Green revolution for East goes West

The government’s programme to usher in a green revolution in West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh will see a key change in the next financial year.

The allocation of funds, which was more skewed towards West Bengal so far, will now shift towards eastern Uttar Pradesh, according to guidelines framed for implementing the scheme.

Officials said this was largely because a new component of wheat had been added to the programme.

The country’s first green revolution took place in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh between the 1960s and 1970s.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had allocated Rs 400 crore in his Budget for 2011-12 for heralding a green revolution in eastern India.

A similar allocation was also made in the 2010-11 Budget, when for the first time, separate funds were allocated for the eastern parts of the country.

According to the scheme, West Bengal’s share in the total funds of Rs 400 crore has been proposed at Rs 85.66 crore, a drop of 16.3 per cent from this year’s allocation.

Senior officials in the agriculture ministry said the allocation, largely need-based, could be altered after final consultation with the state.

On the other hand, eastern Uttar Pradesh, which was allocated around Rs 57.27 crore in the first phase, has seen a 49.5 per cent jump in its allocation of Rs 85.66 crore this time.

Jharkhand will get around Rs 31.68 crore, Orissa around Rs 62.62 crore, Chhattisgarh Rs 55.21 crore, Bihar Rs 55.33 crore and Assam will get Rs 33.32 crore on the basis of the draft guidelines.

The scheme, to be spread across 126 districts of the these states, is proposed to start from the 2011 kharif season. It will focus more on asset-building activities like water management, construction of farm ponds and repair of irrigation channels.

“Most of the activities taken up under the Green Revolution programme in 2010-2011 are short-term strategies aimed at crop-specific development, largely paddy, but to sustain this, it needs investment in medium-term strategies for asset building,” senior agriculture ministry officials said.

Nearly 63 per cent of the total fund allocated under the programme in 2011-2012 will be for block demonstrations of rice and wheat, 17 per cent for asset building activities and 19 per cent for site-specific activities like improving the quality of electric power supply, among others.

“The idea behind the programme is to reduce the gap between actual and potential productivity of rice in the covered districts by 50 per cent, leading to an average increase of about 0.5 tonne per hectare of crop yield in both rice and wheat,” officials said.