Sreelatha Menon
Forty years ago Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan helped rescue the world from growing famine and a deepening gloom over the future of food supplies. Today, public policy projects itself as pro-farmer but it does it half-heartedly, complains Swaminathan.
M S Swaminathan, member of the National Advisory Council and father of the Green Revolution says the government's allocation for agriculture is insignificant.
Doesn't the Union Budget reflect a new focus on agriculture?
I have got tired of this kind of lip service. In the last budget there was an announcement to encourage 60,000 villages to grow pulses.
But the allocation was so small that each village would have barely got Rs 50,000. Revenue foregone in corporate taxes is Rs 3.75 lakh crore (Rs 3.75 trillion) and you give Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) for a second green revolution. It is all lip service!
You were part of the Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi establishments and were even appointed as the agriculture secretary. What is the difference between the governments then and now?
It was totally different then. The country was under pressure. We were importing 10 million tonnes of wheat and the population was only 450 million.
A number of books then said India would not survive and Indians would die like sheep going to slaughter houses. There was political support and determination to make the country self-sufficient. Now all that is gone.
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