Act Now
Two years in office is sufficient time for any well-meaning government to realise that there are no shortcuts to India's development. The country cannot aspire to be prosperous unless its vast rural economy prospers, urban and rural poverty are eliminated, and agriculture turns remunerative and profitable enough to sustain and support the growth ambitions of India's teeming rural population. BT's special report on 'The Village Economy' takes a critical view of the grandiose plan of Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to make India a $10-trillion economy by 2032. It also looks at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's grand vision to double farmers' income by 2022. BT correspondents spread out across the country to examine the progress in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project - the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, including the village adopted by the PM himself. All three initiatives are inter-linked and aimed at elevating the economy of India's 600,000 villages. Here's how.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's promise to double farmers' income in five years has been one of the most debated elements of his 2016/17 Budget speech. Experts were quick to point out that unless the government was talking about doubling the farmers' nominal income, which inflation alone would have ensured, doubling of the real income of the farmer is next to impossible as long as India's agricultural growth remains near stagnant.
The Prime Minister's Office would have kept this in mind when it set up an eight-member committee - headed by a top-ranking official in the agriculture ministry - this April to recommend ways to double farmers' real income by 2022. The committee is in the midst of stakeholder consultations to find ways to double the 'real' income of the farmer, and is expected to submit its report in two months.
While one should always expect new, meaningful suggestions from expert committees, it would be nave to believe that the main reason why Indian agriculture and farmers' prosperity suffered all the while was lack of ideas or expert recommendations. In fact, there have been too many recommendations. The biggest and, perhaps, the most relevant one was the mammoth 2,000-page report prepared almost a decade ago by the National Farmers Commission - headed by India's foremost agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan. The report cannot be considered outdated, as a majority of its recommendations are yet to be implemented. The relevance of the report is driven home by the fact that several agriculture and farmer-related poll promises that one finds in the BJP's election manifesto of 2014, were straight lifts from the Commission's report.
Even as the PMO awaits the recommendations of the newly appointed committee on doubling farmers' income, it could very well check out the poll promises the political party that leads the ruling coalition had made. A cursory glance into the section that talks about turning agriculture scientific, productive and rewarding is certain to provide ideas in plenty to raise farmers' income.
One of the two dozen-plus poll promises to the farmers made by BJP talks about initiating "steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50 per cent profits over the cost of production, cheaper agriculture inputs and credit, introducing latest technologies for farming and high yielding seeds, and linking MGNREGA to agriculture". Right from the reformation of APMC Act to enabling free movement of agri-produce beyond the mandi limits, to creation of cluster-based storage systems, rotation farming for herbal products and adoption of national land use policy, measures to enhance farming productivity and ensure high returns to the farmer are there in BJP's manifesto.
Even if the committee fails to reiterate the same suggestions, it will only do the BJP good by implementing its own election promises in right earnest. Even if it is not going to double farmers' real income in the next five years, it will save the party from a major embarrassment - that of having ignored its own poll promises.
