| SPECIAL: RAINFED AREAS OF INDIA |
What are rainfed areas?
What do rainfed areas mean for India’s agricultural sector?
Why should we focus on rainfed areas?
Why have rainfed regions remained out of policy makers’ focus?
Why does the much talked about Green Revolution need to focus on rainfed areas?
What are rainfed areas?
Concentrated in poorest districts
Rainfed regions are those where crop production is exclusively dependent upon rainfall. In India rainfed regions cover 177 districts and exist in all agro-climatic zones. However, they are mostly concentrated in arid and semi-arid areas. Most of these districts are country’s poorest. Rainfed regions account for 68 per cent of the total net sown area in the country, according to the Union Ministry of Agriculture.
An assessment on agriculture done by S M Jharwal, principal advisor to the
government of India, shows that out of a net sown area of 141 million hectares (ha), 86 million ha is rainfed. Of the 190 million ha cropped area, the ultimate irrigation potential is assessed at 140 million ha. This potential takes into account major, medium, and minor irrigation systems, using surface as well as ground water sources. Already, the irrigation potential of about 103 million ha has been created, but the actual gross irrigated area is only 77 million ha. Based on these assessments, it emerges that currently 113 million ha area is rainfed, and even if we create a full irrigation potential of 140 million ha, based on the current utilisation (75 per cent), about 85 million ha would remain rainfed.
However, rainfed areas change depending on rainfall and water availability in reservoirs. During 1993- 94 and 2003–2004, rainfed areas declined from 90.88 million ha to 85.78 million ha.
State-wise assessment shows that 13 states account for about 92 per cent of the total rainfed area. These include the main states of Maharashtra (14.49 million ha), Madhya Pradesh (9.31 million ha), Rajasthan (12.15 million ha), Karnataka (7.46 million ha), Uttar Pradesh (4.42 million ha), Andhra Pradesh (6.48 million ha), Gujarat (6.58 million ha) and West Bengal (2.54 million ha).
Fragile, degraded
Ecologically, rainfed areas are the most fragile even though they sustain substantial populations. One-third of the dryland areas are highly degraded, which cannot be put under cultivation. They receive rainfall less than 500 mm or more than 1,500 mm and suffer from serious water management problems either way.
Some of these areas have black cotton soil, which has its own problems. Around 40 per cent of the estimated 100 million ha of dryland areas have shallow depth and have been affected by massive soil erosion limiting their production potential.
Rainfed regions are highly drought-prone. On an average, the rainfed regions of India suffer from droughts once in every three years. Western Rajasthan, eastern Rajasthan, Gujarat, western Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh are most vulnerable to droughts.
Often the drought persists for three to six years at different intensities causing multiplier negative effects on availability of water for drinking to humans and livestock, and on crop and fodder production.
80 per cent rainfed?
Going by the literary meaning of ‘rainfed’, (see box: It’s not irrigated agriculture), many more areas in India can be termed rainfed. Of the 54.56 million ha net irrigated area, 69.7 per cent is dependent on tanks, wells, and traditional water bodies. Barring the wells under command area, the rest, along with other sources, are also dependent on rain. This means that around 80 per cent the areas are rainfed.
According to the Central Ground Water Board, in 100 districts of India excessive ground water use has led to major economic and sustainability problems. These districts are termed ‘critical’ as far as their ground water scenario is concerned.
“These 100 districts account for over 60 per cent of India’s ‘critical’ and over exploited blocks. Eighty-five of these districts are in the rainfed regions. These areas happen to have the highest concentration of dug-wells in the country. Here falling water tables have the most disastrous impact on drying wells, forcing farmers to revert to rainfed farming,” says former planning minister Y C Alagh.
In fact, the working group on rainfed farming constituted by the Planning Commission to prepare the 11th Five-Year Plan said that the areas where ground water is stressed, should also be treated as rainfed areas and be covered under related programmes. This is because ground water is recharged by surface rainwater.
