Farmers’ welfare, drought, farm distress and transforming agriculture with special emphasis of Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act would be the main agenda of the first meeting of the NITI Aayog’s Governing Council, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The meeting will be held at Cultural Centre, Rashtrapati Bhawan, on June 15. Farmers’ welfare has been at the top of the agenda of PM Modi during his second term. In his first cabinet meeting, the Modi Government had extended the PM-Kisan scheme to all farmers.
As per the agenda paper, Modi will discuss drought situations in the country and relief measures being taken up by the State Governments with Chief Ministers of all States and Union Territories. The Centre has released Rs 4,714.28 crore to Maharashtra Rs 949.49 crore to Karnataka, Rs 900.4 crore to Andhra Pradesh, Rs 127.60 crore to Gujarat as central assistance tackle drought situations. Chief Ministers of drought-hit States will brief the PM and steps being taken for it.
Chief Ministers and concerned officials of all States and Union Territories (UTs) have been invited for the meeting. However, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has already refused to attend the meeting.
Sources said the primary responsibility of managing drought, however, is with the State Governments. The role of Centre is to help the States in effective management of disasters and provide additional resources in the form of foodgrain or financial assistance to combat the situation. As per the guidelines, State Governments are required to send weekly report on monsoon rains and its impact on agriculture from May 15 until the end of September to Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC), which has the mandate to prepare multiple-in-season crop forecasts and assessments of drought situation using state-of-the-art techniques and methodologies for selected major crops.
According to data, from the Drought Early Warning System (DEWS), a real-time drought monitoring platform, about 42 per cent of India’s land area is facing drought, with 6 per cent exceptionally dry — four times the spatial extent of drought last year. Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, parts of the North-East, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are the worst hit.
About 6 per cent of the land area of the country is currently in the Exceptionally Dry category, which is nearly four times the 1.6 per cent area at the same time last year. The area in Extremely and Exceptionally dry categories is 11 per cent of the entire country, more than double the 5 per cent area in March 2018.
While the Central Government has not declared drought anywhere so far, the State Governments of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan have declared many of their districts as drought-hit. The parts of the country facing drought have been divided into six categories-Exceptionally Dry, Extremely Dry, Severely Dry, Moderately Dry, Abnormally Dry and No Drought’.
During the Southwest monsoon, between June 1, 2018, and September 30, 2018, nine per cent deficit in rainfall was recorded as compared to the long period average (LPA) across the country. Southern Peninsula and Northwest India have received 98 per cent of the LPA, while the central India received 93 per cent of the LPA. However, East and Northeast India have received only 76 per cent of the LPA.
To improve farmers’ income, PM Modi will also discuss on the transforming agriculture-need for structural reforms with special emphasis of Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act as several states have not adopted the Act. Officials of agriculture ministry said that some States and UTs either did not adopt APMC Act or revoked it. They include Bihar, Kerala, Manipur, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Andaman and Nicobar.