GUWAHATI: The State Agriculture Department has nine soil-testing laboratories of its own. In addition to that, it has got Rs 88.91-crore RIDF (Rural Infrastructure Development Fund) loan sanctioned in 2016-17 by NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development). The loan is meant for the renovation out-of-order soil-testing laboratories and the setting up of new soil-testing laboratories in the State. To cap it all, the department has received Rs 2,603 lakh as the first installment of the loan. However, the situation on the ground has come to such a pass that the State Agriculture Department has to outsource its soil testing works to laboratories in Kolkata and Baroda.
An immediate outcome of such a failure on the part of the department is – Assam is lagging much behind in issuing soil health cards to its farmers at a time when the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has been laying much stress on its Soil Health Card Scheme launched on February 19, 2015. The RIDF loan was sanctioned under the Soil Testing Quality Control and Input Testing Laboratories Projects.
Even as the State has nine soil-testing laboratories, most of them are either ageing or ailing. This is not all. All the nine laboratories are outdated ones, and they can’t test surplus or deficiency of micro-level nutrients. Both the soil-testing laboratories in Guwahati, including one mobile one that doesn’t move due to problems in the vehicle it has been fitted, are not working. One each of the other three out-of-order laboratories is in Jorhat, Lakhimpur and Silchar. The remaining four laboratories are working partially – one each at Kokrajhar, Diphu, Haflong and Tezpur.
However, the department in the State has failed to keep pace with the speed at which the soil-testing scheme is being implemented in other States, prompting it to outsource laboratory tests.
Talking to this reporter, a top-level officer in the State Agriculture department said: “We’ve 26 soil testing units at hand, including new and renovated ones. We’ve already started renovation works of three laboratories – one each at Ulubari in Guwahati, Jorhat and Tezpur. In case of new laboratories, the tendering process has just been completed for a laboratory each at Golaghat, Nagaon, Morigaon, Lakhimpur, Bongaigaon and Nalbari. The tendering process for the laboratory in Tinsukia district is on way to completion.
What bodes ill for is that the RIDF loan from NABARD has a clause that reads – ‘if the State Government fails to initiate the implementation of the projects by issue of necessary work order, etc within a period of 18 months from the date of sanction letter, the sanction of the projects for RIDF assistance shall lapse’.
The RIDF loan amount was supposed to be released in three installments – Rs 2,603 lakh in fiscal 2017-18 (already released), Rs 3100.80 lakh in fiscal 2018-19 and Rs 2742.65 lakh in fiscal 2019-20. It doesn’t augur well that only Rs 79 lakh of the Rs 2,603-lakh RIDF loan released in 2017-18 has been spent till date.
However, the Agriculture officer still claims that the department will complete the projects well within their target – March 31, 2020.
However, the RIDF loan is only meant for laying the basic structures like buildings and some laboratory equipment. Soil-testing machines are to be procured by the department under the Centre’s Soil Health Management Scheme that provides funds to States in the ratio 90:10.
Insofar as central schemes are concerned in Assam, it seems, funds are not the problem, but failure on the part of its departments certainly is.