India devlopment at other side

farmer leader Sharad Joshi who propagated[pró-pu,geyt(spread,फैलाना)] the usage of “India”, representing urban elites[i'leet(selected,विशिष्ट)], and leading lakhs of farmers protesting against anti-farmer policies.
World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings cited[sIt(mentioned,उल्लेख)] as a major achievement.

This gives an inkling of how NDA2 may also end up like NDA1’s “India Shining”, when the overall GDP growth hovered[hó-vu(fly over,मँडराना)] around 8 per cent but agriculture performed poorly at about 2.5 per cent. We all know the final result — how NDA1 was voted out of power in 2004.

And the news from the agri-front is not good. Last year, with a rainfall deficit of 12 per cent, agri-GDP grew by only 0.2 per cent (basic prices). This year, the rain deficit is bigger (-14 per cent).

Those in pursuit of making India a manufacturing hub, a la China, must remember that all major countries with large populations, like the US or EU, as well as emerging economies like China and Indonesia, have been supporting their farmers through myriad[mi-ree-ud(countless,असंख्य)] policy tools — high output prices, low input prices, direct income support, or crop insurance.

India aspires to compete with China, but are our policymakers aware of how China produces more than double India’s foodgrain from an agricultural land smaller than India’s and with an average holding size half of India’s?

China’s PSE level increased from 2 per cent in 1995-97 to 19 per cent in 2012-14. For Indonesia, the PSE has gone up from 4 per cent to 21 per cent over the same period. There are no PSEs available for India,Even on the output price front, Indian farmers get much lower MSPs compared to their counterparts in Pakistan and China. In Pakistan, the MSP for wheat is $320/ MT and in China, $385/ MT, against India’s $226/ MT.

There are two important lessons here for India: One, if India wants to feed its people well, it has to almost double (if not triple) its support  to farmers, from current levels of about 6-8 per cent of the value of agri-output; two, it should move from price policy support to income support directly on per hectare basis. More like a DBT.

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