IGIDR in her silver jubilee

1 December 2012

Today, IGIDR
 is decked in her bridal finery,
To begin with pomp and grandeur
 her silver jubilee show.

Current and some past Directors
 are all in their territory,
With a few former RBI Governors
 and the incumbent one in tow.

Multitude of dignitaries
 are lined up for their wizardry,
In attendance are invitees
 who listen and wonder in wow.

Options and Priorities for Agriculture in India on the Eve of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan

Introduction

The Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai and the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi with the support from the Planning Commission, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and The World Bank conducted a two day workshop on 'Policy Options and Investment Priorities for Accelerating Agricultural Productivity and Development in India' at the India International Centre, New Delhi during 10-11 November 2011. Besides the inaugural session (where Dr Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission delivered the keynote address), there were six technical sessions, viz., agriculture in the global perspective, agricultural growth, agricultural investments, technology, marketing and structural transformations, and three panel discussions on perspectives from the states, government perspectives and the way forward. Based on these deliberations, some policy aspects are raised on the eve of the twelfth five-year plan.

Issues and concerns

While agricultural productivity and development is an important question, there could be different perspectives such as increasing foodgrains production, providing livelihood security for more than half the population dependent on agriculture or efficiency in resource use of not only land but also water and other inputs. All these have their own rationale, but they can conflict with each other and that is the challenge for planning. In addition, questions of food inflation in recent times and the ongoing debate on food and nutrition security as also crop diversification, efficiency of small holdings and soil fatigue are also relevant concerns.

Learning from others

Drawing on the comparative study with a focus on Brazil, China and Indonesia, the lessons for India is to focus on research in facilitating appropriate technology, sprucing up the research and extension systems, emphasis on diversification and investment in infrastructure. At a global level, increasing hunger, adverse impacts on production on account of climate change and shift in acreage to biofuels among others are matters that are also pertinent for India.

Growth in agriculture: variation across states

After a period of deceleration from mid-90s, there has been a revival in agricultural growth in the eleventh plan, but this revival is being backed by a technology that is increasing the cost rather than reducing it, which jeopardises the livelihood sustainability of the mass of people dependent on agriculture. There are differences in priorities and policies across states and agro-climatic regions and the planning at the centre should take this into note. In particular, the rainfed regions and districts with lower productivity need special attention. The Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) should be bottom-up in spirit and not just in letter, that is, start planning from the village level by involving the local communities based on their requirements.

Investments in agriculture: public and private

Public investments should sustain the momentum on irrigation, research & development, and rural roads; focus on rainfed and eastern region; and find ways to make fixed capital efficient among others. The policy environment to facilitate private corporate investment should also look into appropriate regulatory and institutional issues. Farmer household level private investment is complementary to public investment, but for this to happen, appropriate credit facilitation should be provided by the formal banking institutions keeping the marginal and small farmer in mind. Further, research should be encouraged with farm level data. The unit level data maintained by the Department of Economics and Statistics (DES) and used by Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) should be made available to researchers so as to help in the policy deliberations and planning process.

Technology: a critical link

New technological developments are required to improve production and this necessitates change in agricultural education, facilitating research that has to be integrated with on-field training and extension education, draws on farmers' innovations and incorporates the ecological concerns among others. For all these, appropriate additional investment is required in research and development. There should be ample scope to integrate Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA) to the needs of the states with a focus on providing appropriate services, as required by the farmers. Efforts should be made to reduce yield gaps from research station potential to on-farm demonstration to actual farm outputs. Independent of the input-intensive cultivation, the alternative paradigm of rainfed cultivation with a focus on soil organic matter, supplementary irrigation, seed bank, millet production along with small ruminants and fisheries among others may be promoted on a pilot basis under the twelfth five-year plan in some selected blocks of backward rainfed districts. This also requires building up of farmer-friendly institutions to facilitate their livelihood security.

