An agricultural economist looks back at 25 years of farm policy, first in Gujarat (2001-02 to 2013-14) and then at the national level (2014-15 to 2025-26). His conclusion is that India has largely secured food security in staples. The open problem is the next one: significantly raising farmers’ incomes.

The Gujarat phase (2001-02 to 2013-14): the author credits Gujarat with farm growth of over 9% a year, a rate he says was rare even in Punjab at the height of the Green Revolution. He traces the growth to infrastructure and technology rather than to price support.

• Water: check dams and a larger share of Narmada waters for irrigation.
• Power: separate electricity feeders for irrigation and for rural homes, so that farm power came reliably and at predictable hours. This was Gujarat’s Jyotigram Yojana (2003).
• Roads: rural roads connecting farmers to markets.
• Extension: the Krishi Mahotsav campaigns, which brought officials and private firms to villages to demonstrate technology.
• Technology: the spread of Bt cotton after its approval in 2002.

The national phase (2014-15 to 2025-26): this phase began with back-to-back droughts in 2014 and 2015, which the author notes had happened only three times in a century. He says policy responded by prioritising irrigation and crop insurance through the PM Fasal Bima Yojana.

• Irrigation: close to 60% of gross cropped area is now irrigated.
• Rice: India is the largest producer and exporter of rice.
• Stocks: even after giving 5 kg of free foodgrain per person per month under the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, stocks stand at more than four times the buffer norm for rice and nearly three times the norm for wheat.
• Trade (2025-26): agri-exports of about US$ 33 billion, led by rice and marine products, against agri-imports of about US$ 40 billion, mainly edible oils and pulses.
• Growth: agricultural GDP grew by about 4% a year on average from 2014-15 to 2025-26.

The thesis: the next farm revolution must be judged by whether it significantly raises farmers’ incomes, and not only by output or food security.

• Surplus is not prosperity: stocks three to four times the buffer norm are a sign of over-procurement of rice and wheat. They lock in the paddy–wheat cycle, raise the food subsidy and carrying costs, and weaken the incentive to diversify. Food security has become a problem of managing surpluses.
• Irrigation that depends on groundwater: much of the gain in irrigated area comes from tubewells. Groundwater supplies roughly three-fifths of irrigation, and free or flat-rate power in many States encourages over-extraction. Separating farm and household feeders is a tool for rationing farm power as well as supplying it.
• The trade gap points to oilseeds and pulses:
  • On the cited figures, India runs an agri-trade deficit of about US$ 7 billion, driven by edible oils and pulses.
  • These are exactly the crops targeted by the National Mission on Edible Oils: Oil Palm (2021) and Oilseeds (2024).
  • They are also targeted by the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses (2025).
• Four per cent is respectable, not transformative: national growth of about 4% is less than half Gujarat’s reported rate. A diverse, largely rainfed country cannot simply replicate the model of one State.
• Where incomes are actually made: the faster-growing parts of agriculture are livestock, fisheries and horticulture. Policy, however, remains centred on cereals, MSP and input subsidies.

• Base effects: growth rates measured over a period that starts in drought-affected years tend to look higher. Long-run trend comparisons are more reliable than averages over a tenure.
• What caused the growth: farm output also depends on the monsoon, global prices and technologies that were cleared nationally, such as Bt cotton. Not all of it can be traced to State policy.
• Ecological costs: expanding irrigation brings aquifer depletion, soil degradation and fertiliser imbalance. These costs are not captured in GVA.
• Out-of-date income data: the most recent farm-income survey is from 2018-19, and the 2022 income-doubling target was never formally assessed. Without regular income data, any income-centred agenda is hard to measure.

• Diversify into high-value farming, supported by cold chains, food processing and export infrastructure.
• Reform price policy: adopt predictable trade rules, use stock limits and export bans only rarely, and supplement MSP with price deficiency payments.
• Rationalise input subsidies: move fertiliser, power and water subsidies towards direct benefit transfers that do not depend on how much input is used.
• Aggregate small farmers through FPOs (the 10,000 FPO scheme, 2020) and cooperatives, so they gain bargaining power in markets.
• Invest in R&D, climate-resilient seeds and digital agriculture (AgriStack), and create rural non-farm jobs so that fewer people depend on farming.

