Overhaul the process of approving agricultural schemes: House panel

Stating that the country’s agriculture sector needs a quick stimulus, a Parliamentary panel has strongly suggested that the government overhaul the tedious process of approving agri-schemes. The streamlining of multi-level clearances of schemes is required to ensure staggering of timelines, cost overruns and back-loading of funds, it said.

Despite 60 years of planning, a plethora of schemes and various measures initiated by the successive governments, “all is not well” with Indian agriculture, the panel observed. “...Of 15 new schemes introduced in the current Five-Year Plan, four are still under consideration stage till date, though the 11th Plan (2007-2012) is in its terminal stage,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture said in its 22nd Report on ‘Demands for Grants’.

“It is their strong view that the system of granting approvals and clearances to a scheme is in the urgent need of an overhaul....This flawed system is bound to collapse ultimately,” the Committee noted.

The delay in granting approval was evident in schemes of National Mission on Seeds, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Cooperatives, Interest Subvention on loans provided by National Cooperative Development Cooperation to cooperatives and support to NAFED, it added.

The panel has recommended that the Planning Commission take up this “vexed issue” seriously while deliberating upon the modalities and framework for the 12th Plan (2012-2017).

Blaming the agriculture ministry for poor performance of a new scheme ‘National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility’ introduced in 2008-09, the Committee said the government has utilised only Rs 79.72 crore funds out of the approved outlay of Rs 429.85 crore in the first four financial years of the current Plan period.

“The Committee consider this to be another instance where the Department has worked out a scheme in isolation and without taking a holistic view,” the panel said.