By Shyam Pandharipande
Mumbai, Oct 10 (IANS) Maharashtra Agriculture Minister Balasaheb Thorat wants to give a big push to small, decentralised water conservation measures to mitigate the distress of farmers in Vidarbha who continue to commit suicide 15 months after the prime minister’s massive relief package.
“We are sincerely implementing the long-term as well as short-term components of the package but I have realised that small measures that can make as big a difference as between life and death should be pushed more vigorously to tide over crunch situations,” Thorat told IANS in an interview.
The minister’s observations are significant as they come within four days of a (Bombay) high court snub to the state government over the ‘failure’ of the package to stem the distressed farmers’ suicides.
Vidarbha is still reporting around 100 suicides a month. Hit by crop failure after incurring high input costs and being unable to repay loans, cultivators continue to take their own lives.
Interest waiver on farm loans coupled with their restructuring and funds for expeditious completion of ongoing irrigation projects in the region were the major components of the relief package announced in July last year besides provisions for horticulture, fisheries, dairy and aid to bereaved families.
While the interest waiver and loan restructuring enabled farmers to get fresh credit to buy farm inputs and labour, they had no provision to water their crops during long dry spells, Thorat pointed out, adding that funds for completion of irrigation projects (within three years) were of no immediate use either.
“It is water conservation measures like farm ponds or protective irrigation from a nearby water source that can keep alive the growing crops or re-sown seeds in rain-fed areas during a dry spell,” Thorat said.
“In the absence of such measures, the loan money spent on buying seeds and fertiliser must have gone waste.”
Localised water harvesting measures, said the agriculture minister, would be the best bet for farmers in Vidarbha even after the promised completion of irrigation projects as more than 80 percent agricultural land in the region is going to remain outside their command area.
Thorat said he has directed officials in his department to implement a programme to dig 1,000 wells in each sub-district and provide electric pumps to draw water from bore-wells where dug wells are not suitable.
Work to dig farm ponds and build earthen bunds will also be taken up in a big way and farmers will be asked to reserve a portion of their land for food crops and adopt a cluster approach, the minister informed.
“Water conservation measures have worked wonders in Marathwada where the average rainfall is much lower compared to Vidarbha and irrigation as meagre,” Thorat said.
Asked whether the government had thought of ways to turn farmers in rain-fed Vidarbha to low cost agriculture, the minister said, they would be motivated to take to organic farming using farm grown inputs and adopt a mixed cropping approach rather than exclusively going after cost intensive cash crops.
“Maharashtra’s seed production programme is the best in the country and the Planning Commission has praised the state for its excellent farm schools and soil testing laboratories,” the minister said.
He asserted that the path to the second green revolution would meander through decentralised agricultural planning and practices, localised water management techniques and organic farming.
“I don’t mean to belittle the worth of the first green revolution which made India self-sufficient and then food surplus,” Thorat hastened to add.
The minister, himself a prosperous sugarcane farmer in western Maharashtra, said the need for more food turned into an obsession for increasing productivity and the damage done by the excesses of water intensive chemical farming was overlooked.
“We realised somewhat late that the soil in Punjab, Haryana and Western Maharashtra had stopped responding to fertilisers. The nosedive began after 1996. Then the global warming took its toll – we had drought in four successive years from 2001 and in 2005. Even the assured rainfall areas like Vidarbha had low rainfall,” Thorat recalled.
Recalling further that the searing droughts were only to be followed by terrible floods the next year, Thorat said the agricultural growth rate in Maharashtra, which has declined from a record 6.6 percent in 1996 to two percent now can be upped again but through a course correction.
“The irrigation in the state is 19 percent, which is half the national average of 40 percent, with Punjab and Haryana at 95 percent. We have to scale the ladder up to 40 percent but in conjunction with decentralized water conservation methods and judicious use of water and an overall balanced approach. Let Vidarbha show the way.”