Farms boost to economic health

Government estimates the growth rate of agriculture, one of the key sectors driving the Indian economy, would be around 3.5 per cent for 2007-08, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 30, 2008, 24:11:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The growth rate of agriculture, one of the key sectors driving the Indian economy, would be around 3.5 per cent for 2007-08, the government estimated on Thursday. The latest estimate, up from the earlier estimate of 2.6, is the highest since 2002, indicating a much-awaited revival of agriculture.

The higher agriculture growth may push the Gross Domestic Product growth rate — to be released on Friday — to 9 per cent from the initial estimate of 8.7 per cent, and give India economic growth of more than 9 per cent for the third straight year. The UPA government had maintained that for GDP growth to be over 9 per cent, agriculture production should grow at an annual rate of 4 per cent.

The high agriculture growth rate comes at the time when the UPA government is under fire from friends and foes for not been able to control the high inflation rate and is trying to tell people that India’s food security was not under threat because of global food crises.

The record agriculture growth has helped the government to stem any food crises with procurement of 210 lakh tonnes of wheat this year against the target of 150 lakh tonnes. Last year, the government was able to buy only 114 lakh tonnes from the domestic market, forcing it to import wheat at a high price.

Pranob Sen, secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said on Thursday that the revised estimates for agriculture would be around 3.5 per cent, about 0.9 per cent higher than the advance estimate of 2.6 per cent. “In the revised estimates, the agriculture growth rate could be higher by 0.7 to 0.8 per cent,” Sen said at the sidelines of a function. The function was to release the Fifth Economic Census report, which said economic development has benefited rural India more than urban India with growth of new enterprises.

The higher agriculture growth is on basis of record output of wheat, rice, coarse grains, pulses, oilseeds and cotton in 2007-08. Agriculture Ministry’s advance estimate released on April 22 said food grain production is estimated at 227.32 million tonnes in 2007-08, which is 10.04 million tonnes higher than the previous year.

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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