Climate change provides the right opportunity to reorient agriculture. Stanford study on integrated farming in China shows the way forward.

With farmers quitting agriculture, farm suicides becoming a global phenomenon, I sometimes wonder why intensive agriculture is not being replaced with safer agro-ecological methods of farming, which are sustainable in the long run and economically viable. The moment I mention this, I face a strong wall of opposition. “This is like romanticizing agriculture,” I am often told. “In the absence of technological progress the country cannot meet the future challenges of feeding the nation,” goes another refrain. This is however not true.  

Stanford University in collaboration with the China Agriculture University has in a path-breaking study compared the prevailing farming systems with the alternative approaches. The study conducted for three years between 2009 and 2012, and spread over 153 locations in the intensively-farmed regions of Eastern and Southern China has conclusively established what I have been suggesting for long. An integrated soil-crop system (ISSM) involving crop selection, method of planting, time of sowing and nutrient management produces higher yields with a significant drop in environmental damages.

“If we can combine much higher yields with much lower environmental consequences in China, there is a real hope that those challenges can be met around the world,” said Stanford biology Professor Peter Vitousek who led the exhaustive study. The integrated approach, applied in case of wheat, corn and rice achieved 97 to 99 per cent of the highest yields with no wastage of chemical nitrogen and a significant drop in the greenhouse gas emissions. More importantly, the farm incomes have risen without causing any environmental and health damages. In a paper published in Nature (Sept 3, 2014) the authors claim that even if the farmers were to achieve 80 per cent of the crop yields (on the same land area as in 2012) in the year 2030, China would be able to provide enough food for its human and animal populations, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent and reduce nitrogen losses by 50 per cent.

Stanford University believes that the technology can be applied in other areas of the world, where the yields can be improved without causing any economic hardship to farmers as well as any further destruction to the environment. 

The Stanford study comes at a time when Andhra Pradesh (and now parts of Telengana) is already witnessing what is perhaps the world’s largest agro-ecological farming transformation. While the climate-change impact that the Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) leads to is still to be studies, but what is clearly evident is a sharp decline in environmental pollution arising from the use and abuse of chemical pesticides. Spread over 36-lakh acres across AP and Telengana, some 20 lakh farmers are adopting non-pesticides management practices. This integrated and community-based approach began from a tiny non-descript village Punnukula in Khammam district way back in 1999.

Like in the Stanford study, crop yields under CMSA in Andhra Pradesh are very high with accompanying decline in environmental damages. The soil health has improved, groundwater table has stabilized, insect attack has come down and the resulting clean and safe environment has reduced the health costs for the farming communities. By simply stopping the use of chemical pesticides, some villages which had mortgaged the entire farm land, have been able to recover it and at the same time pay back the entire interest. . On top of it, CMSA regions have not witnessed any farm suicides

Let’s be clear. The integrated approach that is being followed in China and in Andhra Pradesh is also a technological development. The only difference being this integrated-soil and nutrient-technology is not branded by multinational corporations and is not backed by financial institutions and banks. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi stresses on the need to provide soil-health cards to farmers, integrating it with low-external input sustainable agriculture (LEISA) practices as demonstrated in AP can bring about a rapid switch-over from chemical agriculture. 

The Indian Council of agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Ministry of Agriculture need to shift the research focus from the so-called cutting-edge technologies, which come with a high environmental cost, to the time-tested sustainable farming practices that were in vogue. Agriculture universities must follow a dual approach of lab-to-land and also the reverse pathway from land-to-lab.

This reminds me of yet another simple method of farming perfected in China that helps raise farm yields enormously. In a front page dispatch, and in the midst of the raging GM crop debate, The New York Times had called it a ‘stunning’ simple technique. Scientists at the Oregon State University in America and the Yunnan Agricultural University in China were able to demonstrate that by shifting from monoculture to more diverse cropping systems, farmers were able to double the yields of rice without spending a single penny on buying expensive fungicides to control the deadly rice blast disease.

