How not to function

The Prime Minister's Independence Day pronouncements from the Red Fort are normally deemed sacrosanct. But if these are not implemented even by the next Independence Day, the pronouncements start losing value. This seems to be the case with the declaration made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on August 15 last year that he would set up a National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), which is yet to see the light of day. What would have prompted the Prime minister to moot this authority is the widespread distress among farmers, leading to suicides in the largely rain-dependent areas, where the risk of crop failure is high, and poverty as well as the consequential indebtedness is widespread. The proposed authority was meant to facilitate the conservation of rainwater through innovative, situation-specific techniques so that it could be used for raising the productivity of agricultural and forest lands, and to generate additional sources of income for poor farmers.

It is doubly unfortunate that the delay in constituting the new body is mostly on account of trivial reasons, such as the tussle between the agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar, and the rural development minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, over who should chair this body and where its headquarters should be located. The issue of who will head the Authority has (mercifully) been resolved by a group of ministers, albeit not to the satisfaction of the two contending ministers, by stipulating that both would be co-chairmen of the authority's governing board. But the utterly pointless controversy over the Authority's physical location endures. In fact, it has assumed a new dimension with Mr Pawar reportedly throwing his hat in the ring on behalf of Nagpur. While this plea may be justified on the grounds that the largest number of farmer suicides has been in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, that argument on its own cannot clinch the issue, especially after the announcement of a special financial assistance package.

The mandate of the proposed Authority is such that it will have to deal with several ministries, including agriculture, rural development, water resources, environment and forests, and panchayati raj. But there are also serious constraints, including the lack of will and resources for rainfed area development. In fact, almost 60 per cent of the country's agricultural land and the entire forest land are rainfed. These lands and the vast hilly tracts are where rainwater harvesting is needed the most to recharge the dwindling groundwater aquifers and augment flows in the rivers to enhance water availability for rainfed agriculture. This apart, most of the works proposed for job creation under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme relate to land and water development. What needs to be noted is that while the rural development ministry has the maximum funds for land-related development works, the agriculture and other ministries possess land, technical manpower and the necessary expertise for doing the job.

Thus, the proposed NRAA's major task would be to ensure bringing together the available resources and harmonising their programmes to boost the land's inherent capacity to generate employment and income by harnessing rainwater. For this, it seems additionally necessary that the NRAA is not only managed by technically competent professionals but is also vested with adequate authority to deal independently with various ministries. Since the NRAA has been conceived by the Prime Minister, the onus rests on him to ensure that these critical issues are resolved without further delay.