Pro-BJP NRI could hook NITI Aayog for transforming agriculture to agribusiness: Report

According to the report, Sharad Marathe, a businessman running a software company and who was no expert in agriculture or its allied sectors, could hook the NITI Aayog, to his proposals for transforming agriculture to agribusiness because of his ties with the ruling dispensation

Hyderabad: Decoding the agony of Indian farmers has so far been a failed task for successive governments at the Centre. Often handled by people who know nothing much of agriculture, the formulation of farm sector policies has turned a more worrisome affair.

According to a report published by non-profit investigative reporting organisation, the ‘Reporter’s Collective’, a pro-BJP NRI businessman could emerge all powerful to influence the Niti Aayog to create a high level task force pushing for the corporatization of agriculture to double the farmers income. He also could get inducted into the task force which dealt with the big names involved in the trade of agriculture commodities including the likes of Adani group, Patanjali, Big Basket, Mahindra and ITC.

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According to the report, Sharad Marathe, a businessman running a software company and who was no expert in agriculture or its allied sectors, could hook the NITI Aayog, the apex public policy think tank of the Government of India to his proposals for transforming agriculture to agribusiness because of his ties with the ruling dispensation.

It all began with a letter he wrote in October 2017 to the Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog, Rajiv Kumar outlining a grand vision and concept note to revamp agriculture, the report says.

Marathe and Kumar were acquaintances which could be the reason for the Niti Aayog to pay special interest to the letter. In 2016, while addressing a farmers’ rally in Uttar Pradesh, Modi spoke about his dream of doubling farmers’ income by 2022. Marathe’s blueprint headlined, “Doubling of Farmers’ Incomes Through Market Driven, Agri-Linked Made in India” found an eager buyer in Niti Aayog, it notes.

Marathe claimed he had a radical new practical solution that the government should test and rapidly scale up: stitch together land leased from farmers, make a big marketing company with government help, and create smaller companies for processing and farming. These companies work together to make and sell farming products. Farmers who lease their land can also be part of it and get a share of the profits. This helps them earn more money and makes farming better, the report, (https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/ahead-of-farm-laws-an-nri-seeded-idea-to-corporatise-agriculture), says.

Marathe, who recommended a special ‘Task Force’ to oversee it, also listed the 11 people who should be part of the Task Force. He included himself on that list and the then minister of state for agriculture, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. This wasn’t the only task force Marathe was part of, the Reporters’ Collective says. In 2018, the software company owner was also appointed chairman of an Ayush Ministry’s task force for enhancing the Ayush (traditional medicine) sector, a job that didn’t dovetail with his area of expertise just like the farmers’ income taskforce.

Marathe would later go on to set up a separate non-profit company with Sanjaya Mariwala, a well-established businessman running eighteen companies involved in food and nutraceutical business, to capitalise on the growing nutraceutical market. Mariwala was among the 11 names Marathe recommended to be made part of the taskforce on farmers’ income.

No farmers, economists or farmer organisations were consulted by the Task Force before submitting its report in 2018 to the government, whose aim was to double the income of around 60% of Indians who depend on agriculture as imagined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The report has not been made public till now.

Two years later, India saw the longest-running farmers’ protest over the Modi government’s decision to bring in three controversial laws aimed at allowing corporate players in farming and deregulating agriculture markets. Thousands of farmers sat in protest at Delhi’s borders, and at least 500 of them died from heat, cold and Covid, forcing the government to repeal the laws, the report says.