A Short Sighted, Revamping of Fertilizer Policy.

India Fertilizer Industry is one of the sickest industries in India. In spite of heavy subsidies given to it by Indian Government it is not able to withstand in the market and as result India has to import a large amount of fertilizers.

Recently government decided to revamp the Fertilizer Policy of India. It is a good decision of government as it have huge losses, consumes a lot of subsidies and even then not able to fulfil our own demand. Government decided to inject further liquidity and capital in the industry, modernize its decade old and inefficient machineries and factories. The move will save countries millions of dollars by reducing the imports.

Fertilizers after the green revolution have become an integral part of the Indian agriculture. With the increased use of fertilizers the production has no doubt increased tremendously thus ensuring food security in India; but at the same time overuse of fertilizers has led to many problems like land degradation, health hazards, have affected flora and fauna etc. Recently there had been increased cases of cancer in states like Punjab and Haryana which can be called as dump yards of Fertilizers.

By seeing this government came out with the policy of Sustainable Agriculture which aims at using organic fertilizers like cow dung, manure etc. and herbicides instead of the pesticides.

But it seems as if government is suffering from short term memory loss. At one time it talks about the sustainable agriculture and the other time it gives a boost to the fertilizer industry.

The main aim of government is to reduce the dependence of India on Imports so why not it invests the money in development of organic fertilizers than investing it in the modernization of chemical fertilizer industries. The county has to start it someday then why not today. If country invests in development of organic fertilizers then it will surely reduce the dependence of country on fertilizer imports and will also help in sustainable agriculture also.

Akshay Ratnawat