Bihar Agriculture- A Perspective

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FC. Bansil beads the Techno Economic Research Institute, New Delhi, founded by him in 1984. He belongs to the first batch of Indian Economic Service and has worked with the FAO for about 15 years. in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Rome, Zambia and Libya. He has authored 30 books, besides a large number of reports and papers prepared for various Governments. He has published over 400 papers in specialized technical journals. His work experience relates to the formulation, implementation, evaluation and formulation of regional plans for agriculture, statistics, marketing, livestock, irrigation, fisheries, forestry, wildlife, national parks, tourism, agro-industrial and social sectors like demography, health, education and housing, as well as project identification, formulation and evaluation in these fields.

Dr. Ransil was appointed by the Planning Commission as Chairman of the Tenth and Eleventh Plans Working Group on Animal Husbandry Economics and Statistics. He completed the study "Livestock in India 2000-2030" sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. During his FAO assignments in Sri Lanka, Zambia and Libya as Senior Planning Advisor, he undertook micro level studies on issues relating to water.

The food economy of India has gone through a number of phases since the late sixties when seeds of Green Revolution were sown. Having achieved self-sufficiency, the country has unmanageable Stocks for which India ran short of storage capacity. The position today is that the Green Revolution States, Punjab and Haryana in particular, are suffering from technology fatigue and are unable to show any significant growth. There is a growing imbalance between the demand and the supply of cereals, pulses and edible oilseeds. The country is seriously talking about Second Green Revolution. This concept, however, has not taken any concrete shape.

It is in this context that the Institute (TERI) approached the Planning Commission for an in-depth study of the potentials of agriculture development in Bihar. This state which has immense agricultural resources, to be the leader in the Second Green Revolution, has so far failed to exploit those resources to the desired levels. Fifteen years into India's economic reforms, Bihar, country's third largest state, is finally gearing itself to catch up with the rest of India, according to a World Bank report. From being the first state to abolish the Agriculture Marketing Control (APMC) Act providing additional avenues to farmers from sale produce, repealing the Urban Land Ceiling Act and adopting the Model Municipal Act expected to attract organized construction and real estate firms to Bihar, to providing a Single Window Clearance Act 2006 and State Investment Promotion Board (SIPB) to facilitate Industrial Investments, Bihar has indeed come a long way.

Perspective Plan in the study is based on the theory of 'Look Within, Look Around and Look Beyond'. This means that we first study the potential within the state. We find that there are wide gaps in the productivity levels as between different districts under similar agro- climatic conditions and those between State level and at the research on the farmer's field in the State.

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