More grants likely for agri varsities

The finance ministry might provide more to agriculture and technical universities in the Union Budget to promote research and development, as well as infrastructure.

In a pre-Budget meeting with Finance Minister P Chidambaram last month, agriculturalists had suggested grant for better infrastructure facilities for students of these institutions. They had noted out roughly half the students in some agriculture universities were women, especially in Punjab.

A finance ministry official said there was merit in the suggestion and the ministry was considering giving more aid to some universities.

In last year’s Budget, the ministry had allocated Rs 460 crore to agri universities. The grants included Rs 100 crore each to Kerala Agricultural University and Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University in Hyderabad and Rs 50 crore each to University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka; Chaudhary Charan Singh Agricultural University and Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology.

“The driving force of a modern nation is research and the creation of new knowledge,” then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, now the President, had said in his Budget speech.

The Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE)’s allocation was enhanced by 7.7 per cent to Rs 5,392 crore last year from the revised estimate of Rs 5,008 crore in 2011-12.

India has a massive network of around 45 institutions under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), 17 National Research Centres, six National Bureaus, 25 directorates and almost 60 state agriculture universities, which, apart from imparting training and education, also undertake research.

All the central agricultural institutes and universities come under DARE, while the state universities are governed by the respective state laws. In the 11th five-year Plan, ICAR and state agriculture universities, developed a number of technologies, being used by farmers on a large scale.

Important among these are doubling of the basmati rice yield with reduction in the crop maturity period. These varieties occupy nearly two million hectares area in the north-west plains.

Rice varieties in the Basmati quality have contributed to around Rs 6,000 crore of additional annual income. These additional income came from the Pusan Basmati 1121 strain to the farmers of Punjab and Haryana, an almost 50 per cent gain in income over two million hectares.

Improved wheat varieties resistant to rust, including Race Ug99, have been developed and these are spreading in areas where the crop is grown. Improved varieties of other plants such as maize, pearl millet, mustard and chickpea now cover nearly 40 per cent of the cropped area of the country.

In the 12th Plan (2012-17), a working group of the Planning Commission has suggested India lay more emphasis on research in dry land agriculture, genetically modified food, climate change, nanotechnology, farm mechanisation and precision farming.