The Hindu Business Line : Agriculture knows no caste

POLITICIANS who are nothing but politicians are capable of limitless skullduggery. On the contrary, technocrats who get into politics generally do not fall below a certain level. Of course, there are invariably exceptions to such generalities.

Mr Sharad Pawar, Union Minister for Agriculture, is primarily a politician and a master of electoral games, but he claims to be an agricultural expert.

The other day, Mr Pawar was speaking at Kurduwadi, a prominent railway township in Solapur district of Maharashtra. Solapur was recently in the news because of a scam in the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) — a Pawar showpiece.

The officials in charge of EGS works there had allegedly forged work sanction orders and cooked up Attendance Registers to misappropriate money.

Allegedly projects on which work never began were certified as completed but washed away by rains. Solapur is also the district where recently Congress stalwarts were defeated in Assembly and Parliament elections.

The theme of Mr Pawar's speech was that indeed thousands of farmers had committed suicide; but that was all in the era of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government, none of whose ministers had an agricultural base and, therefore, were indifferent to the plight of the farmers and of agriculture.

A favourite crack of Mr Pawar is that Mr Manohar Joshi, the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, as a brahmin, would not know if groundnut grew under the soil or on branches. But this argument will not stand when used against the Agriculture Ministers of the NDA.

For, none of them — Messrs Nitesh Kumar, Ajit Singh and Rajnath Singh — was a brahmin. Nor could they be accused of the lack of an agricultural base.

Farmers of Andhra Pradesh committed suicide not just under Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, a hi-tech Chief Minister, but continue to do so under the Congress regime. In Maharashtra, the suicides have largely been limited to the cotton farmers of Vidarbha. They are seen as victims of the Cotton Monopoly Procurement Scheme that denied farmers, year after year, even the prices ruling in adjoining Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh or Andhra Pradesh.

Mr Pawar ought to know that agriculture is primarily a State subject, as was reiterated by the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, after the Plenary Meeting of the body on September 29, when the Prime Minister came down on the performance of the Agriculture and the Health Ministries.

The anti-farmer price policies date back to Independence and governments thereafter. It is indeed regrettable that Mr Pawar should have tried to drag in caste to analyse why agriculture is in the morass it is in today.

Leaving the caste aspect aside, what is the agro-knowledge of the United Progressive Alliance Government?

Its latest showpiece for the development of Rural India is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

The Prime Minister emphasised the need for ensuring transparency in the working of this scheme, modelled on the EGS in Maharashtra.

Recently, in the Rajya Sabha, when it was pointed out that the EGS has produced few tangible assets and has been plagued by mismanagement and corruption, Mr Pawar defended the EGS. "The scams like that in Solapur district [are] an exception," he maintained with a straight face. "The EGS has been the bulwark of rural development in Maharashtra," he added.

Probably on Mr Pawar's word the UPA Government decided to replicate the Maharashtra EGS at the national level. But a comprehensive review of the EGS works in Maharashtra is revealing.

According to the review, 4,396 works in Nagpur Division started seven years back are yet to be completed. To complete these works a further expenditure of Rs 170.63 crore will be needed. As regards the new NREGS, few works have been started as yet and no benefit has reached any rural household.

The UPA Government, evidently under the influence of its Left allies, attaches great importance to land holding, regardless of it producing any income, and has been talking of land reforms and further fragmentation of farm land when the development of agriculture, carrying forward its diversification and post-harvest processing are really crying for attention.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, appears keen to launch the second Bhoodan movement to empower the landless.

For, according to a report in a financial daily, the Government is considering a proposal that will pave the way for transferring 60 million hectares to the landless poor.

Degraded land and wastelands under the control of the government, Panchayat Raj Institutions and parastatals would be parcelled out in viable units and handed over to the poor and the socially deprived for homestead and kitchen gardening and agro forestry.

Wastelands are the degraded lands, which cannot be brought under vegetative cover with reasonable effort. The landless people do not have capital. So, it is proposed to organise them into cooperatives and leverage the NREGS for the success of the scheme. A plan has already been prepared for distribution of such land under the National Mission on Bamboo Technology and Trade Development, and the National Mission on Bio-Diesel.

The Government should have shown acumen enough to pause and review the results and consequences of the Bhoodan Movement as also of land redistribution to landless poor during Indira Gandhi's rule.

In a country where agriculture carried out by the traditional farmers drives owners to suicide, some politicians may find in `land distribution' a good slogan.

The landless poor know well that agriculture is a losing proposition and that if the landless labourer does not own any land he does not bear any risk either.

Unknown to politicians of various hues is also that land-owning farmers are mere labourers with no stipulated wages and with all the risks involved — the vicissitudes of nature and the caprices of the state.

Of all the land redistributed during the Bhoodan movement or Indira Gandhi's regime, very little is under efficient cultivation by those to whom the land was allotted.

Surely, agricultural expertise is not the monopoly of any caste or community or of any political consortium.

(The author, Founder of the Shetkari Sanghatana, is Member of the Rajya Sabha. He can be contacted at sharad.mah@nic.in)

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