Indian Agriculture Needs an Urgent Data-Centric Revamp and Reboot -Siraj Hussain

-TheWire.in

Good data is key to informed policymaking. So why isn't it taken seriously?

Here’s a fun experiment. Want to compare the procurement of paddy in the Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2020-21 (October-September) and the corresponding procurement in 2019-20? It’s not possible because the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI’s) website provides data of procurement as on a certain date but not the data on the same date in the previous year. You can get the figure of total procurement in KMS 2019-20 but that does not help to decipher the progress this year.

Looking for data of procurement of pulses and oilseeds by Nafed? Helpfully, the Nafed website depicts photographs of procurement of pulses in AP, Gujarat, Karnataka, MP, Rajasthan, Telangana but it does not provide any data on quantity procured by Nafed, say in 2019-20. It does give figures of procurement of moong and copra in KMS 2020-21 but there is no data on procurement on the same date last year.

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