India’s irrigation strategy has mostly focused on surface water use even though groundwater use has increased drastically, particularly in rainfed areas. The expenditure on surface irrigation during the 10th Five-Year Plan was Rs 95,734.4 crore, compared to Rs 441.8 crore in the first plan.
During the first four five year plans, India created huge projects to harness surface water. Irrigation picked up. However, there was utilisation of available land and water. During the 5th Five-Year Plan (1974-78), the Command Area Development Programme was established to bridge this gap.
Immediately after this, new projects were again opened up for the 6th Five-Year Plan (1980-85). At the end of the 7th Five-Year Plan, there were 182 major and 312 medium projects requiring an estimated Rs 39,044 crore for completion.
The accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme was launched in 1996-97 for this purpose. This created irrigation for 93.5 million ha land by the end of the 9th Plan.
To illustrate, let’s take the example of 99 drought prone districts in 14 states. These districts have 42 per cent of the country’s cultivable lands and the government has 148 major and 195 medium projects. Most of them have not been completed.
So, the irrigated lands in these districts are what they used to be in the 1960s. In the 11th Five-Year Plan, the government proposes to bring 16 million ha under the irrigation potential with a target of bringing at least 64 million ha of new area under irrigation. Meanwhile, some 72,000 tanks and storages for rainwater are not being used.
| It’s not irrigated agriculture |
| Most definitions of ‘rainfed’ areas are unable to distinguish between rainfed and irrigated agriculture. Agriculture scientists have explained rainfed areas from various perspectives. In the Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics (1981), S L Bapna calls those areas rainfed, which have less than 25 per cent of gross cropped area under irrigation and average annual rainfall in the range of 500-1,500 mm. In an article titled Development strategies for rainfed agriculture N S Jodha endorses this view. K Subbarao has a different take. According to him, rainfed areas are those which have less than 25 per cent of gross cropped area under irrigation and an average annual rainfall of less than 970 mm. In a research paper, Dryland farming under the changing source environment in Gujarat (1993), Amita Shah and D C Shah define rainfed areas as those with percentage of gross cropped area under irrigation less than 25 per cent, and an average rainfall of 400-750 mm. In the book, Technological change and regional differentiation (1993), S K Thorat defines those areas as rainfed where the percentage of gross cropped area under irrigation is less than 10 per cent, and the average annual rainfall 375-750 mm. According to scientists with the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, those areas, which receive an annual rainfall of 750-800 mm, and have less than 30 per cent irrigated land, are rainfed. The ministry of agriculture classifies areas, which receive less than 750 mm rainfall annually, and have less than 30 per cent land under irrigation (both surface and ground water) as drylands. |
What do rainfed areas mean for India’s agricultural sector?
Rainfed agriculture plays an important role in India’s economy. Rainfed crops account for 48 per cent of the total area under food crops and 68 per cent of the area under non-food crops in the country.
Nearly 50 per cent of the total rural workforce and 60 per cent of the livestock in
the country are concentrated in the dry districts. “Rainfed areas are a paradox. On the one hand they remain where they were… but they also sustain a vast population in the most difficult situations,” says S P Mittal, former Principal Scientist at the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Institute. (see boxes: Livestock; Livelihoods in rainfed areas) Further, crop-wise analysis shows that major coarse cereals are grown in rainfed areas. Coarse cereals are still the main source of food for India’s poor. For instance, 92 per cent, 94 per cent and 80 per cent of the total area under Jowar, Bajra, and Maize respectively is rainfed.
Similarly, 86 per cent of the area under pulses is rainfed. Eighty three per cent groundnut and 99 per cent soybean are grown under rainfed conditions. About 73 per cent area under cotton is rainfed.
Though rainfed areas contribute in a major way to India’s agriculture, the difference between the output of rainfed and irrigated areas is remarkable. This is cited as a major reason for increasing regional disparity in India.
