Climate change and Indian agriculture: A policy and programme implementation perspective
- Bihar Journal of Public Administration
- 17(1), Jan-June, 2020: p.1-11
With more than two third of its population living in rural areas, who are dependent on agriculture and allied activities, India faces an aggravated challenge to sustain food, nutritional and livelihood security to a billion plus growing population. Formulated in 2008, the National Action Plan on Climate Change or NAPCC acknowledges that climate change may alter the distribution and quality of India’s natural resources and climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture may face a major threat because of the projected changes in climatic conditions. In 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, launched the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture or NMSA as a programmatic intervention to make Indian agriculture more resilient to climate change. NMSA envisages identifying and developing new varieties of crops, especially thermal resistant crops and alternative cropping patterns, capable of withstanding extremes of weather, long dry spells, flooding, and variable moisture availability. This paper aims at analysing the policy and programme implementation perspectives of the NMSA, which is one of the critical eight National missions identified by NAPCC for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The study finds that strengthening the present implementation process with proper coordination between relevant stakeholders and creating synergies with other national-level programmes with respect to agriculture, food security, and development will be necessary to enhance the effectiveness of the NMSA. Reproduced
Climate change, Indian Agriculture, National mission for sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), National action plan on climate change (NAPCC)