07/03/2011 (The Financial Express) - It is commendable to note that focus of the government on agriculture is increasing in a consistent manner over the last few years after neglect of more than last 6 decades. We should treat agriculture as an industry and farmers as entrepreneurs who face so many unknown risks.

In the Union Budget, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has announced some concessions for farmers and agriculture activities. He has reduced interest rate further by 1% for the farmers, who repay loans on time. He has promised to increase credit flow to this sector by R1,00,000 crore to R4,50,000 crore. The Budget also announced some new programmes such as integrated development of pulses, initiative on vegetable clusters, promotion of oil palm, etc. For post harvest improvement, there is a new programme to increase storage capacity of cold chains apart from setting up of additional mega food parks.

While all of these initiatives are laudatory in their intent, they fall short of the resources required. This is a sector on which more than 60 crore people still depend directly or indirectly and it creates almost 35% of our GDP if you take into account value addition to agricultural commodities such as textiles, sugar mills, food processing, etc. However, the entire budget of agriculture ministry is a meagre R17,000 crore.

I understand that finance minister’s hands were tied, as this is the terminal year of the 11th Plan and due to overall fiscal tightness, he could not launch any significant new initiatives.

If our country has to make inclusive growth and achieve a vibrant rural economy, then it must invest heavily in agriculture technology including irrigation, water management, better seeds, soil enrichment and post harvest handling apart from significant emphasis on imparting knowledge and competencies to the farmer. Over the next 5 years if we invest over R1,50,000 crore, it will help Indian agriculture sector to grow at a rate of more than 8% every year and allow this sector to take its right place in India’s growth and bring smile to hundreds of millions of farmers and their families.

We have a large amount of rainfed agriculture where the farmers typically just dependes on monsoon rains. Current water loss in agriculture take various forms such as surface run off of rain water, evaporation losses at the time of conveyance of water or flood irrigation, percolation losses in canals or farms, depletion of underground aquifers etc.

There is a wide range of technological solutions that can not only help us improve the savings, but actually generate water.

Let us hope there will be significant investment in the next XII Plan for agricultural sector. Let ‘Jai Kisan’ be a relevant slogan for our nation, as we dream to become a land of plenty where we will have food security as well as water security for all.