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According to Niti Aayog’s member Ramesh Chand, the second wave of Covid-19 infections in the country will have not affect the agriculture sector despite the spread of the virus in rural areas. Talking to news agency PTI, Chand also said that India’s agricultural policy has remained too much focused on rice, wheat & sugarcane and that we need to make favourable policies for pulses.
Ramesh Chand is a member of the Indian government’s think tank Niti Aayog. Explaining the reason for his claim, he said that Coronavirus started spreading in India’s rural hinterland only in the month of May “and agriculture activity in the month of May is bare minimal, particularly land-based activities.” Except for some vegetables, no other crop is either sown or harvested in the peak summer month of May.
Chand further explained that agriculture activity in India is on the peak in mid-April after which it declines before increasing again with the arrival of the monsoon. “So even if less availability of labour is there (due to spread of coronavirus) in the month of May till mid-June, I don’t think that will impact agriculture in anyway,” he said.
On being asked about pulses production in India, Ramesh Chand said that India is unable to become self-sufficient for pulses because of the country’s subsidy, price and technological policies which favour too much the production of rice, wheat and sugarcane. He believes that the government needs to bring in a procurement policy (including MSP) which favour the growth of pulses.
On the question of growth in the agriculture sector, Chand projected that Indian agriculture would grow by more than 3% for fiscal 2021-22. It may be noted that the farm sector recorded a growth of 3.6% in the year 2020-21.