In fact, states with large rainfed areas have reported less agricultural growth in
the last decade (see: Growth rate in irrigated regions). On May 29, 2007, during the National Development Council meeting to finalise the 11th Five-Year Plan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh clearly stated this difference as a reason for worry as well as the target for the next Green Revolution he has been championing. “There is a technology fatigue in Indian agriculture,” Singh said, pointing to the Green Revolution method of increasing productivity. A redeeming feature of the semi-arid tropic regions is that there is a wide variation in crop yields within the region. For example, the average yield of sorghum varied from 370 kg/ha in farmers’ fields to 1,460 kg/ha in demonstration fields and 1,060 kg/ha with assured input supply.
There is still considerable scope for increasing productivity in fields because the yields actually being achieved for many crops in many states are much below their realisable potential (even of existing varieties if best cultivation practices are used).
In wheat, the unutilised potential is only 6 per cent in Punjab, but rises to 84 per cent in Madhya Pradesh. In Maize, the gap is only 7 per cent in Gujarat, but 300 per cent in Assam. In rice, the potential yield increase is over 100 per cent in Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh.
This is reflected in the fact that the yield of new varieties released in recent years has plateaued. Past strategies, which ushered in the Green Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, are not working anymore. Thus, there is a need to identify and focus on new strategies to achieve these goals.
In areas that witnessed the Green Revolution, the productivity levels are high. However, over the past decade yields have been stagnating and in some cases even declining.
Past resources of growth productivity like expansion in irrigation, and increased use of fertilisers and chemicals for pest control are no longer relevant. Policy regimes, which helped achieve increased productivity, are now not only irrelevant but are also contributing negatively to resource quality.
Why should we focus on rainfed areas?
India’s key to food security
As opportunities for further agricultural growth in irrigated regions get exhausted, food security and productivity growth in agriculture in India in the coming years will increasingly depend on improved utilisation of natural, human, financial and material resources and productivity growth in rainfed regions.
According to the national agriculture policy, India must achieve a growth rate of 3- 4 per cent per annum in the sector. The Union ministry of agriculture estimates that the total food grain production during 2006-07 was 209.2 million tonnes.
For maintaining food security even at the current nutritional levels, about 100 million tonnes of food grains need to be produced additionally by 2020. The total cropped area in India has remained static at around 140 million ha since 1970s. So these areas do not serve as a source of increased output. Thus, the increased yield must come from areas with the least irrigation potential. Even then, there is likely to be a shortfall of 38 million tonnes of food grain in 2020.
Further, the total contribution of irrigated agriculture to food grain production from both area expansion and yield improvement put together is likely be around 64 million tonnes in 2020 -- leaving a shortfall of 38 million tonnes. (see table: Projected demand and supply of food grain in India 2020 (million tonnes)
Projected demand and supply of food grain in India in 2020 (in million tonnes)
Projected food demand in 2020 |
307 |
Average food production in triennium ending 2002 |
205 |
Gap to be met |
102 |
Maximum possible contribution of irrigated agriculture of which from
|
38 26 |
Minimum balance required from rainfed agriculture |
38 |
Share of rainfed agriculture |
37 per cent |
Which implies that even in the best possible scenario of irrigation development, about 40 per cent of the additional supply of food grain needed to match future rise in demand will have to come from the unirrigated segment of Indian agriculture, most of which is located in dryland areas. And this demands that productivity of drylands be raised through intensive watershed work.
According to research done by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) on the rice economy of India, rainfed areas, particularly of eastern India, will be crucial in ensuring rice production that contributes 60 per cent of food grain production in the country.
Rice production registered a four-fold increase during 1950-90, but started declining since 1990. The decline was not only in the Green Revolution states like Punjab and Haryana, but also in rainfed areas like Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
The NABARD research shows that increase in rice production has been skewed. “The gain due to modern rice technology has been discriminatory against the resource poor areas, which are also dominated by small and marginal farmers (read rainfed areas),” says the report, Dynamics of rice economy in India: Emerging science and policy options.
As many Green Revolution states like Punjab are resorting to crop diversification, India has to look for areas where it can compensate the decline in rice production. It is estimated that by 2010, we have to compensate around 5.5 million tonnes of rice in the process of diversification.
