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First steps on relief

THE GOVERNMENT HAS finally taken the first of what will surely have to be many decisions to both minimise the impact of rainfall deficiency on agriculture and deal with the fallout on farm incomes and rural employment. In a situation that is changing from week to week, the full extent of precipitation during the 2002 monsoon will not be known for sure before the end of August. But in most of north and northwest India, more than 90 per cent of the districts have so far experienced below-normal rainfall. So, even if the monsoon does recover in the coming weeks, it will be too late to rescue the usual kharif crop in large swathes across the country. The Central Government and the Governments of 11 States where rainfall has been deficient have decided at their meeting in New Delhi on a fairly well-defined plan of action.

The first set of decisions that have been made aim at rescuing whatever is possible of the kharif crop, if there is some increase in precipitation in the next few weeks. This would mean distribution of seeds for short duration and drought-resistant crops. The ability of farmers to obtain such seeds will depend on the speed with which the local administration can respond to the ground situation. Only then will the decisions to expand the coverage of the subsidy for seeds and to make input subsidies available to all farmers have any operational meaning. The second set of decisions are about relief to farmers who have either lost their crop completely or will see a substantial fall in yields. The National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development and the cooperative agencies are to be asked to relax their recovery norms for farm credit lines extended to the State Governments in the affected areas. For the moment, there is no talk of an interest waiver or debt write-off. Similarly, there will be a relaxation of the norms for crop insurance. Two kinds of problems are likely to be experienced in implementation. The first is of an `over-reaction'. Bad as the drought situation is, this is when the pressures are generated to ease loan recovery conditions in normal rainfall areas as well, while the drought-affected districts could find themselves left out if they do not have strong political representation. The second problem, specific to crop insurance, is that the 1999 national scheme has not been adopted in all States. Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan are three States which have not implemented the insurance scheme, but they are also the ones where the monsoon has been the weakest so far. How the Central and State Governments are going to provide crop compensation in these States is an issue that does not seem to have been addressed at the meeting of Agriculture Ministers and Relief Commissioners. The third set of decisions have been to expand the food-for-work programmes in the drought-hit States with the Centre providing free grain of 4.1 million tonnes. Unfortunately, it has been decided that it will remain the responsibility of the funds-strapped States to come up with the substantial cash resources that will be needed for the employment programmes. The situation is such that the Centre may soon have no choice but to step in with cash assistance as well, since many of the drought-hit States are also in dire financial straits.

Besides crop agriculture and employment, two critical areas that call for urgent attention in any drought are drinking water supply and fodder availability. In both, the scarcity will become serious later in the year, which is when the capacity of the State Governments to cope with the situation will be tested to the full. In a drought, as in all disasters, much the easier part is in deciding what to do. The more difficult part is in delivering the right kind of relief to the right kind of people and to minimise the siphoning off of the large amount of funds that will be channelled into relief programmes.

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