The complexity of the global food availability position, given the population increase and compounded by anthropocentric climate change, has been a cause of worry for managers of the global economy as a whole. The issue has been grossly aggravated by toxic industrial and vehicular emissions and deforestation for industrial development the world over. The contemporary Indian scenario bears careful scrutiny given this perspective and the fact that India’s prime fertility zone is in its huge river basins with high agricultural production capability. These are being threatened. What lends greater gravity to this concern is that policy-makers in India both at the Centre and states are smugly ensconced in their cherished dream of ‘percentage of growth’ from the secondary and tertiary sectors, with agricultural development mentioned as a ‘desirable’ platitude. Even the Prime Minister betrays a dual personality when it comes to such calculations of GDP growth vis-à-vis the imperatives “for eliminating poverty and providing productive employment for our young population in the near future” This was clear from his recent public utterance that he believed that such a form of employment can only be through the primary farm sector. Despite being the basic livelihood of most of the Asia-Pacific regional dwellers, including India, neglect of agriculture has caused widening inequality; and macro-economic policies in India have overlooked the farm sector.
Mohd Ziyaullah Khan
Nagpur