Growth amidst gloom

Agriculture GDP bucks the trend of decline in other sectors. But can the government help the farmers sustain this growth?

C R Sasikumar

will remain dependent on imports of pulses and oilseeds for years to come.

The minimum policymakers could have done was to remove restrictions on free functioning of exports and markets. Exports of pulses and oilseeds are highly restrictive, and traders have been encumbered by stocking restrictions. This does not allow the free play of markets to benefit farmers. And when government agencies fail to ensure even the MSP, the policy environment smells of an antifarmer and pro-consumer bias.

Oilseeds and pulses are grown in relatively less irrigated and poorer regions, consume much less water and fix nitrogen in soil — thus saving large fertiliser subsidies. Therefore, supporting them should be a national priority. It will also help alleviate poverty faster and boost the demand for manufactured products, thus helping industry. Tractor demand is already showing recovery with a 15-20 per cent growth over the corresponding period last year — the demand should rise in the coming months.

However, the current agri-situation raises a fundamental question: How long will Indian agriculture, and therefore, the well being of more than half the population dependent on it, remain hostage to monsoons and ineffective implementation of the MSP policy? Not just farmers who cultivate pulses and oilseeds, but paddy farmers in the eastern belt — including the Varanasi mandal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency — did not get the MSP. If the PMO does not take note of this and take corrective measures, sabka saath, sabka vikas and eliminating poverty, even by 2030, may remain a distant dream.

The writer is Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at ICRIER OUR UNIVERSITIES ARE witnessing a great deal of turmoil. Having straddled the world of both schools and universities, as it were, it seems to me that there are a few basic issues involved here.

The first is the almost total disconnect in our school system between the curriculum and the reality of this country. School curriculum, for the most part, is totally focused on board examinations. Of course we teach our children all there is to know about physics, math, history and what-have- you. But do we teach them about the bitter caste divide that plagues our country, about the spectre of famine that stalks large parts of our land, about gender sensitivity, about the possibility of atheism as a choice, about the rights and emotional needs of the LGBT community?

Equally important, do we teach them to ask questions, or do we teach them only to passively receive our wisdom? An oft repeated complaint from teachers to parents is: “Your child is extremely disruptive in the classroom. He is forever asking questions!”

We do not, because apart from our obsession with board examinations, most of our teachers are woefully ill-equipped to deal with these issues. Most teachers hide behind the fig-leaf of “where is the time for all this?”, when the truth is that a wellinformed and imaginative teacher can easily weave these lessons into the delivery of the regular curriculum. Schools also do not deal with these issues because few schools dare “rock the boat”. What if the parents complain? Of course, some of the “better” schools have debating societies which “debate” these issues. But, as the name suggests, they remain at the level of a “debate”. Once the trophy is won (or lost) the issue is forgotten. And, in any case, how many students do these debates touch? A handful, who, rather boringly, appear for every debate on account of being the school’s “best” debaters, whilst the conscripted audience yawns through the proceedings.

If the teachers are ill-prepared, the principals are even worse off. This is because today, most school managements want “managers”, not “leaders”. I was helping a few schools recently in their search for a principal. In the hundreds of CVS that I saw, there was a monotonous similarity. All of them had the statutory MA and BED. Some even had a PHD. They all claimed considerable “experience”. Of what? Doing the same routine things over and over again.

Not one had dared to step off the trodden path and explore uncharted territory, professionally or in their personal lives. What kind of leadership will these principals