The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : One year of the UPA: areas of darkness

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Monday, May 23, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

One year of the UPA: areas of darkness

L.C. Jain

The Manmohan Singh Government's performance in agriculture and employment generation needs to improve.

IT WILL be a worthy tribute to the United Progressive Alliance Government to highlight where, in its first year in office, it has failed in relation to the Common Minimum Programme. This is to enable it to prioritise the unfinished tasks. In identifying the areas of failure, there is no need to draw upon the criticisms by either the Left or the Right. UPA sources are themselves sufficient.

The foremost issue to flag from the CMP is growth of employment and reduction in poverty. While UPA Government may be only one year old, most of its senior leaders are experienced hands. They know that growth of employment and reduction in poverty are both "infinitely linked to growth performance, specially in agriculture," which employs over 60 per cent of our labour force. Understandably, therefore, the cornerstone of their economic strategy was the "reversal of the declining trend in the growth rate of agriculture with the aim of taking it up to 4 per cent."

On April 5, 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged at a meeting of the Planning Commission that the actual performance of agriculture "deteriorated even further and will possibly not exceed 1.5 per cent during the first three years of the Plan."

The failure to arrest the declining trend in agriculture perhaps occurred despite the Government's best efforts. But what were the efforts actually made. The only explanation listed by Dr. Singh is that "agriculture is the primary responsibility of the States," implying that the Centre is not guilty.

This is not a healthy explanation from the leadership of a party that has had a long innings at the Centre and between 1973 and 1993 has repeatedly sung an ode to agriculture in Parliament. Indira Gandhi had said: "Greater attention to dry farming areas is not merely to avoid inequalities in the rural areas. It is also an essential part of any programme to achieve sustained increases in agricultural production." V.P. Singh had said: "Agriculture is at the centre of our development strategy. The quality of agriculture performance is the single most important factor in reducing the incidence of poverty in rural areas." Rajiv Gandhi had said: "Agriculture is the bedrock of our economy. Growth in this sector is also crucial for the removal of poverty." Manmohan Singh said: "We must ensure that our economic strategy gives full support to agriculture on which the livelihood and well being of the majority of our people depend."

The only Congress leader who comprehended the nature of effort required to raise and sustain agricultural growth was C. Subramaniam, Food and Agriculture Minister in 1966. He pinpointed that "our need is to increase production per acre. Since we have little virgin land each cultivated acre must be made to yield more than what it yields now. This alone will provide an abiding solution to our food and agriculture problem." He spelt out that increasing the per acre yield demands a plan of action involving actual participation by each operating farmer. Unless he is encouraged and helped in the field to step up production there is no hope of achieving the national targets. Any significant increase in output requires improvement in the agricultural practices followed by the cultivator and an adequate and timely supply of critical inputs such as water, seeds, fertilizers and credit. These have been inducted to some extent. But they are all so compartmentalised that no small farmer and no given acre of land is assured of a composite and timely supply of inputs.

Small holdings

The number of our agricultural holdings is about 115 million, of these over three-fourths are marginal and small. Their average size is a bare 0.40 hectare for marginal and 1.44 hectares for the small farmers. The handicap of size of holdings is compounded by the fact that a vast majority of them, about 86 per cent, are till today condemned to high cost credit from moneylenders; and supply of credit is not accompanied with technical advice. In his convocation address at the Institute of Rural Management Anand in April 2002, President A.P.J Kalam called for "a systems approach to enhance agricultural productivity including soil analysis, seed choice, cultivation season, fertilizer selection and training to the farmers particularly in the usage of remote sensing data and also of storage, marketing and banking system."

With this yardstick, we can easily assess the gap in the character and content of services presently extended to the marginal and small farms. Our failure should therefore not surprise us. Clearly there are no takers in the system of the wise and practical counsel of C. Subramaian or President Kalam. How then do we expect to achieve sustained agriculture growth in the years ahead?

To say agriculture is a State subject is a flimsy alibi. The States have not turned down any Central initiative in such constructive spheres. Secondly, as Fali Nariman recently pointed out, the Rajya Sabha is the `Council of States'. Has the Centre ever brought up this subject for discussion in that august House, or sat with State representatives for even two days to adopt a common minimum action plan?

Often the Left parties are accused of holding the UPA Government back. In the case of agriculture there is no evidence whatsoever of the Left parties doing so. In fact, the States governed by Left parties have demonstrated unmatched political will to successfully vest ownership of land in the last cultivator, as that is indisputably the first fundamental requirement for C. Subramaniam's design to be made operational.

A related item in the CMP was to endow elected panchayats with autonomy and resources to make them operational and then to liquidate the non-functioning rural administration, which shocked Rajiv Gandhi into bringing the 73rd Constitution Amendment.

All that the UPA can proudly show at the end of one year is induction of a dynamic Panchayatraj Minister in Manishankar Aiyar. No more. In the villages 30 lakh elected representatives wait for the word to speed up agricultural growth and implement employment guarantee. Will someone in the capital make the call?

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