This large experiment covered 100,000 acres and involved tens of thousands of farmers. Scientists had asked farmers to plant two varieties of rice in their fields – one susceptible to rice blast disease and the other variety being resistant. This was compared with the performance of a monoculture plot. The results were astounding.

At a time when the global debate is on promoting mitigation strategies for farmers to escape the fury of climate change, the Stanford University experiment in China provides an alternative route to instead reduce the contribution of agriculture in raising global temperatures. I have often emphasized that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, which accounts for 25 per cent of the total emissions, is to change the existing cropping systems to more ecologically sustainable farm practices. The Stanford study has shown that it is scientifically possible to do so. Instead of pushing risky GM crops, agricultural universities need to shift the research focus to integrated farming systems.

I see no reason why we can’t have an agriculture which does not devastate soil health, which does not contaminate the ground water, which does not lead to drying of water aquifers, which does not cause environmental pollution, which does not create super weeds and super bugs, which does not contaminate the food chain, which does not lead to global warming and which also does not force farmers to commit suicide. It is certainly possible. All it needs is a political will. # 

The misplaced emphasis on hi-tech agriculture. Repeating the same mistake again and again.

This news report set me thinking. "The Netherlands is working with India to set up 10 centres of excellence across the country with an aim to raise agriculture output and introduce modern farm technologies and techniques," The Economic Times reported (Sept 15, 2014. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-09-15/news/53943034_1_centres-hi-tech-agriculture-excellence). This is not the first time I am reading such a news report. In fact, most times when the discussions veer around to agriculture the emphasis is invariably on enhancing crop productivity. 

Whether it is farmer suicides or food inflation, the way out suggested is often in increasing investments in improved technology to increase crop productivity and thereby improve farm incomes. Raising crop productivity will bring down the cost of production and thereby reduce food prices. 

This is half the story. 

Take the case of Punjab. A year after it launched with much fanfare the Rs 500-crore plan to diversify from paddy to maize and vegetables, the plan has misfired. "Farmers have not taken to diversification. They want to be assured of fixed returns. Farmers could take to growing hybrid maize with a yield of eight quintals per acre, but want minimum support price (MSP) for the same," G S Kalkat, chairman of the Punjab Farmers' Commission was quoted as saying in The Tribune (Sept 20, 2014). This is not the first time that Punjab farmers have spurned every move to diversify from wheat and paddy crop rotation, but what is significant is that the policy makers have not learnt any lesson. It is not improved technology that is hampering crop diversification but the failure to provide an assured income that is keeping the farmers away.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands has already set up three centres of excellence, one each in Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab. Monsanto too has signed an MoU with Punjab Government to set up three centres of excellence for the promotion of cotton, vegetables and maize. A number of other centres of excellence are coming up in other States too. 

What amuses me is that while Netherlands is pushing improved crop technology (read costly equipment and other farm inputs) in India, its own agriculture back home is surviving on massive farm subsidies. Let me make it very clear. The Netherlands is a global leader in agriculture not because of its sophisticated technology and high crop productivity but because of the massive farm support it provides to its farmers. Between 2000-02 as the reference period, the subsidies being paid to European farmers became an entitlement. Accordingly, Dutch farmers were paid a subsidy of Euro 1299 per hectare every year. This figure may have changed now but tells you how Dutch farmers have been a continuous beneficiary of direct income support. 

In the European Union, as per the financial plan for 2013, the agricultural budget stood at roughly 40 per cent of the total budget, with an allocation for agriculture close to Euro 60 billion ($78 billion). This is a whole lot of money for a sector which does not even employ 5 per cent of the population. 

As per www.foodsubsidy.org farmers in the Netherlands received a total of Euro 739,214,572 as direct income support between 1997 and 2012. The question therefore is that if Indian farmers were to raise crop productivity, which they can easily do even without the improved technology from the Netherlands, who will pay them the corresponding subsidies to keep them alive? 

