The Coronavirus or Covid-19 crisis has thrown up several possibilities. Am seeing several products and companies that were just about surviving or even dying get a sudden lease of life while the traditional businesses are locked down or sulking silently. Images of the mass migrations back to their villages in spite of a "curfew" by the migrants is also heart wrenching. They are braving not only the elements but possibly the risk of spreading the infection to their families and friends back in the villages. It remains to be seen if these migrants indeed migrate back to the cities post this crisis or simply decide to live on MGNREGA and other doles. If I may hazard a guess, the returns may be just about 60% but may take over a whole year if conditions do return to normal. Others may simply decide to "settle down" in their villages and not fight the inertia that would set in invariably.
Herein lies our greatest opportunity and the positive fallout of the crisis as a Nation in my view. India should reset its vision and make a simple yet pathbreaking decision in the next few weeks. India should say, “we want to become the food bowl of the world by 2030”. This is because
a) we will have a lot of mouths to feed with 18-20% of global population living here,
b) food availability and hunger is going to be a greater crisis than Covid-19 in the world in the next 10-15 years, and
c) food habits are bound to change post crisis to a more balanced one, leaning towards natural and organically grown foods.
What if our people, who are eminently capable and also naturally inclined towards Agri are incentivized to live in their own villages and indulge in high tech farming. Can we leverage our great and now famous friendship with Israel to reinvent farming and Water Management in our country. Can we empower and energize our farmers by giving them technology tools instead of just handing out doles and pittance of an aid? Can we go for deep ploughing and bring out the nutrients of our rich soils rather than overload the shallow layers with subsidized fertilizers. Isn’t a big increase in farm productivity and yields possible? Something to think of.
Our factories, which are a sad substitute for the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut in terms of scale and productivity can be asked to automate extensively, releasing people for Agriculture and move more and more towards adopting Industry 4.0 techniques. We can do this by leveraging the great IT prowess we arguably have and thereby use less and less people but pack more engineering and smartness into the products. This should be our model for manufacturing and it doesn't matter if it remains at 15-17% of our GDP. It shall grow with our GDP in absolute terms.
More and more of our young people should be directed towards Agriculture, farming and food processing and related fields. This is akin to the school scene in the movie Interstellar where the protagonist’s son is exhorted to take up farming as its the pressing need for the World at the that point. Our Education should keep pace and drive Agriculture and food production related courses with the vision of making India the food factory to the world in a decade as China is for manufacturing today.
We will not only complement China by this and not blindly compete with them in a losing battle. We would even play to our strengths as a country and rejuvenate the forgotten art of farming albeit with the necessary upgrades coming from the current state of the technology in the World.
Are we ready for this bold and decisive step? Am sure if we did, all the forces of this world will conspire to make us a grand success. But time is running out and we cannot afford to let a good pandemic go waste!!
Sreeram Srinivasan
Herein lies our greatest opportunity and the positive fallout of the crisis as a Nation in my view. India should reset its vision and make a simple yet pathbreaking decision in the next few weeks. India should say, “we want to become the food bowl of the world by 2030”. This is because
a) we will have a lot of mouths to feed with 18-20% of global population living here,
b) food availability and hunger is going to be a greater crisis than Covid-19 in the world in the next 10-15 years, and
c) food habits are bound to change post crisis to a more balanced one, leaning towards natural and organically grown foods.
What if our people, who are eminently capable and also naturally inclined towards Agri are incentivized to live in their own villages and indulge in high tech farming. Can we leverage our great and now famous friendship with Israel to reinvent farming and Water Management in our country. Can we empower and energize our farmers by giving them technology tools instead of just handing out doles and pittance of an aid? Can we go for deep ploughing and bring out the nutrients of our rich soils rather than overload the shallow layers with subsidized fertilizers. Isn’t a big increase in farm productivity and yields possible? Something to think of.
Our factories, which are a sad substitute for the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut in terms of scale and productivity can be asked to automate extensively, releasing people for Agriculture and move more and more towards adopting Industry 4.0 techniques. We can do this by leveraging the great IT prowess we arguably have and thereby use less and less people but pack more engineering and smartness into the products. This should be our model for manufacturing and it doesn't matter if it remains at 15-17% of our GDP. It shall grow with our GDP in absolute terms.
More and more of our young people should be directed towards Agriculture, farming and food processing and related fields. This is akin to the school scene in the movie Interstellar where the protagonist’s son is exhorted to take up farming as its the pressing need for the World at the that point. Our Education should keep pace and drive Agriculture and food production related courses with the vision of making India the food factory to the world in a decade as China is for manufacturing today.
We will not only complement China by this and not blindly compete with them in a losing battle. We would even play to our strengths as a country and rejuvenate the forgotten art of farming albeit with the necessary upgrades coming from the current state of the technology in the World.
Are we ready for this bold and decisive step? Am sure if we did, all the forces of this world will conspire to make us a grand success. But time is running out and we cannot afford to let a good pandemic go waste!!
Sreeram Srinivasan
This is a wonderful progressive thought. It could be the next agricultural revolution after the Mahalonobis model. I also believe that consumption of agri products must increase if we have to be eco friendly and follow a sustainable development path. Industrial products are great but have resulted in ravaging our resources and natural eco system.
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