Second Green Revolution to come from rainfed region: Rawat

New Delhi, Aug.1 (ANI): India's Minister of State for Agriculture, Harish Rawat, on Wednesday said that the country's second Green Revolution would come only from the rain-fed region.

Delivering the inaugural address at the Discussion on "Generating responses to an uncertain monsoon" at the Observer Research Foundation, Rawat stressed the need to improve the technology and policy environment to help farmers tackle the uncertain monsoon.

"If the Second Green Revolution is to come, it would come from the rain-fed areas. We have to focus attention on that," Rawat said, adding 80 percent farmers depend on south west monsoon.

Rawat said there is good news that by 2015, weather forecasting would become 100 percent accurate. He admitted many times it was noticed that it was not possible to predict the pattern rightly in advance.

He also said that the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) and ICAR have jointly prepared contingency plan to face the aberration in monsoon. He said 320 districts have been covered right now and the plans for these districts are ready.

Rawat said the government is closely monitoring the situation and plans have been made to distribute seeds, fertilizers and machinery for short duration crops in case of further delay in the monsoon. The EGOM has also decided on various steps like subsidizing diesel and other inputs.

Chairing the discussion, former Union Cabinet Secretary Surendra Singh, now an advisor to ORF, said there is an urgent need to evolve long-term monsoon management system.

Dr. Ravender Singh, Head of the Physics Division in Indian Agriculture Research Institute said that quantity is not very important. "What is important is the distribution of rainfall. "Drought itself is not a disaster. Management issues are very important," he said.

Dr. Singh said there is an urgent need for a Nature Early Warning System and Nature Response System.

Dr. V.U.M. Rao, project coordinator of Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad, said even in the case of poor monsoon, various technological interventions could be used to maintain agricultural output. He said CRIDA has worked out various plans for farmers which were disseminated through ICT, like website, mobile SMSs, Voice Messages etc besides district offices.

He said by 2013, they would be able to prepare contingency plans at the block level. He underlined the need for better management of water resources to meet such situations.

Dr. Rao said though NREGA has helped many people, the scheme has led to an acute shortage of agricultural labourers, which in turn affected the agricultural activity.

Dr. L.M. Rathore, Director General of Indian Meteorological Department, said the IMD is developing Android based programmes for the help of farmers and planners. He said though the monsoon has been poor so far, it would pick up soon. He predicted better rainfall till September when Al Eno effect is expected again disturb weather pattern. (ANI)