A 120 Schemes

...that is the approximate number of schemes that a DDA ( Deputy Director of Agriculture) is supposed to manage. The Agricultural Department in the State is in a state of mess. Recruitment into this Department stopped long time back - as a part of the austerity drive to control Government spending ( I keep wondering if what the Agri department does is spending or investing .... but na, it has steadily moved to spending these days)...and the officers are busy today putting up vegetable arches and fruit arches when a minister visits or setting up exhibition stalls on the roads to please some visitor...

There is a scheme for everything ... for instance there is a scheme under the national horticultural mission , where if one were to submit (a copy of) the title deeds, the saplings of one's choice, the agricultural inputs - the bio fertilizer required, oil cake ..everything is given free. Such a wonderful scheme ....- except that one can never be sure if the sapling given is of the variety one actually asks , or if what has been given will ever grow , or if there is any nutrient at all in the fertilizer supplied or if what is supplied as oil cake is oil cake or soil. No wonder there are hardly any serious takers for this scheme. Similarly there are schemes for rearing cattle , growing earthworms etc etc ...all adding up to several crores of rupees. It is no rocket science to know what happens with all this money....and who actually gains.

And if there are 120 schemes to manage, one wonders if the scheme is actually managed or the vouchers and auditors are managed.

There is no vision for the Department. Or probably there is one - of how the create fancy and free schemes running to several crores to benefit select individuals. What else can one say of a scheme to increase pulse production - where the concerned official is simply given an amount to be spent in any way suitable to increase pulse production and he/she just conducts awareness programs ? or of the revised nutrient based subsidy scheme which no one seems to fully understand - except that now every fertilizer manufacture prices his product differently...

There seems to be no serious application of mind on actual agriculture development - on augmenting irrigation capabilities ,on rainwater harvesting , on water conservation, on extending responsible post harvest technologies , on creating good storage and market infrastructure , on supply of quality seeds, focused nutrient management etc. And we are happily turning prime agricultural land into SEZs and residential apartments and what not. No 'educated ' individual wants to take up agriculture as a career - oh forget the educated mass - even the not so educated mass benefiting from the 100 day employment scheme does not want to look at agriculture. Labor is probably the biggest problem that a farmer faces today - that is if the rains don't fail him. And we still keep talking of India living in villages and of more than 60 % of the population depending on agriculture for livelihood. That number surely should go down by over 20%. ...

I keep wondering how long we can pull along this way...