Even as the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD Government is claiming much credit during the party’s election campaign for the Krishi Karman Puraskar it recently received from the Centre for “record food grain output” in 2012-13, the naked truth is that the State has only marginally bettered a record achieved way back in 1991-92.
Secondly, it received the award for being the best among the ‘B’ category States.
According to information available from the Union Agriculture Ministry by a Balangir RTI activist Hemant Panda, a committee of the Ministry had selected the States for the award for 2012-13 taking into consideration the rate of food grain production and the rate of increase in the productivity, procurement of food grains, budget expenditure in various agriculture related programmes for increase in the productivity and the ratio of food grain production in comparison to national average over the last five years.
As per the statistics, between 1980-81 and 2012-13, Odisha had produced 8,273 tonne of food grains in 1991-92. However, it took 22 years for the State to better this mark in 2012-13 with 8,352 tonnes, which is barely 79 tonnes more.
The statistics clearly reveals the priority the State Government has given to its agriculture sector over the last 20 years, including 14 years of the BJD rule which has seen nearly 4,000 farmer suicides.
What the BJD Government is not willing to explain is why it took 14 years to reach a figure that had been achieved 22 years ago. In its boastful advertisements, the ruling party has cleverly suppressed the fact that the award was meant for ‘B’ or second category States that produce less than 10 lakh tonnes of food grains per annum.
Till date, Odisha has not been able to qualify to be part of ‘A’ category States that includes Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, which are way ahead in foodgrain production and produce well above 10 million tonnes.
Odisha is still bracketed with States like Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, which produce less than 10 million tonnes of food grains annually.