Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

BGREI turns Eastern region into food surplus region

The Bringing Green Revolution in Eastern India  programme launched  in 2010-11 as a Prime Minster's initiative based on the Inter Ministerial Task Force has resulted in impressive increase in production of food grains with the eastern region now turning a food surplus region. The BGREI  is a subscheme of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVYJ ) with an outlay of Rs. 400 crores in the eastern region including Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Eastern Uttar Pradesh & West Bengal.
  
The programme gained momentum in 2011-12 with the focus on rice  and  wheat  only and strategic  interventions   relating  to crop production, water harvesting and recycling, asset building and site specific activities needed for improving the agronomy-adopting cluster approach aimed at enhancing the productivity per unit area and the income of the farmers.

Eastern region hitherto known as food deficit region, has with the help of the programme, turned food surplus region. The rice production from the region is estimated at 562.6 lakh tons an increase of 19.8% over last year against an all India increase of 7%. And the foodgrain production from the region is estimated at 1032 tons an increase of 11.9% against an all India increase of 2.2%.

The increased productivity/ production was optimized  due to resource   allocation   and   utilization.  The significant increase in production of food grains in the region not only offset the decline in production in central and peninsular India but also contributed  significantly to the highest ever production of food grains. The growth in food grains i.e. rice and wheat provides an opportunity to procure and create food grain reserves locally reducing the pressure on Punjab and Haryana, and cutting costs on transport and other logistics.

The focus will now be to consolidate the gains  with continued emphasis  during the 12th Plan. Further steps will be taken to improve the infrastructure for procurement and storage of the produce and to ensure a reasonable price for the farmers.