It is over a year since the new Government has bloomed and fully grown rail and finance budgets have been planted. Research on a genetically modified women’s reservation seed is completed and tested in the Rajya Sabha Laboratory. You close your eyes and the only crop that comes to your mind is a certain family tree Lady Chairperson Gardner and village loving General Secretary Gardner watering congress flora in green Delhi and elsewhere. Does the Govt have a vision? Perhaps, cage (sorry, save) the Tiger and grow the Elephant should be one!

Recent market trends show that manufacturing growth in India is about 16% and perhaps for the first time it has nipped Agriculture in the bud. The Govt has no real control here having reasonably freed Industry. However, it controls Agriculture much the way our Agricultural Minister hoards sugar (eat less sugar he warns- as if his mouth is full of sugarcane) and concentrates on his bowling & batting preity shilpa figures in the IPL. The comparison with our border nibbling neighbor being almost mandatory and inevitable -China’s reforms first began in Agriculture which ultimately provide the impetus to Industry!

Agriculture harvests bumper votes for politicians, hence it is subsidized, protected, price-controlled, and strangled (in the name of producing hybrids and bonsai’s to show case in pretty urban drawing rooms ?) India’s attitude towards Agriculture is much like the archetypal Indian film hero who protects his girl and dutifully obeys his Mom – ‘Mere paas Agriculture hai’! It is well known that few Indian farmers grow food only for their own consumption and the Govt’s Policy is essentially based on a myopic erroneous perception of Subsistence Farmers and a Big Brother attitude. Recall, the story of blind-men groping around the Elephant.

Indian Farmers need up-to-date researched seeds (including the kinds of Bt Brinjal), farming technology and infrastructure to knock on their huts. Incidentally someone is building them concrete ones – I would prefer concrete roads leading to every thatched hut and watch the huts gradually disappear (in a ‘maize’ of concrete jungle?).Floor prices need to be freed-up to encourage diversification, middlemen need to taught a lesson or two and Agriculture opened up to retail trade. Internet should enable the farmer access markets and determine selling prices (ITC is already doing this in certain parts of the country). Added to this, fragmented land holdings should be stitched together and water resources made available in the manner of: teach the guy fishing so that he can catch fish and survive, rather than hand over the fish. Subsidies may be rationalized to directly reach the farmer in the form of Coupons.

Now tell me, we all talk of inclusive growth and the ‘aam admi ‘–where does this poor guy live? (At a village near you!)India needs to become a powerhouse in Agriculture for which it has to be treated as an engine of growth. The Elephant would become bigger if tethered to Agriculture. Lets all become Agriculture crazy and populate the world with our grain & produce! Anybody listening? How about an Agriculture Budget, vote-on-account to start with, followed by a fully grown one in 2011?