When Rural Voice had to decide the theme of the Agriculture Conclave to be organized on its third anniversary, we realized that if the country's economy is to be strengthened, the agriculture sector will have to be kept at its center. Anyway, it is not logical to talk about strengthening the country's economy without the rapid growth of the agriculture sector, which has about 18 percent share in the country's economy and is the source of employment for 45 percent of the working people. Keeping these things in mind, our topic was decided as 'Making Agriculture Engine of Economic Growth'.

In 1991, when liberal economic policies were started through the New Industrial Policy, the belief was very strong that industrial development in the country would accelerate and a large part of the population would leave agriculture and move to industries. This will reduce the burden on agriculture and due to reduction in the number of people in rural India, the economic situation there will also improve. It is true that in the meantime urbanization and the percentage of urban population has increased in the country, but the assumption that the number of people dependent on agriculture has reduced has not proved to be correct. On the other hand, the dream of making India a manufacturing hub was also not fulfilled. The government is implementing various schemes to take manufacturing to 25 percent of the GDP, for which it also incentives worth thousands of crores of rupees every year, yet it is stuck at 12-13 percent. According to the Labour Force Survey, after reaching about 14 percent, the share of the total number of working people included in it has now dropped to less than 12 percent.

The industrial growth rate of six per cent is increasing employment by only one per cent as the use of automation and technology in manufacturing continues to increase. In such a situation, the better option is to strengthen agriculture. NITI Aayog member Professor Ramesh Chand says that India can become a developed nation by 2047 only if the agricultural growth rate is 4.5 percent. There is a better opportunity for the government to decide its economic policies keeping agriculture at the center. This is not happening right now but it is necessary to do so. There is huge potential in the agriculture sector which can accelerate the pace of development of the country, but for that changes in the policies related to agriculture sector and better opportunities for investment are needed.

The worrying thing is that the interest of private corporates in investing in agriculture sector is very less and it is less than three percent. Most of the investment in agriculture sector is either from the public sector or the farmers themselves are investing money. This situation cannot accelerate the wheel of agricultural development. The central and state governments are giving a large part of the amount allocated for the agriculture sector in their budget in the form of income support or subsidy and the capital expenditure is negligible. In the current year's Union Budget, the capital expenditure for agriculture is less than Rs 100 crore whereas the government has made a provision of capital expenditure of Rs 11.11 lakh crore. The largest part of this is going on the development of infrastructure facilities. Not only this, government expenditure on agricultural research and education is either stable or decreasing.

The success of the Green Revolution in the country was due to public sector agricultural research institutes like ICAR and IARI and state agricultural universities. But now most of the amount allocated for them is spent on salaries only. Many of the world's largest private sector companies are spending more on research than the total budget of ICAR. There is no focus of the governments on setting up modern infrastructure facilities on the marketing front, nor is there any effective policy for value addition. The decisions of the last two years prove that the consumer, not the farmer, is at the center of the government's decisions on import and export. Such policies cannot make agriculture an engine of economic growth. The government should include all stakeholders in it, in which farmers are the most prominent.