Market: beyond efficiencies

In recent years, Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) laws have been enacted or are in the process of being enacted in most states, but some of the variation across states need to be bridged with subsequent amendments and the enacted laws need to be properly implemented and where there are no laws, appropriate regulatory structures need to be put in place. There is a case to empower marginal and small farmers by expanding their choice set so that they benefit from market transactions and this may be possible through pro-poor value chains, and appropriate contracts that are situation-specific to guard them against price and income shocks. Risk mitigation at the household level has to be based on diversification and low external input technologies. There is a need for appropriate insurance instruments – crop insurance at the farm level and weather-based insurance to factor in different stages of crops life cycle and input requirements.

Village studies: multiple perspectives required

The changing technological and market scenario as also socio-economic intervention is also bringing about a lot of changes in rural India. Revival of village studies from multiple perspectives would help complement our understanding from large scale surveys and macro data. Such studies need to be encouraged.

The way forward

On the eve of the twelfth five-year plan, the challenges for agriculture are multiple – climate change, foodgrains production, technology fatigue, resource use efficiency, food inflation, and livelihood security for those dependent on agriculture among others. It requires coming together of many domains and perspectives, as has been shown in this workshop wherein one received support from the government and multilateral organizations involving researchers from Indian as well as International institutes with an attempt to initiate a conversation between agricultural scientists and economists.

Alternative technologies emphasizing on sustainable and conservation practices with a focus on rainfed regions need to be explored. This has to be complemented with appropriate institutions: (1) those that organize farmers from the village level to aggregate their input and market requirements, (2) those that help to leverage scientific developments and the claimed potential with on-field outcomes at the farmer level through appropriate research and extension structure that are bi-directional in nature and also take into consideration the local situation – both agro-climatic as also socio-economic, and (3) those that facilitate collection and analysis of quality data at the micro (farm or household level including village studies), meso (regional or state-specific studies) and macro (aggregate economy level studies) level. There is also a case to bring together the concerns of agricultural development with that of rural development.

The task ahead is daunting. To quote Robert Frost, “…And miles to go before (we) sleep, And miles to go before (we) sleep.”

(This has been prepared by Srijit Mishra in consultation with S Mahendra Dev and with inputs from Ritika Palit, Sanjay Prasad, Upasana Sharma and D Suganthi.)

Some of my other recent related posts are:

Size-class and returns to cultivation in India

Food, hunger and ethics

Report on strengthening the role of agriculture for nutrition secure India

Poverty estimates in India

Report on Strengthening the Role of Agriculture for Nutrition Secure India

The Indira Gandhi Institute ofDevelopment Research (IGIDR), Mumbai and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), New Delhi organized a workshop ‘Strengthening the Role of Agriculture for Nutrition Secure India’ on 13 September 2011 at New Delhi.

In his welcome and opening remarks, PK Joshi pointed out that the concerns of hunger, micronutrient deficiencies and undernourishment should take our thinking beyond growth. He also mentioned that one per cent growth in agriculture has a greater impact on poverty reduction than a similar growth in non-agricultural sector.  He urged the need to look at agriculture and nutrition linkages through three lenses - economic, social and governance.

S Mahendra Dev indicated that one of the purposes of the workshop is to bring in agriculture-nutrition linkages into the policy making exercise. In particular, the twelfth five year plan. Five concerns that he raised are (a) to increase productivity of rainfed resource poor regions with an emphasis on small and marginal farmers, (b) to diversify the diet beyond cereals and include locally available nutritious food, (c) to curb food inflation, particularly for proteins like pulses, (d) a greater need for empowerment of women, and (e) convergence of agriculture with other programmes. Also see his recent co-authored policy note, Pro-nutrition agriculture in India.

