India’s farm policy debate is often reduced to a choice between subsidies and reforms. Subsidies are, and likely will remain, necessary, especially as climate change makes farming more volatile. But, say experts, they are not a substitute for robust, science-driven agricultural research.
Over the past decade India’s gross expenditure on research and development (R&D) has tripled in nominal terms, yet it still accounts for a mere 0.6-0.7 per cent of GDP, far below the 2 per cent or more spent by most developed countries.
Unless India decisively shifts towards stronger public agricultural R&D and reforms how that research is organised, experts say, it will keep spending larger and larger sums managing farm distress instead of preventing it.
