Chairperson,
President Dr. Nwanze,
Governors,
and Distinguished Delegates,

It is my pleasure to represent India at the 35th Session of IFAD's Governing Council.

Rising food prices, climate change, and inadequate access to input and output markets are among the challenges that the global community needs to address if we are to move closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.  These and other challenges point towards the need for collective action and commitment by all concerned in the quest to see a world free of poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

India firmly believes IFAD has a unique role to play in meeting the MDGs.  It is the only multilateral global organization that provides investments for, and exclusively supports, small scale agriculture and rural development, in particular, by targeting small farmers, rural women, fisher-folk, pastoralist, tribal people and other disadvantaged communities. We are sure that the Fund can effectively fulfill its part, and India is committed to providing its full support and collaboration the organization’s needs.

Distinguished Chairperson,
The theme for this year’s interactive session, “Sustainable Smallholder Agriculture: Feeding the world and protecting the planet” is very pertinent, especially given the attention of the international community on promoting climate-smart and low agriculture technologies for enhancing productivity, nutritional security, and better livelihoods for the millions of poor people, majority of whom continue to live in rural areas.

India believes the vision of IFAD, as captured in the recently adopted 2011-2015 Strategic Framework, is central towards ensuring higher incomes and prospects for the millions of rural people who still live in poverty. The Fund’s emphasis on supporting Governments in increasing agriculture and food production and productivity, promoting linkages to markets, strengthening decentralised decision-making and improving delivery systems is crucial.  Similarly, as the theme of this Governing Council suggests, we need to ensure more investments in regeneration of forest resources and tree cover, sustainable watershed and coastal management, land degradation, and soil conservation to make sure future generations can have access to essential natural and environmental resources for their livelihoods.

In India, agriculture is extremely important to the economy, in spite of our advances in technology, services and manufacturing. A large proportion of India’s population continues to reside in rural areas, majority of whom derive their livelihoods from agricultural-related activities including agro-processing, income generation and marketing.

We need to also integrate agriculture with other sectors.  Institutional arrangements and policy orientation for a farmer-centric, industry driven and knowledge paradigm, are required for enhanced competiveness of the agriculture sector. 

Diversification of the rural economy hinges on changes in agriculture as well as on emerging opportunities in non-farm sector.  There should be deliberations on evolving suitable models for partnership between farmers, private sector and the government in agriculture and rural development.  Partnerships can also be evolved for production, processing, value addition, storage and marketing, research, microcredit, skill building, all of which contribute to better price realisation. A transparent farmer-industry partnership where farmers retain confidence about the ownership of the land and protection of their interest is the key to rural transformation.  Farming models that may include participation of industry-cooperative, contract, joint venture or farmers’ corporate that bring farmers having different sizes of land to get benefits of economies of scale can be evolved, depending on the socio economic development of the area. IFAD can facilitate the exchange of views between countries which have some experience on these models, as part of the South-South cooperation.

Distinguished Chairperson,

IFAD has been an important partner for India in more than 30 years, supporting Government’s own efforts to eradicate rural poverty in some of our poorest states, especially among women, small farmers, and the numerous tribal people who live in India. We particularly value the ‘demonstration effects’ of the projects financed by IFAD, as they help us learn on how to better design, rigorously implement, supervise, and monitor and evaluate agriculture and rural development projects.  On a similar note, the innovations promoted in the context of IFAD-supported projects, for instance in terms of community management of natural resources in the North East of the country, are paying dividends and have been scaled up  further in a  project financed by the World Bank and the Government of India.

In fact, scaling up in India and elsewhere is “mission critical” for IFAD, given that the amount of resources available to the Fund for investments projects and programmes are relatively limited.  India is pleased to see the added emphasis in recent years within IFAD in identifying pathways to scaling up, which however, will need to be accompanied by concerted efforts in promoting better knowledge management, policy dialogue, and partnership building.

On the issue of partnership, India is glad to note that IFAD is highly appreciated by partner governments. It has also developed strong collaboration at the grassroots level with non-governmental and community-based organisations. Along similar lines, we encourage the Fund to deepen its efforts to partner with other development actors, in particular, key multilateral development organisations and the private sector, in order to leverage on their comparative advantage, resources and specialisation in support of its own rural poverty reduction efforts.

India has noted the serious efforts that are being made by the IFAD Management to increase institutional efficiency by reforming important corporate business processes.  The on-going reforms in human resources forms the central dimension in improving efficiency as well as effectiveness.  In this regard, India looks forward to discussing later this year, in the Executive Board, the comprehensive corporate level evaluation on IFAD’s institutional efficiency being undertaken by the Fund’s Independent Office of Evaluation.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate IFAD and thank all member states for their strong participation in the recently-concluded ninth replenishment of IFAD resources. The 25 per cent increase in the ninth replenishment over the eighth replenishment is a reflection of the confidence we all have in this important organisation, and the fundamental role it has in promoting sustainable and equitable social and economic advancement by investments in small agriculture development. India supports the consolidation of past efforts and commitments to focus its energies in implementing the new vision of making agriculture a profitable business in the IFAD9 period starting 2013.

In closing, India would like to express its full support to President Nwanze in the years to come, for steering IFAD to achieve the desired results in helping the rural poor have better lives and opportunities in all geographic regions.

Rome 22 February 2012