Does India’s agriculture policy resemble Khichdhi, the Indian superfood that got a place in the Guinness Book of World Record?

At the World Food India event in November 2017, 980 Kilogram of Khichdhi was prepared that made its entry at the Guinness Book of World Record. Colloquially the word “Khichdhi” is also used to mean botch- up. The food is made boiling rice and lentils together with an assortment of vegetables and at the end some spices are mixed to get the right taste. The preparation of Khichdhi is unlike the preparation of most Indian cuisine which require proper planning and process and cannot be made in a haste.

Policy Anomaly

The year 2017 started with a grand vision of Doubling Farmers Income by 2022 and also on following with earlier visions of More Crops per Drops and implementation of crop insurance schemes. However, as the year rolled on, mainly due to developments in the agricultural markets and pressure coming from the farmers the policy interventions done by government both at the central level and regional level seems more to tackle short term challenges of the sector and have often little connect with the grand vision set out early in the year.   

In 2017, India saw record output of wheat, pulses, cotton, potato and host of other horticulture crops coming after a gap of 2 years of successive drought. Many of the crops harvested in January and in February – March started selling below official Minimum Support Prices (MSP), rate set by the government to guarantee buyback. Prices crashed in April – June even for horticulture crops and potato where prices were market driven.  Low price realization which in some crops did not even cover the cost of production. Farmers vented their angers in protest in many regions of India.

Government of few states and the Central government started responding to the crisis of depressed producer realised by growers by providing farm loan waiver, lifting the stockholding limits of pulses, imposing quantitative caps and increasing import duty on some pulses varieties and lifting export ban on other varieties of pulses. The different interventions done for pulses were unable to stem the fall in prices below MSP.

Few of the state government after experiencing the uncertainty in farm community in 2017 has taken up proactive measures for 2018. One of the case is that of Haryana Government. The state to promote its farmers to shift from cereal crop cultivation to vegetable cultivation has launched a price deficit compensation scheme for vegetables. Under this scheme the protected price or base price would be fixed equivalent to the cultivation cost. Whenever the market prices fall below base price the state government will compensate for price deficit.

How will the policies and interventions of last year have an effect on prices in 2018 considering that monsoon has been normal last year? Will farmers look forward for more government support or plant crops depending on the movement of market prices? How does all these initiatives connect with vision laid out like doubling farmers income, e- NAM – the National Agriculture Market program?

To avoid recurrence of 2017, Prof. Ashok Gulati in his latest column Plate to Plough has made few recommendations of forming farmer clusters producing horticulture crops to connect to processors and organised retails. The Agriculture Department of the Embassy of the Netherlands in India has taken lot of initiatives along with companies, knowledge institutes, NGOs of the Netherlands to work with their Indian counterparts on similar projects. One such program is the Partners in International Business (PIB). There are two PIB programs: (i) vegetables and (ii) fruits. In 2017 there were several important visit of delegations from the private  and government sector to the Netherlands from India where the delegation members had the opportunity to have detailed insight on how the Netherlands has developed efficient supply chain for perishable commodities like fruits, vegetables, dairy, poultry and flowers.