In his inaugural address, Vijay Vyas used some recent nutrition indicators on children and women from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) where India, when compared with similar indicators for other countries, is nearly at the bottom. In addition to low levels, he also pointed out their persistence and in some cases the deterioration of malnourishment. To a large extent, India has addressed the issue of chronic hunger. But seasonal hunger, particularly during the period after sowing and before harvesting, for some sub-groups of population in agricultural communities is a matter of concern. However, when it comes to calorie-protein adequacy and micronutrient requirements we are still below the norm. We are not even able to provide 1800 calories to many and then again a substantial amount of what is provided is only through cereals. Thus, it is not just agriculture, but also the dietary intake, economic accessibility and environmental factors that matter. He reiterated the pivotal role of agriculture both as a supplier but also as a sector that can generate maximum demand. He called for more production, more variety in terms of nutri-cereals, fruits and vegetables and to make this possible the need for changes or a move beyond rice and wheat through policies of pricing, credit facilitation, distribution and institutional reforms among others.

The keynote address was given by RB Singh who began by quoting Hippocrates “Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine be they food” and then goes on to reiterate Dr Vyas’s point by presenting actual data on India’s poor nutrition indicators in a global comparative perspective, particularly with Brazil and China, for undernourishment, underweight children, low birth weight, low body mass index of mothers, greater fertility, higher child anaemia, lower expenditure on child care, lower vaccination, lower mother’s literacy and lower public expenditure. Both Brazil and China also intervened on clean drinking water, sanitation hygiene, education and awareness and backed this up with political will. He reminded the gathering about the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 reiterating the need for Lifelong Livelihood Security and how neglecting issues of child malnutrition can have adverse impacts on the economy. There is immense scope for research towards leveraging agriculture for nutrition. He put up a case in favour of new technology for seeds, but on genetic engineering he said that cisgenic (genes taken from the same species or a closely related one) will have certain advantages and less regulatory requirement when compared against the transgenic (genes from other species like the Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt). He also highlighted the importance of home/kitchen garden in meeting most of the micro nutrient deficiencies. He praised the rich gene biodiversity of India and said that we should maintain it and propagate agro-ecologically differentiated practices. Keeping the importance of children in this concern of nutrition, he concludes by showing the picture of a child with the caption “Hold my today; I will hold your tomorrow.”

In her presentation, Suneetha Kadiyala began by highlighting the overall scenario in India, higher growth, but not doing well in human development dimension and with much higher share of poor and malnourishment (both undernourished and overweight). The agriculture sector is not doing well and one has observed a high food price index. In the global hunger index, India is not doing well and the state-specific hunger index also does not augur well for almost all the states analyzed. To address nutrition problems, direct interventions like infant feeding and bio-fortification could address only one-third of the problem whereas indirect interventions through agriculture, social protection, education, health system, and women’s empowerment turn out to be important. Some of the emerging findings from their recent study are as follows. (a) A cross-country analysis indicates that agricultural growth helps in the reduction of stunting, but the result weakens when Indian states are included in the analysis suggesting a poor linkage or disconnect between agriculture and nutrition in India. (b) There is a data disconnect as the existing information make it difficult to analyze the said linkage. (c) Over the years, dietary diversity has increased and the food base has moved to non-cereal sources but mother’s education and household income seem to have a positive impact on diversity. Some of the key entry points from her presentation are that household income matters, agriculture influences dietary pattern, women’s asset ownership is critical for decision making and nutritional outcomes, and that direct health and nutrition interventions matter.

Praduman Kumar’s talk was from a small holder perspective. It began with the contrast that at an aggregate level, India is self-sufficient in food, but it also has the largest number of hungry and poor and most of them happen to be agricultural labourer and marginal farmers with less than one hectare of land. The presentation pointed out that demand, particularly of non-foodgrain crops will increase, but supply will not. This will increase prices and reduce per capita consumption and also have an adverse affect on dietary diversification. Thus, for a food/nutrition secure India we need to focus on livestock, education, irrigation, aquaculture, horticulture, and dryland agriculture. There is a need to bridge research and policy gaps and integrate them with local wisdom. The presentation ended by showing a critical triangle with the three dimensions being food security and agricultural growth, poverty reduction and rural development, and environmental sustainability.

