Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana: Scheme Details

The Indian economy is extremely dependent on the agricultural sector. A huge population basically translates into a need to address the rising food demands each year. And this dependency is best seen in a year when because of abnormal monsoon the prices of food items touch skies.

Over the past years, fears of the El Nino phenomenon have kept farmers and economists concerned. A number of farmer deaths have also been recorded across the country. Most of these are associated to crop failure followed by lack of rainfall and insufficient irrigation. Food and retail inflation are natural consequences of the situation and this affects the economy badly. In 2014-15, foodgrain production in the country decreased by about 5.3 per cent.

In an effort to improve the agricultural productivity, the Indian government has come up with a new scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY). According to news reports, the details of the scheme was finalized by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) which is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the cabinet has “decided that INR 50,000 crore from the central budget, over the period of 5 years, would be used for the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. States’ share will be over and above this”. The entire money shall be spent towards improving farm yields and productivity, he said. The spending target, for the current financial year is about INR 5300 crore. This is almost twice the corpus set aside for any agricultural irrigation scheme in previous budgets. Over and above the central government’s allocation, different states shall add their funds to the scheme.

If the scheme become successful, economists and rural managers think that the crop production could see a manifold growth.

Details of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana

According to recent estimates, out of the 142 million hectares of agricultural land in India, only about 45 per cent has any provision for artificial irrigation. The rest of the agricultural farm is dependent only on rainfall for its water supply. In case of delay in rainfall or a failure forces the farmers to bear worse consequences. The government estimates that an additional 6 lakh hectares of agricultural land can be brought under irrigation by spending about INR 5300 crore under this scheme this fiscal year. In addition to this, the scheme will enable 5 lakh hectares of land will also receive the benefits of drip irrigation. Micro-irrigation projects (“Har Khet Ko Pani”) and end-to-end irrigation solutions will be the main focus of this scheme.

The scheme shall also undertake responsibility for various other irrigation projects that were poorly implemented by earlier governments despite adequacy of funds. These projects shall be improvised based on quality guidelines which will be strictly applicable now. About 1,300 watershed projects that have remained in limbo shall now be accomplished.

According to reports, the Finance Minister said, “The major aim of the PMKSY is to achieve convergence of investments in irrigation at the field level, increase and develop cultivable area under assured irrigation, improve on-farm water use efficiency to reduce unnecessary wastage of water, increase adoption of precision-irrigation and other water-saving technologies”.

Apart from the irrigation projects, an estimated budget of INR 200 crore from this scheme will be earmarked as Agri-Tech Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) – the corpus required to promote the National Agricultural Market (NAM). This will give farmers easy access to the markets for sale of their produced goods. The FM also said that the budgetary allocation for this scheme may tie into the material element of the MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act).

Irrigation and Water Conservation

Water conservation and bringing down the wastage is important to bring irrigation facilities to every farm in India. This introduces sustainable water preservation practices and optimisation of water resources (More Crop Per Drop) just as integral as introduction of new irrigation facilities. The PMKSY shall also figure out a number of methods to treat and re-use municipal water for these irrigation projects. Water recycling will play an importance role in the success of the scheme, said the FM. Private investments in these plans shall also be considered by the government.

Programme Structure

The planning and execution of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana has been decentralized and the states shall now draw district-level plans for its successful implementation.

National Steering Committee (NSC) will be supervising the long-term adherence to these District Irrigation Plans (DIP) and State Irrigation Plans (SIP) with representation from the various ministries involved and shall be closely monitored by the Union Ministers. The Prime Minister himself shall chair the committee.

The implementation of the scheme shall be overlooked by a National Executive Committee (NEC), which shall be chaired by the Vice-Chairman of the NITI Aayog.

PMKSY and Pro-farmer Schemes

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana is part of a group of pro-farmer actions that the NDA government aims to implement. Earlier, the Cabinet led by Modi agreed on various changes to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, which are likely to benefit those farmers whose lands are acquired by the central government for carrying out of various projects. Apart from these, the NDA government has launched a variety of social security schemes (pension, insurance schemes etc.) targeted at improving the lot of the poor masses in India, with specific focus on the rural poor. Earlier this year, the government had announced the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana – a scheme to support organic farming endeavors.