“Apparently in order to compensate the loss of total production in such an event, the onus automatically falls on the lesser performing rainfed areas. It would require at least three times additional area at the given level of productivity of rice or to increase the productivity itself by two to three times,” says the report.
And this effort has to be made by the eastern states as these have hardly 36 per cent of the area under irrigation.
“Thus, it is the rainfed parts of Indian agriculture that have been the weakest, they are also the ones that contain the greatest unutilised potential for growth, and need to be developed if food security demands of 2020 are to be met,” says S Parthasarthy, who headed the technical committee on watershed programmes in India.
Change in cropping pattern
There has been an enormous shift in crops and cropping patterns in rainfed areas. Commercial crops like sunflower, soybean, and groundnuts have replaced the rainfed staple coarse cereals. More recently cotton is replacing sorghum in its potential areas.
Mixed cropping, which was universally practiced in rainfed areas, is now limited to hot arid and humid regions besides tribal regions. With the popularisation of bore wells in rainfed areas, rice and horticultural crops like fruits and vegetable have come up. Thus, ecological access to food has become acute.
In well-irrigated rainfed ecosystems, food habits have changed enormously -- rice has replaced coarse cereals. In fact, in the process the marketability of coarse cereals has become a problem. Even though the minimum support price (MSP) exists for these crops, there is no attempt to procure them in many areas.
“MSP is hardly implemented in a few states. For coarse cereals it almost doesn’t exist. This makes the market, and incentive for rainfed crops unsuitable,” says Ramesh Chand of the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (see box: MSP not helping rainfed areas).
| MSP not helping rainfed |
| A study by Ramesh Chand of the National Centre for
Agricultural Economics and Policy Research shows rainfed
farmers invariably suffer from price fluctuations and earn less out of agriculture. The government with a view to ensure remunerative prices to the farmers announces the minimum support prices (MSP). Farmers perceive MSP as a guarantee price for their produce from the government. These prices are announced by the Government at the commencement of the season to enable them to pursue their efforts with the assurance that the prices would not be allowed to fall below the level fixed by the government. However, “MSP is not implemented everywhere and is effective only in those places where the government has set a procurement price”, says Ramesh Chand. The study further notes that the farm harvest price (FHP) has a higher risk of going below the MSP. FHP is the actual price of the crop during three months after harvest. The study capturing the actual MSP and FHP in 12 states shows that Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Maharashtra where 66- 90 per cent of geographical area in each state are under rainfed conditions demonstrate fluctuations as high as Rs 300- 445 per quintal. States like Punjab and Haryana that have experienced the Green Revolution are stable with variations of Rs 5- 40 per quintal. The stability of prices in irrigated areas can be attributed to the presence of welldeveloped markets. |
That rainfed farmers are abandoning their most suitable crops is evident from the fact that the output of crops grown and eaten by the poorest of the poor (coarse grain, pulses and oilseeds) and grown largely in drylands, actually declined from 1995-2005 and the rate of growth of their yields decelerated considerably (see: Crop diversification).According to the working group on rainfed areas for the planning of the 11th Five-Year Plan, production of coarse grains did not show any significant trend from 1980-2003 in the country as well as in rainfed regions.
The moderate growth in productivity levels couldn’t neutralise the delivering trend in production caused by the shrinking area. In case of millets, the productivity enhancement for rainfed areas was 0.29 per cent, whereas the area in rainfed region reduced by 2.17 per cent, resulting in an overall decline in production from rainfed regions by about 2 per cent.
In the use of oilseeds, though there is a decline (0.56 per cent) in production at the national level, productivity enhancement (0.75 per cent) and increase in oilseed area (3.10 per cent) under rainfed conditions resulted in increased production (3.87 per cent) from rainfed areas.
A comparison of rate of growth of production from 1980-90 and 1990-2003 indicates lower growth rates during 1990-2003 in case of coarse grains (1.91 per cent and 1.47 per cent) and millets (3.31 per cent and 0.29 per cent) and marginally higher growth rates for pulses (0.32 per cent and 0.39 per cent) and oilseeds (0.70 per cent and 0.75 per cent).
