The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : `Crop diversification needed to accelerate sustainable growth'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 20, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

`Crop diversification needed to accelerate sustainable growth'

R.K. Radhakrishnan

Suggestions will serve as inputs for Equitable Growth Initiative

CHENNAI: : A State Planning Commission round table on human development, agricultural diversification and water resources management concluded here on Thursday, with stakeholders suggesting measures to accelerate sustainable growth.

The suggestions will serve as inputs for the Chief Minister's Tamil Nadu Equitable Growth Initiative, to be launched "sometime later."

Asked when it would be launched, officials said it could be decided only after all inputs were available.

The goals would be achieved only in "long term", and hence, it had to be drawn up taking into consideration the many variables that had an effect on growth over a period. This will run alongside the current and medium-term strategies. Making growth projections needed a multiplicity of inputs and the initiative could take a year or more.

On Wednesday and Thursday, senior officials, experts, members of the academia, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, the World Bank and people who would benefit from the measures — farmers and villagers — told the round table what they expected from the process.

The more pressing need the participants highlighted was diversification in crop patterns. While one expert pointed out that contract farming could form part of the solution, another said this introduced more problems than it solved.

For instance, farmers in Punjab breached a contract with a multinational and sold their produce to outsiders because prices had risen as the contract was signed for a lower rate. The company was unwilling to offer the prevailing, higher market price.

In another case, small farmers were left in lurch when an Indian company selling basmati rice, backed out of buying as per the contract, since the market price had fallen, and the company found it profitable to buy from the market than from its captive farmers.

The recurring theme of the day was the need for getting more out of every drop of water. Analysts and officials stressed the need for promoting strategies for efficient utilisation of water.

While farmers were more concerned at yield per hectare, they did not seem anxious about water consumption. They should be mindful of how they used water, because it was fast depleting.

Asked about the presence of the World Bank at a meeting of this nature, the officials said the bank would bring in specific technologies from the world over. "What we are looking at is a knowledge partnership," an official said. This was an initiative by the State Government supported by the bank's knowledge base.

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