Saturday, December 26, 2009

The great pit of corruption and fertilizer subsidy

The one of the major criticism of the so great and laudable green revolution of the seventies is the distorted use of chemical fertilizer. Though at that time food security was pirority, we were the country of impoverished, hungry, dying, desperate, people and green revolution brought a great relief it made us at least self reliant in food. But with the change in circumstances we need to change, our strategies today we are growing. major draw back or lacunae lies in inadequate funds allocated and improper use of the allocated funds.
Fertilizer subisdy is very critical, keeping in mind the deteriorating agricultural growth.
Wastage of money, but why?
Govt. set aside Rs119,772 crore rupees in the year 2008-09 for synthetic fertilizer subsidy , which comes out to be Rs 30000 per year per family of five members if we consider the population of farmers to be 60 crore (which is over estimation it will come out to be more than thirty thousand).
But on ground what does our farmer gets? and If farmers are not getting the proper worth of the subsidies given to them then, where does the money goes?
Answer to these questions is , the entire system of subsidy works for feeding the corrupt machinery of our system. These already known answers also say that why this illogical subsidy system is in practice.
It is far better to provide this money directly to the farmers, but then who will feed corruption.
Unrational system is degrading our agriculture.....
The biggest portion of the subsidy goes to Urea and Sulphate based fertilizers and this system is common for all places. Here the soil conditions are never taken care of instead of it , the imbalanced use of fertilizers is encouraged by keeping the prices of select fertilizers down, which leads to soil degradation and pollution, resulting in low outputs.
What needs to be done?
• We need to revamp our fertilizer subsidy structure if we really want to improve the conditions of agriculture. Subsidy should be given in congruency with the local requirements of the places. For example if the soil conditions of a particular district or region shows the lack of a particular nutrient then in those areas that particular nutrients should be subsidized.
• The amount of subsidies given should depend on the amount of requirements and should be inversely proportional to the amount of their presence in particular soils.
Apart from these many other things could also be done , but the major problem lies in who cares and for what...

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