Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Expenses soar, yields decline

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The substantial budgetary allocations made by the Central and State governments for developing the agriculture sector and the huge sums expended by the government for meeting the establishment expenses of the Agriculture Department have not yielded the desired results in increasing productivity or the extent under rice cultivation.

Agriculture Department sources told The Hindu that about 80 per cent of the budgetary allocation remained unspent and even the 20 per cent shown by the department as ‘utilised’ is expended in March every year in a ritualistic manner. The fate of the current allocation of Rs.174 crore is also feared to be the same.

Though the department has a legion of officers, precious little is being done to exploit their skills for enhancing productivity. At present, the department has 3,200 agriculture assistants, 2,000 agriculture officers, 200 assistant directors, 100 deputy directors, 25 joint directors and six additional directors. The government is spending around Rs.120 crore annually to meet their salary expense alone.

The extent of paddy cultivation has been steadily declining over the past three decades. If the paddy fields spread over 8.81 lakh hectares in 1975, it came down to 5.59 lakh hectares 1990, 3.47 lakh in 2000, 2.90 lakh in 2005 and 2.5 lakh in the current year. This has reflected on the productivity too. From 12.55 lakh tonnes in 1984-85, it dwindled to 9.75 lakh tonnes in 1995, 5.6 lakh in 2004-05 and 4 lakh in 2006-07 and then to 2.4 lakh tonnes. This fall in productivity strikes a sharp contrast with the global achievement of 12 tonnes a hectare registered by rice-growing countries in the world.

Though bureaucratic indifference is often cited as the main reason for the poor absorption of funds and fall in productivity, the department’s failure in assigning a creative role to the officers by giving creative inputs is also pointed out as the cause for their inertia.

Instead of exploiting their expertise for providing information to farmers about quality seeds and fertilizers, the officials manning Krishi Bhavans are being made to distribute subsidy and assistance to the farmers under various schemes.

In the absence of a specific directive from the department bosses, most of the officials confine themselves to the routine chores and stay away from the initiatives of the local self-government institutions to enhance productivity, sources said.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu