If Indian agriculture has to break the stranglehold of the draconian mindset of the `top down' delivery system, a revolutionary change in the approach to many things must begin to happen.
The contribution of Indian agriculture to the nation's economy hardly needs to be emphasized. Agriculture is still connected to more than 60% of the country's population for their livelihood in one way or another. Despite the hype of the agricultural fraternity, Indian farming is still a "gamble in the monsoon". The nosediving of agriculture in 2002, when there was widespread drought in the country, and its remarkable rebound in 2003 when the country received plentiful rains, illustrates this point beyond a shadow of doubt. It is, again, on a downhill course, thanks to the delayed monsoon. Before one goes further, it is pertinent to take stock of some very alarming facts connected with our agriculture.
It was in the early 1960s that the country ushered in a `new era' on its agriculture front by bringing about the so-called green revolution. The chief characteristics of green revolution were a very high input technology, plenty of water, unbridled use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides combined with the dwarf seeds of wheat, hitherto unknown in the country-in fact an `import' from Mexico (CIMMYT, the Center for Maize and Wheat Research). Yields jumped in the fields of wheat farmers in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Given the characteristics of the varieties cultivated until then, this was bound to happen. The country had no infrastructure to produce chemical fertilizers, so fertilizers in huge quantities were imported at great cost to the national exchequer for use in wheat fields. |
