If there is one issue that will likely haunt Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in the next general election, it will be the party’s attempt to ram through agricultural reforms in September 2020, which triggered fierce and sustained protests by farmers’ unions. The protests eventually led to a rollback of the laws in November that year—the first time in PM Modi’s eight years in power that a law passed by Parliament had to be repealed. The BJP’s failure derailed its attempt to liberalise market access to farm produce. As a result, the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare under Narendra Tomar has had to continue with the public capital-supported mechanism currently in place.
COVER STORY | The challenges ahead
The ministry’s roadmap for the future includes a push for chemical-free organic farming and the development of a network of farmer-producer organisations (FPOs) to create new market intermediaries. Despite the Centre’s inability to open up agricultural markets to the private sector, several major agricultural states—including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat—have reformed their APMCs (agricultural produce market committees) to allow the sale of agricultural produce outside APMC markets. Tomar will also get credit for encouraging states to increase the cultivation of pulses (with production rising from about 16.3 million tonnes in 2015-16 to 26.9 MT in 2020-21), as well as for his push for the adoption of new technology. This includes the use of drones to spray fertilisers and the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) for more accurate surveys and planning. The agriculture ministry is also building databases to track the number of farmers, their land holdings, the agri-climatic zones they fall within and their produce.
These efforts are in addition to other initiatives, including subsidies for FPOs to buy drones, studies of the use of genetically modified crops for higher yields, technology for better irrigation and so on. Tomar’s ministry is also working on plans to constitute a group of experts and members of farmers’ unions to find ways to make it legally binding for purchases of agricultural produce to be made at minimum support prices (MSPs) or higher. Tomar also needs to get the Pesticide Management Bill cleared by Parliament—this could accelerate the domestic production of inexpensive formulations.
FOOD & PDS
ITC’s integrated consumer goods manufacturing facility in Howrah
A major worry for the Piyush Goyal-led ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution this year is the inability to procure its targeted 43.5 million tonnes of wheat for its buffer stock. As a result of the early summer this year and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—both countries are major exporters of wheat—there has been a huge spike in demand and prices, with India forced to ban exports in an attempt to cool prices.
India began this fiscal year with 19 MT of wheat stocks, and purchased another 18.5 MT. Leaving aside the 7.5 MT required for emergency reserves, that leaves the Centre with about 30 MT of wheat to supply to the states to fulfil their beneficiary commitments. India requires about 26 MT of wheat annually to meet its various distribution targets. The demand is elevated this year—the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, the Centre’s Covid-relief food scheme, continues till September, requiring an additional 10 MT of wheat.
The grain surplus of last year had allowed Goyal to open up India’s granaries for 236 million ration card holders, covering nearly 800 million beneficiaries overall. This not only supported those in need but also allowed the BJP to reap political dividends in the recently conducted assembly elections. The major change that Goyal has overseen is an acceleration of the digitisation of ration cards. The TPDS (targeted public distribution system), a reform initiated by Ram Vilas Paswan, Goyal’s predecessor in the ministry, has resulted in the digitisation of all ration cards, with 93.5 per cent linked to at least one beneficiary Aadhaar card. The ministry also claims that 517,000 of the country’s 534,000 fair price shops now have electronic point-of-sale devices. This push for digitisation has allowed the Centre to move quickly toward implementing its One Nation One Ration Card programme with interstate portability. In 2019, this had been implemented in four states; it has now been expanded to 35 states and Union territories, covering nearly 770 million beneficiaries. Goyal has also pushed states like Punjab and Haryana to link land records with procurement details in the face of major opposition from farm unions.