During 1980-2003, the area sown to pulses declined marginally in the country though it increased at an annual rate of 2.7 per cent in rainfed regions. However, the growth in productivity was low at about 1.2 per cent in all India and rainfed regions. Compared to the 1980s, growth in area and production slowed down considerably in rainfed regions after 1990. The growth in productivity was less than 1 per cent during this period.
The production of oilseeds increased in rainfed regions at a much faster rate compared to the all India growth during 1980-2003. The growth was however more rapid during the 1980s largely because of the introduction of technology mission on oilseeds during this period. As a result, oilseeds gained area at a rate of 8 per cent. However, this was not accompanied by yield gains. After 1990, area expansion stopped. In fact there was a small loss of area to other crops in rainfed regions.
The growth rate in productivity in rainfed regions never exceeded 1 per cent. It is now admitted that closing the oilseed technology mission in 1995 hit rainfed areas hard, as this constituted close to 60 per cent of outputs from rainfed areas.
Suitable approaches to rainfed farming
Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh is an example of how rainfed farmers are being pushed to greater misery due to government policies. The district has Andhra Pradesh’s largest chunk of dryland farms as well as the largest areas under groundnut cultivation.
The district first took up extensive groundnut cultivation protected by the oilseed technology mission and a protected market. In the 1980s the state government gave people rice at Rs 2 a kg, thus forcing them to consume rice and abandon their subsistence mixed cropping.
Then in 1990 the oil market was deregulated and palm oil was allowed to be imported. Meanwhile, the state government had also discontinued its populist rice scheme due to the mounting burden on the state exchequer. And all of a sudden, the farmers were left high and dry.
Moreover, groundnut cultivation was becoming expensive due to inputs in the form of pesticides and fertilisers. Gradually, the yields began to drop: yield from 1 ha came down from 2,000 kg in the mid 1980s to 200 kg in 2002. Earnings from groundnut also crashed to Rs 300-Rs 500 in 1997-98, one-tenth the price just a few years ago.
There was reduction in the area under cotton during the 1980s across the country and in rainfed regions. The productivity growth was much higher (4.04 per cent) in the country compared to rainfed regions (1.94 per cent).
After the 1990s, production in rainfed regions and in the country as a whole showed a declining trend inspite of expansion of area under cotton. Take the case of Bt cotton. It might be good in certain situations -- high rainfall and irrigated areas, and with farmers with high investments and risk bearing capabilities. But with universalisation in the recommendations and with greater expectations, even poorly endowed areas were put under Bt cotton.
Normally, poorly endowed areas get low rainfall and are owned by the poorer sections of society. Even in better rainfall areas the poor own lands where the uplands are light and shallow. The critical phonological stages for cotton include square formation, flower initiation and boll formation when moisture availability is necessary for obtaining normal yields. Since the poor soils/rainfall areas are more affected with moisture stress, Bt cotton should not have been chosen.
Similarly, with the traditional rice system being phased out of the landscape and being replaced with the hybrid variety, rainfed areas registered very low productivity. About 36 per cent of the districts covering 44 per cent of the total rice area in the country achieved a productivity level of more than 2 tonnes/ha.
These districts contributed the lion’s share of 63 per cent of production. On the contrary, the remaining 64 districts covering 57 per cent of the total rice area had to contend with dispassionately low productivity of less than 1 tonne/ha. Most of these districts are rainfed. Rice contributes close to 60 per cent of an average person’s calorie intake. This means in rainfed areas low productivity and production also affect the overall health of the people.
Studies show that the maximum increase in rice production and productivity has occurred due to three factors: the high yield variety, fertilisers and irrigation facility. Thus rapid adoption of modern variety took place in irrigated areas, which suited the production conditions using high yield varieties of rice.
Thus, rainfed areas, by default non-irrigated, lagged behind. This created a crisis as farmers used the same varieties without irrigation and therefore faced uncertainty in crop outputs. An interesting picture emerged from the analysis: the proportion of area under modern varieties was found to be larger than that of area irrigated.
