Science for a new agricultural policy

Science for a new agricultural policy Rajeswari S. Raina (CSIR-NISTADS, New Delhi) * (Chapter 9, in C. Ramasamy and K . R. Ashok (Eds.) 2016. Vicissitudes of Agriculture in the Fast Growing Indian Economy, Academic Foundation: New Delhi) 1. Introduction: India is a global leader in agricultural production. Sound science and scientific advice for policy are essential for the sustainability of Indian agriculture, which has to feed and nourish 1.2 billion people. It has to achieve this with substantive enhancement of all the dimensions of food and nutritional security, without further degradation of the environment. The task is daunting because it faces a massive and young rural population looking for decent and gainful employment, increasing climate variability and change and globally competitive markets. Debates rage about farmers suicides, FDI in retail, institutional farm credit being diverted to non-farm purposes, increasing fertilizer subsidies, loss of seed sovereignty, rapid depletion and massive degradation of soil and water systems and biodiversity; scientists watch, armed with crop-specific production technologies. Many of these are technologies that fail because they are not specific to agroecological contexts; the technologies for natural resource conservation receive inadequate policy support, or the prevalent subsidies distort opportunities for resource conservation and productivity. Scientists also do not comprehend the increasing criticisms of agricultural science and technology (S&T) by the state (for instance, Planning Commission, 2008 Vol.III, p.13), or the evident indifference of the state (since the late 1990s) to funding S&T (Raina et al 2014), most painfully evident in the 2014-15 S&T budget cuts. Their science is responding to policy imperatives; they demand more funding and expansion of agricultural research (Committee on Agriculture, 2014). India’s agricultural S&T establishment has never questioned the prevalent policy framework or developed a constructive critique and alternatives. In this context, this paper demands a moment of introspection. This paper presents the case for the agricultural sciences to work with a new awareness of the overall purpose or goal of, and strategic directions for agriculture in India. It argues that India’s agricultural S&T needs policy research capacities. Sound science not only serves existing policy, but also articulates and helps revise periodically, the agricultural policy goal and new policy instruments. The social sciences play a crucial role in building and maintaining policy research capacities. Following a brief overview of India’s agricultural policy - goal(s), instruments and processes, and insights from other countries (section 2), the paper explores the relationship between agricultural S&T and policy in the contemporary history of Indian agriculture (section 3). The agricultural sciences have always been subservient to policy; they see their role as supplying technologies and evidence to policy makers, even when they are aware that the policy goal is flawed. The social sciences (limited to agricultural economics in India) located in a positivist hierarchical policy framework have always translated into economic terms or policy instruments, the evidence or technologies generated by the natural sciences. Globally, this, the policy research framework of ‘science speaking truth to power,’ faced its demise with scientific controversies *

Comments and suggestions from Dr. I. P. Abrol, and from the VPAGe project sponsored by NAIP are gratefully acknowledged; any errors and omissions that remain are mine.

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following Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and increasing democratization of expert knowledge in the 20th century (Weingart, 1999). In 21st century India, the GM crops controversies that bring diverse problem statements, solutions, technological risk and impact assessments (Menon and Siddharthan, 2015) have resulted in a massive loss of face for science, which can only be regained with capacities for self-reflection, responsiveness and anticipation within the sciences. Today, the scientists have scant appreciation of the ways in which science can articulate and help shape policy (besides supplying evidence for predetermined policy goals) (Section 4). The social sciences can enable a better appreciation of the social and political embeddedness and accountability of science, the social construction of technology, the dynamic history of science and agriculture in the sub-continent, the global processes (especially the agenda setting international agricultural research system), the institutional changes or new norms and rules that rural people grapple with today, the diversity and variability across agro-ecological and social systems; thus ensure a deeper democratic engagement between the natural sciences and diverse stakeholders. Democratic dialogues are necessary for the sciences to get involved in policy research (Section 5). The policy research framework needed, is one of “making sense together” where science along with the stakeholders in the sector strives to bring evidence, enable argument and debate, providing advice where there is consensus and continuing the scientific investigations and dialogue in cases of extreme differences, chaos or uncertainty (Hoppe, 1999). That this is possible only within decentralized eco-regional or location specific research systems is a useful policy pointer. 2. India’s NAP The first agricultural policy statement of the Government of India, the National Agriculture Policy (NAP) (DoAC, 2000), was drafted more than three decades after the launch of its successful green revolution, and half a century after its first industrial policy. Unlike the Industrial Policy Resolution, 1956 which was tabled, debated and passed by the Parliament, the NAP (DoAC, 2000) was not tabled in or passed by the Parliament. Yet, it was a moment of achievement for Indian agriculture; a national policy document did come into existence. The anomaly that it was drafted by the DoAC of the Union Government’s Ministry of Agriculture was not discussed; agriculture is a State subject according to the Constitution of the Republic of India, where ideally, each State Government should have its own State Agricultural Policy. Till the NAP (DoAC, 2000) came into existence, agriculture was governed by the Union Government’s DoAC using several Acts and Rules. Many of them dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, revised and overhauled as stated in the New Strategy (Subramaniam, 1972). These rules provide the administrative and programme guidelines for the Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Central Sector Schemes that operationalise government support for agriculture in the country. The NAP (DoAC, 2000) and the National Policy on Farmers (NPF 2007) are both available on the website of the Union Government’s Ministry of Agriculture. India’s NAP, has a policy goal of: • A growth rate in excess of 4 percent per annum in the agriculture sector; • Growth that is based on efficient use of resources and conserves our soil, water and biodiversity; • Growth with equity; i.e., growth which is widespread across regions and farmers; 2

