{"id":48995,"date":"2019-07-08T19:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T13:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?p=48995"},"modified":"2019-07-08T15:22:18","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T09:52:18","slug":"7-pm-road-to-agriculture-and-rural-prosperity-8th-july-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-road-to-agriculture-and-rural-prosperity-8th-july-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"7 PM | Road to agriculture and rural prosperity | 8th July, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/open?id=1E2vmphZG1v48KrPMu3PB_Anyiht_Etbn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Read\u00a0In-depth analysis of all the Editorials here (opens in a new tab)\">Read\u00a0In-depth analysis of all the Editorials here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong> How\nAgriculture and rural development are important to maintain the economic growth\nof India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>India is\npredominantly a rural country with two third Population and 70% workforce\nresiding in rural areas. Rural economy constitutes 46 per cent of national\nincome. Despite the rise of urbanization more than half of India\u2019s population\nis projected to be rural by 2050. Thus growth and development of rural economy\nand population is a key to overall growth and inclusive development of the\ncountry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why the government should focus on agriculture and\nrural sector<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Around\ntwo-thirds of India\u2019s population is in rural areas and a large proportion of\nthis population lives in abject poverty. According to the ICE 360\u00b0 Household\nSurvey conducted in 2016, of the bottom 20% of India\u2019s income quintile, 89%\nlive in rural areas.<\/li><li>India is\na global agricultural powerhouse. It is the world\u2019s largest producer of milk,\npulses, and spices, and has the world\u2019s largest cattle herd (buffaloes), as\nwell as the largest area under wheat, rice and cotton. It is the second largest\nproducer of rice, wheat, cotton, sugarcane, farmed fish, sheep &amp; goat meat,\nfruit, vegetables and tea. The country has some 195 m ha under cultivation of\nwhich some 63 percent are rain fed (roughly 125m ha) while 37 percent are\nirrigated (70m ha). In addition, forests cover some 65m ha of India\u2019s land. Even\nthough India is largest producer in cereals and dairy products but the per\ncapita average consumption is less than world\u2019s average. So the government\nshould focus on increasing the per capita availability of food grains by\nincreasing productivity.<\/li><li>According to NITI Aayog discussion paper\n\u201cchanging structure of rural economy in India implications for employment and\ngrowth\u201d Contrary to the common perception about predominance of agriculture in\nrural economy, about two third of rural income is now generated in non\nagricultural activities. Similarly, it looks amazing to find that more than\nhalf of the value added in manufacturing sector in India is contributed by\nrural areas.<\/li><li>Between 2001 and 2011, India\u2019s urban\npopulation increased by 31.8 per cent as compared to 12.18 per cent increase in\nthe rural population. This led to unplanned rural to urban migration,\nparticularly in search of better economic opportunities, is putting severe\npressure on urban amenities and forcing a large number of low wage migrants\nfrom rural areas to live in unhygienic and deprived conditions. Thus, to check\nunplanned migration from rural to urban areas and to improve socio economic\nconditions of vast majority of population in the country, there is a need to\nmake rural economy stronger and create employment opportunities in rural\neconomic activities.<\/li><li><strong>Rural Segment Quickly Catching Up: <\/strong>The Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector\nin rural and semi- urban India is estimated to cross US$ 100 billion by 2025. According to the third annual edition of\nAccenture Research, \u201cMasters of Rural Markets: From Touch points to Trust\npoints &#8211; Winning over India&#8217;s Aspiring Rural Consumers,\u201d rural consumers are\nparticularly aspiring or striving to purchase branded, high quality products.\nConsequently, businesses in India are optimistic about growth of the country&#8217;s\nrural consumer markets, which is expected to be faster than urban consumer\nmarkets.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Budget interventions with respect to\nagriculture and rural sector:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Budget 2019-20 ensured to form 10,000\nnew Farmer Producer Organizations,<strong> <\/strong>to ensure economies of scale for farmers over the\nnext five years.<strong><\/strong><\/li><li>Fishing and fishermen communities are\nclosely aligned with farming and are crucial to rural India. Through a focused\nScheme \u2013 the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) \u2013 the Department of Fisheries\nwill establish a robust fisheries management framework. This will address\ncritical gaps in the value chain, including infrastructure, modernization,\ntraceability, production, productivity, post-harvest<strong> <\/strong>management, and quality control.<strong><\/strong><\/li><li>The SFURTI envisions setting up 100 new\nclusters during 2019-20 which should enable 50,000 artisans to join the\neconomic value chain.<strong><\/strong><\/li><li>&nbsp;The\nScheme for Promotion of Innovation, Rural Industry and Entrepreneurship\u2019\n(ASPIRE) has been consolidated for setting up of Livelihood Business Incubators\n(LBIs) and Technology Business Incubators (TBIs). The Scheme contemplates to\nset up 80 Livelihood Business Incubators (LBIs) and 20 Technology Business\nIncubators (TBIs) in 2019-20 to develop 75,000 skilled entrepreneurs in\nagro-rural industry sectors.<strong><\/strong><\/li><li>Government will work with State\nGovernments to allow farmers to benefit from e-NAM. The Agriculture Produce\nMarketing Cooperatives (APMC) Act should not hamper farmers from getting a fair\nprice for their produce. Ease of doing business and ease of living both<strong> <\/strong>should\napply to farmers too.