Achieving both growth and equity
February 01, 2021
Quoting Thirukkural, the Finance Minister said in her Budget speech: “A king/ruler is the one who creates and acquires wealth, protects and distributes it for common good.” Achieving both growth and equity is more critical for agriculture compared to any other sector of the economy, because farmers constitute the single largest segment of the poor in the country. On the other hand, agriculture has an enormous upside potential, too, given the headroom available in the sector’s resource productivity metrics to deliver required growth.
Three-fold objectives
The overarching objectives for the sector are three-fold. Creating more wealth by improving competitiveness of agricultural production, and adding further value to the primary produce through processing being the first objective. Expanding production in an ecologically sensitive manner is the next objective, given our rapidly depleting water tables and the accelerating clim