• •

Growth that is demand driven and caters to domestic markets and maximizes benefits from exports of agricultural products in the face of the challenges arising from economic liberalization and globalization; Growth that is sustainable technologically, environmentally and economically.

The recent performance of Indian agriculture, “the 3.75 percent growth rate during 2004-05 to 2012-13, is a matter of pride for the country;” it approached the “targeted growth rate of 4 percent.” (Chand, 2014, p. 11). This, the 4 percent growth rate was the target for the XI Five Year Plan, and remains the same for the on-going XII Five Year Plan (2012-17). The policy has been criticised for insufficient attention to strategies to achieve the policy goal – including levels of investment, public and private sector roles, improved irrigation and participatory management of water, forests, common lands (Chand, 2004; NAAS, 2003; Dhoot, 2006). Yet, S&T based schemes are designed and implemented, and supported with massive subsidies, in order to achieve this growth rate, the policy goal. Recent evidence shows that the policy goal, the 4 percent growth rate has been achieved mainly due to the increase in prices received by farmers (higher MSP and favourable terms of trade) and increased use of material inputs (Chand, 2014). The policy instruments that keep these two drivers strong, ie., the output pricing and input subsidy instruments are therefore, sufficient. Even the maintenance research (conceptualized as the S&T effort required to handle secondary and tertiary production problems that will emerge even after adoption of the primary (irrigationHYV- chemical) technology package) that is touted to keep agricultural productivity growing, is not considered necessary today. An agricultural development strategy focusing on MSP and not on technological improvements, development of infrastructure, entry of modern capital, and market reforms, may not be sustainable (ibid). This is a vicious circle; for technological improvements, new and locally appropriate infrastructure and capital investments, and markets (ranging from FDI in retail to local farmer producer companies, cooperatives or thousands of informal local markets) there must be more and better S&T effort, way beyond current magnitudes and quality. 2.1. Comparing Agricultural Policy Goals Many countries have reformed their agricultural policies and their agricultural S&T systems, especially in the wake of increasing evidence of the negative environmental impacts of green revolution technologies. In South Africa, the policy goal is “to achieve sustainable, equitable and efficient agricultural development” (MALA, 1998). 1 Three strategic goals are listed, which must be achieved to achieve the overarching policy goal; (i) to build an efficient and internationally competitive agricultural sector; (ii) to support the emergence of a more diverse structure of production with a large increase in the numbers of successful smallholder farming enterprises; and (iii) to conserve our agricultural natural resources and put in place policies and institutions for sustainable resource use. (ibid) These goals remained more or less the same in the formal policy adopted, drafted by the Presidential Working Committee on Agriculture (2001). The expected outcomes were: 3

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii)

