Key is agriculture reforms. However, there is very little that has been done in this area. Huge workforce is engaged in agriculture, but they are under employed. Too many people keeping themselves busy, doing too little. Not that they are lazy, just that there are not many opportunities. Govt must create an environment where the percentage of population involved in agriculture comes down considerably, allowing consolidation of farms, enabling mechanisation and adoption of efficient farming techniques, resulting in improved productivity.
It is a waste of time and effort to make small farms productive beyond a point. By throwing small handouts to them from time to time, their misery is only being prolonged. Suicides will continue, even with Minimum Support Price regime, free electricity, no tax and waiver of loans from time to time.
Effort should be made to move people out of agriculture into other sectors of economy. Migration of population to urban economic hubs should be encouraged and facilitated. Government on the other hand has been trying to just do the opposite, with schemes like NREGA. Government pays to keep the people poor!
Government should set a growth target of 5% for the agriculture sector, up from dismal 1.5 - 2%. This can not be achieved by throwing money and some crumbs at an inefficient system. The system must be overhauled. It starts with putting someone in-charge, who has the zeal to fix it. Not someone like Pawar, for who agriculture is one of the many things that he does on the side, while he gets some time from Indian politics and International cricket politics.
Till the time that Indian agriculture does not pull its own weight, it will remain a drag on the overall Indian economy, keeping people in perpetual poverty. I wonder what is government's long term vision, if there is one.
It is a waste of time and effort to make small farms productive beyond a point. By throwing small handouts to them from time to time, their misery is only being prolonged. Suicides will continue, even with Minimum Support Price regime, free electricity, no tax and waiver of loans from time to time.
Effort should be made to move people out of agriculture into other sectors of economy. Migration of population to urban economic hubs should be encouraged and facilitated. Government on the other hand has been trying to just do the opposite, with schemes like NREGA. Government pays to keep the people poor!
Government should set a growth target of 5% for the agriculture sector, up from dismal 1.5 - 2%. This can not be achieved by throwing money and some crumbs at an inefficient system. The system must be overhauled. It starts with putting someone in-charge, who has the zeal to fix it. Not someone like Pawar, for who agriculture is one of the many things that he does on the side, while he gets some time from Indian politics and International cricket politics.
Till the time that Indian agriculture does not pull its own weight, it will remain a drag on the overall Indian economy, keeping people in perpetual poverty. I wonder what is government's long term vision, if there is one.
Very Well said Manish Sir.
ReplyDeleteThe crux is the "Zeal to fix it" which is lacking from our system.
But I wonder, do we have enough sectors to keep the population busy and engaged?
That is right. First we need to recoganize and accept the fact that there is a serious task that must be done. The task of putting people to productive work, otherwise the demographic dividend will turn into street protests and breakdown of civil order. There is a lot that can be done to engage population, it is not an easy task, but it is not impossible either.
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