Crop diversification and Punjab

IN 1985 under the stress of paddy glut in Punjab markets and the Central government dragging its feet due to bulging food stocks with them, the Punjab government set up an expert committee for suggesting measures that would resolve the problems of market clearance for the rice crop in the state. The committee after extensive consultations with professionals in the related fields, informed farmers and other stake-holders submitted its report well in time before the paddy plantation season in 1986. However, as was expected, due the change in the governance scenario and severe droughts for four consecutive years, the report gathered dust on the shelves of the administration. This report was prepared with a long-term vision projected over a period of next five decades, but unfortunately the myopic vision of our political administration could not see beyond their nose.

Once again from 1991-92 onwards the food stock started building up and by the end of the decade, the foodgrain stocks reached the unmanageable level of more than 65 million tonnes. The country, as a consequence, suffered huge losses due to spoilage as well as on exports. Quite a few export consignments got rejected and most of the stocks were exported at below BPL prices. Yearly exports amounted to between six and seven million tonnes of foodgrains. In five years, preceding September 2005, 35 million tonnes of foodgrains were exported, of which 23 million tonnes were rice and 12 million tonnes wheat.
Surprisingly, while the government had exported 5 million tonnes of rice and about a million tonnes of wheat in the year 2005, by end of that year, the Ministry of Food again started crying shortages. Next year India imported five million tonnes of wheat at very high prices, which it did not need to. Wheat was not available in the international market; otherwise the country would have imported more next year. Since then food stocks have been continuously building up and have again reached unmanageable levels leading to huge wastages and losses.
Apprehending the impending dire situation, the Punjab government in 2002 again appointed an expert committee for suggesting measures to resolve the problem. The committee comprising experts, informed farmers, grain handlers and agro-industrialists, after consulting scores of stake-holders, submitted its report in June 2002. The main thrust of the report was on (1) rationalising the water and electric power subsidies for tube-wells so that subsidies are focused to reach the ones who really deserved, (2) providing compensation to the farmers for the replacement of at least one million hectare of land from under rice to pulses and oilseeds crops. At that time while rice and wheat were exported at a huge loss, oils, oilseeds and pulses were being imported costing more than Rs 14,000 crore every year.
The subsidy to the farmers for the purpose was costing only Rs1600 crore, which could reduce the production of about 4 million tonnes of rice from one million hectare and considerably release pressure on imports of oilseeds and pulses. Major benefit would have been on correcting the underground water balance of the state because the carrying capacity of water resources in Punjab was not for more than 1.5 million hectare of the rice crop. Punjab at that time was growing rice on 2.6 million hectare of its land.
The proposal was agreed to by the Central Ministry of Food as well as the Ministry of Finance, and was sent to the Ministry of Agriculture for further action, but the case was lost due to the indifference, rather hostile attitude, of the Punjab bureaucracy and lack of political process on the part of the state government. The shocking aspect was that in spite of repeated requests by the committee, the report so laboriously prepared was never discussed at any forum of the government. Twice the Chief Minister promised to discuss that in the Council of Ministers, but it was never to be.
Now it seems the Punjab government has again woken up from its usual slumber to the ground realities of the situation and the Vice-Chairman of the Planning Commission has agreed to help the state, by setting up a committee headed by an expatriate expert. The intension is no doubt at its right place, yet one wonders what would a foreign expert do? There are no better experts on the subject in the world than the Punjab scientists and agricultural development policy experts in the country itself. There is a top-ranking agricultural university in the state that has nationally and internationally awarded scientists and ranking development policy experts. Working in the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Economic Commission in West Asia, the World Bank and other international organisations, I have not found anywhere agricultural experts better than Indians.
Once, the Chinese government requested the FAO to provide them with one top-ranking agricultural planning expert from the world over for one-day single expert consultation with the concerned agricultural policy makers and planners of their country. FAO sent 16 names from different developed and developing countries. The Chinese government selected the Indian expert out of them. In this scenario, the Planning Commission seems to be grossly under-valuing the expertise available in India. Punjab does not need to seek expertise from outside and waste precious resources. It would amount to manifestation of slavish mentality in seeking advice from the place(s), where it does not exist. Decision-makers in the country need to realise that white skin is not necessarily superior to the brown one!
It is not that the problems of the agriculture sector and those of farmers are not known and that their solutions are not there. What is lacking in the state is the political will to take right and hard decisions. It is well known that the underground water balance of the state is in the negative and is continuously deteriorating, mainly because the state is growing at least one million hectares of paddy in excess of the carrying capacity of its water resources. The alternative crops that can be grown on a large scale do not have economic advantages over the paddy crop under the present level of technology and availability of free electric power. In the interest of adjusting the production pattern to the need-based consumption pattern of the country, the Punjab farmers would need to be compensated for shifting the substantial area from under rice crop to other crops, specialty the oilseeds and pulses.
Without rationalising the electric power subsidy and right-pricing of water and power supply to the farm sector, the mantra of crop diversification in Punjab would remain no more than a pipe dream. Yet, there is a crying need for diversification in the cropping pattern of the state. More so is the need for diversification of the total agricultural production pattern, including animal husbandry and other allied activities in the sector. Still more important is the need for diversification of the rural economy for providing gainful employment to the rural youth and thereby weaning them away from drug addiction and petty crimes that are plaguing the state. The failure of diversification in the agricultural production pattern of the state is not the technology or advisory failure; it is primarily due to the policy paralysis and vote bank political dispensations that have sucked out the will to take hard decisions.