The Hindu Business Line : Farm, Food Ministries merger: A step in right direction

FINALLY, the country has a `strong' Agriculture Minister at the Centre, which gels with the new United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government's stated intention to make the farm sector, the focus of its policy initiatives.

And significantly, Mr Sharad Pawar has been made the Minister for not just Agriculture, but also Food and Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution.

The move to combine the two separate Ministries is expected to restore some of the lost glory and glamour that was once attached to being in Krishi Bhawan.

To get an idea, consider the manner in which the Agriculture Ministry's role has been systematically degraded over the years, leading to a profusion of Ministries and Departments, on the one hand, and ministers and bureaucrats to oversee them, on the other.

The Agriculture Ministry today comprises a Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, a Department of Animal Husbandary & Dairying and a Department of Agricultural Research and Education, each of which has a Secretary. The Ministry's role, therefore, is confined purely to the production-related problems confronting the farmer in the field.

Even here, crucial agri-inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides come under the purview of the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers, while irrigation is with the Ministry of Water Resources.

But when it comes to marketing or processing of the agri-produce, there is a separate Ministry for Food and Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution. Within this Ministry, there is a Department of Food and Public Distribution (which looks after procurement of grain by the Food Corporation of India and its distribution through retail outlets) and a Department of Consumer Affairs (which, among others, regulates commodity futures trading through the Forward Markets Commission).

Till recently, there used to be a Department of Sugar and Edible Oils as well, headed by a Secretary, which has now been merged with the Department of Food and Public Distribution.

But that did not end the anomaly of having one Ministry looking after the production of foodgrains, oilseeds or sugarcane and another one for grain procurement or the sugar and edible oil industries.

This fragmentation, in a sense, reduced the Agriculture Minister's powers to holding a largely decorative post. Being a Food Minister, in contrast, was a more lucrative proposition, as it facilitated direct interface with grain exporters, sugar millers and solvent extractors, as against ordinary farmers.

The decision to combine the functioning of the Agriculture and Food Ministries will correct these distortions, though not entirely.

To illustrate, while diaries, sugar plants and the edible oil industry will now be under Mr Pawar, there will still a separate Ministry of Food Processing Industries under the `independent charge' of Mr Subodh Kant Sahay.

And strangely enough, plantation crops such as rubber, spices, tea, coffee and tobacco and the commodity boards responsible for their production, development and exports, fall under the Commerce Ministry's domain. So does the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).

Further, the job of framing food safety standards resides with the Health Ministry. If all this were not enough, there is a separate Ministry of Rural Development, administering various employment generation and poverty alleviation schemes in rural areas.

The new Government has now split even this Ministry, by hiving off Panchayati Raj or local self-government under the Minister of Petroleum, Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer!

Contrast this fragmented approach towards agriculture and rural development with that of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln founded the USDA, he called it the "people's Department".

The USDA's role today is not limited to just agriculture per se or crop research.

It also "helps ensure open markets for US agricultural products and provides food aid to needy people overseas", is "responsible for the safety of meat, poultry and egg products", "brings housing, modern telecommunications and safe drinking water to rural America" and operates Federal anti-hunger programmes including food stamps and school lunch.

Moreover, the USDA is the country's largest conservation agency and "steward of our nation's 192 million acres of national forests and rangelands".

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Farm, Food Ministries merger: A step in right direction