36
Based on its recommendations, the National Rain-fed Areas Authority (NRAA)
was set up in November 2006; it formulated a new set of common guidelines
for watershed development projects in February 2008. NRAA has proposed
to develop about 2.28 million hectares in the XI Plan period covering about
3,744 micro watersheds. By the end of March 2011, 12.08 lakh hectares have
been developed at a cost of
`
1,065.31 crore. During 2011-12, it is targeted
to develop another 2.96 lakh hectares with investment of about
`
235 crore
(Annual Report of Department of Agriculture and Cooperation 2011-12, p.126).
However, the worry on the success of the development of rain-fed areas
emanates from some candid assessment found in the
Mid-Term Appraisal of
the Eleventh Five Year Plan
(2007-08 to 2011-12), which reads as follows:
“Given these ambitious objectives, the performance so far has been most
disappointing. Till 31 August 2009, an expenditure of nearly
`
5,000
crore had been incurred during the Eleventh Plan period but this was
entirely on old projects. No watershed projects under the new IWMP had
been sanctioned till then. There are still about 16,744 ongoing projects
in various stages of completion, which have been unduly delayed on
one count or the other. This poses a serious question over where the
massively raised outlays for the new IWMP in the Eleventh Plan are
going to be spent. What is even more worrisome is that the steps that
need to be taken to actualize the potential inherent in the new guidelines
have yet to be put into place” (pp.71-72) (IWMP = Integrated Watershed
Management Programme).
Earlier Causes for the Agricultural Crisis: Meaningful to Recall
It is necessary to take cognizance of the multiple causes for the dismal
picture of agriculture that provided in the economy until recently. The first and
the foremost has been the neglect of agriculture in the plan resource allocations.
Associated with this has been the neglect of public investments in irrigation
and other infrastructure programmes. As shown in Table 2.7(b), public sector
gross capital formation (GCF) in agriculture as percentage of total agriculture
GCF has dwindled from 43-44% until the 1980s to a little over 20% in 2004-
05; as percentage of agriculture GDP, the public sector capital formation has
dwindled to around 2% from over 4% until the 1990s. GCF in agriculture as
a percentage of aggregate GCF in the country was about 13-14% or more until
the 1980s but it has dwindled to around 7% by 2005-06.
Secondly, the neglect of agriculture has been more conspicuous in the
case of the areas of dry-farming and rain-fed agriculture which occupy about
