Farm reforms pending in India since 1991; China implemented it long back: PMEAC chief

New Delhi: Farm reforms in India are pending even today since 1991, while neighbouring China implemented them way back in 1978, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council’s (PMEAC) Chairman Bibek Debroy said on Friday.

The reforms undertaken in 1991 were pertaining to external factors and industrial liberalisation, and were not related to agriculture, he said.Agriculture has become unviable and even its share of the country’s GDP is declining by 1 percent per year even as a large percentage of the population is still dependent on this sector for their livelihood, he added.

“Quite often in India, we compare with China. In 1978-79, China reformed agriculture. We are told that reforms in India were implemented in 1991 and pertain to the external sector and industrial liberalisation. Have the reforms in agriculture been introduced? Has agriculture been subjected to “delicensing”?

The answer is no,” Debroy said in an agri-summit event organised by Businessline here. By and large, the inputoutput, marketing and distribution side of the agriculture sector is controlled by the government, he said, adding “that reform agenda for agriculture is not only been pending since 1991, it is pending even today as we speak at this point”.

“In technology, seeds, marketing channels, investments and links in terms of distribution channels -- in each of these you will tend to find controls. Those controls have not gone away...Fundamentally, there is a political economy of resistance,” he said. Debroy opined that the political economy of resistance comes because of the mindset that Indian farmers do not know what is good for him or her and therefore must be protected.

“I don’t think farmers need to be protected in that sense. Yes, farming is unviable because input prices are more than other prices. We still do not have satisfactory insurance. Indian farmer does not need to be protected,” he said