'Job creation in industry is key to prosperity'

NITI chief: Farmers too look to industry

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s key aide for policy formulation and Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, Arvind Panagariya, on Monday backed the government’s policy on land acquisition, saying that the potential of agriculture to bring prosperity to a vast population remained limited in the long-run.

“Indian farmers and their children recognise the superior prospects that faster-growing industry and services can potentially offer,” Panagariya said in a blog post he wrote on the newly launched Aayog’s website.

According to a recent survey conducted by the NGO Lokniti, 62 per cent of all farmers say that they would quit farming if they could get a job in the city. As for their children, 76 per cent say that they would like to take a profession other than farming. “In the recorded Indian history, the fastest that agriculture has grown nationally over a continuous ten-year period has been under five per cent. Put another way, in countries experiencing growth rates of six per cent or more over long periods, overwhelmingly, industry and services have grown substantially faster than agriculture,” he said underlining the need for setting up more industries in the country for which the Modi government has been trying to bring amended land laws.

The vice chairman cited the example of South Korea and Taiwan where prosperity was widely shared during the 1960s and 1970s because workers in agriculture could migrate to good jobs in industry.

The Centre has encouraged states to undertake labour law reforms that would help stimulate jobs, he added.

DH News Service