The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday cleared two new farmer-oriented schemes – Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) and Promotion of National Agriculture Market (PNAM) - to improve farm productivity and help farmers get good money for their crop. While PMKSY is a major irrigation initiative worth Rs50,000 crore to be spent over five years to help expand cultivable area, the Agricultural Market aims to provide better price to farmers, improve supply chain, reduce wastage and create a unified national market through common e-platform.
“PM Krishi Sinchai Yojana will fulfil the dream of ‘har khet ko paani’ (water for every field) by enhancing irrigation facilities for farmers,” Modi later tweeted. “Farmers & traders can get opportunities to purchase and sell agricultural commodities at optimal prices in a transparent manner… 585 regulated markets across India will be integrated with common e-platform. This will be hugely beneficial for farmers,” he posted in another tweet.
“It has been decided that in 5 years, Rs50,000 crore from the central Budget would be utilised for the PMKSY. States’ share will be over and above this. This can also be utilised to help the material component in MNREGA”, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while giving details of the CCEA decision taken on Wednesday. It is expected that PMKSY will provide convergence to existing schemes of water management, thus bringing efficiency to the use of water.
The spending this year is expected to bring an additional 6 lakh hectares under irrigation while 5 lakh hectares will benefit from drip irrigation. Apart from this 1,300 watershed projects have been marked for completion.
Currently, 142 million hectares are used for cultivation, of which only 45% farm land is under irrigation. The major objective of the PMKSY is to achieve convergence of investments in irrigation at the field level, expand cultivable area under assured irrigation (har khet ko pani), improve on-farm water use efficiency to reduce wastage of water, enhance adoption of precision-irrigation and other water-saving technologies (more crop per drop), enhance recharge of aquifers and introduce sustainable water conservation practices by exploring the feasibility of reusing treated municipal based water for peri-urban agriculture and attract greater private investment in precision irrigation system.
The scheme also aims at bringing concerned ministries, departments, agencies, research and financial institutions engaged in recycling of water under a common platform, so that proper water budgeting can be done for various sectors like household, agriculture and industries.
With decentralised state-level planning and execution structure, PMKSY will allow States to draw up their own District Irrigation Plan (DIP) and a State Irrigation Plan (SIP). However, the programme will be supervised and monitored at the national level by an Inter-Ministerial National Steering Committee (NSC) headed by Prime Minister.
The National Agricultural Market will be promoted through Agri-Tech Infrastructure Fund (ATIF). The Department of Agriculture & Cooperation (DAC) will set it up through the Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) by creating a common electronic platform in selected regulated markets across the country. An amount of Rs200 crore has been earmarked for the scheme from 2015-16 to 2017-18. This includes provision for supplying software free of cost by DAC to the States and Union Territories (UTs) and for cost of related hardware/infrastructure to be subsidised by the Government of India up to Rs30 lakh per Mandi (other than for private mandis).
In all, 585 regulated markets across the country will be integrated with the common e-platform to provide farmers and traders with access to opportunities for purchase-sale of agri-commodities at optimal prices in a transparent manner across the country. Besides, private markets will also be allowed access to the e-platform thereby enhancing its outreach.