35
still appear discouraging in this scenario. First, the improvement in agricultural
investment was measured in terms of agricultural GCF to agricultural GDP
ratio. To an extent, this ratio is misleading because agricultural GDP growth
has been lukewarm and hence the agricultural GCF to agricultural GDP ratios
got inflated in recent years. On the other hand, agricultural GCF as percentage
of the country’s aggregate GCF has continued to remain sluggish. In fact, the
average of this ratio for the quinquennium 1999-2000 to 2003-04 was 10.4%,
but it dwindled to 7.3% in the next seven-year period 2004-05 to 2010-11. No
doubt, within this seven-year period, there has been a gentle increase from an
average of 6.9% from the four-year period 2004-05 to 2007-08 to 7.8% in the
next three years 2008-09 to 2010-11 [Table 2.9(a)].
Even this increase in farm investment has come about because of
the increase in the private sector investment, its share in the total jumping
from 77.6% in 2007-08 to 83.7% in 2010-11. The public sector share in total
investment even in this recovery phase has slumped from 22.4% to 16.3%
during the same period.
This brings us to yet another issue of concern relates to the budgetary
allocations for agriculture, which had as explained above, shown a flicker of
improvement for some time, but has again reverted to a situation of stagnation.
As shown in Table 2.8(a) earlier, combined expenditures of the central and
state governments as a proportion of their total development expenditure has
shown no increase at all in recent years; in fact, this proportion has slipped
from 15.1% in 2008-09 to a range of 13.4% to 13.8% in the next latest three
years. This certainly does not augur well for the expansion of public investment
in agriculture, which is a
sine quo non
for stimulating private farm investment.
Apart from these, the most arduous challenge in agriculture relates
rain-fed agriculture. Rain-fed area constitutes about three-fourths of land mass
under arid, semi-arid and dry humid zones and they account for nearly 55%
of agricultural land spread across large parts of the country. The Technical
Committee on Watershed Programmes in India (Parthasarathy Committee), in
its report submitted in January 2006, had lighted the fact that for the first time
since the mid-1960s, the 1999s experienced a rate of growth of foodgrains
production that was lower than the growth of population. It further argued
that while irrigated agriculture appeared to have hit a plateau, rain-fed farming
has suffered neglect. Therefore, towards the end of the Tenth Plan (2002-
03 to 2006-07), watershed development programme was conferred a new
beginning with the acceptance of a series of recommendations made by the
Parthasarathy Committee which sought to reform the watershed programme.
