Punjab to Constitute a “Think Tank” on Agriculture Sector as a Bridge between the Farmers and the Policy Makers

In a historic move to involve the farmers in the policy making, Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal has approved to constitute a ‘Think Tank’ for agriculture sector. The Think Tank will be an exclusively Farmer’s organization with Agro experts, progressive farmers and others as its representatives.

Similar to industrial promotion bodies like FICCI and CII, “Think Tank” will act as catalyst for promoting agriculture and allied farming sector.The upcoming organization will be exclusively a farmers’ organization that will mull over various aspects related to the welfare of the peasantry besides suggesting ways and means to the policy makers for making agriculture a far more profitable venture.

Speaking about the Think Tank, an official of Government stated, “The autonomous organization will be mandated with activities including awareness and adoption of latest farmlatest farm practices and techniques, ensuring remunerative prices of the produce, trainings of the farmers, marketing and research.  The organization will continuously dwell on the challenges faced by the agriculture sector, agriculture related policies and global best practices. It will suggest the steps to state and Centre Government to boost the agriculture sector and safe guard farmers’ interests.”

The progressive farmers from agriculture and allied farming like dairy, fisheries, honey, piggery, floriculture, horticulture etc. as representatives of this farmers’ chamber will have a fixed term so that maximum number of such progressive farmers could be accommodated in rotation so that they could espouse the cause of farmers to their satisfaction in a free and fair manner.

This ‘Think Tank’ will be provided with necessary infra structure support including space for official accommodation and the state government has already zeroed in space at SAS Nagar (Mohali) for setting the office of this organization. Likewise the organization will also be granted a corpus fund by the state government to make this upcoming organization self-sustainable and economically viable. The entire purpose of setting up of this ‘Think Tank’ is to ensure that well being of the farmers is ensured, through extensive research and deliberations between the farmers and the policy makers.