53 Years of HARTI- Looking Back and Looking Ahead

C. Narayanasuwami, the first Director of the then Agrarian Research and Training Institute (ARTI).

I am delighted to be associated with the fifty third anniversary celebrations of HARTI. I cherish pleasant memories of the relentless efforts made as the First Director to establish, incorporate, develop, direct, and manage a nascent institute in the 1970s amidst many challenges. The seven-year period as Director remains as the most formidable and rewarding period in my career as a development professional. I have been fortunate to have had a continuing relationship with HARTI over the last five decades. It is rarely that one who played a significant role in the establishment and growth of an institution gets an opportunity to maintain the links throughout his lifetime and provide messages on the completion of its fifth (I was still the director then), the 15th, 50^th and 53rd anniversaries.

I had occasion also to acknowledge the contribution of the Institute on its 46th year when I released my book, ‘Managing Development: People, Policies and Institutions’ using HARTI auditorium and facilities, with the able support of the then director and staff who made the event memorable. The book contains a special chapter on HARTI.

On HARTI’s 15th anniversary I was called upon to offer some thoughts on the Institute’s future operations. The following were some of my observations then, “ARTI has graduated from its stage of infancy to adolescence….Looking back it gives me great satisfaction to observe the vast strides it has made in developing itself into a dynamic multidisciplinary research institution with a complement of qualified and trained staff. The significant progress achieved in new areas such as marketing and food policy, data processing, statistical consultancies, information dissemination and irrigation management, highlights the relevance and validity of the scope and objectives originally conceived and implemented”.

It may be prudent to review whether the recommendations contained in that message, specifically (a) the preparation of a catalogue of research findings accepted for implementation partially or fully during policy formulation, (b) the relevance and usefulness of information services and market research activities in enhancing farmer income, and (c) the extent to which the concept of interdisciplinary research- a judicious blend of socio-economic and technical research considered vital for problem-oriented studies- was applied to seek solutions to problems in the agricultural sector.

The thoughts expressed on the 15th anniversary also encompassed some significant management concerns, specifically, the need to study the institutional capabilities of implementing agencies, including the ‘human factor’ that influenced development, and a critical review of leadership patterns, management styles, motivational aspects, and behavioural and attitudinal factors that were considered vital to improve performance of agrarian enterprises.

A review of HARTI’s current operational processes confirm that farmer-based and policy-based studies are given greater attention, as for example, providing market information service for the benefit of producers, and undertaking credit, microfinance, and marketing studies to support policy changes.

The changes introduced over the years which modified the original discipline-based research units into more functional divisions such as agricultural policy and project evaluation division, environmental and water resources management division, and agricultural resource management division, clearly signified the growing importance attached to functional, action-oriented research in preference to the originally conceived narrowly focused discipline-based research activities.

HARTI has firmly established its place as a centre of excellence in socio-economic research and training with a mature staff base. It is pertinent at this juncture to determine whether the progress of HARTI’s operations was consistently and uniformly assessed as successful over the last five decades.

Anecdotal evidence and transient observations suggest that there were ups and downs in performance standards over the last couple of decades due to a variety of factors, not excluding political and administrative interventions, that downplayed the significance of socio-economic research. The success of HARTI’s operations, including the impact of policy-based studies, should be judged on the basis of improved legislation to establish a more structured socio-economic policy framework for agrarian development.

Looking Ahead

Fifty-three years in the life of an institution is substantial and significant enough to review, reflect and evaluate successes and shortcomings. Agrarian landscapes have changed over the last few decades and national and global trends in agriculture have seen radical transformation. Under these circumstances, such a review and reflection would provide the basis for improving organisational structures for agricultural institutions such as the Paddy Marketing Board, development of well-conceived food security plans, and above all, carefully orchestrated interventions to improve farmer income.

New opportunities have arisen consequent to the recent changes in the political horizon which further validates the role of HARTI. HARTI was born at a time when Land Reform and Agricultural Productivity were given pride of place in the development programs of the then government. The Paddy Lands Act provided for the emancipation of the farming community but recent events have proven that the implementation of the Paddy Lands Act has to be re-looked at in the context of agricultural marketing, agricultural productivity and income generation for the farming community.

Farmers have been at the mercy of millers and the price of paddy has been manipulated by an oligopoly of millers. This needs change and greater flexibility must be exercised to fix a guaranteed scale of prices that adjust to varying market situations, and provide adequate storage and milling facilities to ensure that there is no price manipulation. It is time that the Paddy Lands Act is amended to provide for greater flexibility in the provision of milling, storage and marketing services.

The need for restructuring small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) recently announced by the government warrants greater inputs from HARTI to study the structure, institutional impediments and managerial constraints that inflict heavy damages leading to losses in profitability and organisational efficiency of SMEs.

Similarly, HARTI should look at the operational efficiency of the cooperative societies and assess the inputs required to make them more viable agrarian institutions at the rural level. A compact research exercise could unearth inefficiencies that require remedial intervention.

With heightened priority accorded to poverty alleviation and rural development by the current government, HARTI should be in the forefront to initiate case studies on a country wide platform, perhaps selecting areas on a zonal basis, to determine applicable modes of intervention that would help alleviate poverty.

The objective should be to work with implementing line agencies to identify structural and institutional weaknesses that hamper implementation of poverty reduction and rural development policies and programs.

The role played in disseminating marketing information has had considerable success in keeping the farming community informed of pricing structures. This should be further expanded to identify simple agricultural marketing practices that contribute to better pricing and income distribution.

HARTI should consider setting up a small management unit to provide inputs for management of small-scale agrarian enterprises, including the setting up of monitoring and evaluation programs, to regularly monitor and evaluate implementation performance and provide advisory support.

Research and training must get high level endorsement

to ensure that agrarian policies and programs constitute integral components of the agricultural development framework. This would necessitate a role for HARTI in central planning bodies to propose, consider and align research priorities in line with critical agricultural needs.

There is a felt need to establish links with universities and co-opt university staff to play a role in HARTI research and training activities-this was done during the initial seven-year period. These linkages would help HARTI to undertake evaluative studies jointly to assess impacts of agrarian/agricultural projects and disseminate lessons learned for improving the planning and execution of future projects in the different sectors.

In the overall analysis, the usefulness of HARTI remains in articulating that research and analysis are crucial to the success of implementation of agrarian policies and programs.

In conclusion, let us congratulate the architects and the dynamic management teams and staff that supported the remarkable growth of HARTI which today looks forward to injecting greater dynamism to build a robust institution that would gear itself to meeting the challenges of a new era of diversified and self-reliant agrarian society. As the first director of the Institute, it is my wish that it should grow from strength to strength to maintain its objectivity and produce evidence-based studies that would help toward better policies and implementation structures for rural transformation.