The next presentation was on Food Security Atlas of Rural India by Preet Rustagi, which was based on a district level exercise for rural areas of eight states. At the district level they came up with two indicators – one on food security based on 12 indicators (of which four were on availability, six on access and two on absorption) and an outcome indicator based on underweight children and under-five mortality. From the 281 districts, 101 are food insecure (all the 18 in Jharkhand, most (13 out of 16) in Chhattisgarh, 29 out of 45 in Madhya Pradesh and 19 out of 30 in Odisha and the relatively food secure districts are mostly in Uttar Pradesh (16) and one each in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. There is a clear connection between food insecurity and low irrigation, poor connectivity, income insecurity, hilly terrain, higher proportion of scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, higher proportion of agricultural labourers, low agricultural wages and low female literacy. However, there did not seem to be much connection with the outcome indicators. Severe or extreme insecurity in outcome were observed in 82 districts (31 in Uttar Pradesh, 26 in Madhya Pradesh (there could be some connection here) and 15 in Rajasthan).  The way forward is to focus on the food insecure and poor outcome districts on various associated risk factors, but the interventions should be locally relevant.

Speaking from a gender perspective, Bina Agarwal brought into the discourse some welfare and efficiency concerns. She vouched the concept of land bank, which can act as a depositor of landowners and creditors to tenants. The landowners could be given some minimum returns and higher returns if the land is put to use by tenants. The latter can work in groups, but they need not worry about going to individuals for leasing in. She also mentioned about integrating other support services for the final tiller.

Coming back again, S Mahendra Dev raised some additional issues. The question of availability/access is important, but so is the productivity of water. This reminds RB Singh’s keynote that one kilogram of potato requires 900 litres of water but one kilogram of beef requires 15,500 litres of water. The other concern is that of climate change, as it could adversely affect the yield. Other matters of concern are to bring nutri-cereals into the public distribution system, who should grow pulses (small or large farmers), the slowing growth of fruits and vegetables (or as someone said, the slowing down of horticulture revolution), bridging the gap in prices between what farmers receive and what consumers pay, and the need for convergence of different district level plan through the panchayati raj institutions. An important point that came up during the discussion is the increasing input costs and adverse impacts of pesticide usage.

Veena Rao, a bureaucrat, lamented that nothing much happened out of the National Nutrition Policy 1993 and the National Plan of Action on Nutrition 1995 where the linkage between agriculture and nutrition was spelt out. However, some of these have been taken up in the Karnataka Nutrition Mission. The important ones being that nutrition is to be addressed from a life cycle approach – infants, children, adolescents, lactating and pregnant mother; bridging calorie, protein and micronutrient deficiency through appropriate intervention to different target groups; accelerating, integrating and tightly monitoring multi-sectoral ongoing programmes; achieving convergence between different programmes and covering pragmatic gaps; involving civil society and community; launching awareness and making available nutritious and energy rich food at lower cost through public-private partnership. This reminds me of the ‘health and nutrition’ intervention through the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in Andhra Pradesh. In some villages where nutritious food was given to lactating and pregnant mothers, the cost of food in some villages could be met by the participants doing some packaging work for the local grocery shop, and as a result none of the child births in this village was less than 3.5 kilograms – the proof of the pudding lies in its eating.   

Kaustav Banerjee, representing the revitalizing rainfed agriculture, pointed out that from the perspective of availability at the aggregate level one should not be worried for foodgrains as a whole. While there availability at a local level does matter, but a matter of greater concern is the unavailability of millets in adequate quantities even at an aggregate level. Further rainfed agriculture comprises two-thirds of the farmed area but has attracted comparatively less policy design and interventions. Thus, there is the need for a new architecture to address this, which should be holistic and integrate agriculture with livestock and area development.

