Most observers seemed to have missed the ominous implications for working millions, more rural than urban, of the Central Ministries like Agriculture, Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution remaining invested with Sharad Pawar despite his preoccupation with other responsibilities. For public consumption he has talked of his party affairs only in this context.

Pawar talked with the media about his heavy ministerial burden, for the first time, at Singapore soon after taking over as President of the International Cricket Council (ICC). He said he had been requesting Manmohan Singh to give him three more Ministers so that he was able to discharge his ministerial responsibilities. It has to be noted that Pawar has earlier been President of BCCI in India. The country being a leading cricketing nation, BCCI has developed many a national ramification holding regular competitions. Moreover, the country has innovated a local national joint, the Indian Premier League (IPL) and reports suggested that Pawar had a leg in it too. This is not a space to go into what cricketing world now means for Pawar, nor is the intention to do so.

Intention here is to underline the likely fate of the people to be served by important Central portfolios like Agriculture, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution when their political leadership, Sharad Pawar, is busy elsewhere and finds it difficult to attend to these. Obviously, these portfolios are left for bureaucracy to deal with and that too in accordance with the liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG) policies of Manmohan Singh regime.

In this backdrop, there should be no surprise if the Public Distribution System (PDS) is in a shambles. As reported earlier, chairman of the Prime Minister's own Economic Advisory Council C. Rangarajan had urged the Government (June 25) to use foodstocks to “dampen inflation” since, as he said, “inflation is the worst enemy of the poor”. And he suggested that “the stocks can be used to reach the poor through the public distribution system”. Either the policy-makers knew the PDS was not in a workable condition or they had more faith in the private sector traders. Order, therefore, went out that the Centre would release five million tones of wheat from its pool “in open market”, apparently, to maintain a check on foodgrains prices. The announcement said that the released wheat would be directly available “from depots for traders and retail buyers”. It was to be available at a reserved price of approximately Rs 12.54 a kg. This only means the poor should learn to live with the ways of private traders or else they can go to hell.

The Agriculture portfolio is critical for the people and the nation from long term as well as short term point of view. Food for the nation and raw material for the nation's industry are produced on land; agriculture provides employment on land and in agro-industries to the largest number of the socalled unorganised rural workforce. The MGNREGA of the Rural Development Ministry is a pointer to the employment potential of the rural area; though, of course, its full potential has yet to be explored fully.

Credit should go to the Punjab and Haryana for producing foodgrains for the nation. At the same time, there should have been concern at the declining growth rate in nation's Agriculture; it was negative growth rate last year. According to Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Member Rajya Sabha, “self-sufficiency in home grown food is a must for a country of our size.” Addressing the 97th Indian Science Congress in Kerala (5.1.2010), he said, the future belongs to nations with grains, not guns. One may agree or disagree on this count. But his underlining the importance of attending to the problems of small farms is unexceptional in India's case. According to him, a revolution in small farms management was essential to “revitalise” the country's agriculture sector. Unfortunately that approach towards the country's agriculture is completely absent and the small and marginal farmers who constitute about 80 per cent of India's peasant proprietors, are left to their fate.

Under the UPA-1 regime, National Council for Land Reforms under the Prime Minister was constituted. It was followed by the setting up of another Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms. The Committee on Agrarian Relations was reported to have underlined the relevance of land ceiling as a redistributive programme. It emphasized that most of the beneficiaries were not in possession of the allotted pieces of land.

The Committee quoted statistics to say that the potential of ceiling surplus land in the country was approximately 21 million hectares. The report also pointed out that out of the declared 2.7 million hectares surplus land, states took possession of only 2.3 million hectares and distributed only 1.9 million hectares among 5.5 million households. The cases were pending in revenue courts, High Courts. The failure to acquire ceiling surplus land or benami land holdings has been attributed to “under-locked interest structure developed among large landowners, the elite including the village elite and members of bureaucracy.” The Committee reportedly also sharply criticised “inefficiency and lack of interest on the part of officialdom”.

Moreover, when Manmohan Singh Government's policy-makers are more interested in corporatisation of agriculture, who would work for land reforms or for the multi-million small and marginal farmer. And, this when the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has sought to convene a meeting of the country's eastern states to discuss about green revolution.

In this context, it would be useful to recall the “major ingredients” of the 1966 green revolution as outlined by Prof. M.S. Swaminathan. These were, technology services that can take technology to the fields of small and marginal farmers; public policies, particularly relating to input and output pricing; assured and remunerative marketing; and above all, farmers' enthusiasm as a result of national demonstrations in small farmers' fields. The agronomist however bemoans that “Today, the last component of the green revolution symphony is sadly lacking.”

Obviously, all this could not be thought of much less achieved when Agriculture Ministry's political boss believed sugar cooperatives in Maharashtra and the cricketing world to be much more interesting. And, country's policy-makers believed corporatisation of agriculture and establishment of more and more special economic zones (SEZs) on acquired lands to be more productive than wasting time and resources on vast mass of small and marginal farmers. (IPA Service)