Showing posts with label Haryana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haryana. Show all posts

Friday, August 03, 2012

Policy-STATE

At the recently concluded India-Japan Global Partnership Summit in Tokyo, Haryana’s Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, made a strong pitch for investment in his State. In an exclusive interaction with B&E, Hooda says the state’s strong industrial base, infrastructure and agriculture are its drawing card.

While other states like Gujarat have also been fairly successful in attracting investments through investor-friendly policies, Haryana has earned itself a special place in the area of agricultural productivity as well. In July this year, Prime minister Manmohan Singh awarded Haryana the Krishi Karman Award for being the best performing state in terms of wheat production for the year 2010-11. As per the citation, Haryana has been awarded ‘for exemplary work in supporting farmers of the state and for achieving highest productivity and production of wheat during 2010-11’. Haryana also happens to be the first and the only state in the country to have ensured 100% treatment of certified seeds of wheat produced by the government as well as seeds from private producers during 2010-11. The entire cost on seed treatment was also borne by the state government.

Hooda has also been consistently working towards increasing food productivity in the country, having been appointed by the Centre to lead the Working Group on Agriculture Productivity in India. Speaking about the steps that his government has taken to improve food productivity in the state, Hooda says, “A special campaign was launched to educate farmers regarding the fungal disease ‘Yellow rust’ and control measures were taken on a war-footing. As a result of the initiatives taken, there has been a record production of 11.630 million metric tonne of wheat in 2010-11 and the productivity has also reached the highest ever level of 4,624 kg. per hectare in the state.” Some of the other initiatives taken by the government for increasing food productivity include mapping village-level soil fertility, water management, promotion of resource conservation technologies and increase in the seed replacement rate.

Still, the absence of inclusive growth has often been a point cited by critics of the government. Hooda, however rubbishes these claims outright. “Look, I am a farmer’s son and I understand the problems that the poor have to struggle with,” he says. His government has installed several power projects and set up Information Technology and Information Systems (ITIs) in the remotest of towns and many of these are already operational. To give a boost to the state’s strong agricultural growth, the government has also started imparting agricultural training and providing the right quality of seeds and irrigation facilities. The response, especially from farmers, has been very promising. After all, what farmers need is the right kinds of seeds and good irrigation services. The people of Haryana are a laborious lot and Hooda’s policies are helping them to move up on the productivity scale – both in business and agriculture.


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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Real National Shame: Food

In a recent column, the respected agriculture economist M. S. Swaminathan has described the bumper crop of wheat in Punjab and Haryana as a moment of both ecstasy and agony. Ecstasy because the 85 million tons of wheat output reveal how our intrepid farmers battle against all odds do their bit for food security in the country; agony because most of their efforts go down the drain because of a hopelessly incompetent and criminally callous Government, particularly the Food and Agriculture Ministry headed by our cricket Czar Sharad Pawar.

At the moment, India is sitting on about 45 million tonnes of food grains, quaintly known as buffer stocks. As procurement gathers momentum each day, it will not be surprising if the stockpile of food grains crosses the 50 million ton mark very soon. In fact, so acute is the crisis of ‘surplus’ that state and central procurement agencies now claim they simply have no space left to store any more food. There will be the usual tales of corrupt and venal procurement officials harassing poor farmers with demand for bribes. Worse, most of the food procured will simply rot as the government has not managed even the childishly simple task of building adequate and safe storage godowns despite more than 20 years of persistent surpluses. What can you say about the priorities of our system when spanking new stadiums for the recently concluded Cricket World Cup can be built almost overnight under the benign supervision of Mr. Sharad Pawar while we fail to erect simple concrete structures to store food in a dispensation run by the same man?

The most commonsense and obvious solution is to allow Indian farmers to export food so that they can reap the benefits of globalisation, just as our IT, Telecom, Automobile, Petrochemical and Infrastructure tycoons have been doing. But mention the word 'exports' and you will encounter storms of protest from both do-gooders and government types who say allowing exports of food will once again uncork the genie of food inflation. They will say how each kilo of food will now be crucial since the Right to Food is now a constitutional requirement and that the buffer stocks will be needed to distribute free food to the poor. They also talk about how onion exports and one bad harvest led to onion prices going through the roof last year.

Frankly, such arguments are nonsense and reflect the defeatist mindset our policymakers acquired during the dark era of socialist inspired shortages of everything. First, be assured that almost all the ‘free’ food that will be doled out to the poor will be so rotten due to poor storage that it will be virtually unfit for consumption. Second, and more important, such arguments ignore the fact that foodgrain productivity in India is still half that of China. Quite simply, we have the potential and the ability to almost double our foodgrain output to close to 500 million tonnes a year. That one national endeavour will enrich tens of millions of farmer families who can export food even as the poor get enough free food.



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