By IANS,
Patna : Bihar, the first state to constitute an ‘agriculture cabinet’ to improve the agrarian sector, Tuesday held its maiden meeting under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
“The first meeting of the agriculture cabinet was chaired by Nitish Kumar and it was attended by ministers and top officials to discuss issues related to agriculture,” an official in the Chief Minister’s Office told IANS.
The chief minister’s agriculture advisor Mangala Rai, former director general of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), is a special invitee to this cabinet. He presented his research-based project to develop agriculture in Bihar at the meeting.
The new ‘cabinet’ is headed by the chief minister and constitutes ministers of 18 departments, including water resources, irrigation, energy, rural works, sugarcane industry, animal husbandry and disaster management.
“Agriculture sector in one way or another is dependent on all these departments. All these departments will work with a single goal to develop the agriculture sector,” the official said.
“It is not only big news for the millions of farmers in Bihar, but marks the beginning of turnaround for the state’s agriculture sector. This will help the state achieve a second green revolution,” state Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh told IANS.
Singh said the Bihar government has given highest priority to the agriculture sector and increased its budgetary allocation from Rs.25 crore to almost Rs.844 crore in 2011-12.
The news of a cabinet exclusively for the agriculture sector was cheered by the farmers.
“It appears that the Bihar government is turning its attention to the agriculture sector,” Mahavir Mahto, a farmer near Patna, said.
In the last five years, Nitish Kumar has repeatedly said that he wants to have one or two agriculture products from the state on the plate of every Indian in the coming years.
The state government chalked out a roadmap for the agriculture sector in 2008.
“Several steps, including promotion of modern techniques of farming, organic farming, use of improved seeds among others, have been taken in last two-three years but it is still a long way to go in developing the agriculture sector,” an official of the agriculture department said.
Atul Singh, an economist researcher at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that Bihar’s agriculture growth instead of going up has shown a declining trend.
“It is a hard fact revealed by the government’s own economic survey,” Singh said.
According to official data, against the national productivity average of two tonnes of rice per hectare, the state’s rice productivity is about 1.5 tonnes per hectare.
In case of wheat, the state’s productivity is 2.2 tonnes per hectare against the national average of 2.7 tonnes.
The state government holds the repeated droughts and floods responsible for this poor production.
The state government admits on its official website that agriculture is the key to overall development of the state’s economy.
Agriculture is the backbone of Bihar’s economy, involving 81 percent of workforce, and generates nearly 42 percent of the state domestic product, the website says.
“Barring maize and pulses, productivity of various farm produce in Bihar is much below the national average. Though the area under cultivation is shrinking, there is tremendous scope for income generation, by improving productivity. Adverse climatic condition, like drought and floods, do play a role in decreasing products,” the official website says.