Suddenly “India Story” is blipping at the radar screen of every country, multinational or academia worth its salt. The double digit growth is no longer a distant dream and confidence index is all set to reach its tipping point as our Indian Multinationals are on a M&A binge to have the biggest shopping ever done by them. Amidst this India shinning story, Agriculture is again found wanting to keep up the pace with the other sectors with its continued dismal performance. You do not have to dig deep to find the reasons as it’s all over the place. Our policy makers are yet to come out of the hangover of age old “Protectionism” of the farming sector of India. Once upon a time, this has helped our country to achieve food security and provided the poor farmers much needed support but now its proving to be the last straw to break the back the country’s farming sector’s competitiveness in the global market. More so, farmers are yet to get wind of the buzz of “ Supply Chain Revolution ”, slowly unfolding here and there in the isolated tracts of country. The recent “Singur Controversy” over the agricultural land acquisition by Tata has opened another facet of this debate of Nation’s new found expediency of fast track Industrialization over sluggish agriculture. What does it all mean, are we into the “Takeover stage of growth” where knowledge based services and Industries would be our engine of growth leaving agriculture losing out as our Mainstay of economy. The recent spurt of suicides by the farmers, failure of Co-operatives, inadequate credit to agriculture by the Banks, dwindling stocks of staple food grains like wheat, oil and pulses and minuscule investment by governments in Agriculture Infrastructure are not good signs of the times to come for the sector.
So what will happen to the 60 percent of the population, constituting the largest and most unorganized work force in the country, without any social security or bare minimum health, education and sanitation amenities. Hope lies only in seeing agriculture in the same perspective as we had seen our IT or off late our manufacturing industry. Let them grow as Entrepreneurs, give them the freedom to choose what they want to grow and more importantly where, whom and when to sale. The biggest handicap of our farmers as primary producers is that they still don’t have bargaining power as information asymmetry and heavy intermediation has virtually kept them aloof from the market. The “Adhatiyas” still rule the roost. Either co-opt them as ITC had done in E- Choupal or straightaway bring the market forces to their farm gates by abolishing the APMCs. Leave aside the global market, we had not given our farmers to sale their produce in the National Market by imposing severe restrictions over the movements of agricultural produces across the country. SEZ as a concept has caught the fancy of the imaginations of our policymakers but can they bother to think about the Agriculture Economic Zone in the same earnest. The every agro-climatic region of India has got unique comparative advantage in terms of production of specific agri-produces, coupled with age long traditional expertise of the local farmers. There are hundreds of such self–growing and sustaining Agri Economic Zones existing in all parts of country but does any one really looking at them as another Investment opportunity for the Private players to make it more integrated with the demands of the market. Let Government come out of the self donned straightjacket of the so called custodian of Agriculture and let our farmers along with the Market decide to find its course. Believe me, India has got everything to become agri-basket of world.
Without our farmers smiling, India can’t shine but is anyone listening…