But that's not the question that worries Indian policy makers. They are more keen to bail out the Dutch companies, which are find it difficult to survive in The Netherlands. Lutz Ribbe, a member of the EU's agricultural commission and the conservation director the environmental organisation Euronatur had this to say: "The Netherlands, for example has reached its limits. The farmers' income aren't right anymore; the environment is collapsing. The big companies, which can't develop anymore, are leaving the Netherlands and are being welcomed with open arms in eastern Europe." (http://www.dw.de/eu-proposal-seeks-big-reforms-on-farm-subsidies/a-16780256).Well, it goes much beyond eastern Europe. The Dutch companies are also finding markets outside Europe, and India continues to be world's biggest dustbin. 

I give you another example, this time from Denmark. Some years back I wrote in one of my articles: "If you are wondering as to why Indian pea producers are unable to competitively bid for processed foods in the global market, let us see how Denmark, for instance, manipulates the market and that too by truly following the WTO norms. Danish pea farmers do not benefit from price subsidies. Danish split pea processing companies do not benefit from processing and marketing aids. Danish pre-cooked split pea exporters do not benefit from export refunds. So obviously, you will think that they are very efficient producers and of course very competitive. But hold on.

Since pea farmers do not have to recover their full production costs from the sale price of the peas supplied to processing companies, the price at which pea is supplied to processing companies is substantially reduced. As a consequence, the price at which pre-cooked split peas is offered for sale is substantially below the prices that Indian pulse growers can offer. The provision of direct payments thus enables Danish suppliers of pre-cooked split pea to capture markets, which they would never have been able to supply in the absence of the aid payments.

Let me make it very clear. The comparative advantage that is cited by developed countries is actually built on agricultural subsidies. Withdraw the agricultural subsidies, there is no comparative advantage left for most of the crops, and I repeat, for most of the crops. That is why the mainline economists do not compare the cost of production of agricultural commodities but look invariably at the supply chain management." (Read my article: Hold economists accountable too. IndiaTogether. April 5, 2005. http://indiatogether.org/subsidies-op-ed). 

Agriculture is not simply a play of technology. It requires supporting policies to make it click. Even the Green Revolution wouldn't have been successful if the Indian government had not provided two critical policy planks. Assured price to farmers through the mechanism of MSP and the assured marketing of the surplus produce by setting up a procurement structure is what made high-yielding varieties perform and deliver. The rest is history. 

Kashmir floods: Don't blame the climate. It's a man-made disaster

Kashmir valley looked like an ocean, says Indian Air Force officials. 

Pic from www.arabnews.com 

No one cares for warnings anymore. In our madness to achieve a high economic growth, natural disasters come in handy. After the death toll has been estimated, the floods have receded and the city slowly limps back to normalcy, it's again business as usual. Wait for Srinagar to return back to normalcy, and the same people who were hit by the unprecedented tragedy, will be back to their normal routine recklessly exploiting the fragile environment.

I saw this happening when Mumbai was hit with flash floods in 2005. While 5,000 people were killed across Maharashtra, the deluge of Mumbai, the financial capital of India, donned the headlines. Many blamed the 18-km long Mithi river, which runs through densely populated and industrial areas of Mumbai and carries the overflow discharges of Powai and Vihar lakes to the Arabian Sea at Mahim Creek, responsible for the floods. Even the Mithi River Development Authority (MRDA) acknowledges: "The Mithi river used to serve as an important storm water drain but has been reduced to a sewer over the years."  

Before Mumbai, Hyderabad was hit by devastating floods in 2000. In 2009, again Hyderabad (and Kunool city) faced the fury of incessant rains flooding large parts of the city.  But interestingly, in 2000, the Geological Survey of India admitted "the August 2000 flood of Hyderabad cannot be considered as a result of the Nature's fury. It starkly exposes the deficiencies in planning of urban habitats in growing cities. Paradoxically, when Hyderabad was lashed by 24 cm of rain in 24 hours in August 2000, the adjacent districts of Mahabubnagar and Nalgonda were under the grip of drought-like or dry weather conditions due to scanty rainfall." (Read the full report here: August 2000 Flood in Hyderabad city. Causative factors and suggestions to avoid recurrence. http://www.portal.gsi.gov.in/gsiDoc/pub/cs_hydflood_aug00.pdf). 