<strong><\/strong><\/li><li>The government and people shall go back\nto basics on one count: Zero Budget Farming. We need to replicate this\ninnovative model through which in a few States farmers are already being\ntrained in this practice. Steps such as this can help in doubling our farmers\u2019\nincome in time for our<strong> <\/strong>75th year of Independence.<strong><\/strong><\/li><li>Government\nPropose\nto expand the Women SHG interest subvention programme to all districts.\nFurthermore, for every verified women SHG member having a Jan Dhan Bank Account,\nan overdraft of 5,000 shall be allowed. One woman in every SHG will also be<strong> <\/strong>made\neligible for a loan up to 1 lakh under the MUDRA Scheme.<strong><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Issues\nand measures related to above budget interventions:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Women SHG and MUDRA scheme:<\/strong> Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) is a flagship scheme of\nGovernment of India to&nbsp;\u201cfund the unfunded\u201d by bringing such enterprises to\nthe formal financial system and extending affordable credit to them.<strong> <\/strong>The average of sanctioned loans under Mudra Yojana comes at Rs 46,530\nwhile that of disbursed amount is Rs 45,034. This amount could not be\nconsidered enough to launch a start up that could provide jobs to others. This\namount is also much lower than the average per capita income of Indians &#8211; Rs\n1.11 lakh for 2017-18, according to advance estimates of the Central Statistics\nOrganization (CSO). So the government should ensure that the budgetary\nannouncement of 1lakh credit to women should reach on time. <\/li><li><strong>Farmer Producers Organization:<\/strong> An FPO,\nformed by a group of farm producers, is a registered body with producers as\nshareholders in the organization. It deals with business activities related to\nthe farm produce and it works for the benefit of the member producers. These\norganizations face challenges such as funding, capacity building and value\nchain investments. Domestic policies and laws also needed to be addressed for\ngrowing the FPOs. To harness the economies of scale by forming FPO, government\nand RBI shall frame guidelines for the proper ecosystem to develop FPOs.<\/li><li><strong>Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF):<\/strong> The word \u2018budget\u2019\nrefers to credit and expenses, thus the phrase &#8216;Zero Budget&#8217; means without\nusing any credit, and without spending any money on purchased inputs. &#8216;Natural\nfarming&#8217; means farming with Nature and without chemicals. According to Subhash\nPalekar, in his home state of\nMaharashtra, a considerable number of followers have returned to practicing\nchemical farming as they failed to improve their incomes with ZBNF, because\nIndia has 16 agro-ecological climatic zones where each zone has its own\nspecific characteristics.&nbsp;ZBNF has\nbeen in vogue on a small scale across several farms in the country for over a\ndecade now, but recently successful in Andhra Pradesh. So the government should\nreplicate the same success story throughout the country.<\/li><li><strong>e-NAM and APMC act<\/strong>: National Agriculture Market (eNAM) is a pan-India\nelectronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC mandis to create a\nunified national market for agricultural commodities.\nThe eNAM portal, launched by the\nCentre in April 2016, has 45.4lakh farmers and 417mandis across the country\nregistered with it. This number is disappointing, given that there are more\nthan 13crore farmers in India. To implement it, each State has to first amend\nits APMC Act to make a provision for electronic auction as a mode of price\ndiscovery, allow a single license across the State and have market fees levied\nat a single point. Currently, only 13 States have enacted the necessary\namendments. So the central government should persuade state governments to\nimplement Agricultural produce and livestock marketing (promotion and\nfacilitation) Act 2017, as early as possible.<\/li><li><strong>SFURTI<\/strong>: SFURTI is\nScheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries. To organize the traditional industries and artisans into clusters\nto make them competitive and provide support for their long term sustainability\nand economy of scale. While\ntraditional industry has huge potential, but this industry is faced with myriad\nchallenges arising from the absence of patronage, lack of quality Raw Material;\nwant of working capital, poor infrastructure (education, roads, etc.) and the\ninflux of cheaper substitutes. So government should encourage the E-commerce\nplayers to participate and to promote the growth of traditional industries.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Way forward<\/strong>: India is a land of villages, and in\nvillages nearly 50% population dependent on agriculture and related activities.\nTaking the above mentioned measures, both the governments (central and state)\ncan work towards a prosperous rural India with agriculture in focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/business\/agri-business\/budget-2019-the-road-to-agriculture-and-rural-prosperity\/article28307177.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/business\/agri-business\/budget-2019-the-road-to-agriculture-and-rural-prosperity\/article28307177.ece<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read\u00a0In-depth analysis of all the Editorials here Context: How Agriculture and rural development are important to maintain the economic growth of India. India is predominantly a rural country with two third Population and 70% workforce residing in rural areas. Rural economy constitutes 46 per cent of national income. Despite the rise of urbanization more than&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-road-to-agriculture-and-rural-prosperity-8th-july-2019\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">7 PM | Road to agriculture and rural prosperity | 8th July, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":3567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-pm","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/brief-image.jpg?fit=1000%2C500&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704765018},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}