The Right to Information Act, 2005 completed 21 years on 12 October 2026. The Act had two intended routes to information: filing a request, and proactive (suo motu) disclosure by government bodies. A data analysis shows that the second route remains weak. As a result, requests and appeals keep piling up.

• Audit submission: according to the CIC Annual Report 2024-25, about 1,443 of the 2,303 registered public authorities (62.7%) submitted third-party transparency audit reports. About 37% did not submit any.
• Audit quality: more than half of the reports submitted were graded C or below, meaning a score of 80% or less. Grade E means a score below 60%.
• Improving trend: the number of authorities submitting audits roughly doubled, from 754 (2020-21) to about 1,443 (2024-25).
• Website check: the newspaper verified the websites of the 94 departments under which these authorities fall.
  • Only 33 carried the 2024-25 audit report.
  • 56 (nearly three-fifths) had largely complied with Section 4, with information for 2025-26.
  • 26 lacked the mandated information.
  • The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment site had none.
• Request volume: about 23 lakh RTI requests were handled in 2024-25. About 5.1 lakh (22%) of these were carried over from the previous year. Both new requests and pending requests have risen steadily since 2007-08.

Figure 4 — Audit compliance (Chart 1) and RTI request load (Chart 2)

Chart 1: audit submission is rising, but more than a third of authorities still do not file. Chart 2: the total RTI load has grown steadily. Per the newspaper’s note, about 5.1 lakh of the roughly 23 lakh requests in 2024-25 were carried over. Image courtesy The Hindu, 12 October 2026; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• The Act’s own design: Section 4(2) asks public authorities to disclose enough on their own that the public has minimal need to file requests. Strong proactive disclosure is the Act’s intended first line of access.
• Lower pendency: each item published proactively reduces the number of requests, first appeals and second appeals, and so eases the backlog at the Commissions.
• Equal access: applying for information takes time, literacy and some confidence in dealing with officials. Published information is equally available to everyone.
• Accountability: published procurement, budget and beneficiary data enables social audit, deters corruption and supports evidence-based scrutiny.
• Global commitment: the measure supports SDG Target 16.10, which concerns public access to information.

• No penalty for non-disclosure: the Section 20 penalties apply to how PIOs handle requests, not to failures to disclose under Section 4.
  • The Commission may recommend corrective steps under Section 25(5).
  • While deciding an appeal, it may direct a public authority to publish categories of information under Section 19(8).
  • There is no routine mechanism to enforce compliance with Section 4.
• Audits as box-ticking: self-arranged third-party audits, with more than half graded C or below and many not published, risk becoming a formality rather than a real check.
• Outdated information: some websites hold old or partial information. Section 4 requires regular updates, so stale data defeats its purpose.
• Format problems: information is often posted as scanned PDFs instead of machine-readable data. This falls short of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (2012) and the open-data approach behind data.gov.in.
• Institutional weakness: vacancies in the Commissions, delayed appointments and the dilution of Commissioners’ independence through the 2019 amendment all weaken enforcement of the Act.
• A narrower Act: the DPDP Act’s change to Section 8(1)(j) widens the scope for refusing information. This makes proactive disclosure of non-personal public data even more important.

• Give Section 4 compliance legal force through rules, with Commission oversight and departmental accountability for failures to disclose.
• Have the CIC empanel independent auditors, publish grade-wise rankings of public authorities, and require audit reports on department websites.
• Build a standard, machine-readable disclosure template on a single national portal, with automatic date-stamps so that stale data is visible.
• Use RTI request patterns to decide what to publish: information that is requested often should be published by default.
• Fill Commission vacancies on time, as the Anjali Bhardwaj directions require, and publish pendency data quarterly.