations for their produce to make farming a profitable activity. Every year, hundreds of debt trapped farmers commit suicide, unable to face the harassment from the lenders, including public sector banks.

To help farmers improve their incomes and raise output, the agriculture ministry is planning to step up fund allocation to improve irrigation infrastructure, while promoting integrated farming, mechanisation, diversification to animal husbandry and horticulture. Agriculture and Farmers Welfare minister Radha Mohan Singh points out “all-round efforts” being made towards increasing adaptation and resilience of agriculture from extreme weather conditions. Addressing a meet in Germany in January, he also spoke of “developing short-duration varieties of crops, adoption of inter-cropping and promotion of allied sectors including animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries to supplement farmers’ income.” The government is “aggressively” pursuing such a farmer-centric developmental approach with bottom-up planning to achieve the goal of doubling income of farmers over the next five years, he added.

Suitably, there has been a 13-fold incr­ease in funds for animal husbandry besi­des for development and conservation of indigenous breeds of cattle. Last year, the number of veterinary colleges in the country increased by 10 to 46; their seats rising to 1,334 from 914 in 2014. Agri­culture education budget is expected to further enhance to attract and empower youth in rural areas for various agriculture and allied activities. “We are pushing for integrated farming system for doubling farm incomes,” states a senior agriculture ministry official, pointing out that 40 per cent of every 100 rupees earned in rural areas comes from allied activities.

Supporting this objective, the rural development ministry is proposing a 45-day onsite certificate programme approved by the Construction Skill Council for training in masonry, plumbing and carpentry. The objective is to train 5 lakh masons by March 2019, even as the government targets raising 1 crore rural houses in three years besides completing 35 lakh housing projects.

The focus of the NREGA programme, too, is agriculture and allied activity. It is being intensified with the introduction of skill development through a concept called “barefoot technicians”. Under this programme, educated NREGA workers are being trained in the basic technical concepts to help them come up the skill ladder. Once they are trained to undertake more skilled work including supervision of work, they will get skilled workers wages. The target is to have 10,000 skilled technicians among NREGA workers.

The 11-year-old NREGA, which aims to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing every household at least 100 days of wage employment in a fiscal, is in the process of a rejig. “One of the criticisms of NREGA has been incomplete work,” points out Aparajita Sarangi, joint secretary, Rural Development, but comes up with a defence: a drive was initiated this year to complete all incomplete projects. That has led to completion of 48 lakh works so far. “This is an improvement from earlier years when only 25-30 lakh works were being completed in 12 months.”

A quarter of works under the NREGA remains incomplete. The states are taking up these 87 lakh works; their number is coming down, adds Sarangi. Also, there is a system now to monitor the quality of NREGA works. It is a joint exercise by the department officials and a common review mission comprising mostly retired senior officials. In project selection, the emphasis is on “mission water conservation” with focus on natural resource management in 112 irrigation-deficit districts and 1,068 blocks where groundwater has been over-exploited.

Economist Y.K Alagh feels the advent of more public-private participation in rural development projects has enhanced their transparency and helped them deliver better results whether in water, irrigation or seeds development programmes. Alagh is among those who favour government giving the FRBM target a miss this year to step up public investments in projects to give a stimulus to growth. If the signals being given by Modi are any indications, the rural economy and the small and minor enterprises are likely to get further impetus. Hopefully, that’s enough to drive rural demand and economic growth.