This year they say it will be 75 million tonnes if everything goes well. Sure, rabi sowing was a bit delayed, winter rains have been sparse, the temperature has been a bit on the warmer side; but things don’t seem to be so bad. So now we are aiming lower than what we achieved almost a decade back. Shameful, isn’t it? To put this in perspective, in 1968 we barely produced 10 million tonnes of wheat a year, and production had been stagnant at that level for many years. Within 10 years of sustained efforts, by 1978 we were at 30 million tonnes of wheat.

In those days we had little access to the latest technology, all other sectors were dependent upon agriculture, and the farmer tended to be poorer, less educated, with more mouths to feed, and had far fewer means for any improvements. The government also had fewer means and even lesser expertise. But a decision was taken, implementation occurred, problems surfaced, some problems were circumvented, some were not; but results were achieved very rapidly.

No such luck today. Not just the Central government, state governments across North India are equally, if not more, at fault. Will it be so difficult to increase wheat output? The answer, surprisingly, is no. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continue to have very low productivity in wheat. So do Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. If Haryana and Punjab can achieve international yield levels, there is no reason why one cannot achieve the same in UP, Bihar, the Ganganagar region in Rajasthan and Malwa in MP.

... contd.