Newsmaker: Ashok Gulati

A matchmaker of economics and ground realities

A fresh coat of paint and other new furnishing in the room of the chairman is symbolic of the change the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP) awaits.

In Ashok Gulati, the forty-year-old organisation gets a chairman who is not known to restrain himself in finding faults with government policies.

He has been a formidable critic of the agricultural policies followed by the governments at the Centre, including the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, headed by Manmohan Singh.

That his criticism is usually constructive in nature is, of course, a different matter.

During his long professional career, Gulati has worked mostly with organisations where people are not bound by the kind of intellectual discipline that the government think tanks are normally subjected to.

CACP, on the other hand, has mostly been headed by farm economists from the government-funded academic or research institutions. They have not only been familiar but have also been quite at ease with bureaucratic ways of functioning.

It would, therefore, be a challenge for Gulati to hold on to his own ways while adhering to the official protocol.

Though Gulati is essentially an agricultural economist and, as such, relies on statistic-based analysis of public policies, his ability to think out of the box sets his commentaries on public issues apart from those of others.

His long association with the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (Ifpri) has given him ample opportunity to study agricultural systems in different parts of the world and learn from their successes and failures. This has helped sharpen his views on state policy matters.

Being a rational thinker, who is capable of marrying sound economic principles with actual ground realities, he usually comes up with radical suggestions that the governments often find politically difficult to implement.

His views on agricultural subsidies are articulated in the book ‘The Subsidy Syndrome in Indian Agriculture’, which he co-authored with another colleague from Ifpri. The book categorically states that increasing subsidies at the expense of investments would seriously jeopardise agricultural growth.

Gulati has been a staunch exponent of sweeping reforms in the Indian agricultural system.

He has been in favour of freeing agricultural marketing from all controls.

His concept of farmer is that of a farm entrepreneur who is interested more in maximising profit than production.

As head of CACP, Gulati would now have to ensure that the prices offered to farmers for their produce have a reasonable profit margin, over and above their production costs, and, at the same time, are in tandem with the trends of international commodity price movement.

He would also, simultaneously, have to adhere to CACP’s mandate of protecting the interests of consumers. This is a daunting task that will require him to strain all his nerves to perform well.