Agricultural Guessing Game
Anyone even remotely connected with the farm sector, from the prime minister downwards, loves to dwell on the neglect of agriculture by others. But few care to devote time to patient system-building and improving mundane areas like data collection and transmission which bring no political plaudits. Mr Chaturanan Mishra, the agriculture minister, can make a good beginning by telling us what steps will be taken to improve the quality of statistics, thus setting apart his management style from that of Mr Balram Jakhar, his predecessor. The nation's agriculture can hardly modernise if its ministry continues to have antediluvian statistics.
The other worrying point is that the drop in production occurred in a period which supposedly had good rains. Traditionally, Indian food output has waxed and waned from year to year, within a modestly rising trend, with good and bad monsoons. In 1987, for the first time, food output did not seriously suffer despite a failed monsoon. It seemed that luckily the rainfall-deficient areas were mainly in the north and north-west, well served by irrigation systems. This stability of grain output, despite poor rains, was cited as sign of new resilience of Indian agriculture. Poor rains in 1991 produced a poor crop in 1991-92 and marginal improvement in rainfall the next year led to a partial recovery in output. Good rains in the three-year period 1993-95 have led to good harvests in 1993-94 and also 1994-95 but a sharp fall last year. Why has this happened?
The adverse factors cited are so detailed that a whole host of good factors, of similar detail, could be identified for other areas. The fact is that nobody has a clue. The agriculture ministry urgently needs to devise a system of forecasting and quick assessment of agricultural output in the same way as the meteorological department predicts the monsoon. The impact of rains on specific agriculturally important regions and known attacks of pests can go into the calculations. An enormous amount of data can be analysed quickly if a computer programme is designed for the purpose. It should distinguish between a similar rainfall deficiency in, say, Ganganagar and Jaisalmer, and floods in Karnal and Katihar. The absence of such a forecasting system indicates a lack of leadership in the ministry.