THE proud Punjabi farmer on his four wheel tractor is one of the more enduring images of agricultural prosperity and the Green Revolution in India. The Indian agricultural success story today is one of aggregates at the national level. Less noticed is the fact that high levels of buffer stock of foodgrains and claims of India emerging as the largest producer of milk, beef, fruits and vegetables, as also growing sales of four wheel tractors often mask regional inequalities and paradoxes. The persistence of large-scale farm distress, nutrition deficits, and climate stress often raises uncomfortable questions about schemes that today seek to ‘set right’ years of historical neglect by ‘Bring(ing) the Green Revolution to Eastern India’ (BGREI). Paradoxically, farmers in Punjab today are the among the most indebted.

The recent suicide of Arumugam, unable to repay the bank loan for a tractor in Tamil Nadu, raises disturbing questions about the tenuous link between agricultural prosperity and the ‘Indian’ model of agricultural mechanization that has inextricably conjoined mechanization and improved farm productivity with the spread of four wheel tractors (4WTs). Global headlines and celebrated case studies in business schools of the success of Mahindra and Mahindra in leveraging India’s market size for global scale in tractors, and giving the John Deeres and New Hollands a run for their money, masks a more fundamental question regarding the choice of these machines in poor East Indian states such as Odisha. Farms and farmers in eastern India have little in common with the traditional green revolution areas. Should farmers and policy makers of Odisha or Bihar thus learn from the ‘small’, lesser-known policy experiments in the spread of small machines in Bangladesh and Nepal instead of following Punjab and Haryana?

A few surprising trends about the spread of small machines merit further investigation. While tractor manufacturers in India have seen a decline and stagnation in sales of 4WTs in recent years, surprisingly Odisha has emerged as the leader in the country in sales of two wheeled tractors, 2WTs, (popularly known as power tillers). Second, as pointed out by Biggs and Justice in their insightful paper on the comparative spread of small machines in Asia, India’s trajectory of growth is out of sync with the rest of the region.¹ Despite leading the manufacture of 4WT globally, there have been more 2WTs in operation in Bangladesh than India. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have over 80 per cent of their tilling operations mechanized largely through 2WTs. The comparative low Indian figure of 45 per cent indicates that the model of agricultural mechanization based on 4WTs has placed it beyond the reach of most smallholders. India’s preference for 4WT over 2WTs is 56:2 whereas the comparable ratio is 3:53 for Bangladesh. The Indian agricultural mechanization paradox is surprising given the predominance of small and marginal farmers, and the country’s the stronger manufacturing base and research and development capability in comparison to its neighbours.

 

This short essay seeks to unravel this paradox by examining policy experiments that have led to a possible alternate mechanization story in Odisha. We suggest that better insights for policy interventions to chart alternate agricultural pathways are more likely through learning from grassroots experiments in states in eastern India rather than seeking to replicate the green revolution paradigm. These experiments, even if partially successful, could benefit by situating and embedding these experiences within a larger set of discussions on agriculture in the region. The recent success of Sikkim being declared an organic state, for instance, has happened despite the absence of a state agricultural university. Sikkim was willing to make the most of its disadvantage by learning from others and charting bold, decentralized and empowering policy experiments.

 

Our study on the spread of small engines and equipment in rural Odisha has shown a surprising, even spectacular, growth of power tillers.² While Odisha’s share of 4WTs is less than 1.2 per cent of the country’s total and is decreasing, in the period 2004-14, its share of overall 2WTs sales has varied between 10 per cent and a high of 25 per cent. A key contributor to this growth has been the subsidy push through the State Agriculture Policy in 2008, enhanced further in 2013. This policy has brought farm machines within the reach of small farmers. It has also attracted manufacturers such as VST that specialize in 2WT and lower HP tractors.

VST’s dealership network in Odisha is second only to the one in its home base in Karnataka. Despite recent implementation issues that have affected release of subsidy money that could thus lead to lower growth, the broad message is that public investments in agriculture can spur growth that can benefit small holders. Subsidies are not 2WT specific and have also facilitated the spread of power reapers, pump sets, power threshers and so on. However, a spatial analysis indicates the spread of power tillers to be higher in some of the poorer southern and western districts of Kalahandi and Sundergarh, with most other equipment spreading better in the favoured coastal districts of Odisha.

This surprising spread of power tillers suggests a counter trend in agricultural mechanization that could be relevant in rethinking the green revolution strategy. The policy experiment of spread of power tillers and Odisha’s leadership was not planned or foreseen in the thrust to increase farm productivity. In contrast to a top-down approach, the policy experiment of enabling the spread of small machines like the Mandwa weeders has been based on an openness to learn from grassroots innovations which are outside the formal agricultural establishment.

 

The Mandwa weeder is a mechanical equipment that emerged out of experiments by civil society organizations (CSOs) for a labour and gender friendly mechanical tool to help the spread of the System of Rice Intensification (or SRI) in southern India. In Odisha, the policy experiment involved the then Director of Agriculture opening up to ideas from CSOs that resulted in the Mandwa weeder getting official recognition and sanction over the state promoted though underperforming Cono weeder. Figures for sales of these weeders across India are difficult to collate but not only are the Mandwa weeders being used by many farmers, Odisha today arguably has more women operating these weeders than any other state.