Just to give you an idea of how unplanned urbanisation is taking a heavy toll. The Geological Survey report states, and I quote: "One such blatant violation of the urban development norms is conversion of a water tank known as Masab Tank, situated at the southern foothill limit of Banjara Hills, into currently a thickly populated residential-cum-commercial area. Further, the downstream side of the tank has been totally converted to residential areas such as Vijaya Nagar colony and Shanti Nagar ..Thus the active channels of streams that existed on the downstream side of these areas and colonies have disappeared." In the absence of any natural drainage, flooding is natural.  

Bangalore, New Delhi, Kolkata, Guwahati ,... the story is same everywhere. 

It is however very convenient to shift the blame to climate change. At a time when people have become so used to climate aberrations, and have begun to club everything under the broader head of climate change, that I find the blame game shifting to reasons beyond your immediate control to be escapism and self-defeating. If the temperature goes up, blame it on climate; if the rains are late, blame it on climate, if the heat season prolongs, blame it on climate. In fact, Climate Change has been accepted as something beyond our control. Like for all the ills in our society we blame the politicians, similarly for all the development-induced disasters we don't want to take the blame on ourselves. Why blame yourself when you can easily pass on the buck. 

In case of Hyderabad, let's not forget the city had faced a major flood disaster about 100 years back, in 1908, when Musi river had gone on a rampage. Some reports say 15,000 were killed in the flood fury. In case of Srinagar also, the city had faced a big flood in 1893 itself. You'll agree we can't blame the climate change for those disasters.

After the Uttarakhand disaster of July 2013, which again was blamed on Climate Change by many experts, I had thought that the nation would sit back and draw some lessons. But nothing like that happened. In fact, the moment you raise the issue of unplanned urbanisation, a chorus rises accusing you of being anti-development. This is a class of people who remain unmoved by the catastrophic consequences of epic disasters like the Himalayan Tsunami that struck Uttarakhand and Kashmir. They are only interested in exploiting the natural resources to the hilt. As long as they make money, who cares if thousands (and millions who survive) have to pay the consequences with their lives.

In an aptly titled report: A threat everyone knew, but refuses to believe (The Tribune. Sept 14, 2014 http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140914/pers.htm#1), the authors say: "The bowl-shaped lay of the land in Srinagar is such that once the Jhelum waters breach, there is nowhere for the floodwater to drain. this is a well-known fact that everyone has chosen to ignore." In an accompanying report, The Tribune states that the State Government officials admit that 50 per cent lakes, ponds and the wetlands in Srinagar have been converted into residential and commercial places. Wular lake, Asia's largest freshwater lake in Bandipora district, has shrunk by 87.58 sq kms. The famed Dal lake in Srinagar has shrunk to 12 sq kms (from 24 sq kms) and rapid siltation has reduced the average depth to 3 mts. The 165-kms long Jhelum river was pushed to the brink, and it obviously was waiting to retaliate one day.  

While the two environmental disasters of epic proportion had struck India in quick succession I had thought that the people in power would wake up to all that was going wrong. I had thought that the media, business and industry, the intelligentsia and the planners would be burning a lot of midnight oil, and at the same time holding wide ranging public hearings on how to minimise the environmental damage in the years to come. But on the contrary I hear the media relentlessly blaming the Ministry of Environment and Forests for blocking clearance to industrial projects. Such is the tirade against anything linked to environment that those who stand up to warn are accused of holding India's growth story. Kashmir paid for ignoring the repeated warnings. But the bigger question still remains. Will the government learn from the past mistakes and make appropriate corrections?  

