It is now official. We are in the middle of the worst drought since independence.Ten states have declared 246 districts as drought hit. This is about 47% of the total districts in the country.Rice production is also expected to go down by 10 million tones. However India does have enough food reserves to meet any shortfall for the next 13 months. The fall in rice production works out to as much as 70% of what the country holds as buffer or emergency stock. Foodgrain demand for 2008-09 has been estimated at 219.01 million tones as against 233.88 million tonnes produced. India currently needs 7.2 million tones of Rice as buffer and has about 14.1 million tones. The current buffer for wheat is 7 million tones while the country has 15 million tones. This will help the country avoid the need to import. Congress party spokesman Janardhan Reddy has issued an advisory to the government to tackle the most important fall out of a drought season: the rise in food prices. Already, Congress has drafted a “drought-code” for its members, whereby Congress MPs, legislators and salaried officeholders will contribute 20% of their basic salary to state and central exchequer in a symbolic gesture of solidarity with those battling drought and price rise.
To a certain extent, the concerns about its impact on growth are valid but less so compared to the previous droughts: partly because agriculture accounts for much less of national income now than it did during previous droughts and partly because other sectors of the economy are less dependent on agriculture than they were earlier. The concerns are valid but are not as important for growth as they are for livelihood and food security, since at least half of India’s population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood and that is not much different from previous spells of drought.
This drought is a grim reminder of the fact that not all of boom in agriculture was driven by government policy. It is an altogether different matter that the rain gods hardly ever get credit for good monsoons. However, droughts have also presented the unique opportunity to governances in their time to innovate social solutions. Earlier droughts have now become landmark events for public policy depending on a government’s ability to convert challenges into opportunities.
The first major drought after independence was in the mid-1960s, with severe consequences for food security. But the government of the day was successful in converting the challenge into a golden opportunity. The opportunity was the green revolution and by the end of the next decade we were more or less self-sufficient in food. It was also successful in increasing irrigation on a much bigger scale than in the previous decades.
The second major public policy lesson was also a response to droughts. The much-appreciated National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is a successor of such a policy initiative. It was the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme which was started initially as a drought relief programme that formed the basis of a unique experiment in the world to provide guaranteed employment to the rural poor.
The importance of public employment programmes was also appreciated in the 1987-88 drought, which incidentally also saw a significant reduction in rural poverty for the first time. This was ably supported by the public policy of keeping cereal prices low and providing food security to the poor.
The 2002-03 drought was again severe and manifested itself in large-scale farmer suicides, but it also exposed the limitations of credit delivery in rural areas. The rapid expansion of credit in rural areas subsequently has not been enough to correct the serious imbalances on that front but it was successful in emphasising the magnitude of the problem. But more than that, it did provide the background for emphasising the importance of public employment programmes. The result is NREGA.
So what kind of opportunity does this drought throw up? In the long run, this drought has highlighted the vulnerabilities of Indian agriculture to the seasonal monsoons, despite claims of record production in the last four years. There cannot be a better time to usher a second green revolution and create a sustainable food security environment. It is high time to take up the long-term challenge of investing in agriculture and particularly on creating long-term sustainable irrigation systems. These may not be large-scale irrigation systems alone but even small water harvesting and conservation works undertaken as part of NREGA. But, in the short run, it is the best time to strengthen NREGA and expand its scope to individual entitlement from the existing household entitlement.
This drought is also a golden opportunity to convert this challenge into a successful public policy initiative. This opportunity is the enactment of the Right to Food Act. There cannot be a better time to do this. There is already a political consensus. This is also the time when the government stocks are full of foodgrain and it is economically insulated because of high growth achieved in the previous four years. This government has the option of being remembered for having faced the worst drought since independence or being remembered for successfully fighting it by enacting the Right to Food Act.
Ref: http://www.livemint.com/2009/08/18234120/It8217s-time-for-a-New-Deal.html
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