No Bed Of Roses

The new regime will inherit tall targets like doubling farmers’ income, along with policies that have not worked – and a drought

- Prabodh Krishna

IN HIS LAST BUDGET SPEECH Union Minister for Finance, Arun Jaitley had said, “My government is committed for the welfare of farmers. For decades, (the) country’s agriculture policy and programme had remained production centric. We have sought to effect a paradigm shift.” Indeed, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led coalition at the Centre has over the last four years announced a plethora of policy measures that aim to double income levels of Indian farmers and energise the rural economy. As the term of the present government draws to a close, statistics though, throw up scary paradoxes.

Presenting a paper at the Indian Agriculture Outlook Forum — 2018, Pramod Kumar of the Institute of Social & Economic Change, for instance, claimed that the rural economy’s contribution to India’s total gross domestic product (GDP) was actually expected to slide from 47 per cent in 2011-12 to 44 per cent in 2020-21. The following year incidentally, is the targeted deadline for doubling farmers’ income. The rural economy’s share of the GDP is projected to plummet further to 40 per cent by 2032-33. These projections belie the professed paradigm shift in the policy on agriculture.

In the paper titled, Demand and supply forecasts of foodgrains, oilseeds, horticulture and animal products, Kumar also predicts a steady rise in the rural population from 835.4 million in 2011-12 to 900 million by 2021-22. By 2025-26, when India’s total population is likely to shoot up to 1.447 billion, 918 million people will probably live in the rural hinterland. A rising rural population will only accelerate the pace at which landholdings get fragmented.