Around the time P Chidambaram was on air saying that agriculture was No 1 on the government’s priority list and that reforms are here to stay, he couldn’t have got a better endorsement.Addressing his first press conference at Krishi Bhawan, his colleague Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar announced the appointment of Green Revolution architect M S Swaminathan as head of the National Commission of Agriculture, a panel set up in March by the NDA Govt to help frame policy.‘‘The last government derailed reforms in agriculture,’’ Pawar said, ‘‘and it will be our priority now.we will use the commission to work out our reforms roadmap.’’ Some milestones on this map, he said, were: removing current roadblocks on inter-state movement of farm products, doubling credit in three years, opening up mandis to private players to ensure that the farmer doesn’t have to depend on government-controlled markets.Signalling that this wasn’t just rhetoric, he said: ‘‘I insisted that I get this Ministry otherwise I would not join the government.’’ In fact, he takes charges of two ministries — food and agriculture — making him responsible for every aspect of food starting from production and procurement to trade.In Chennai, Pawar’s words had an echo in Swaminathan’s. Speaking to The Indian Express, Swaminathan, who has consistently called for decontrol in agriculture, said: ‘‘It is high time for reforms. We have to learn from China where reforms began in the ’70s in the agriculture and rural sector and not the other way round, like in India, where we are talking of agriculture reform after (reform in) industry.’’ Swaminathan, who holds the UNESCO Chair in Ecotechnology and is chairman of a research foundation he set up, is a strong advocate for phasing out subsidies. ‘‘The farmer doesn’t need subsidy,’’ he said, ‘‘what he needs are services and better infrastructure. The money spent on subsidy should be used more imaginatively for this.’’ According to him, the only way out of rural poverty is to ‘‘merge on-farm employment with non-farm employment.’’‘‘I am glad that at least the Common Minimum Programme mentions things like dryland farming, considering 60 per cent of our farmers do not have access to irrigation,’’ said Swaminathan. Although he is yet to formally accept Pawar’s offer, both seemed to be talking the same language, at least today. ‘‘The first priority,’’ Pawar said, ‘‘will be market reforms — removing all impediments that farmers face in getting a better price and exporting their produce.’’ Linked to this is the re-organisation of the mandis. ‘‘We will try and convince the states to amend the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Act,’’ said Pawar. This is considered to be the reform needed to enable markets to open to private players and break the monopoly of inefficient government mandis as sole buyers and sellers. The previous government did frame a model Act but states are yet to amend theirs. His constituency Baramati is a food processing hub and Pawar talked of more incentives to agro processing and food processing industry. There is a market waiting to be exploited but the government has been slow in creating infrastructure like cold chains and packaging facilities. When asked about kisan credit cards, one of the few success stories of the NDA government, he said: ‘‘I am a farmer. I have not got a card till date. I need to find a system by which every farmer in the country will get timely and cheap credit,’’ he said. While loans for cars and homes are available on demand, most farmers have depend on the arhtia or the money-lender ‘‘Soon I will be talking to NABARD and finding out what needs to be done to double credit to farmers in the next three years,’’ said Pawar.