Increased wealth creation in agriculture and rural areas. Increased sustainable employment in agriculture Increased incomes and increased foreign exchange earnings Reduced poverty and inequalities in land and enterprise ownership Improved farming efficiency Improved national and household food security Stable and safe rural communities, reduced levels of crime and violence and sustained rural development (viii) Improved investor confidence and greater domestic and foreign investment in agricultural activities and rural areas (ix) Pride and dignity in agriculture as an occupation and sector. In Brazil, the national agricultural policy goal is integrated with the food policy goal, the Secretariat of Agricultural Policy being located within the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply. The Agricultural Policy Mission is to “promote the sustainable development and the agribusiness competitiveness in benefit of the Brazilian society”, and the specific policy instruments of finance, market and income warranty, insurance, climate risk zoning, agricultural and livestock activity guarantee, agro-energy and infrastructure are designed to support this overarching policy goal (SAP, 2008). “Food self-sufficiency” is China’s agricultural policy goal. In order to achieve this goal, policies are designed for continued agricultural production growth, rising rural incomes, continued high levels of food security, and the elimination of absolute poverty (FAO, 1998). Increasing agricultural support (mainly subsidies and direct payments to farmers) has become the mainstay of Chinese agricultural policy since the early 2000s (Gale, 2013). The UK Government’s Agricultural Policy, is the responsibility of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Drafted within the framework of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) of the European Union, the policy goal is “to provide a sustainable and thriving rural economy.” The new Rural Development Programme (starting January 2015) is supported through three policy areas (i) managing the environment, (ii) increasing farming and forestry productivity, (iii) growing the rural economy. While production targets and growth were part of an earlier (pre-CAP) policy articulation, the UK Government has moved on to making agricultural policy a part of a broad-based rural development and food policy. Let us reiterate the observation that such changes in agricultural policy have been happening in every country – developing, emerging, and developed economies. Their goals have shifted out of production enhancement to small farmer livelihoods, competitiveness, nutritional self sufficiency, or overall rural wellbeing. Growth rates are mentioned to achieve some of these goals; but they come with causal relationships established by sound science and inclusion of several social, political, economic and cultural factors. 3. Revisiting India’s Agricultural Policy Goal and S&T: India’s agricultural policy goal needs to shift too. The 4 percent growth rate as a policy goal, even if the growth is ‘efficient, resource conserving, widespread, demand driven, and sustainable’ is highly inadequate. This policy gullibility not only undermines the capacity of 4

agriculture to address food and environmental security, but also destroys the social and political legitimacy of science. An alternative, an integrated food, agriculture and nutrition (FAN) policy was articulated sometime ago 2. I am asking for a national policy of food, agriculture and nutrition, that can be implemented on a decentralized basis, taking full account of local resources, availabilities, costs, preferences and traditions and has for its objective the minimization of nutritional inequalities among the people, irrespective of their money incomes and their urban or rural residence.(V.K. R.V. Rao, 1982, p.137) The policy goal articulated here was not 4 percent growth rate; it was ‘minimization of nutritional inequalities’. The complexity of the policy problem is captured in this statement. The act of asking for a policy, comes with the specification of agents of production, distribution and consumption, the contexts of centralized planning and implementation in a country with persistent nutritional inequalities (the reasons may be economic (incomes), social (gender or caste), or location (urban or rural)), the articulation of agency of local resources (labour, natural resources, etc.), costs, preferences, and the specification of the purpose or the objective of minimization of nutritional inequalities 3. It addresses the policy goal, choice of policy instruments (or means) and ways of policy implementation. Given this integrated articulation of an overarching food, agriculture and nutrition policy, with the explicit goal of ‘reducing nutritional inequalities’, the prevalent NAP goal of 4 percent growth rate is absurd. Prevalence of hunger and increasing malnutrition is the first sign of this policy absurdity. The turn of the century witnessed a series of criticisms about Indian agricultural S&T; many of them by the very patron state that organized and supported this S&T system. Criticisms focused on how the system was generating technologies for irrigated-chemical intensive cereal production systems with little concern for the environment (see Planning Commission, 2008, Vol. III, pg. 13). Also that pouring more resources without adequate institutional reform of the S&T establishment was meaningless (Planning Commission, 2011, pg. 66). Policy obsession with food production targets continues; when there is scientific evidence that even with record food production, food security and nutrition security are getting worse (Deaton and Dreze, 2009), and several other drivers and causal relationships that impact food security (Dev and Sharma, 2010) are jeopardized, mainly by the very productive power that destroys the crucial ecological and social linkages that support production, distribution and consumption patterns in different agroecological systems (Nellemann et al, 2009). There are criticisms of the National Food Security Mission (NFSM) and the programme for Bringing the Green Revolution to Eastern India (BGREI) as policy instruments or programmes embodying the same green revolution technologies, with subsidies and investments that will lead to the same pressures on ecosystems and farmers livelihoods. These are schemes with very poor baseline data to monitor and evaluate even production successes (for eg., www.kisanswaraj.in/tag/bgrei). The larger political commitment and policy instruments that maintain the same upstream subsidies (mainly favouring domestic suppliers of three important inputs – fertilizer, irrigation and seed) (Dorin, et al 2004) are immutable. The allegiance to past policy frameworks, production paths and investments continues. Science remains subservient to 5

