'Create a new ministry for dairy, fisheries'

In a move that can rattle Sharad Pawar, food minister KV Thomas has suggested that the agriculture ministry be broken up to create a new independent ministry for fishing and dairy as it has huge growth potential.

Updated on: Jul 20, 2011, 24:30:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a move that can rattle Sharad Pawar, food minister KV Thomas has suggested that the agriculture ministry be broken up to create a new independent ministry for fishing and dairy as it has huge growth potential.

As head of the agriculture ministry, Pawar is in-charge of the departments of agriculture and cooperation and animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries.

But agriculture has always got precedence because of its political and economic importance.

"Despite so much potential, I have a feeling that the department has not so far acquired as much development as it should have," Thomas said in a recent letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

He presented data to back his suggestion: Animal husbandry output constitutes over 30% of the country's agriculture GDP. The contribution of livestock and fishery sector to total GDP has been over 6%.

"India is endowed with a high population of livestock in the world and is also the highest producer of milk," said Thomas, who was a MoS under Pawar before he got independent charge of the food ministry, which was taken away from his senior Cabinet colleague in a reshuffle earlier this year.

The letter comes at a time when milk prices have witnessed an unprecedented increase of about 30% in the past year. The Central Statistical Organisation estimates that the per capita milk consumption is increasing but the production has almost stagnated.

Another area where India has failed to harvest its potential is fisheries, though it is the second largest producer of inland fish in the world.

Raising these challenges, Thomas said the Centre had several reputed institutions that can change the allied agriculture sector. Also, the department has sufficient funds to turn the sector to help India's economic growth success story.

"There is no dearth of funds…but more attention is paid to agriculture therefore diluting the required attention towards animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries," he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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