In an ambitious plan aiming at almost doubling Bihar’s agricultural output in five years between 2012 and 2017, the Nitish Kumar-led government has unveiled a roadmap to raise and spend `1,52,511 crore in various farming sectors with active help from the private sector.
Approving Mr Kumar’s dream of a grand agricultural overhaul in Bihar, the state “agriculture cabinet” — a consortium of 17 government departments — has set up a resource management group (RMG) headed by chief secretary Navin Kumar and authorised it to raise these funds both from the government and the private sector. This move on Mr Kumar’s insistence on a “rainbow revolution” in Bihar aims at fixing the chronic deterioration in the agriculture sector and its falling contribution to the state’s galloping GDP growth rate.
The new plan, to be effective since April, covers traditional production of foodgrains and allied sectors such as fisheries, dairies and poultries, said Ashok Kumar Sinha, Bihar’s secretary of the agriculture department and development commissioner, after the Cabinet’s decision on Tuesday evening.
“A broad roadmap has been framed and it will be finalised after getting inputs from the farmers. An amount of `1,52,511 crore will be spent on agriculture and a host of allied sectors like water resources, minor irrigation, foodgrains storage capacity enhancements, energy, rural works and marketing linkages,” Mr Sinha told this newspaper. The state government is organising a farmers’ convention in Patna on February 1 to seek their suggestions on the agriculture roadmap, he added.
Significantly, agriculture would now become an integral part of Bihar’s education system under the new roadmap as the government has decided to include it as a compulsory subject from Class 9 in high schools up to all the intermediate courses.
The private sector, said officials, has already promised investments of `23,746 crore in agriculture in Bihar in the next five years.