Indian agriculture lacks a vision. Why this is a bigger problem than floods and droughts
It has often been suggested that whatever is said about India, the opposite may also be true. If there is one area where this paradox applies, it is in India’s monsoon behaviour, which directly impacts our agricultural growth story year after year. Thus, even as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted a “normal” monsoon this year, Bihar and parts of Gujarat saw huge floods and many states faced deficient rainfall. And even as the IMD is still to withdraw its last forecast of “normal” rainfall (meaning, a total precipitation all over India of plus or minus 10% of the long period average), latest ground reports suggest that nearly 60% of our land area received deficient rainfall, and around 225 districts may be in the grip of moderate-to-acute drought conditions.
Worse, the deficiency is said to be pronounced in the food-bowl states of north-west and central India — including Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, apart from some agriculturally-proficient regions of Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The first conclusion we need to draw from this is that aggregates lie. The IMD simply needs to get its spatial forecasts of rainfall better if we are to be better prepared for future droughts and floods.
The second conclusion is that there is no reason for panic. Droughts do not have the same impact on overall agricultural production as they used to have earlier, since many parts of the food bowl are well irrigated. Madhya Pradesh, the new star performer in agricultural production, for example, saw a 35% improvement in its irrigation potential in the 10 years between 2004-05 and 2013-14. Another less-known aspect is power. When power supplies are assured, farmers can easily tap groundwater during poor monsoon years. This was one reason (apart from the availability of Narmada waters) behind Narendra Modi’s Gujarat agricultural miracle of the last decade.
In short, droughts and floods do not cause major blips in agricultural output, and even less on overall GDP, since agriculture is barely 15% the overall economy. In the two back-to-back drought years of 2014-15 and 2015-16, overall agricultural growth was anaemic, but positive. Buffer stocks ensured that there was no unusual spike in foodgrain prices.
This brings us to the third — and critical conclusion. The real tragedy is embedded in the millions of small and marginal farmers who are minor data points in the overall aggregate figure of agricultural growth or stagnation. Aggregates hide the deeper bruises in Indian agriculture.
India’s agricultural problem is not about the lack of resources; it is about a lack of vision. The imperatives are the following: we need to get people out of agriculture by enabling job creation outside agriculture; this will enhance productivity as farm sizes become more viable through consolidation and mechanisation; the state needs to simultaneously invest in irrigation, cold chains, and cheap insurance, all of which yield better outcomes than loan waivers. Technology (satellite-based assessments of crop damage, for example) can be used to cut out the role of the middleman, both in compensating for crop losses, and in determining mandi prices. Once inter-state curbs on farm produce go, and once farmers are able to sell their products before they cart their products to mandis, no one needs to fear a loss due to plentiful arrivals at mandis at the wrong time.
Floods and droughts are not the problem; the problem is our inability to see the damage it does to farmers whose distress gets blotted out by the macro statistics on agricultural growth.