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Harish Damodaran

New Delhi , Dec. 19

EVEN as the Government is all set to table the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, 2004 in Parliament providing for legally assured 100 days of employment for poor rural households, there is a view emerging that such a programme should not be fully de-linked from agriculture and meet the fate of most `pure' rural development schemes.

The model that is being suggested by some officials in Krishi Bhawan as worth replicating is the Horticulture Development Programme linked with the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) that was introduced in 1990 by the Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, when he was Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

Between 1989-90 and now, there has been an increase of about 10 lakh hectares planted under fruits in the State, of which an estimated 96 per cent has been supported through the horticulture-linked EGS. What the scheme -- an improved version of the original EGS launched in 1972 - essentially did was to provide a 100 per cent subsidy on wage costs incurred by farmers over a three-year period. In addition, all small and marginal farmers, besides scheduled castes and scheduled tribe cultivators, were provided 100 per cent subsidy on material inputs, including planting material, fertilisers and pesticides. The wages were given in cash, while the material inputs were supplied in kind.

The programme was applicable for 25 fruit crops, spices intercropped in coconut plantations, and medicinal and aromatic plants and the 100 per cent wage subsidy was made available to all farmers, for a minimum coverage of 0.2 hectares to a maximum of for hectares. For the Konkan region, the minimum eligible area was set at 0.1 hectares and the maximum at four hectares.

Further, to ensure that the monies under the scheme - which essentially translated into an investment grant covering the labour and material costs during the initial start-up phase - were spent well, the assistance in the second and third years was linked to the survival rates of the planted trees.

The survival rates in the second year was fixed at 75 per cent for irrigated and 50 per cent in rainfed crops, while for the third year, these were set at 90 cent and 75 per cent, respectively.

The success of the programme has been borne out by the average 75,000 hectares additional area brought in under fruit cultivation every year since 1990.

Besides Alphonso mangoes, Thomson Seedless grapes, Cavendish bananas, Nagpur oranges and self-seeded pomegranates, Maharashtra today is also a major producer of chickoo, guava, sweetlime, lemon, ziziphus (bhor), custard apple, cashew and coconut.

From the employment angle, the programme is estimated to have covered roughly 13 lakh farmers and directly created 21.3 crore man-days of work. The employment-intensity was even more pronounced because horticulture production is said to typically require up to 275 man-days per hectare per year, compared to only 100-120 in the case of normal food crops.

Also, the programme helped in bringing large areas of wastelands and hilly tracts under cultivation, which would ordinarily not have been possible with food crops.

"Agriculture and rural development should not be viewed in isolation from each other. No rural employment programme will succeed in the long run at the cost of ignoring agriculture", the officials warned.

More Stories on : Horticulture/Fruits & Vegetables | Employment

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