How to Make India Drought Resistant





There is a lot to do and much can be done

The Met has forecast a second-successive year of deficient rainfall, an event that last happened 28 years ago.Punjab and Haryana -the country's largest wheat-producing states -are predicted to get the lowest rainfall in 16 years. These are forward-looking numbers, and the reality could be more benign. But there is every reason for the government to gear itself up to avert large-scale rural distress. One of the major failures of successive regimes is to build an extensive, as well as efficient, system of irrigation. Much of what we have today is the legacy of decades past: open canal systems, built long ago, lose much water through evaporation and seepage due to poor maintenance. We can, and must, improve on this.Traditional models of storing water -and replenishing groundwater -like ponds, wells and even small lakes have to be rejuvenated. All land cannot be bought to develop malls and condos.Rice, wheat and coarse grains must be released from Food Corporation of India's hoards, at low cost. Drought-resistant seeds, already developed, need to be produced in large quantities and distributed cheap to farmers. Initiatives like kisan credit cards, crop insurance and so on have either failed or are yet to take off meaningfully , because we lack the institutional mechanism to activate them. However, preventing the farmer falling deeper into debt, with distress borrowings from the moneylender, is the foremost task before the government. The government will have an opportunity to put its Jan Dhan achievement to work and disburse credit to farmers.
Most states continue with the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, which give monopsony powers to brokers and middlemen, and deprive farmers of a just market price. This has to be scrapped.Expanding the network of regulated warehouses, whose receipts are now negotiable instruments, will also help.Making the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme work as it is intended to will shield landless labourers from distress.