Posts
Food
Security:Modalities of Management
If you don’t diversify,
incomes don’t rise. For that you need infrastructure and technology. Seeds are
important. You need MNREGA and food security because a lesson of world history
is that rise in wages triggers technical change in agriculture. Its not the
other way around.
The
Food Security Bill may be passed by the time this sees print and it seems
better to get back to the village and see how we can have sustained
agricultural and rural development growth as the basis of food security. Many
years ago I had modelled in the Plans that redistribution always needs to be
intertwined with growth. I know that in high growth areas poverty still remains
and co-relations of growth with reduced poverty don’t help the women and men
and their children are left out. But any food security scheme will only work
best in the larger context of widespread and diversified agricultural and rural
growth. So back to the village with some stories to anticipate what will really
happen and what to do about it.
The
typical image of agriculture in the eastern region is hard working poor farmers
producing paddy in the monsoon, getting hit by floods and then again gambling
in the winter rains, which when they fail lead to drought. Yields were
traditionally high in this fertile soil, but did not rise. All that is
changing, as we see the Second Green revolution in the Eastern Region. We need
more and better versions of that for growth is in spasmodic spurts, rather than
a continuous oiled machine and also not everywhere. When I last went there, the
district was Midnapur; not as fertile as Hooghly or the 24 Parganas. As you
drive out of Howrah, it is all factories, but surprise-surprise, there are now
dairies and nurseries. After a few hours of driving we stopped by for a meal
and the fish curry, rice and channa dal and topping off with a sandesh and
mishti dohi, brought back my childhood in Calcutta. The waiter was happy that
an obvious Pathan like character could eat fish and bhat in the Bengali style
without first taking out the bones even when the fish was the delectable but
not so easy to eat rohu. The Midnapur I landed up in was red laterite soil and
the slope of the land didn’t retain water. It drained back into the rivers; an
agricultural extension man’s nightmare.
