[Answered] Just as in the defence sector, India needs to reorient its approach to agricultural self-reliance with a great focus on R&D. Elaborate

Self-reliance means specialisation in commodities in which we have a comparative advantage, export them and import those in which we don’t have a significant comparative advantage.  To foster innovation and technology development in Defence and Aerospace iDEX is created. It aims to create an ecosystem by engaging Industries including MSMEs, Start-ups, Individual Innovators, R&D institutes and provide them support to carry out R&D. Technology Development Fund (TDF) has been created under DRDO to promote self-reliance in defence technology through participation of Public/Private industries especially MSMEs and startups.

India has achieved much more success in developing self-reliant defence sector. On the front of agriculture and food production, India is a self-reliant nation having a record output of cereals, fruits, vegetables and highest production of milk in the world. Steady surge in extreme weather events and vagaries of monsoon made Indian farming vulnerable to frequent crop failures that initiated large-scale migration of farmers to non-farming sectors. Although eNAM (Electronic National Agriculture Market) which aims to integrate existing agricultural mandis on an online platform is made to realise the vision of ‘One Nation, One Market’, there is still long way to go in achieving self-sufficiency.

Challenges for self-reliant agriculture:

• Poor Budgetary Allocation: The expenditure of both the Union government and the states on agri-R&D and education drifts around 0.6 per cent of agri-GDP. This is way below the minimum cut off point of 1 per cent.
• High dependence on edible oil import: It is around 55 to 60 per cent of consumption which creates heavy economic burden on households.
• Heavy Subsidies: Generally budget is heavily tilted towards safety nets and subsidies so it creates limitation in developing innovative technologies to achieve competitiveness at a global level.
• Private participation: It is necessary to provide finance to Primary Agricultural Co-operative Societies (PACS), FPOs agri-preneurs, agri-startups etc. to develop farm-gate infrastructure for farmers.

Way forward:

• The private players should be incentivized to develop technology which increases productivity of limited net sown area, depleting water resources and vulnerability to climate change.
• India’s budget allocations in the agri-food space should focus on creating “more from less” and need to be reoriented to ensure that there is more room for R&D expenditure.
• The financing should focus on altering the current atmosphere of a high incidence of hunger and malnutrition and keep a check on the climate change issues.