The right kind of regulation and empathetic laws are needed to help the academia and industry collaborate to better the fate of our farmers
Every time we try to break through a critical situation, the lack of inter-departmental coordination dawns on us — the academia’s hard work of R&D struggles to find a market, the industry reaches a stalemate when it comes to product advancement and the Government is too overworked to act as a bridge between the two. Agriculture, the biggest contributor to India’s Gross Domestic Product, also suffers from this. The result is evident today as farmers have left their fields and have taken to the roads. What they lack is continuous education and updation of technology — not only in the traditional sense of the term defining literacy but also education related to farming activities, based on science that explains their existing practices and dispels various myths.
Academic pursuits and the loop of scalability: There are several institutions, both private and Government, that are working continuously to develop new seed varieties, technology for crop protection, equipment and improve efficiency of existing ones with the sole objective to benefit the farmers. Their main challenge is to retain talent, which we are constantly losing to foreign institutions due to problems of funds and infrastructure. Despite the many challenges, innovative ideas are flourishing in the laboratories of these institutions. But then they struggle to find a market and, hence, get commercialised. No matter how promising the prototypes are, institutions find it difficult to scale innovation to a level that may sound lucrative to the industry and farmers as well. Agricultural scholars are also instrumental in identifying the best way for both farmers and industry as well as bringing out existing loopholes and suggesting remedial moves. As a result, scholars with a sound understanding of the market and ground realities often find a place in the various expert committees constituted by the Government from time to time. But most of their recommendations remains in the books.
Did the industry dump the farmers’ interests? Detractors are quick to blame the industry and dump academic success in the name of poor profitability or scalability. But what they fail to realise is that while a lab prototype marks intellectual success, it is developed in ‘ideal conditions’. It does provide a dependable model to the industry to modify and make it suitable to the needs of the farmers. When put to test, the prototype may not perform because conditions there are often far from ideal. It is for the industry to bridge this gap between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’. This should be a constant pursuit and requires interventions from other quarters as well. The farmer does not care about increased numbers in the power of the tractor; the price of the new variant and a substantial improvement in performance are a bigger concern for him. While it is both easy to point fingers at the industry, accusing them of making profits at the cost of farmers, one cannot forget that the industry has to be self-sustaining for which the business should be modelled more to seek return on investment than philanthropy. The industry has never shied from taking forward steps and is always ready to collaborate with the Government to make the farmers’ lives easy.
Crucial role played by planners: Here comes the role of those who make the laws. In recent times, we have seen that the Government has been proactive in issuing relief packages for farmers in view of the elections. However, this came after farmers across the country protested falling prices and lack of mechanism to ensure MSP for designated crops, among others. While the farmers reeled under poor prices, consumers endured rising inflation rates. Clearly, there is a gap, which was precipitated by poor policy-making, driven by lack of ground-level knowledge and political will to include agriculture into the core political discourse of the country. That is indeed surprising for an agrarian country. However, in recent years, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) have emerged as a powerful tool to transform agriculture in India. Incepted by the Government of India through the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, a large network of over 600 KVKs across the country is fostering a multi-disciplinary approach in the farmers. The centres conduct technology assessment and refinement, disseminate knowledge and provide critical input support for the farmers. A NITI Aayog study on the impact of KVKs on farmers found that 40 per cent farmers reported that they implemented the technology immediately after its dissemination by KVK and that 25 per cent did so from the next agricultural season. It found that technologies adopted resulted in higher productivity, enhanced incomes and reduction of drudgery.
Right amount of regulation and empathetic laws are the primary needs that will help the academia and industry collaborate better and bring the best to the farmers to help them survive this existential crisis: The only way to erase the evil of status quo of today is to work hard in our respective domains but at the same time, foster a better sense of collective responsibility so that the benefits percolate from one domain to the other and reach the end users in a form that would benefit them.
(The writer is MD of an insecticides company)