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| State’s agricultural land, productivity shows downward trend | | |
Early Times Report
Srinagar: As agricultural lands continue to shrink with every passing day in Jammu and Kashmir, the state government is acting as a mute spectator and doing little to bring any discernible change. The situation is worsening day by day as thousands of hectares are lost to greed and nonsensical planning.
In Jammu and Kashmir the net sown area has shown a tremendous decline over the last four years. A latest audit scrutiny by Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has pointed out that the net sown area in the state has declined by 11,000 hectares and irrigated area by 2,000 hectares from 2004-05 to 2006-07.
All this has been happening as the Agriculture and allied sector has been the biggest contributor to the Gross State Domestic Product GDSP. The state’s agricultural sector has been contributing 27 per cent to GSDP during the last five years.
“We have collectively failed to save agricultural land as no efforts are being done to preserve it,” Director Agriculture, Bashir Ahmad Dar told Press Bureau of India. He said that a full fledged department, State land use board has been given the responsibility of preserving the agricultural land but the government is not in a position to let the board function.
Interestingly, the state governments plan allocation under the agriculture and allied services has been declining over the years. The plan allocation that was 9.42 per cent in 2003-04 has trickled down to 6.03 percent in 2006-07. The allocation under agriculture sector alone declined from 1.89 to 1.46 per cent during this period.
“The state government is spending least in agricultural sector even though the spending should have increased tremendously,” Bashir Ahmad, adds. He said that if the centrally sponsored schemes will be stopped the state agricultural and other related departments will have no work to attend to.
Importantly, the audit scrutiny carried out by CAG reveals that the centrally sponsored funds were released after quite along delays causing further harm to the agriculture sector.
“The Directorates in Jammu and Kashmir Valley released the funds after a delay of 4-6 months. As a result, the executing agencies could spend only Rs 1.57 crore thereby leaving an unutilized balance of Rs 70.49 lakh. Consequently, the second instalment of Rs 2.27 crore could not be availed by the department for these years, though an action plan for its release was submitted on time,” The CAG report alleges.
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