The Hindu Business Line : Elections and agriculture: Poor crop of plans and policies

Instead of focussing on matters of vital concern to the country's food security, such as eradicating persistent hunger, enhancing foodgrain production and sounding the alarm on GM foods, the battle for the ballot has degenerated into non-issues. It is time those in the electoral fray thought seriously about how to put the farm sector back in a position of strength.

A STRIKING feature of the current election scene is the emphasis both the NDA coalition and its principal opponent, the Congress(I), are placing on the farm front. Equally striking is the lack of a clear strategy to prevent the farm sector from sinking further into misery.

Broad generalities such as "improving the rural infrastructure", "better credit facilities for the farmer at lower interest rates" and "crop insurance" are being routinely bandied around. But neither of the political fronts that is claiming the right to rule has come out with details and plans concerning specific issues it would tackle if elected.

For instance, what is the avowed stand of each on the controversial genetically modified organisms (GMOs), both of plant and/or animal origin? What precise measures will the parties take to save traditional agriculture from this threat?

Every concerned Indian knows that the dismantling of the "quantitative restrictions" (QR) regime has impacted the farm-gate prices of many agricultural products. Kerala is reeling under the crash of prices in pepper, arecanut, cardamom and rubber, the mainstay of the State's economy. Will New Delhi reconsider the QR issue to safeguard the country's interests?

Then there is the question of hunger. Of the world's more than 860 million hungry, India is home to more than a third. What is the political stand on the right to food?

Even in the case of the GMOs, why is it that concerned individuals or organisations (mostly NGOs) have to take up the issue with the judiciary in the form of public interest litigations (PILs)? Just the other day "Gene Campaign", an NGO working with the seeds issue, moved the Supreme Court to ban the import of GM wheat and rice. Why is it that the common man's, and the country's, interests are put to risk by governments, which must be the ones to guard these in the first place?

Instead of focussing on such matters of vital concern to food security, the battle for the ballot degenerates into non-issues, whether or not someone is fit to rule, one's origins or, more pertinently, how alliances are made or broken, all just with an eye to capturing power.

Taking agriculture as a test case, it may be educative to examine the substance in the claims and counter-claims by both the NDA and the Congress(I).

While the former has been trumpeting its achievements in food "self-sufficiency" and talking of "overflowing granaries", and so on, the latter has been rubbishing all these claims, taking credit for itself and its earlier efforts.

Without going into the exaggerated triviality of these claims, it is worth looking at how these regimes have fared over the years on the farm front. The base line for this comparison would be the early 1990s, when the economic "reforms" were set in motion.

Against this backdrop, it is interesting to critically examine the performance of the political dispensations over the past decade starting from the Congress/United Front dispensation in the early 1990s, and the switch-over to the NDA rule in the latter half of the 1990s, spilling over to the early part of this decade.

The rate of growth in foodgrains production slumped by 20 per cent during the NDA regime, compared to its predecessors (Congress/United Front governments). When one considers the case of the entire spectrum of crops cultivated, the picture is worse — a slump of 53 per cent.

Inasmuch as compound rates of growth in agriculture are concerned, the figure for foodgrains production during the NDA regime is dismal indeed. It is -133 per cent (negative value)! All crops put together, it is -38 per cent. These data explicitly show that, contrary to what the NDA would have us believe, its performance has been very disappointing on the farm front compared to that of its predecessors.

It also shows that this year's upswing in the economy, mainly triggered by the bountiful kharif harvests — principally rice — has been a boon of the South-West monsoon rather than any technological breakthroughs (as our agricultural fraternity would have us believe, either through the provision of superior crop varieties to the farmers or remarkable crop management practices).

Agriculture was, and still is, a great gamble on the monsoon. The technology on the ground is still incapable of factoring in abrupt and discernible changes in the weather pattern and put in place alternative choices. Look at the adverse effects that north Indian wheat has been suffering lately due to extremely high ambient temperature (5-6 degrees Celsius above normal).

Every extra day the wheat crop spends in the field would translate into 45-50 kg extra grain a day per hectare. If the crop takes ten days more to mature gradually in the field with salubrious climate, it would mean an extra half a tonne of grain per hectare. The abrupt hastening of maturity due to extreme ambient temperature, as has happened now in the wheat belt of north India, means considerable grain loss.

India has around 28 million hectares of wheat area and this translates to about 15 million tonnes of lost grain. Are our agricultural scientists capable of factoring in these abnormal and sudden changes in wheat production? Alternatively, have they put in place, in advance, a contingent strategy, taking into consideration all the data from satellite pictures, the water level in reservoirs, summer rains, and so on?

Last year, the drought killed our crops, and this year the rain god saved the farmers even as our agricultural scientists were taken quite unawares. Most disturbing is the fact that whatever the hue of the government or its predecessor, the performance on the food front has been deplorable. In terms of absolute values, food productionwas just 1.5 per cent during the Congress/United Front regimes, while -1,20 per cent during the NDA regime.

In other words, the population growth rate, at 1.8 per cent, had already overtaken the rate of foodgrain production even during the Congress/United Front governments. This casts a dark shadow on India's reform pattern, where agriculture, which is linked to the livelihoods of more than 700 million Indians, has been relegated to the periphery of our development. An election is a very costly exercise and the most crucial questions that concern the nation's future must be discussed objectively. None of those who have thrown their hats in the ring has shown any demonstrable courage to recognise and list out issues of grave national importance and what he or she proposes to do about them.

A "Second Green Revolution" should not happen when the most disastrous fallout from the first remains objectively unaddressed. Look at the confusion that surrounds the genetically modified crops. Some MNCs are pushing the idea, with support from individuals with vested interests, who played a similar role when the first "Green Revolution" was launched. India is neither like Europe nor like the US, whose mono-cropping systems are beyond our comprehension or capacities.

Except for large tracts in Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, where mono-cropping is practised, with disastrous consequences on aquifers, soils and bio-diversity, agriculture in India, to a large extent, is still "homestead" in style — an assortment of crops and even animals, where diversity is the rule rather than the exception.

Farming is still an act of faith in India, a "culture" in itself, so to say, and far removed from the industrial mindset. It is into this set-up that the powers-that-be are pushing hard to introduce an array of genetically modified crops whose culture can bring unknown hazardous consequences over the years.

Take the example of rice and maize. The year 2004 has been termed the "International Year of Rice" and there is a covert attempt to get the nation to accept the idea of GM rice. We must remember that India is a very major centre of origin of rice and the largest pool of rice germplasm and those related to rice are found here — in particular, in Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgargh and vast tracts of North-Eastern India.

Such being the case, these regions are high-risk areas inasmuch as GM rice is concerned because if the alien genes contained in the GM rice move into the native gene pool there can be unforeseen consequences. India, as of today, has no clear-cut policy on GM crop cultivation. In Mexico, a major world centre for maize, the government has not only banned the commercial cultivation of GM maize but altogether forbidden research in GM maize. The country has taken this strong position in order to safeguard its natural maize gene pool. Why is India found wanting? In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, some very rare germplasms of rice were clandestinely carted out of the country in order to usher in a `rice revolution', spearheaded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, once again with support from the mighty of the day.

Why is the nation letting another drama of this magnitude be enacted again, now in the case of GM crops, putting the nation's interests in jeopardy? Has either the Congress or the NDA a clear policy on GM crops? More pertinently, why is there so much `arm-twisting' in the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the creation of the latter? Such instances are legion. Our only weapon to fight this hegemony will be the mighty ballot. Will we use it well?

(The author, a former Professor, National Science Foundation, Royal Society, Belgium, can be reached at nair_kpp@yahoo.com)

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