Committee to monitor DFI implementation soon

The government is in the process of setting up a panel to monitor the implementation of the recommendation of the Doubling Farmers’ Income (DFI) committee, a senior agriculture ministry official said.

“The government wasn’t waiting for the final recommendations of the committee to come in. In fact, most of the new announcements relating to agriculture in the last two Union Budgets were based on our recommendations,” said Ashok Dalwai, CEO of the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), who also headed the DFI committee.

“There will be a committee to oversee the implementations. It will have specific terms of reference. The idea is to bring sharpness and speed to the implementation. The committee will supervise, monitor and even handhold those involved in implementing the recommendations,” Dalwai told BusinessLine . Be it the provisions announced for increasing procurement, or new bio-fuels policy, or the recently-announced agri exports policy, they were all part of the recommendations of the committee, he said.

Reform system

The government in 2016 constituted an expert committee headed by Dalwai to look into the entire agriculture ecosystem in the country to suggest ways and means to reform it so that farmers’ income can be doubled by 2022. The panel, in the last two-and-a-half years, came out with 14 voluminous reports that deal with all aspects of agriculture including agri inputs, risk management, post-harvesting and agri-logistics.

The final recommendations, submitted by the committee a few months ago, were accepted by the government, paving the way for their implementation. The immediate and greater attention will be given to tapping the low-hanging fruits in production and post-production stages of agriculture.

“We will be focussing mainly on three things: promoting retail agriculture markets, reforming the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees through the new Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (APLM) Act, and promoting exports. These three would be the pillars of agriculture marketing architecture,” he said.

There is a need to make the States understand the value of undertaking reforms in agricultural marketplace.

“We have kept restrictive practices in place, keeping the consumer interests in mind against the background of shortages. But what we are currently witnessing is a surplus in production,” Dalwai said.

“We need to remove existing restrictions in storage, transportation and marketing. For this to happen, various control orders under the Essential Commodities Act should go,” he said. This would be the real transformation of Indian agriculture, he added.

According to Dalwai, the States have started to realise the farmers’ demands. It is the reason many States have come forward to adopt the APLM act, at least some parts of it, he said.

“Arunachal Pradesh has already adopted it and thus became the first State to do so. Maharashtra is in the process of doing it,” the NRAA CEO said.

There is misunderstanding among people who criticise the DFI.

They all are looking at production. They are not realising that if people have been able to monetise what is being produced better, even at the current production, the incomes are going to go up. The focus currently is on that, Dalwai remarked.

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