a flawed policy goal of 4 percent growth rate and to policy instruments like subsidies (especially resource degrading and farmer deskilling subsidies that go to industry) that help achieve production targets. This continues, even with overwhelming evidence that the recent agricultural growth rates were achieved because of price increases and not due to production or productivity growth (Chand, 2014). Given the indifference of the government towards agriculture and agricultural S&T over the past decade, there is a policy research exigency. It stems from the persistence of hunger and worsening malnutrition, evident variability and intensity of climate change, increasing natural resource degradation, and the demands on agriculture due to changing rural-urban relationships. Within some States of the Indian Union, new State level policies (even if limited to organic agriculture or agro-food processing industry) reveal a new rural and agrarian political consciousness. They offer opportunities to foster policy research capacities and policy reform. Many have analysed and recommended institutional and organizational reform for revitalizing the agricultural sciences in India, by enabling agro-ecosystem specific S&T capacities and science-policy dialogues. They have called for these very capacities to make the agricultural S&T system simultaneously excellent and relevant. In recommending measures for revitalizing agricultural S&T in India, a key concern has been the capacities within the agricultural S&T system for learning and change (Abrol and Chopra, 2008; Hall et al 2005). The limited opportunities and capacities for linkages and interactions with a range of direct stakeholders, mainly because of the heavy centralization of agricultural S&T (Raina, 2011) is a major constraint. India’s agricultural S&T which was mostly handled by provincial research systems and responding (even if in a limited manner) to location specific knowledge demands till the mid 1960s, is now controlled and directed by the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) of the Union Government’s Ministry of Agriculture. In research expenditure (over 75 percent of national agricultural research expenditure) and the contents of research, it controls agricultural science, through a rigid set of inward and upward accountabilities, myopic evaluation and monitoring systems (Raina, 1999; Raina et al 2014). Strengthening SAUs with eco-regional approaches for S&T and agricultural development have been recommended. “Operationalization of eco-regional approaches will demand that the scientific community in the State Agricultural Universities take an upfront role in defining the research agenda, best approaches to arrive at solutions and developing a seamless interface with development agencies. They must also increasingly guide policy at the local level in consonance with larger goals.” (Abrol and Chopra, 2008, p. 19) In Indian agriculture, spread over 127 agro-climatic zones each containing different magnitudes of variability and diversity of agro-ecosystems, dominated by smallholders (over 86 percent of all operational holdings being marginal and small holdings) there is an urgent need to move on to another research agenda from the centralized commodity specific research structure and the exclusive focus on production targets. Yet almost all the S&T effort is organized into commodity or crop or animal specific organizations, with the overall norm of productionism to govern scientific research; enhancement of genetic potential to meet production targets. One of the 6

biggest pitfalls of this overarching institution or norm of productionism, is this techno-centric problem perception, diagnosis and solutions, devoid of systems relationships and socio-political contexts. Science, caught in one particular knowledge paradigm, seems to have lost its ability to see and analyse the causal relationships between production, the producer (farmer) and the environment. Globally, ‘the conventional life-science based green revolution paradigm in both public and private sector agricultural research has entered a phase of diminishing returns;’ there is an urgent need for fresh thinking about and design of institutional innovations (Ruttan, 2005). The operationalisation of eco-regional approaches strengthening location specific natural resource – based research, giving up the commodity specific techno-centric approach, as has been recommended (Abrol and Chopra, 2008), is one institutional innovation, a policy reform that can build sustainable bridges between agriculture and the environment and between agriculture and nutrition. But for that, the social sciences have to find ways of breaking the current vicious circle of a flawed policy regime, centralized S&T subservient to this policy regime and centrally designed and administered programmes and schemes implemented uniformly across diverse agro-ecological systems. National agricultural policy reform in other countries (discussed above), resulted from combinations of academic (natural and social sciences) evidence, political pressure and civil society led social mobilization processes, which identified the causal relationships and the coherence or incoherence between diverse policy goals and instruments, between the actors, the agency, actions, and outcomes. Despite some extremely relevant evidence churned out by academia and prominent civil society led organizations/coalitions, social mobilization for agricultural policy reform is limited; contributions of and engagement of S&T with policy reform are more alien.