This implied that modern varieties spread to non-targeted rainfed ecosystems also, as farmers were willing to encash the opportunities for increasing rice production through modern varieties without adequate irrigation facilities. Thus despite irrigation, production has been modest.
The low productivity in rainfed areas and ecological diversity created enormous demand for targeted technologies, particularly for ecosystem-based rice research. But the existing technology is far from adequate in rainfed areas.
More than 55 per cent of the total number of modern varieties are targeted for irrigated areas, while the same is 27 per cent in rainfed lowlands and 19 percent for rainfed uplands. This means that there are 25 modern varieties per million hectares of irrigated rice areas, only 10 in rainfed lowland and deep-water ecosystem, and 13 in rainfed upland rice ecosystem.
Due to scarcity of ecosystem specific improved varieties, the rate of adoption of modern varieties has been moderately low, and thereby the low productivity.
Let us consider maize. The area under maize is growing enormously. In fact in the recent past, it is the only cereal that has shown a growth rate of more than 2 per cent as compared to other cereals which are about 1 per cent or less.
So even very poorly endowed and low rainfall areas are put under maize, for example south Telengana. Such areas are not suitable for the maize crop. They are better suited for cereals like local varieties of sorghum.
Naturally, the maize grown in such areas could be subject to more moisture stress, leading to lower yields and poor quality grain, and unable to bear drought conditions.
“One of the serious negative effects of mono-cultural cropping pattern promoted by the Green Revolution technology has been the loss of soil fertility and productivity, undermining long-term sustainability of yield growth,” says B Venkateswarlu, head, Division of Crop Sciences, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, a Hyderabad-based institute under Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR).
Agricultural scientists point out that there is a need to address the declining productivity of land in rainfed areas. It is estimated that in the last 15 years, there has been a deceleration in the growth rate in all sectors such as crops, livestock, fish etc. This is largely due to continuous loss in soil productivity.
Another worrying factor is the loss in soil organic matter (SOM), which leads to deteriorating physical and biological conditions. Estimates say that annually crops take 28 metric tonnes of nutrients away, and only 18 metric tonnes of chemical nutrients are added in the country. Out of the chemical nutrients around 10 metric tonnes are used in the production systems, the rest being lost into the atmosphere and soil, thus polluting the biosphere.
“This is happening because of the government’s subsidy for fertilisers,” says J Venkateswarlu, former director of Jodpur-based Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), under the ministry of agriculture.
Evidently, the rest of 18 metric tonnes of nutrients are derived from natural resources. Thus there is a great depletion of SOM, which is close to 0.2 per cent to 0.4 per cent in different ecosystems. So there is an urgent need to encourage use of organic nutrients and enhance SOM. “Soil is a living system and it has to be treated differently. Due to low soil organic matter, the water absorbing capacities of soil have gone down,” says Venkateswarlu.
Where are the ‘treated’ areas?
What happened to the extensive rainfed areas treatment plan? By the end of the 10th plan, nearly 51 million ha were supposed to have been “treated” under watersheds jointly by the ministries of rural development, agriculture and environment and forests, and by the Planning Commission for nearly Rs 20,000 crore.
The 11th plan is hoping to treat additional 38 million ha, costing about Rs 28,000 crore. Although positive outcomes of watershed-based developments are reported from several locations, little is known of the impact of the past “treatments” on national production, productivity, farmers’ income, and equity indicators.
Cases of reversal to the “untreated” original situation are commonly encountered. Obviously, the “business as usual” will not do.
The one-time project-based treatment approach under watersheds is unsustainable. “The watershed plus approach has not been fully implemented. The programmes/subsidies supporting agriculture are not differentiated to suit the requirements of rainfed farming.
Support in terms of fertiliser subsidies, price support and procurement does not reach in the same way for rainfed farmers, resulting in skewed national investments across irrigated and rainfed areas, says the Parthasarathy Committee report.
The historical neglect and absence of appropriate support systems have created a high degree of indifference on part of farmers towards rainfed agriculture. Private investment and care for natural resources have suffered. Natural resources degradation cannot be arrested if farmers are apathetic towards land resources.
