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Arun
Firodia, chairman, Kinetic Group, keeps on
expressing his views on rural transformation. It
interests me. I am sure his ideas carry some
freshness to bring out revolutionary changes in
the quality of life in Indian villages even for
governments with limited resources. I have met
him once, but I don’t know if he has some root
in village and first hand experience or he is
just a thinker of the subject only. Here is the
gist of some key points mentioned in his latest
lead article in ‘Times of India’ editorial page:
World trade in food products, seafood, herbal
products and flowers is about $395 billion.
India ought to have a 20% share in this market,
since India possess 20% of world's irrigated
land. Fortunately, nature has provided India
with large tracts of fertile land, nine to 10
months of sunshine, average rainfall of over
1,000 mm and great biodiversity. India must
leverage this to focus on export of a variety of
processed food, seafood, herbal products and
flowers. Rural India can become the world's
agribusiness powerhouse.
Banks can provide such finance and insurance
companies the necessary cover. The government
should exempt agribusiness units from income
tax, sales tax and excise duty.
More than 25% of the farm produce is lost in
storage and transportation. A chain of cold
storages can be of great help. As I know
government in many villages in Bihar got
constructed 'godowns' in 70s or 80s that had
never been used and are now depilated. I wish
all the future rural projects in a village get
developed in a cluster. Going by my own village
or as I have seen in villages around mine, all
the government owned buildings such as schools,
panchayat, and godown are in different locations
away from the main habitation. If they would
have been one single cluster, it could have
better use as well as supervision of their
status by villagers.
Food Bank
Mr. Firodia proposes a new arm of the banks that
are having some 68,000 branches all over the
country called 'food bank'. A food bank would
own a cold storage unit and function like a safe
deposit vault.
A farmer could deposit his produce (or milk) in
a food bank when he needs to and withdraw it
whenever he chooses. A food bank should give him
a loan against this security to help him buy
seeds and fertiliser for his next crop.
Electronically wired food banks can act as
commodity exchanges and help the farmer in
deciding the right time and the right
destination to sell his produce.
A food bank can lend to agribusiness units to
help them modernise to international standards.
It can even open a retail counter. A food bank
can provide all these services at a much lower
rate than the middlemen. That would increase
farmers' take-home sharply which he can then
invest in his agribusiness.
Rural Bio-energy Cluster
Oil companies in the country could help create a
bio-energy cluster in each village that uses
locally available feedstock to produce biogas,
bio-diesel and ethanol.
India has 1250 million cattle. Cow dung coupled
with other farm residue like rice husk can be a
source to generate enough biogas. And the rural
population can use it for cooking, running
agricultural pumps, energising cold storages and
powering transport vehicles. Biogas can also
help in producing electricity, bio-fertilisers
and bio-pesticides. Waste heat from the
generating set can help in generating safe
drinking water too.
Every village is having a lot of wasteland - a
total of 41.5 million hectares in India. Rural
population requires empowering to plant some 400
different types of bio-diesel trees like
jatropha, neem and karanji. Seeds from these
plants can produce enough bio-diesel to meet
their requirement of diesel. Bio-diesel and
ethanol can be sold to oil companies for further
processing and blending with diesel and petrol.
Carbon credits under Kyoto Protocol will improve
the clusters' economic viability.
India has 108 million hectares of non-irrigated
farmland where farmers can grow sweet sorghum,
corn or similar energy-rich plants or grass that
can be the source for ethanol to meet our petrol
needs.
The Agriculture Finance Corporation has
estimated that an agriculture-led strategy can
generate 7.5 lakh jobs in Pune district alone.
If we implement this strategy in 350 districts
we can create 270 million jobs. Banks and
insurance companies will do a great social
service if they encourage this concept.
With a liberal but responsible rather
accountable credit policy and some rural level
leadership, every village on its own can become
prosperous. The major national political
parties, both ruling and those in opposition
that claim to believe in developmental politics
must have post-election campaign to rebuild the
country side on its on resources and must start
using its cadre at village level for the
projects such as those suggested by Mr. Firodia
or other innovative ideas suggested by the grass
root levels for improving the local conditions.
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