4. S&T and Policy Research Capacities: India’s agricultural S&T establishment and agricultural policy actors appear complacent in a positivist linear science-policy framework. Because the S&T establishment refuses to link with and learn about resource changes (especially soil, water, biodiversity) in each agro-ecosystem, emerging markets, agricultural and rural realities, changing aspirations, cultural and demographic features of farming, there is no scope for a dialogue between public sector S&T and policy actors. The S&T establishment has tinkered with a few marginal reforms, following concerns in the post-liberalization phase, about new import licenses for seeds or machines, FDI in retail and new contract farming, as well as private sector S&T activities (especially in hybrid and GM seeds). There is a clear policy directive for public–private partnerships, especially for commercialization of technologies for agricultural production and productivity (Ayyappan, et al 2007). There is also increasing pressure on public sector research organizations to patent and commercialize their own technologies (ibid), irrespective of their mandate to produce and serve “knowledge public goods”. Yet, a subservient public sector S&T establishment desperately seeking increased funding and promising further legitimization of the flawed policy goal of 4 percent growth rate, seems to have limited future.

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Agricultural S&T organizations need policy research capacities. Policy research capacity within the agricultural sciences is interpreted as the capacity to recommend policy uptake of technological solutions using the research results generated. It is not seen as capacities within the S&T system to understand and relate to policy and development concerns. In India it does not include questions about ‘the effectiveness of science-based decision-making structures, the nature and legitimacy of expertise, the consequences of changes such as increasing transparency, choices among different sources of evidence, the implications of new means of characterizing and representing uncertainties, and ways in which policy and political processes affect what counts as authoritative evidence” (Sutherland et al, 2012). The argument is not that scientists should conduct policy research. The expertise for that is not theirs (though it is the accepted practice that leading scientists assume policy roles, with little or no capacity for the same), though they may have socially sanctioned authority attributed because of their expertise (Raina, 1999). But scientists need to understand how science and policy are related, and how their own expertise is designed by policy. The centrality of S&T in constituting and shaping other policy instruments and outcomes has received scant attention. In ‘the current policy framework’, there are several drivers and causal relationships that impact food security and nutrition (Dev and Sharma, 2010, Planning Commission, 2010). Agricultural S&T is one among six major policy instruments used by the state to increase production; (i) infrastructure, (ii) land and water management, (iii) research and extension, (iv) inputs– including agricultural credit, (v) marketing- including price policy, and (vi) diversification and development of the rural non-farm sector (Dev and Sharma, 2010). The ways in which S&T informs and is applied to each of these policy instruments is however, shaped by the overarching policy goal. If the policy goal is 4 percent annual agricultural growth rate, the nature and directions of scientific research are bound to be different, compared to that which caters to a policy goal of minimization of nutritional inequality as part of an integrated food, agriculture and nutrition (FAN) policy. Thereby, the nature of expertise that is valued and used in the S&T establishment will also differ; the expertise to provide accurate or realistic problem statements and diagnosis, to integrate natural and social sciences explanations of phenomena and causal relationships into research designs, to conduct collaborative research with other stakeholders and validate the solutions generated in each eco-regional and social system are not necessary if the policy goal is merely growth rate. Scientists also need to acknowledge that the relationship between science and policy changes over time. During the first phase of the green revolution (1967-68 to 1980-83, according to Bhalla and Singh, 2010) with increasing growth rates, agricultural S&T legitimized and played a major role in shaping the policy instruments like investments in and subsidies for major inputs, pricing mechanisms and the organization of produce markets. The post-liberalization phase of retrogression of growth rates (1990-93 to 2003-06, Bhalla and Singh, 2010) led to the second green revolution, with the post- 2007 launch of the NFSM and the programme for BGREI. In this phase it is S&T that draws its political legitimacy by catering to policy instruments and programmes that have allegiance to past production investments, and designed to enhance agricultural growth rate. When science draws its political legitimacy from a pre-conceived policy framework (a politically prescribed knowledge-policy paradigm), policy reform is difficult. Here, the policy push needed to change S&T is also locked into the flawed policy