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has said when it comes to environmental clearances his Ministry's green light is always on. Reports of pending decisions to withdraw the provisions of allowing tribals to have their say before an industrial project is approved, dilution of the Indian Wildlife Act provisions, dumping of Madhav Gadgil report on Western Ghats are some of the steps that needs to be immediately reconsidered. Instead of protecting the environment to ensure that the disasters of Uttarakhand and Kashmir are not repeated, the powers that be need to understand that no amount of industrial growth can succeed in isolation. Environment is not a price that has to be paid for industrial growth. Environment is a pre-requisite for any development paradigm. Economy cannot grow on a dead planet. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Aug 15 that industrial growth has to come with 'Zero Effect', which means without any accompanying environmental destruction. If this does not happen, and is glossed over, let's be very clear: what happened at Srinagar will not be an isolated event. Every city will sooner or later have to meet the same fate. #  

     
1. Playing with ecosystems. Deccan Herald. Sept 23, 2014
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/432237/playing-ecosystems.html

2. Climate, Catastrophe, Kashmir. Orissa Post. Sept 19, 2014
http://www.orissapost.com/epaper/190914/p8.htm

The Poverty Game. World Bank, Asian Development Bank and India's Planning Commission comes out with three magical figures.

Does it really matter if these children earn an equivalent of $ 1.51 or $ 1.25 or less than that per day? 

Picture Ankesh Kothari (from web)

The magicians are out on the stage. The challenge before them is to compute poverty. performing the vanishing trick, and that too without any compassion, they perform the statistical jugglery. Leading the pack is the World Bank. In its latest poverty vanishing trick the World Bank revisits its Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) index, and in one stroke it reduces India’s poverty from over 402 million in 2005 to a very impressive 98 million in 2010.

On the other hand, the Asian Development Bank has revised its poverty line to $ 1.51 per person (from the existing $1.25), and India's poverty in 2010 rises to 584 million or 47.7 per cent of the population. The gap between 584 million and 98 million is so huge that one is forced to dismiss both the estimates as unreal.

Here comes the third magician. An expert committee under Prof C Rangarajan, a former economic advisor to the Prime Minister, submitted its report to India's Planning Commission in July this year. By revising the poverty line to Rs 32 in rural areas and Rs 47 in urban areas, Rangarajan committee actually added another 93.7 million thereby raising the number of total poor to 363 million or 29.5 per cent of the population. 

So now we have three estimates: 98 million, 363 million and 584 million.

Isn’t this shocking? While not many Indians will believe that Rangarajan committee’s estimates are anywhere near the reality, and in fact is a gross underestimation of the extent of poverty in India, the World Bank’s latest estimates only shows that poverty does not require Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets to be achieved or any real effort to combat poverty and squalor. All it needs is a few economists who can play around with statistics. These economists can perform the vanishing trick much better than the Indian rope trick.

According to the World Bank’s latest estimates, global poverty has come down overnight from 1.2 billion to 571 million.

The earlier poverty line figure in India was Rs 27 for rural areas and Rs 33 for urban areas as computed by the Tendulkar committee a year back. This had raised a storm over the faulty and impractical estimates necessitating the setting up of yet another committee under C Rangarajan. And if the recommendations of the Rangarajan committee are to be believed, it tells us that there is something dubiously wrong with the way India is trying to deliberately keep poverty low. In all fairness, the new poverty line is nothing but a starvation line. It only tells us how many people need emergency food aid.

World Bank’s projections are still worse. In order to justify economic liberalization, it has been trying to fiddle around with social indicators as well as the poverty line to establish that the market mantrais working. World Bank’s chief economist Kaushik Basu defends the exercise by saying: “In case a dollar in Ghana can buy three times what it can but in the United States, then a person who earns 1,000 dollar each month in Ghana is said to earn 3,000 in terms of PPP-adjusted dollars”. But the reality is that even in the United States, despite being a privatized economy, hunger has shattered 25 years record. A record 49 million people, one in seven, depend upon food coupons to meet their daily food needs. One in four lives in poverty in America.