For many years, the soil-climatic classification did not become the basis of any policy-level intervention. The Planning Commission pioneered the much-needed shift in strategy at the end of 1980s, when it initiated a growth strategy based on the agro-climatic regional planning approach.
The purpose of this exercise was to identify broadly the crop mixes and types of land use that were best suited to the available resources of climate, soil, topography, water resources and irrigation facilities in each region. This implied a serious departure from the legacy of crop-centered research, which culminated in the Green Revolution.
In the 1980s, Indian policy shifted from food self sufficiency to livelihood security. Acceleration of agriculture growth, with a special focus on improving the position of small farmers and extending the productivity revolution to non-irrigated areas was seen as a critical part of the strategy.
The country achieved considerable success with this approach in the 1980s. Growth of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) accelerated to about 4.7 per cent in the 1980s, compared with only 1.4 per cent in the 1970s. This agricultural growth, together with the beginning of economic reforms in the non-agricultural sector, pushed up the growth rate of overall GDP to around 5.8 per cent in the period 1980-81 to 1989-90 compared to about 3 per cent in the 1970s.
However, actual performance since the mid-1990s has been disappointing. Agricultural growth slowed to 2 per cent a year in the 9th plan period, and overall economic growth was only 5.5 per cent, well below the 8 per cent target. During the 10th plan agriculture growth went below 2 per cent.
Area treated (million ha) and investment in Rs (crore)
Programme |
Area treated till March 2005 |
Investment in Rs (crore) till March 2005 |
National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas |
7.95 |
2,398.76 |
River Valley Project and Flood Prone Regions |
6.09 |
1,894.12 |
Watershed Development Projects in Shifting Cultivation Areas |
0.28 |
236.35 |
Alkali Soil Reclamation |
0.56 |
82.54 |
Externally Aided Project |
2.36 |
4756.26 |
DPAP |
15.13 |
2623.40 |
DDP |
5.71 |
1857.78 |
Integrated Watershed Development Programme |
6.32 |
2161.81 |
EAP |
0.36 |
212.67 |
Integrated Afforestation and Eco-development Projects Schemes |
0.82 |
813.73 |
Total |
45.58 |
17,037 |
Why have rainfed regions remained out of policy makers’ focus?
The Green Revolution’s orphan
The biggest problem of rainfed areas is a historic policy mistake: adapting the Green Revolution principle for rainfed areas. It focused on intensive area approach comprising the already endowed areas.
An anomaly at present is that large areas of land and large number of people in the country are outside the framework. “It is no wonder that these people also constitute the poverty geography of the country,” says Planning Commission member B N Yugandhar.
In the last decade there has been a sharp deceleration in Indian agriculture with the growth rate of agriculture GDP slipping from 3.62 per cent from 1984-85 to 1995-96 to less than 2 per cent from 1995-96 to 2004-05. This is because irrigated areas, like Green Revolution states of Punjab and Haryana, have exhausted their potential.
“India’s net sown area under crops has fallen drastically for the first time. The area under canal irrigation has fallen again for the first time in history. This is overall bad news for agriculture but worse for rainfed farmers,” says former planning minister Y K Alagh.
Food grain production during the 10th Five-Year Plan was less than during the 9th Five-Year Plan period. From 1949-50 to 1964-65 (pre-Green Revolution period) additional lands were brought under the plough with extension of irrigation facilities.
From 1967-68 to 2002-03 (post-Green Revolution period), the scope for extension of cultivation gradually declined. The annual compound growth rate was quite low for all principal crops (0.29 per cent).
While India’s population is increasing by 2 per cent every year, area under food production has shrunk by 12.5 per cent over the last decade. Thus food availability in rural areas has fallen to 152 kg per capita, 23 kg less than in the 1990s, creating large-scale food insecurity in villages.
The annual per capita production of cereals has declined from 192 kg in 1991/1995 to only 174 kg in 2004-07 and of pulses from 15 kg to 12 kg (1991/1995- 2004/07). This means that per capita food grain production is now at the 1970s level. This is because irrigated areas, like the Green Revolution states of Punjab and Haryana, have exhausted their potential.
