By R. Suryamurthy
The 2024–25 Estimates Committee report on “Promotion of Climate Resilient Agriculture, Natural and Organic Farming through Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs)” lands with the weight of over a decade of accumulated failures. While it offers dozens of recommendations and shines light on key gaps in policy execution, it also, perhaps unintentionally, indicts the very machinery responsible for India’s agricultural future.
What emerges is not a roadmap, but a reckoning—a grim audit of hollow schemes, chronic neglect, performative pilots, and a bureaucracy too paralysed to keep pace with either climate change or the aspirations of the Indian farmer.
Let’s start with the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA)—the government’s flagship for climate-smart agriculture. Its near-perfect fund utilisation over five years (95%) is less an achievement than a symptom of systemic throttling. How is a programme expected to shield Indian agriculture from climate shocks supposed to function when it receives only enough money to reach 151 out of 310 highly vulnerable districts?
This is not fiscal discipline. It is fiscal negligence masquerading as prudence. Risk assessments were carried out for 573 districts. The data is there. The vulnerabilities are known. And yet, the government chooses to underfund the very vehicle designed to respond. It’s climate resilience on paper, and abandonment on the ground.
The Committee meekly recommends a phased, rotational model for reaching the rest of the high-risk districts. What it should have said, if it were truly honest, is this: NICRA is being slowly smothered by budgetary starvation, and unless there is an immediate and massive infusion of funds, its survival—let alone success—is impossible.
India’s scientific institutions have done their job. Drought- and flood-tolerant seeds for major crops like rice and wheat exist. But thanks to a spectacular failure in extension services and distribution logistics, farmers either don’t know about them or can’t access them.
What is the point of research that never leaves the shelf? The Krishi Vigyan Kendras —supposed to serve as the bridge between lab and land—are in disrepair, short-staffed, underfunded, and often indifferent. States are absent from coordination. Adoption rates are abysmal. The problem isn’t scientific capacity. It’s bureaucratic lethargy and structural disconnect.
The Committee’s solution? More awareness campaigns. It’s the policy equivalent of handing out pamphlets while the house burns.
Natural Farming (NF) is the new policy darling—celebrated for its low-input, climate-friendly virtues. But the Committee’s findings expose a dangerous truth: beyond the speeches and symbolic pilot projects, there is no coherent national strategy to mainstream NF.
Most KVKs, shockingly, are still peddling chemical farming, with NF relegated to token plots. Adoption is low. Income stability is questionable. Transition support is practically non-existent. Yet the Committee offers another round of “recommendations”—more training, more protocols, more studies.
Enough studies. What NF needs is decisive policy backing, financial protection during transition, institutional prioritisation, and radical subsidy shifts. Instead, what it gets is lip service and pilot fatigue.
Schemes like Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region (MOVCDNER) were supposed to power India’s organic transition. What they’ve become is proof that poorly designed, underfunded programmes are worse than none at all.
Financial support is laughably inadequate for a sector that requires years to stabilise yields and access markets. Certification is costly and convoluted. Market access is unreliable. The so-called “Sikkim Model” is dangled as a poster child, but it conveniently ignores its unsustainability outside unique geographic and demographic conditions.
The truth is, India’s organic farming “mission” is a Potemkin village—impressive in policy memos, but hollow in rural fields.
Krishi Vigyan Kendras were designed to be the nerve centres of agricultural extension. Instead, they’re choking on administrative chaos. The report reveals that nearly a third of their staff positions are vacant. Some haven’t been evaluated since 2017. Many are ranked “C” or “D”, failing to perform even basic functions.
Worse, their governance structure is fractured—hosted by disparate institutions with no uniform service rules, creating a morale and accountability disaster. The ₹2,500 crore one-time capital grant is a band-aid on a compound fracture.
Unless the Ministry forces structural standardisation, enforces mandatory performance audits, and brings these institutions under direct, accountable central supervision, KVKs will remain bureaucratic relics incapable of leading any meaningful agricultural transformation.
The success of cold storage for onions has been endlessly celebrated, yet its replication across other perishable crops has seen little traction. Why? Because the government seems more interested in praising pilot models than scaling them. Recommendations for PPP-based models, renewable energy integration, and targeted incentives are recycled talking points at this stage—familiar, comfortable, and rarely executed.
Fertilizer reform suffers from the same affliction. Nano fertilizers are hyped endlessly, but outreach is minimal, adoption is niche, and benefits remain poorly understood. The real elephant in the room—the irrational fertilizer subsidy regime—goes untouched.
The PM-PRANAM scheme is presented as a panacea, yet without binding targets and transparent performance metrics, it’s little more than a wishful accounting exercise.
The report’s findings on pesticide overuse and counterfeit chemicals are damning. Harmful residues persist across food products. Bio-pesticide promotion is tokenistic. Regulations under the Insecticides Act are either toothless or routinely ignored.
Between 2019 and 2024, over 9,200 misbranded pesticide samples were found. Convictions? Just 185. That’s a 2% enforcement success rate—utterly scandalous. And yet, all the Committee can muster are mild calls for “tighter regulations.”
Let’s be clear: India’s pesticide regulation system is not underperforming—it is broken.
The Committee praises the integration of AI and digital tools in agriculture. But this tech-utopianism conveniently ignores the fact that most rural farmers lack stable internet, digital literacy, or even access to functioning smartphones.
Until these fundamentals are fixed, AI in Indian agriculture will remain what it currently is: a sleek PowerPoint dream, inaccessible to the people who need it most.
Final Thoughts: Reports Don’t Transform Agriculture. Political Will Does.
India’s agricultural crisis is not one of ideas. It is a crisis of implementation, of political courage, and of bureaucratic honesty.
This report, for all its thoroughness, exposes the rot at the heart of agri-policy: schemes without teeth, institutions without resources, science without outreach, and farmers without support.
Climate change won’t wait for us to get our paperwork in order. Nor will the millions of small and marginal farmers whose livelihoods are hanging by a thread.
Unless the government moves from rhetoric to realism, from pilots to policies, from recommendations to reform, India’s agricultural future may well be lost to climate chaos, policy cowardice, and institutional decay. (IPA Service)
Trump Supporters Want To Debar Zohran Mamdani From November Mayoral Polls 