Is A Second Green Revolution Possible In A Few Years?

June 6, 2007 - PRLog -- Is it possible to usher in the second green revolution in India? Is it possible to do it fast? Why has the new green revolution to start right away? Why is there little or no time left to wait for the green revolution to take its time as did the first green revolution of the 1960s? Is it because time is running out? Running out very fast. Is it because there is no insurance of a political upheaval that Jawaharlal Nehru and his immediate successors enjoyed for almost 25 years after him?

Is the second green revolution a tall order for the rulers of the day? Is it that they have very little breathing time? Is that breathing time just two years now as three years of their five year term have run out? What grandiose design could they come up with in the short time at their disposal? The questions are in the region of the fathomable as well as unfathomable: is a miracle on the farm front possible?

The Grand Old Party that the Congress is in India has ruled the nation for 50 of the 60 years since 1947 without batting an eyelid. Did it face any challenge? almost none. The only Opposition came from within and even the Morarji Desai and Chaudhary Charan Singh experiment of less than three years came from former party men after the Congress split in the mid 1970s. Today the scenario is vastly different, though there is no alternative even now to the Congress. The only alternative is a hung Parliament, with the remote and limited prospect of a rag tag non-Congress coalition, with both the Third Front and BJP led coalition being near non-starters.

Is it this weakness of the non Congress parties around the country and their apparent inability to coalesce viably that is making the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and their flock to sit up and try and keep the present arrangement going by reaching out to the traditional Congress constituency in the countryside, in the villages, in the farms, in the cow belt and beyond the Vindhyas, in western India and eastern India? Is it the Congress effort to override the caste factors yet once more and promise the poor and deliver a life worth their while? Is it possible?

The green revolution of 1960s took 20 to 25 years to raise grain production from 30 million tons to nearly 200 million tons. It was a great achievement. The sevenfold increase in food production in that time span came to a halt in 1990s even as industry and services flourished as never before. They did feed millions upon millions of people, but not hundreds of millions as half the nation of 1.1 billion is malnourished and nearly half of that almost starving.

The hundreds of farmer deaths and suicides after failure of crops and unbearable indebtedness, now visible live in electronic media and even print processes have added a new dimension to public awareness. Is it what at times influences the voters? The caste code having been cracked by the likes of Mayawati with the incumbency factors of U.P. and Andhra having overturned two key State satraps in recent years, is genuine public welfare and poor people's sheer survival against the worst odds, the new factor that politicians of all hues must part of their own survival mantra?

Is that why Dr. Manmohan Singh unveiled a Rs. 25,000 crore programme of making farms and farming a worthwhile prospect? The intentions are good as were of the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which has given rural families 100 days of jobs a year and promoted a degree of welfare. But there have been reports that the Sarpanches and panchayat leaders have been lining their pockets and buying cars and other durable goodies to have a new life style rather than feed their poor constituents.

That indeed is the crux of the problem. How to ensure outcomes from outlays, very large outlays of money? How to reach the poorest farmer and his family? How to short circuit the many hurdles on the way from the Finance Ministry at the Centre to the State, district, development block, village level worker and panchayat or some other non governmental organization?

The captains of industry have come up with the novel idea of contract farming, which is working in isolated pockets with fast moving consumer goods manufacturers collecting quality farm produce for processing and marketing. But the great new idea is to corporatize farms with companies and farmers becoming shareholders in joint ventures. Does it sound like cooperative farming or collective farming of the Soviet model of a bygone era, which became very unpopular because it would deprive the farmers of their land ownership. Corporate control would again entice farmers to sell their ownership rights to the highest bidder and create an uproar from all parties, not just the Communists.

Even the Congress and its very large membership and adherents and supporters would find it a great threat. So the corporates would need to come up with more practical ideas rather than just their narrow ideas learnt from business and management schools where profit is god and human beings are disposable.

The farm universities would have to spread out more extensively and intensively and bypass the governmental structures. The NGOs would have to be more geared to doing public good in the villages and go far beyond kitchen garden movements. The public and private sector giants would have to adopt thousands of villages and smaller and medium sized companies a few villages for their own good so as to escape the rapidly increasing threats like those posed by the Maoists and other starving people, which would not leave cities and the localities of the rich and famous any more safe havens. The countdown began some years ago, but they could all afford to learn a lesson and perhaps make a start today, if not tomorrow.

Wasteland and saline land could indeed be given to reliable corporates for short leases of 10 to 15 years to set up model farms or grow oilseed yielding farms on build, operate and turn back to the owners or renewed leases on profit sharing basis without tax exemptions. The leased wasteland and degraded land may also have built in clauses requiring the companies to grow forests in limited areas even as they may be allowed to tap ground water from great depths of water like 800 to 1,000 feet below the surface. If in the process of deep drilling, they find minerals, that would be a bonanza, but the laws on exploring and exploiting minerals, including petroleum would have to be obeyed and not just taken as nature's bounty.

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