Comparing the Empowered Group of Ministers draft versions of the National Food Security Act to that prepared by the National Advisory Council, Biraj Patnaik pointed out that the former has several shortcomings. It does not have the definitions of some important concepts such as child, malnutrition, starvation, job chart and health centre upfront and the definitions of foodgrains, homeless person and public distribution system are relatively restricted. The entitlements for a person per day have been reduced from four to three kilograms of foodgrains. There are no special provision for single women, lactating and pregnant mothers, malnourished children and emergency and disaster affected persons. More importantly the rights of the people living with starvation have been watered down. As a result, the links with nutrition is  absent. He also raised the attention of the house to two other things. The global land grab in Africa where many countries (including India) and private companies (including Indian) are leasing in land to produce food to address shortfalls in their own countries, besides building food reserves to make gains through speculation and trading, is contributing to less land being available for the production of food for the local economies in Africa. The other concern was on the role of the commodities futures markets and its implication on food prices (see the Report of the Expert Committee To Study the Impact of Futures Trading on Agricultural Commodity Prices, particularly the note by the Chairperson of the committee, Abhijit Sen).

In his remarks, Sukhadeo Thorat pointed out that some vulnerable social groups suffered more in terms of malnutrition. If one factors in the gender dimension, women from these social groups are found to be suffering more. To address this, there is need to have a group specific policy. He also pointed out that the larger scheme of things makes the farmer take a decision on crop production based on profitability and not on nutrition. See his co-authored policy note on addressing the unequal burden of malnutrition. 

Ramesh Chand began by pointing out the weakening link between agriculture and nutrition and the paradox of higher production as also high prices and hunger existing concurrently. He raised the concerns of India being a global diabetic capital, of whether lower consumption of 1400/1600 kilocalorie by some people is because of absence of purchasing power or low requirement based on different homeostatic conditions, and of the fact that people continue to avoid purchasing nutri-cereals even in those regions/areas where their prices are lower than rice and wheat. The homeostatic argument reminded of PV Sukhatme's dissent note to the Report of the Expert Group on Estimation of Proportion and Number of Poor, pp.46-49.

Pravesh Sharma, a bureaucrat with the Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium, made the last presentation where he outlined three things. First, he pointed out that the institutions of the 1970s that were meant to achieve a macro level food sufficiency are not appropriate to address livelihood and nutrition security. There is need to encourage producers organizations that embed technology credit and market and are also linked to pathways that foster food and nutrition security. Second, there should be diversification at the household or village level, which on the one hand will spread the risk of the small farmer, and on the other will also give the farmer household a healthy and varied nutrition basket. Third, there is a need to encourage the non-farm sector with good backward and forward linkages, as this would be of help for the small and marginal farmers, the local region as also the overall economy.

The day’s session ended with the remarks from Liz Drake, Department for International Development (DFID) and the hosts S Mahaendra Dev, Director, IGIDR and PK Joshi, In-charge, IFPRI, New Delhi. The takeaway from the exercise is that a small group will work towards formulating key policy suggestions that would be submitted to the Government of India. From IGIDR’s perspective, this has been a nice collaborative exercise with IFPRI and in New Delhi and one is looking forward to more such endeavours in the future.

(The author thanks Bhaskar Goswami for his suggestions on an earlier write-up.)

Also see my post, Food, Hunger and Ethics.

World Statistics Day

The first World Statistics Day, 20 October 2010 (20.10.2010) went by without any formal activity on campus at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. However, for the Research Methodology course there was a lecture on Measuring Government Output, which was apt for the occasion. This was preceded by a lecture on Price Indices in National Accounting the previous day (19 October 2010).


From a research methodology perspective, the two lectures also have some additional learning. Let me elaborate on two points.

The first is to go down to details. While looking into a problem, start asking questions and while answering some of the questions you will end up many more questions leading to a search for some more answers. The process of raising questions and answering is rewarding as it will take you a step closer towards unraveling 'curiosity', which is an unending journey.