The World Bank is wrong. In case of India, with or without the new PPP index of the World Bank, I would like to know what can a poor with a daily income of Rs 47 in urban areas buy three times more than what he can buy in America with the same money. It therefore tells us that economists are no different from the famed Indian magicians. They too can perform the vanishing magic trick with alacrity. 

Global empirical evidence is now emerging challenging the World Bank's deliberate underestimation of poverty. Recent studies (ECLAC 2002, 2011) have conclusively shown that in Latin America for instance actual poverty rates are twice than what the World Bank had projected. More recently, on April 11, 2014, a study by the University of Bristol published in the Journal of Sociology concludes that the World Bank is painting a 'rosy' picture by keeping poverty too low due to its narrow definition. Dr Christopher Deeming of the Bristol University's School of Geographical Sciences is quoted as saying: "Our findings suggest that the current international poverty line of a dollar a day seriously underestimates global poverty."

In India too, the entire effort of policy planners as well as the numerous expert committees constituted over time to estimate poverty have simply tried to brush the realities under the carpet. While Rangarajan Committee tabulates a new poverty line, way back in 2007, Arjun Sengupta committee report had estimated that 77 per cent of the population or 834 million people were unable to spend more than Rs 20 a day. But more recently, the consumer expenditure data presented by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) 2011-12 paints before us the grim realities.

Accordingly, if you are spending more than Rs 2,886 per month in the rural areas and Rs 6,383 in the urban areas you are part of the top 5 per cent of the country’s population. In other words, those spending more than Rs 6383 in urban areas are in the same category as Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Nandan Nilekani et al. For the rest 95 per cent, roughly 118-crore people, life in any case remains tough. With or without the growth trajectory, their life hasn’t changed. In fact, with the aggressive pitching by the corporate-controlled media, the growing social divide is getting completely ignored. Poor have simply disappeared from the economic radar screen.  

Another estimate exposes the glaring inequalities. The economic wealth of 56 people is equal to the economic wealth of 600 million people. No wonder when we take averages like the rising average income, it hides the rapidly growing inequalities. The mainline economic thinking is that the 600 million would benefit from a trickle-down impact. Now with the number of absolute poor being reduced with a magic stroke, the World Bank will succeed in painting a rosy picture by brushing the poor under the carpet in one single sweep hides the truth. With the passage of time, these unchallenged statistics will be repeatedly used and get accepted over time.

Unless the World Bank makes an immediate correction, all projections of removing 'extreme poverty' by 2030 would be as farcical as the new poverty estimates are. But I doubt if there would be an international uproar forcing the World Bank to redraw the poverty line. At this rate, in the next five years when the World Bank will revise its PPP index, poverty in India on paper will disappear. The poor in India will one day suddenly wake up to find themselves bracketed with those living in opulence. That’s the power of statistical jugglery. #

Painting a rosy picture, Deccan Herald, Sept 9, 2014.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/429821/painting-rosy-picture.html

गरीबी पर आंकड़ों का खेल Dainik Jagran, Sept 6, 2014
http://www.jagran.com/editorial/apnibaat-figures-on-poverty-11609424.html

100 Days performance: When markets begin to dictate economic agenda

I am sure you noticed it. The first 100 days of the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government has turned into a big marketing event. This is probably the first time that some of the big media houses had employed marketing agencies to conduct nationwide surveys. The results were splashed on the front pages, and TV channels not only dissected the survey report throughout the day but also held panel discussions.

In a way, 100 Days performance, which was more or less a journalistic exercise all these years, has now been upgraded by the markets. Like the Father’s Day, Mother’s day or Valentine Day, I’ll not be surprised if 100 Days also becomes a once-in-five-year marketing ritual. Rating agencies can now find another opportunity for garnering more business.