Grassroots innovations in agriculture outside the formal research establishment, have been extensively documented by the Honey Bee Network and, more recently, celebrated and featured as Krishi Sutra of the Department of Agriculture. The uptake of these ideas by extension wings of the department has, however, been limited, primarily because of the linear or pipeline model of innovation in agriculture that separates research and extension and privileges formal over informal research. Recent institutional innovations supported by the Department of Rural Development, the spread of agro-ecological innovations such as community managed sustainable agriculture (CMSA), non-pesticidal management (NPM) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana earlier, and SRI in most parts of India, demonstrates that rural development departments have of late been more open to ideas from outside formal research domains. A broader poverty and livelihood focus and mission has helped take these innovations much further than the limited food supply mandate of departments of agriculture and these innovations have spread through community based extension systems.

 

The case of the Mandwa weeder shows how small and timely policy interventions can open up spaces for both small farmers and women in agriculture. The Mandwa weeder, named after a village in Khammam district of Telangana, where Kishan Rao, the innovator-engineer hails from, emerged out of a workshop on weeder design conducted by the CSO WASSAN in collaboration with farmers and agriculture engineering officials in 2006. The involvement of users led to the realization that weeder designs had to account for different soil types and needed to be lighter than the conventional Cono weeder promoted by the department. The redesigned Mandwa weeder entered Odisha when Sambhav, a CSO in Nayagarh district working on gender and agriculture issues, chose to try it out in its experiments and training on SRI.³ Weeding in paddy cultivation is primarily carried out by women. The heavier and mechanical Cono weeder shifted this role to men. Sambhav found the Mandwa weeder more suitable for Odisha soils and innovated by testing it with women labourers. This practice soon spread to other parts of southern Odisha.

 

Odisha had an unusual SRI learning alliance that enabled conversations between agriculture department officials, CSOs and researchers.⁴ When the state government initiated programmes for spread of SRI in 2008, the demand for weeders was high. The then Director of Agriculture, Dr Padhee, in a bold policy decision directed the Agro Industries Corporation to fabricate the Mandwa weeder in Odisha because procuring them from Andhra Pradesh would have resulted in increased costs. Soon weeder designs were given to fabricators at the district level and thus taken across the state. A government subsidy helped in greater dissemination of the weeders to small farmers.

It is not often that grassroots innovations in agriculture get mainstreamed like the Mandwa weeder has in Odisha, something that has not happened in other states. Significantly, because the policy experiment was situated within a broader context, it created the space for discussion and action on the neglected dimension of mechanization suitable for women, which is increasingly acquiring importance due to the increased feminization of agriculture. Beyond the numbers game, the really significant and unusual story is that there are more women using mechanical weeders in Odisha than in any other state.

The highlighting of the above mentioned instances is not to imply that the high sales of power tillers or gender-friendly weeders have been an unequivocal success in Odisha. Sales of power tillers are linked directly to subsidy provision, and rent seeking is not uncommon both in ensuring inclusion of a particular equipment within the subsidy regime and in the distribution of subsidy to the farmer. Though Odisha has received awards for the use of ICT and implementation of an online system of registering beneficiaries, this is unlikely to completely plug leakages as revealed in our discussions with distributors.

 

Subsidies can provide an initial impetus, but then need to be followed up with more consistent effort in changing behavioural patterns in the agricultural ecosystem, and enabling the transition to greater ownership by farmers and rural entrepreneurs. The Government of Odisha has not been able to effectively plan this transition to ensure that interesting policy experiments survive when they fall below the radar; this requires innovative policy thinking and design. Thus, while the macro-goal of increasing the power input in farms from 0.25 kilowatt/hectare to 1.47kw/ha from 2001-2013 has been met, effort at further enhancing this from 1.47kw/ha to 2 kw/ha in future is only likely to favour the dissemination of higher horsepower machines that are far more expensive. Similarly, though there have been a few attempts to set up agro-service centres, or encourage custom hiring of agricultural equipment, the spread of these centres, however, has largely been in coastal areas and the costing structure continues to be designed for bigger machines.⁵

The other challenge has been to sustain the quality of inputs required for new innovations. While the state has mandated purchase of a large number of Mandwa weeders, there is a difference in quality of weeders made by the official manufacturer and the ones where users and CSOs have greater control and say in design. As comes through in interviews, the mechanical weeder itself has been subject to policy vagaries. Odisha, in recent years, has moved away from promoting SRI to pushing line sowing in combination with the spread of hybrid rice, unfortunately without any effort to actively discourage the use of herbicides. Moreover, there is no attempt to encourage the use of mechanical weeders in aerating soils and promoting soil microbial quality. Also, depending on the promoting agency, there is diversity in the use of weeders. Ideally, promoting forums like the earlier SRI learning alliance, that allowed different actors to promote their experiments and learn from each other, could contribute to more informed policy design involving an active listening and learning from grassroots experiences. More recent public policy in agriculture rarely encourages multi-stakeholder dialogues.

