Central Farm Schemes To Be Clubbed

The government is planning to club around 50 centrally sponsored schemes

in agriculture under one head in the coming budge. This will enable the replacement of the present system of formulation and funding of centrally sponsored schemes with a more flexible agricultural development management system.

The schemes to be clubbed together include those dealing with crops like wheat, rice, maize, coarse cereals, jute, sugarcane and cotton among others.

The rigidly conceived and uniformly structured Central schemes will now give way to the situation-specific and need-based programmes formulated largely by the states themselves.

At present, these schemes are conceived by the Union government and handed over to the states for implementation with rigid fund allocation for various components. For instance, the integrated cereals development programme for rice is being implemented in the states largely following the rice based cropping systems. Sixteen states are currently covered under this scheme. This means that any state other than these sixteen is not given any funds to encourage rice cultivation.

 

Also, states currently have no flexibility to spend the funds in areas that need to be given priority. So, for instance, a state cannot divert funds it has got for development of cotton to rice, development.

However, it has been realized that the requirements of different states are different. The new agricultural management system will therefore permit the states not only to mould the schemes according to their needs, but also to spend the available Central funds in a manner they deem more beneficial.

The Centre's role would now be that of advocacy, articulation and facilitation to help the states in their efforts. The Centre would play a proactive role in articulating the problems and policy changes and suggesting remedies for the problems with the help of Central agencies like Indian Council for Agricultural Research and the commerce and the finance ministries. These schemes include the integrated cereals development programme in rice based cropping system areas, integrated cereals development programme in wheat based cropping system areas, and integrated cereals development programme in coarse cereals based cropping areas.

For these schemes, the funding pattern between the government of India and states is on a 75:25 basis, except for the special jute development programme which is fully funded by the Centre.