This reminds of a folklore from the Indian Statistical Institute. Post-partition, post-independence in New Delhi a sizable proportion of Muslim population were staying inside the Red Fort. Food was provided to people inside, but there was a feeling in the establishment that large amounts were siphoned.

If I recall correctly, Pandit Nehru called up Professor Mahalanobis so that the Indian Statistical Institute could help them out. There was no way that they could do a survey because anybody going inside would have been killed and likewise someone coming out would have met the same fate.

The statisticians went about the problem in the following manner. They took expert advise to arrive at the minimum amount of salt an individual will consume per day. This figure was divided by the total amount of salt requisitioned (as a proxy for having been consumed) to arrived at an estimate of the total population. Similar expert advise helped them arrive at the maximum amount of rice and other items an individual will consume per day and and divided this by the total amount of that item requisitioned to get estimates of the population. Note that the minimum salt per day will give overestimates of population whereas maximum amount for rice and other items will give underestimates of population. Despite this, the population estimates through rice and other items were many times higher than that estimated by salt giving us an extent of the corruption.

The second is to inculcate self-doubt. This is easier said then done. But, then these are some of the first principles. It is only when we start doubting that we raise questions. When we put ourselves to scrutiny, we may be able to appreciate another point of view. As an aside, it reminds me of the proverbial statement, "if you point a finger at someone then do keep in mind that three of the fingers are pointing towards you."

Having said this, I would like to state that one should be careful in dealing with statistics. It has the potential to mislead. You must have heard about the story of how three persons repeat a lie and make a fourth person believe that the lie is indeed the truth. No wonder, it is often said that "there are three kind of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." It is for this that everyone in the business of statistics should work with honesty and integrity in their observation and analysis.

This takes me to Tycho Brahe, who till his death believed that the Sun went around the Earth, but despite this belief he did not tamper with his observations and it is for this that Kepler could come up the three laws of planetary motion. Brahe's observation also paved the path for least-squares curve fitting with the most popular being the linear regression analysis in statistics. Long live statistics!

Singling Violin Dr Rajam

2nd October, 2010 at 6:30 P.M.

Padma Vibhushan Dr. N. Rajam accompanied in the Tabla by Shri A Pathak gave a Violin concert at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) as part of SPIC-MACAY. True to the occasion, she began with a rendering of Vaishnava Janatu, a light classical of the famous Bhajan. The difference, between lay people and classically trained musicians playing a bhajan is that they can bring in their imagination in between the stanzas. The variation of volume and the pauses all being deliberate to make the music more appealing, aesthetic and emotional.

The second composition she played was a classical one where she interacted with the people and explained by stating that we begin with the Stahi, which has two lines, each line played twice then the first line is played once and then we play the alap where again each of the two line are played twice and then we end with the stahi. The alap, boltan and tan are intersperced with the Mukhda. Her imagination along with the imagination of the Tablist was followed by a jugalbandi, which she referred to as the question and answer session - she questions through her violin and the tablist responds through his beats.

On the question of the differene between Hindustani and Classical she told that both have the same base 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni' and the same way that the Stahi, Alap and other things are but only the way they present is different. She also responded by explaining the ascending and descending notes. On the question of how lay people can recognize a raga she suggested that buy CD of your liking and listen to it continuously for a month before going to the next one. This way you will be able to identify the raga. After all, it is a language one can only know by learning it.

Finally she along with the tablist played a nice composition where everyone was enthralled. All those who did not know the lines were also humming with her. And this is why she is referred to as the 'singing violin'. It was a nice day to spend the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Rudra Veena Rendition

The rendition of Rudra Veena rendition by Ustad Baha'ud'din Mohiuddin Dagar on 6th March 2009 evening as part of Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth (SPIC-MACAY) programme at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) was really a very classic experience. I am not a student of music but there are a few moments that I would like to mention. There was a time when I felt as if 'Oum' was vibrating all over. At another point, one felt that the music calls for Shiva's Tandava. These may be my own feeling but I loved the experience.