An evasive dialogue

INDIAN AGRICULTURE, WITH all its inherited structural constraints, should continue to be insulated from the logic of market forces. This was one note of concordance which resonated at the Conference of Chief Ministers in New Delhi last Monday. The agenda for the conference turned on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its presumed catastrophic impact on the Indian farmer, apart from the largely politicised issues of food procurement and distribution. The Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) in the WTO dispensation, which was signed in 1994 by India and other member-countries, postulated a world-wide movement towards competitive markets. It was, by no means, a carte blanche for the developed countries, with vast agricultural surpluses, to exploit markets in the developing countries. The fact is that the AOA recognises that in many developing countries, agriculture is much more a way of life than a commercial occupation for the vast majority of the farmers. To this extent, the paradigm of competitive global free trade in agricultural commodities must remain subordinate to the paramount human concerns of food security and livelihood. But then the political establishment, at the State level, continues to harbour grave misapprehensions about the WTO being the sole source of the entire malaise of agriculture including glut in production, injudicious crop planning, the drastic fall in new public investment in agriculture (in research and irrigation besides post-harvest technologies and marketing infrastructure) and the long-continued official inability to empower the small and marginal farmers who constitute the predominant majority of cultivators.

On the decline in domestic prices of agricultural commodities such as copra, pepper, chillies, turmeric and ginger in recent times, is it all the sequel to the lifting of quantitative restrictions (QRs) on imports? Can it be denied that the slump in prices of such commodities has a great deal to do with both unplanned extension of the cropping area and deplorably inadequate marketing support, not to ignore the vital factor of stagnant and even declining demand?

Obviously the country is not yet ready for the WTO regime, even six years after signing the AOA. The Centre is no doubt culpable in not generating even the minimum degree of awareness of what the WTO mandates and of how the broad contours of tariffied two- way trade would impact on Indian farming. Can the State Governments plead ignorance of the AOA as the justification for their own apathy towards structural deficiencies in the farming sector? Apart from pressuring the Centre for higher support prices and larger levels of procurement of foodgrain have the State Governments endeavoured to develop agriculture on the basis of improved productivity and infrastructural remediation?

The Vajpayee Government's proposal for decentralisation of procurement of foodgrain with the requisite funds being made available to the States has drawn a blank from the Chief Ministers. This is indeed a pity. For one thing, it indicates that the States have no willingness to realise that Central procurement, often under duress, leads to huge mountains of foodstocks being held by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), far in excess of the off-take for the Public Distribution System (PDS) and at enormous avoidable cost. Arguments about the States not having adequate infrastructure for handling procurement seem unconvincing. The truth perhaps is that the Chief Ministers know that their political vulnerability will only increase with their assuming responsibility for as sensitive an operation as purchasing foodgrain from the market through a bureaucratic process. In any case, is it not pragmatic to maintain the status quo and keep the Centre in the firing line? Not being able to grapple with the reforms needed in agriculture, the Conference predictably has passed the buck to a committee of Chief Ministers. Can the committee supply the political will for reforms, so pathetically lacking now?

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