Tamil Nadu has announced the presentation of a separate budget for agriculture. This has been demanded by Dr S Ramadoss of PMK.
The need for a separate budget is rather weak. The share of agriculture in the state’s GDP (around 8 per cent) has been falling more steeply than the national average of around 14 per cent. However, there has not been a corresponding steep drop in the people dependant on agriculture; this is estimated at around 45 per cent which still forms a sizeable vote bank.
The state has serious water issues with its neighbouring states – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. In the absence of perennial rivers and erratic monsoons, there has been over-dependence of the state on groundwater.
Lack of focus on the selection of crops has resulted in an over-emphasis on water-guzzling crops of paddy and sugarcane. The state did expand the area under cane and peaked production of sugar to as high as 25 lakh tonnes contributed by 45 sugar mills. In years of poor rainfall, sugar production has dropped to as low as 8 lakh tonnes. Today nearly half of the sugar mills remain closed. Those that have survived are thriving on the byproduct alcohol supplied to the booming liquor sector.
The other water-intensive crop, rice, has also been having little scope for sustained high production. IE has pointed to the average annual growth of Tamil Nadu during 1967 – 2017 at around 1 per cent against that of Punjab’s in double digits. In fact, Tamil Nadu is not a No.1 producer of any agricultural commodity due to lack of focus. One can see such a focus of Gujarat on cotton and groundnut to great benefit.
Tamil Nadu has done well in horticultural crops and has emerged strong in banana, mango and several other fruits. State policy of incentives can help in a sharper focus on selecting crops with great potential for growth and profits.
Attention is also needed to streamline agriculture education. There has been a proliferation of agricultural colleges and even agriculture universities. There is clamour for more. There is little attention to the gainful employment of the huge turnout of graduates, post-graduates and even PhDs. There is the clamour for government or corporate jobs which are limited in number. We are witnessing a situation similar to the proliferation of engineering colleges resulting in pathetic failures of large numbers admitted to engineering colleges and equally large numbers into graduate unemployable.
