10 Action Points to address Rural Poverty

10 Action Points to address Rural Poverty

By:

Vijay Sardana

Addressing agriculture sector challenges will be important to India’s overall development and the improved welfare of its rural poor:

1. Focus on Agricultural productivity per unit of land not just total quantity: Raising productivity per unit of land will need to be the main engine of agricultural growth as virtually all cultivable land is farmed. 

2. Ensure Sensible use of natural resources: Water resources are also limited and water for irrigation must contend with increasing industrial and urban needs. Increasing competition for water between industry, domestic use and agriculture has highlighted the need to plan and manage water on a river basin and multi-sectoral basis.

3. Address strong regional disparities by decentralised approach in execution strategy and planning: Rural development must benefit the poor, landless, women, scheduled castes and tribes. Moreover, there are strong regional disparities in resource mobilisation and political will power. Niti Aayog must release an action plan in this regard.

4. Reduce rural poverty through a socially inclusive strategy that comprises both agriculture as well as non-farm employment: There is a clear need for a faster reduction. Hence, poverty alleviation is a central pillar of the rural development efforts of the government policy planners.

5. Ensure that agricultural growth responds to food security needs and food inflation: The sharp rise in food production will enabled the country to achieve self-sufficiency in food-grains and stave off the threat of food inflation and famine in certain years. Agricultural intensification will increase demand for industrial products and rural labour in industrial activities will help in declining food prices as well as reduced rural poverty.

6. Need for new and sensible technologies and reform agricultural research and extension: The market aspirations and global trade dynamics have changes a lot in last two decades. There is a major and urgent need to reform and strengthening of India’s agricultural research and extension systems. This is one of the most important needs for agricultural growth.

7. Need for water management policies in place of water exploitation policies including modernising  Irrigation and Drainage systems with active participation of farmers and other agencies in managing irrigation water with the help of MNREGA schemes. Improving cost recovery of water from highly profitable non-agriculture value-added industrial sectors to generate sufficient resources for operations and maintenance for the sustainability of water related investments.

8. Focus on Value Chain development with low cost of capital and more manpower: All measures to increase productivity will need exploiting, amongst them: increasing yields, diversification to higher value crops, and developing value chains to reduce marketing costs. While diversification initiatives should be left to farmers and entrepreneurs, the Government can, first and foremost, liberalise constraints to marketing, transport, export and processing. It can also play a small regulatory role, taking due care that this does not become an impediment.

9. Encourage Private sector Participation in value addition, risk management and cutting edge research: Private sector investment in marketing, value chains and agro-processing is growing, but much slower than potential. While some restrictions are being lifted, considerably more needs to be done to enable investment, diversification and minimise consumer prices. Improving access to rural finance for farmers is another need as it remains difficult for farmers to get credit. Moreover, subsidies on power, fertilisers and irrigation have progressively come to dominate Government expenditures on the sector, and are now four times larger than investment expenditures, crowding out top priorities such as agricultural research and extension.

10.Social institution reforms will help in poverty alleviation programs: While agricultural growth will provide the base for increasing incomes, for the millions of rural persons that are below the poverty line, additional social measures are required to make this growth inclusive. It is important that rural livelihoods and development programs that empowers communities to become self-reliant promotes the formation of cooperatives, self-help groups, increases community savings, and promotes local initiatives to increase incomes and employment. These collective institutions of the poor gain the strength to negotiate better prices and market access for their products, and also gain the political power over local governments to provide them with better technical and social services. These self-help groups are particularly effective at reaching women and impoverished families. This needs political will to do this.

Time to Think-Out-of-Box:

Policy makers will need to initiate and conclude policy actions and public programs in a time bound manner to shift the sector away from the existing outdated policy and institutional regime that appears to be no longer viable in eliminating poverty at desired rate and build a solid foundation for a much more productive, internationally competitive, and diversified and sustainable agricultural sector.