Marathwada has faced four rain deficient years in the last five years ( 2012-2016). Women farmers in Osmanabad say: “ Drought is here to stay and we have to change ourselves as nature will not.” Komal Katkate, a small farmer in Osmanabad who, along with other women in the area, is trying to cultivate vegetables and pulses that require less water. “We have to change our farming,” says Komal.

The State-appointed Vijay Kelkar committee in its report echoes Komal’s line of thought. . “Technological options in improving dry land farming are many. Foremost among them are the introduction of protective irrigation, rainwater harvesting approaches such as conservation measures, watershed development and farm ponds. These need to be supplemented by micro-irrigation techniques for improving water productivity and promotion of new technical and commercial pathways in major crops deserves a 'mission mode' approach in Vidarbha and Marathwada,” the committee has noted .

The report added that farmers should be encouraged to diversify their crop-pattern in favour of non-traditional high value crops and horticultural crops, complemented with research in water stress resistant varieties. New agricultural growth strategies are much needed for the region, which would combine various techniques ranging from green-house technologies, micro-irrigation and fertigation with diversified market oriented crop-pattern, group farming, group marketing and contract farming aimed at value sharing arrangements with processing industries.

Growth Strategies

The Kelkar Committee mentioned that the major strengths of the region are strategic location, existing dynamic manufacturing, SME clusters, heritage tourism, solar energy, regional language ITES and BPO capabilities. The constraints on the other hand are scarcity for natural resource such as water, skills deficit, poor connectivity (rail/ road) , governance deficit, especially, administrative capacity to efficiently utilise development expenditures and hysteresis effect related to social capital. The strategy thus seeks to accelerate the regional growth rate in an inclusive fashion by successively removing the constraints mainly through governance and policy reforms and leveraging the comparative dynamic advantage so as to significantly reduce the per-capita income-gap between Marathwada and other parts of Maharashtra.

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