A food-dependent India would never have stood up with its voice in the world, on account of the politics of food aid and it is to Indira Gandhi the country owes its food self-reliance.
I did not participate in the centennial writings on Indira Gandhi. November 19, her birthday, is also a special day for us because Tavishi, our first-born, was born on this day. But the eulogies and critiques on Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary entirely missed the difficulties she faced on pushing food self-reliance and the tenacity with which she overcame them. A food-dependent India would never have stood up with its voice in the world, on account of the politics of food aid and it is to Indira Gandhi the country owes its food self-reliance.
In December 1974, I took over as the head of the Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission. In those days, Planning Commission division heads had to call on the president and the prime minister, who was the chairman of the Commission. One late evening in December, I was given my task: Steel plants and machine tools are all right but my people must be fed. When we beg for grain our nose is rubbed in the ground. Do you understand this? Ji, I stammer. What will you do? I will try my best, you say weakly. That’s all I want. I have great faith in young Indians. If you run into problems, ask my office to help. And a phone call on the RAX — if this young advisor needs something help him. How many 35-year-olds are fired up that way?
Coming out, I discovered that agricultural planning in India was done with fictitious data. The so-called “norms” of input demand came from a Polish planning paper. We did not have data at the district level for the early Seventies to identify what worked and what did not. I wrote to every collector to send me data from 1971 to 1973. They did. I knew this work could only be done in a research set-up and gave the project to my friend and teacher, G.S. Bhalla, then in JNU, to process the data for me. In a few months, with data from hundreds of districts, we said it is not true that the Indian farmer does not respond. In one-sixth of the area, the agricultural growth rate is above 5 per cent per annum. These are areas with irrigation, high yielding varieties (HYVs) and other inputs. In another two-fifths, it’s largely only irrigation and the growth rate is over 3 per cent. But in the remaining areas, nothing is happening. On Independence Day 1975, Indira Gandhi was to say from the Red Fort that in one hundred districts agriculture is declining, we have to change this.
In March 1975, we said if you complete 10 big irrigation projects struggling along from the last two decades by spending Rs 500 crore, by 1978-79, the last year of the fifth Five-Year Plan, you will get four million hectares under irrigation. If you give another Rs 500 crore for ground water, you will get another four million hectares. Then, even if the yield of the HYVs remain the same as in irrigated areas, you will produce 125 million tonnes of grain. India’s grain production had reached 116 million tonnes in 1971, a record year, but had fallen to 102 and then 104 million tonnes. The World Bank was to say that production will not go beyond 118 million tonnes. The Economic Survey put the figure at 120 million tonnes. The scientists said we can produce more without all this. Indira Gandhi stood behind the Planning Commission’s self-reliance plan in grains like a rock. The money was allocated in a special supplementary grant after the budget. In real terms, it was only in the Nineties that agriculture got this large an allocation again according to CSO data. India produced 127 million tonnes of grain in 1978-79, two million tonnes more than the target. Jeffrey Sachs was to eulogise the Indian model of irrigation and tube wells as a model for Sahelian Africa three decades later.
Food self-reliance is at the heart of the autonomy of a nation. Indira Gandhi made India stand on its feet and stop begging for grain. Malnutrition is still there. But you don’t beg for grain, thanks to her.
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