On the other hand, the vast 60 per cent rainfed areas remain unexplored. According to the Planning Commission, the largest slump occurred in those areas that are predominantly rainfed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh didn’t even hesitate to say that the slump in rainfed areas is a major policy blunder.
Why does the much talked about Green Revolution need to focus on rainfed areas?
What is the way ahead?
Rainfed areas will have to be the focus of India’s future agriculture revival. But as the past shows we need a different paradigm of development. “In view of their characteristics rainfed areas require approaches to agricultural development that differ from the Green Revolution strategy,” says Katar Singh, chairman of the Anand-based India Natural Resources Economics and Management Foundation.
“There is an urgent need to change the mindset of the Green Revolution era, which focused more on inputs and did not look at regional variations. Because even water rich state like Kerala now get drought,” says J S Samra, head of the newly-established National Rainfed Area Authority.
There is considerable potential to enhance productivity of rainfed areas. “Most of the areas will be able to take up a second crop,” says Samra. Realising this potential essentially hinges on our ability to reverse the process of degradation -- the process that will contribute to institutionalising water conservation, reducing run-off and erosion. Secondly, the crops must be suitable for local agro-climatic zones. Thirdly, market access to rainfed crops.
One of the major challenges facing rainfed agriculture in India today is to conserve and enhance the inherent capacity of its land and other natural resources to sustain agriculture. Any erosion of this inherent capacity will threaten India’s food security and agriculture substantially.
In order to constantly address this concern along with increasing production of food grains and other agricultural products, it is necessary to do the following: a) enhance and conserve the stock of available land, water and other natural resources, b) develop improved technologies, which maintain and improve the productive capacity of natural resources.
However, the first and foremost shift should be from ‘input centricity’ in the agriculture policy to ‘needs/requirements’ centricity. “By and large the prescription is the same as the good old Green Revolution -- hybrid seeds, chemicals and mechanical inputs, monocrops. Much of the chemical inputs are a substitute for ‘labour’. These lead to externalisation of inputs and can be devastating for rainfed farmers,” says Satheesh of Deccan Development Society, a Medak-based NGO.
In its recommendations for improving the drought prone area programme, the Hanumantha Rao committee had in 1994 suggested that any area development programme must be location specific and must be based on the current status of natural resources such as vegetation cover and ground water recharge.
The decrease in rainfed areas or the increase in irrigated areas has been due to the increase in ground water use. But as the trend shows, recharge of ground water is hardly being addressed in the current watershed development programmes, the major initiatives to treat rainfed areas. Thus a greater focus has to be on recharging ground water in such areas along with surface storage and management.
For improving the water conservation strategy, there has been a suggestion of providing a labour component under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) for digging ponds in private lands. NREGA could be used for producing biomass even on private land for improving soil fertility.
“The government must provide water conservation subsidy to farmers in rainfed areas under NREGA,” says Y S Ramakrishna of Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture.
“Time has come to integrate dryland food grains into the Public Distribution System and other food for work programmes so that dryland agriculture products get a market,” says G V Ramanjaneyulu, of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, a Hyderabad-based NGO.
Livestock is an essential component of dryland ecosystems. Farmers get their livelihood during the drought mainly through livestock. Livestock, especially bullocks and buffaloes provide much needed farmyard manure for maintaining soil fertility apart from being useful for other agricultural operations such as ploughing and transportation.
Moreover, all livestock support systems are ‘milk’ centric. “There are practically no support systems available for livestock rearing for most farmers of dryland regions. It is time we thought about the role of livestock beyond milk,” says J Venkateswarlu, former director of Jodpur-based Central Arid Zone Research Institute.
Even experts have been arguing about shifting a section of the population dependent on agriculture to non-farming sectors such as agro-processing, manufacturing and allied activities. “We need to create livelihood opportunities in agro-processing industries and manufacturing sectors,” says Mahendra Deb, Director, Centre for Economic Social Studies, a Hyderabad-based research institute.
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