 

This paper argues for a shift in thinking about agricultural policy. For a start, there is need to learn from positive deviants. Even a poor state like Odisha reveals surprising trends and micro-narratives of change. Rather than look for big policy moves that could bring about sweeping changes, administrators should be encouraged to be more innovative and entrepreneurial by conducting policy experiments with a view to embed or empower some normative ideas or axioms, like designing policies specifically for small farmers, exploring ways to use smaller machines that might be more user friendly, encouraging gender discussions in agricultural mechanisation debates, and so on.

Second, policy experiments need enabling ecosystems for both articulating and embedding these alternate strategies and pathways. The institutional innovation of crafting a learning alliance between farmers, CSOs and, government officials (and manufacturers in today’s context) enabled dialogue between and among dissimilar actors – research and non-research. Public investments in agriculture need to go beyond merely increasing financial investments and should articulate alternate pathways or vision. Subsidies can at best spur growth but can it last? They, however, need to be followed by a strategy that is longer term and involves greater engagement with the agri-engineering ecosystem.

 

Manufacturing practices need to be geared more to the small farmer than they currently are. Manufacturing brochures highlight the ability to receive subsidies as the key selling point and not design changes that incorporate the wide range of uses and users that small machines like power tillers enable. During field visits we observed that a CSO in Odisha, CTx Green, recently found that the power tiller could enhance the functionality of their village level biodiesel plant. Not only did this lead to an intensification of agricultural operations but there was a new use for the local biodiesel as well. The multiple uses of agricultural machines – in transport or for agri-processing, therefore, need to be tapped more systematically to enable the spread of small machines. Agricultural mechanization can complement rural industrialization, suggesting a strong case for our planning to recognize the role of rural capital goods in revitalizing the rural economy.

India needs to rethink, even reboot, its agricultural mechanization strategy. Why is it that a power tiller in India, despite subsidy, seems to cost the same if not more as compared to Nepal without subsidy? It is common to see manufacturers raise prices once subsidies are announced. In an under-invested environment, actors are likely to be risk averse. Public policy would be better served by enabling Indian states to better learn from each other and neighbouring countries so as to redesign and rejig their delivery of public goods. Even as states compete with each other today to attract foreign direct investment, one sees little action in a state subject like agriculture. ‘Make in India’, a popular slogan, needs to be expanded to focus more on ‘Make in (and for) Rural India’.⁶ Thus, rather than imitating Punjab or aiming to reach national averages of power usage, Odisha would be better served by consolidating its leadership in power tillers and other small equipment to provide better value for its small holders by both inviting investors to Odisha and working with VST and other manufacturers to provide robust and reliable small machines in a growing domestic market.

 

Despite the increased emphasis on cooperative federalism and the possible shift in the arena of policy making to the states, the focus is still on nation-wide reforms and replicating a particular success story – Green Revolution in Punjab, e-choupals and so on. One of the early lessons in the SRI learning alliance was the opportunity for policy makers to learn, not just from Andhra Pradesh but also Tripura which had spread SRI through the panchayati raj institutions. This complemented the lessons from national and international networks willing to share their experiences. The ability of Indian states to be involved in creative imitation should not be underestimated, a quality which is perhaps best demonstrated in the way livelihood missions have drawn from national and ‘successful’ state experiences only to adapt and introduce their own versions and stories of change. The Andhra model of social mobilization was tried out across India but soon we have had Bihari, Jharkhandi, Maharashtrian and other variations.

An analysis of the growth strategies of seven states under BGREI indicates that states express themselves differently even in a largely central government driven scheme. BGREI though suffers from design flaws in assuming that the green revolution needs to be brought or imported from Punjab or Haryana instead of being worked out in an inclusive manner by drawing from its own agro-ecological challenges. Poorer states, as the Odisha experiment indicates, can rework agricultural mechanization approaches and possibly other elements of what might be a different green revolution for the twenty-first century.

Agriculture in India not only needs enhanced investment, but also several policy experiments. Learning from these experiments, as the Odisha case shows, can be extended to bring about institutional change among actors, including in the large agricultural research and extension system. Big reform is often not an option but policy experiments can more easily be taken forward. These policy experiments though need to be designed appreciating the diversity of agricultural pathways and investing in understanding micro-narratives of change where small farmers have gained. Bold policy experiments can also help build the resilience of disempowered small farmers by enabling and empowering them to experiment and engage in collective action rather than await the next package of subsidies or big reforms in agriculture.

 

Footnotes:

1. S. Biggs and S. Justice, Rural and Agricultural Mechanization – A History of Spread of Small Engines in South Asian Countries, IFPRI Discussion Paper, 1443, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, May 2015.

2. The study was conducted by the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) and supported by CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre’s agricultural mechanization wing.

3. For details on gender issues in rice farming and Sambhav’s approach visit http://www. agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/women-agroecology/sri-cultivates-well-being-for-women

4. For more details visit http://www.agsri. com/images/documents/sri/SRI_in_ Orissa.pdf

5. http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/article608212.ece

6. http://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/agriculture-from-make-in-india-to-make-in-rural-india-through-dairying/story/227529.html