Pays rich dividends in the development of new variety of Pusa Basmati superfine rice! India is able to export a record 5 billion dollar worth of this rice!
This story is worth told many times. Though no one had written and told so as we want it to be told. We have become rather tired and bored by the same theme song and same faces and voices for long. This is the theme of the Green Revolution and also the success we have attained.
Yes, this is on record. But how long we can play the very same old song?
Right now, India is emerging as a top exporter of rice in the international market. And there have been so many new developments even in the international wheat trade.
And as far as agri exports are concerned this is a topic on which almost every other country, major or minor, is interested. For the world agri trade is also shifting.
But who will tell this story? Where is the media?
No major Indian newspaper or media house is interested in giving agriculture its due share in the scheme of things. Only when there is a drought or a price fall for some major crops then there is a mention in the mainstream newspapers. Otherwise, it is back to politics and here too there is lately much timidity on the part of the media.
There is more unethical politics that covers our mental space too. The way our mainstream parties are going about the elections. There is no major reforms in the electoral or Constitutional spheres, though there have been any number of reforms lying for attention.
Our very democracy is becoming rather unbalanced between the rich and the poor and so too between the mainstream parties that are able to collect big funds and the small parties that are becoming more and more regional and parochial.
So, even the development issues are only seasonal it seems, at election eves and thereafter.
Now, as for agriculture research there are some 30 odd agri universities and what comes out of them as research findings, we are not able to assess its quality. For the simple reason, the communication from the research bodies and the consumers of such news, the farmers or farmers’ bodies is so wide.
No agri expert, from these universities writes in the media and has any columns.
Our experience with the agri universities is that they are not simply interested anything outside their campus. So, now we are so glad to see that some of the private agri export companies have joined hands to develop new variant of basmati rice and that new varieties have come as a boon for exporters.
on hand is the news that Mr.Anil Kumar Mittal, CMD of KKBL Ltd (may be based in Delhi) had done a wonderful job in going for collaboration with agri scientists from Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) to develop the Pusa 1121, a variety developed by IARI and now this variety has become something like 70 to 75 per cent of our total rice exports from India this year.
Congratulations Mr.Mittal to you and your team for this extraordinary success!
As per a report by the Business Line…..
The point is that instead of relying on the public research bodies like ICAR, we have encourage as many private sector bodies that come forward to enter into collaboration to development new crops, new productivity tools to make Indian agriculture really internationally competitive.