The farm sector in India is still looking for a breakthrough in the yield front. This is seriously affecting food consumption in India.
Addressing a two-day international seminar at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, very recently, Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia made a very unsettling observation that the deceleration in the growth of agricultural sector was causing a great deal of anxiety, and the mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Plan would consider corrective measures to address this problem. He was very critical of the excessive bureaucratization of agricultural research institutes that failed to come up with breakthrough technologies in the farm sector. Coming as it is, from the high profile Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, one must take a serious note of it.
The slide in agriculture was particularly significant during the NDA regime, when compound rate of growth for all crops put together came down from the already low level of 1.51%, during the earlier United Front and Congress regimes, to -0.94% now. However, more unsettling was the trend in food grains production, which plummeted from 1.19% to -1.58%. Per capita food availability came down from 465.7 grams in 1999 to 439.2 grams in 2003, a drop of 1.49% per annum. The drop in cereals was from 429.2 grams to 409.9 grams and for pulses, the main protein supplement of the majority of Indians, it was a steep fall from the already low 36.5 grams to 28.2 gramsa drop of 23%. The minimum daily per capita food requirement, prescribed by the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, is 500 grams.
During the NDA regime, one saw the Food Corporation of India (FCI) warehouses bursting at the seams, followed by grain export, while widespread hunger prevailed. It was thought to be an anachronism. At the center of human hunger in India is the more startling, and yet scarcely discussed, features of Indian development over the past several decades, which pertains to the decline in calories consumption among the poor in India. |
