Pawar says 'inspector raj' back, hurting agri sector

Accusing the government of "bringing back licence and control raj", NCP chief and former agriculture minister Sharad Pawar today said that various steps taken by the Centre are proving to be "detrimental" for the farm sector.
Besides, he suggested the BJP-led government to develop a better coordination between the Centre and states and not to have hostility towards use of improved systems and modern agriculture technologies.
He also said the government should also "defer from finding faults of the past."
"Recently, I find that Indian agriculture is being brought back to licence and control raj which is detrimental for the growth of this sector," Pawar said addressing 89th annual general meeting of the industry chamber Ficci.

Experience in this field suggests that farmers need to be freed from the restrictive acts and laws of APMC, essential commodities, export-import policy and frequent changes in them in the interest of consumers who are more vocal than producers, he said.
The Centre's control on cotton export in 2014, restriction on export of onion below USD 700 per tonne in 2015, order to control cotton seed price in 2015 and fixing the sale price of cotton seed are considered "retrograde steps", he said.

"Ironically, the cotton seed price control goes beyond the government's mandate to fix maximum sale price under the Essential Commodity Act, 1955 and interferes in the fundamental rights in signing confidential agreements between private parties," he said.

Observing that the government appears to be "overly cautions on technology front," Pawar said it lacks the required central-state coordination for promotion of new technologies.
"The government of the day should not have hostility to improved systems and technologies. ...Rural prosperity through agriculture development rests on the technology platform and hence I feel that the choice of using any technology must be left with farmers," he added.
To bring prosperity to rural folks, Pawar said economists have often suggested use of modern technologies, shift to high value commodities, getting remunerative prices to farmers via stitching torn value chain among others.

Stating that these suggestions have been adopted in his constituency Baramati in Pune district, Maharashtra, he said that 'Baramati model' had focused on secondary and tertiary agriculture which auto-boosted the primary farming and encouraged farmers to produce more as there was ready market and processing facilities.