Once the markets takeover, it is the voice of the big business that resonates. Backed by the rising stock markets, the completion of 100 days of Modi government became a perfect event for the markets to appreciate, exhort and provoke the Prime Minister to push for more investments. With respondents being drawn from different genders, age groups and socio-economic strata, as the different surveys would explain, the common thread that ran through all the surveys that I came across was the need to push for more of the same i.e. reduce subsidies, provide more sops/incentives for industry, and make land acquisitions easy and cheap.  

Nothing else mattered.

In fact, the entire thrust of the 100 days marketing exercise, also evident from some of the columns that appeared in mainline newspapers, was to primarily pressurize the Prime Minister to go in for what is called the big ticket reforms. I am not sure how much weight the media blitz would have on Narendra Modi’s thinking and approach in future, but what is evident so far is that he is taking very calculated steps. The emphasis on constructing toilets and asking MPs/MLAs to use the MPLAD funds to fund its construction in schools, public places as well as for every household across the country is something that does not enthuse the markets. Nor did his strong position at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by refusing to sign on the Trade Facilitation Treaty unless a permanent solution to protect India’s food security is found, was palatable to pro-market apologists. And I liked when he said “this decision may invite some media criticism in international and national press, but India will not compromise the livelihood security of its farmers” In my understanding that was a powerful statement for the international trading community, something that has never been said and done by the previous Prime Ministers. 

Participating in several TV discussions to evaluate the 100 days performance, I had particularly highlighted the decisive role the Prime Minister Office has now begun to play. The discipline and work culture that is being demonstrated by his Cabinet colleagues has percolated to the government machinery. This is no less an achievement that the bureaucrats and officials now come in time and do not fritter away the public exchequer like the way it was being done all these years. A strong work culture when it spreads to the State governments will certainly make a difference. I am looking for the day when the bureaucracy welcomes you with a smile and attends immediately to your queries.

What comes out very clearly is the real desire to use his mandate to bring about a difference, but it cannot be at the cost of social and environmental upheavals. Containing food inflation for instance is a top priority for the government, but it does not mean punishing farmers for producing more. In the garb of keeping inflation low, the Food & Agriculture ministry has clamped down on the procurement prices blaming it for the rise on food prices. This year, while the government employees are getting 107 per cent DA allowance, farmers are penalized by almost freezing the procurement prices at the last year level.

On top of it, Food Ministry has directed the State governments not to provide a bonus over the procurement prices, and if they still do the Centre will withdraw from making procurement. In a way, this dictat goes against the election promise of providing farmers with a higher procurement price.

The taciturn approval for GM crops, and the restructuring of the public distribution system too needs to be revisited. The government cannot have a double approach of opposing WTO rules in the name of protecting farmers, and at the same time go in for autonomous liberalization as proposed by the markets. Removing procurement would spell a death-knell for farmers, and the government appears keen to do so. This is primarily because the same set of economic advisors that the Congress had in its 10 year of misrule are now back, advising the Madi government. I have always said that the people who were responsible for the crisis cannot be expected to provide a solution to emerge free from the same crisis.

From the ramparts of the Red Fort, the Prime Minister had made a commitment which needs to be applauded. While wanting India t turn into a manufacturing hub, he had spelled out that he was in favour of “Zero Defect, Zero Effect” meaning that no destruction of the environment would be allowed. But the way Ministry of Environment & Forests has gone about clearing pending projects, and also rejecting the Madhav Gadgil report to keep the ecologically-sensitive western Ghats free of mining and other harmful industries. At the same time the efforts to dilute the National Green Tribunal Act, the Forests Rights Act and the Land Acquisition laws shows that ‘zero effect’ is being openly impinged upon.

The markets would never raise these concerns. The reason is obvious. They consider environmental norms to be coming in the way of speedier industrial development. That is why you will hardly find the mainline media talking about these social and environmental impacts that the country has to be careful about. It is in this connection that I am vary at the way marketing agencies has taken over the entire debate on the performance of the Modi government. I am sure the Prime Minister would ensure that development has to be pro-people, pro-gender and pro-environment. There can be no compromise here. #