Agrarian distress, doubling of farmers’ income, drought in several parts of the country, and PM-KISAN scheme will be top most priorities for the new Agriculture Minister. As for the Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), it will be Housing for All by 2022, development of 100 smart cities and the national urban rental housing policy among others that will be the main priorities..
Following a historic mandate, the Modi Government is now expected to shift its focus on governance. "The immediate reason for farm distress is falling food prices. Despite Modi Government's implementation of new Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime, the farmers are not getting profitable remuneration from their agriculture products. However, despite increased support, prices for several crops continued to be below even the MSPs that had been declared last year. PM-AASHA too failed to have any positive impact on procurement and prices," said the sources. The Prime Minister's major promise to agriculture in its manifesto for 2019 was to doubling farmers income by 2022 with 2015 being the reference year.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Modi Government tried to lessen the burden on the farmers with Prime Minister-Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) a scheme to provide cash support of Rs 6,000 a year in three intalments.
According to agriculture ministry, agriculture, animals, forestry, fishing — together clubbed under the head of agriculture — comprised 17.89 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016-17. It has dropped to around 13 per cent in the past 15 years. But the number of workforce has not dropped accordingly in farms. Agriculture employs nearly 55 per cent of the workforce in the country. An estimated 26 crore people are working in the sector. This translates into dependence of about 55-57 per cent population on agriculture, which is in distress for far too long to ignore for Narendra Modi Government.
The Modi Government will have to address bigger issue in agriculture, that is, of shifting farm workers to other employment avenues. This leads to PM Modi's another major challenge — unemployment before the new Agriculture Minister. Of 136 crore estimated population of India, 67 per cent is in 15-64 years bracket. This puts the job-seeking population over 91 crore. Not all of them would actually be looking for job but this figure itself is a challenge to any Government. The promise of 2 crore jobs annually coupled with the slogan of "achhe din" (good days) had brought Modi Government to power in 2014. A Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) report, released in January this year, said around 1.1 crore jobs were lost in 2018 as side effects of 2016 demonetisation and 2017 GST rollout.
"The new Minister should have as its first priority not only the mapping out of the vulnerabilities in the agricultural sector, but also finding ways of dealing with the structural issues which require urgent interventions," said the sources. Reforms in e-NAM and Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee will be major challenge before the agriculture minister.
The MoHUA, which spearheads the maximum number of flagship programmes, will focus on the national urban rental housing policy to promote various types of public-private partnerships for promotion of rental housing in the country and making good the growing housing shortage. To complete and develop 100 smart cities will be top agenda for the new Housing and Urban Affairs minister. States have been asked to expedite the award of tenders and the conversion of detailed project reports (DPRs) to tenders with targets having been set.
