The Hindu Business Line : Missing the wood for the trees

In the backdrop of the double-digit growth in industry, the country must introspect how it plans to pull agrisulture out of the quagmire it has sunk into, given that the bulk of the country's population depends on the farm sector.

There is a great debate in the country on setting up industry by private enterprise acquiring land, sometimes fertile, from farmers who have been tilling it for generations, under the overall umbrella of special economic zones.

More so the Singur issue, in West Bengal, on the acquisition of about 1000 acres to set up the "small car" project of the Tatas.

From the President, down to the local political big wig, there was frenetic appeal to Ms Mamta Banerjee, who initiated the agitation, to call off her indefinite hunger strike to stop the "acquisition".

Why is it that such acquisitions, all on a sudden, have become the most contested subject of discussion among the polity, policy-makers and the nation at large?

Economic scenario

India has forever been an agrarian country. As much as 65 per cent of the population is involved in, and dependent on, agriculture. But ironically the rest of the 35 per cent, that is sustained by the farm sector, has a per capita domestic product that is more than 600 per cent of the former.

In fact, India is two countries: One, the "Galloping India" that is enjoying the 9 per cent-plus growth, has a per capita purchasing power parity GDP above that of the Philippines.

The Other India, the poor cousin "Bharat", which is mired in poverty and misery, at places even worse off than a war-ravaged Sub-Saharan African country.

Salvaging Bharat

It is then logical to think that unless this 65 per cent is salvaged, India has no real right to be clubbed along with the comity of prosperous nations. Ever since Nehru dreamt of machines and factories, India's economic development has been predicated on industry and almost all of India's Five-Year Plans have followed the Western pattern of "export and expand".

But the agrarian sector is the bedrock of India's development but has of late become the real laggard. The annual rate of increase in food production has fallen below the population growth rate, setting in motion the Malthusian theory of population explosion outstripping food production, and India's share of the global trade in agriculture is less than one per cent.

In the backdrop of a double-digit growth in industry — the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for November 2006 was 14 per cent — the country must introspect how it plans to pull the 65 per cent out of the quagmire it has sunk into.

Gargantuan task

This is a gargantuan task. An example: Transferring about five million workers from the agricultural sector (about 2 per cent of that workforce) to the non-agricultural sector annually will require investments upwards of Rs 250,000 crore or about 30 per cent of India's total capital formation.

It would be impossible to generate this sum. But one must make a beginning, lest India misses the bus to economic prosperity.

Raising the foreign direct investment from $10 billion by about 500 per cent might meet the need half way. Redirecting through incentives, current non-agricultural investment to rural districts, along the borders of taluk and district headquarters, which skirt the highways, might provide a substantial sum of money.

But here the mandarins in New Delhi and State capitals need to be very vigilant, to sieve the chaff from the grain — that is, they must zero in on the authentic industrial enterprise from the land grabber.

Perform or quit

Equally importantly, the country's leadership must tell in no uncertain manner the agricultural scientists that if they have nothing spectacular to show, they might as well shut shop. India is long past the heyday of the so-called Green Revolution, which, though at an enormous cost to the nation's environmental security — in terms of soil degradation, salinity build-up, vanishing biodiversity due to monoculture of rice and wheat as in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh and drying aquifers — did manage to treble the food production to more than 150 million tonnes.

But the country can no more afford to rest on this laurel and sing the paeans ad nauseam. And the word play of an "ever green revolution", to bring in through the back door genetically modified crops, is no answer either. Recently the Indian Council of Agricultural Research re-christened the Rs 1,000-crore World Bank-aided National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP) as the National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), as though the change in name will act like a magic wand.

At best, it will provide more jobs to the already affluent. Look at the state of agricultural extension network. Only 0.9 per cent of India's huge farming community makes practical use of the monolithic Krishi Vigyan Kendras being run on a very huge budget.

The 1.5 million Agro Technology Agents in China do a far better job, working shoulder-to-shoulder with farmers in the field, constantly innovating, unlike our `scientists' who spend much time in the office, pushing files.

And while the Prime Minister has promised an increase to 2 per cent of GDP the science outlay, the President has rightly brought up the issue of hundreds of projects worth crores of rupees that make no progress, some not even drawing the funds.

Forward-looking statesmanship

Probably this is where pro-active, forward-looking statesmanship must come into play, as opposed to the "vote bank politics". The big picture must be kept in mind to ensure this shift, if nothing else, for a better tomorrow for the succeeding generations.

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