Editorial 1 : Reclaim the Farm
Context: How agriculture can be an engine for growth?
Status of Agriculture
- Indian agriculture has had a five-year average growth rate of 4%, it contributes 18% to the GDP.
- Its growth is erratic and environmentally costly.
- It employs 46% of all workers and 60% of rural workers, but incomes remain low, and educated youth don’t wish to farm.
- Today, farming in many countries is high-tech and highly productive. We can get there too if we give agriculture its rightful place and rethink the way we farm.
What needs to be done?
- For agriculture to be an engine of growth and attractive to youth we need to:
- Overcome ecological, technological, institutional challenges
- Reconnect with allied sectors
- Create synergy with rural non-farm sector.
Irrigation and Water Use
- Irrigation is the key to higher productivity and drought resilience.
- Currently, only half of India’s gross cropped area is irrigated, mainly via groundwater whose over-extraction has led to alarming falls in water tables. A notable cause is free electricity.
- For irrigation expansion, a combination of groundwater regulation, rainwater harvesting and micro-irrigation would be effective.
- Example: In Gujarat, between 1999-2009 agriculture grew at 9.6% per year, due to mass-based rainwater harvesting via micro-structures such as check dams, bunds, ponds.
- Efficiency in water use is essential, with measures ranging from drip irrigation to less water-guzzling crops.
Fix the soil
- After water, soils need fixing.
- An estimated 37% of our geo-area is degraded, with waterlogging, soil salinity, chemical contamination, and nutrient depletion.
Change in cropping pattern
- Shifting from cereal monocultures to crop diversity and agro-ecological farming would revive soils, save costs, raise yields, create jobs, and increase profits.
- A diversity of produce, including poultry, fruits and vegetables, will also cater to changing dietary patterns.
Technology in Agriculture
- Technology is key to tackle climate change, especially heat-resistant crops and efficient extension of new farming techniques.
- Cell phones are great source for agricultural information.
- Drones offer new means for pest control and crop monitoring.
Production Constraints
- Today, 86% of Indian farmers cultivate two hectares or less, occupying 47% of the operated area.
- Most farms are too small to tap scale economies, use machines efficiently, or bargain well in markets.
- Lack of formal credit: 75-80% small farmers use informal credit.
- Farm incomes are low and erratic.
- Higher crop prices and market reforms can benefit smallholders if we first address their production constraints.
Institutional Innovations to overcome constraints
- Encourage smallholders to cooperate and farm in groups to increase farm size.
- cooperation must be voluntary, with small groups, economically homogenous, and cemented by trust.
- There should be participative decision-making and equitable sharing of costs and returns.
- Example: Kudumbashree (Kerala)
- Forming groups enables them to consolidate holdings, invest in irrigation equipment, and save on labour and input costs. Group farming reports higher yields than farming individually.
- Livestock, fisheries and forests also offer huge growth and job potential. In 2022-23, fisheries grew at 10%, providing 28 million jobs (44% for women).
Non-farm sector
- 61% of rural incomes come from the non-farm sector.
- Expanding and synergising farm-nonfarm linkages in agro-processing, machine tools, eco-tourism, etc can raise incomes and jobs.
Conclusion: We have an opportunity to make agriculture technically sophisticated, environmentally sustainable and institutionally innovative — provided we shed old economic theories and change the way we farm.
Editorial 2 : Friends with Benefits
Context: Singapore, a partner in India’s growth story
Introduction: India-Singapore relations are vibrant and constantly opening up new possibilities as indicated by the frequency and high level of inter-governmental contacts.
Interstate interactions
- The interstate interactions focus on the new frontiers and consolidation of bilateral relations.
- Sectors in focus: Digitalisation, skills development, sustainability, healthcare, advanced manufacturing and connectivity.
- The broad spectrum of interstate contacts highlights the spread and depth of the India-Singapore interface.
India-Singapore Relations
- Singapore is India’s largest trading partner amongst the ASEAN countries and ranks as the sixth largest trading partner in global terms.
- It is also India’s largest source of foreign direct investment.
- Singapore has the largest concentration of IIT and IIM alumni in any non-Indian city.
- The two countries share a long and distinguished history of people-to-people exchanges. Singapore was the home of the Indian National Army.
- Older generation of diasporic Indians from the late 19th century played a pivotal role in transforming Singapore into a high-achievement hub. Their contribution in making Singapore a secular and multicultural society is immense.
- Singapore is a major travel destination for Indian tourists.
India’s Regional policy and Singapore
- Since the 1990s, Singapore has been a critical factor as India framed a regional policy Look East and then Act East.
- Singapore facilitated India becoming a sectoral dialogue partner and then a full dialogue partner of ASEAN.
Maritime Dimension
- India’s regional narrative has widened to the Indo-Pacific.
- Chinese political and military assertion has meant that existing approaches such as ASEAN centrality now increasingly jostle with new architectures such as QUAD, posing new opportunities and challenges for the India-ASEAN and India-Singapore relationships.
Singapore’s Success
- Trade and investment profile in the relationship owes more to Singapore’s success in building itself up as a formidable trading platform and global investment centre than any inherent complementarity between the two economies.
- It provided a global window that India’s older entrepreneur and financial capitals of Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai could not provide due to regulatory failures and structural inefficiencies at different levels.
- We, therefore, need to be conscious of how much our own regulatory shortcomings need to be addressed.
Way Forward
- A prime ministerial visit is an important occasion to review bilateral, regional and global issues. If trade and economic partnership is at the heart of the relation, new vistas are also opening up.
- Singapore is relevant to India’s growth story because it is a pointer to just how much path we still have to cover.