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framework. This causes lasting damage to science, and the social and political legitimacy of expertise. In India, the social sciences that ought to help articulate problem contexts, decipher the problem statements and findings unearthed by scientific research to a wide policy and practice audience, are highly limited and constrained. Agricultural economics, the major and perhaps only social science within India’s agricultural S&T system, can play a major role in articulating some of the science-policy research questions. But the legacy of legitimizing research investments using estimates of returns to research investment still weighs heavily. Recently, the transnational effects of climate change and related negotiations have prompted concerned scholars to ask why some knowledge producers, especially, the economics of public policy have “swayed with the political winds to the detriment of the profession and its outcomes” (Stern, 2009); in particular, outcomes that drive decisions about the environment and the poor. The agricultural scientist today needs to understand how scientifically researched content and direction of policy goals and instruments, merges with politically informed value judgements, social choices, cultural and historical specificities. The social sciences in India should enable a better understanding of the social and political embeddedness and accountability of science, the social construction of technology, the dynamic history of science and agriculture in the subcontinent, the global processes (especially the agenda setting international agricultural research system), the institutional changes or new norms and rules that rural people grapple with today, the diversity and variability across agro-ecological and social systems. These are new research questions within the agricultural sciences. These understandings will enable capacities for inclusion, introspection and responsiveness within the sciences, and significantly alter the indifference of the S&T establishment to the vulnerability and distress of its biggest ally and client, its farmers. 5. Science for Policy: Our argument thus far may be summarized as follows. India’s agricultural S&T plays a subservient role to policy, feeding technologies, data or evidence to a flawed policy goal and inadequate policy instruments. Because it maintains an upward accountability to policy, and is unwilling and unable to articulate its own legitimate scientific voice in society, it loses credibility both within the policy and administrative apparatus of the state and within society. Agricultural S&T can and should enable the much needed policy research for policy reform in agriculture. The capacity of science to clarify and inform policy makers about the complex problem contexts, the scientific and technological choices available and the decisions that they are responsible for (Menon and Siddharthan, 2015) is important. The relationships between S&T and policy are not limited to a simple supply of scientific evidence for uptake into the policy realm. It is a transformation of S&T from a body of knowledge into expert advice including the processes of inscription into policy decisions and the exact legitimization or accountability it confers on that policy goal or instrument (Weingart, 1999). When the policy framing is one of neutral ‘science speaking truth to power’ or the messy political interests and actors, and science exists as part of the policy processes (of inscription into decisions), there is a loss of credibility.

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Credibility for the agricultural sciences will come with meaningful policy research; it will include processes that keep the dialogue open between the social and natural sciences, and between science and various actors including policy makers and politicians. A policy research framework of ‘making sense together’ with anticipatory and reflective capacities and inclusive ways of working (Hoppe, 1999) can be enabled by effective deliberative democratic practices within the S&T establishment. In the Indian agricultural sciences, a first step will be to promote on-going dialogues between scientists, policy makers and a wide range of stakeholders with a complete reorganization of the highly centralized and consolidated agricultural S&T. Good science and meaningful policy go hand in hand. Policy instruments tailored to enable the technological changes and support services for India’s marginal and small farmers, or rainfed agriculture, can be enabled only if there are new policy goals, like sustainable and climate smart (with adaptation and mitigation capacities) agriculture (Abrol and Chopra, 2008; Raina, 2012) or reduction in nutritional inequalities (Rao, 1982). The prevalent NAP goal of some percentage growth rate spells disaster and helplessness for agriculture and agricultural S&T. Good and credible science is needed to address some simmering policy research questions, about the epistemology of natural resources or capital and the causal relationships between these and production choices; it is necessary for science to confront the increasing criticisms from its main patron, the state. In the wider civic space, there have been demands for science-policy research, especially following GM cotton, soaring fertilizer subsidies, and increasing farmer’s suicides. It is now the rational and moral responsibility of India’s S&T establishment to break out of the centralized monolithic research structure subservient to a wrong policy goal, and branch out into several decentralized eco-regional and location specific research programmes, in collaboration with stakeholders, to ensure more accurate problem statements and better explanations of the causal relationships between hunger, consumption, production, and the environment. It can then enable policy research and support the political processes for the articulation of and revision of agricultural policy goals and instruments for each State of the Indian Union, as envisaged by the Constitution of the Republic of India. Perhaps, even provide the S&T support for an overarching national food, agriculture and nutrition (FAN) policy to minimize nutritional inequalities.

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NOTES 1

Of the three policy documents, the Agricultural White Paper (1994), the Agricultural Policy in South Africa (1998) and the Strategic Plan for South African Agriculture (2001), it is the second drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs that shaped the formally adopted agricultural policy. 2

The following two paragraphs draw from Raina, 2015.

3

From Raina ( 2015 forthcoming) using the Burkean pentadic discussed in Knapp (2009).

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