Sabour (Bhagalpur), Feb. 13: Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi today claimed that the state had achieved massive progress in the field of agriculture under chief minister Nitish Kumar’s leadership.
He also acknowledged hard labour and use of scientific measures by farmers as factors behind the success story. Modi said this while addressing the inaugural function of the two-day state-level Kisan Mela organised by Bihar Agriculture University (BAU), Sabour.
He told the farmers, who had arrived from across the state, Jharkhand, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, besides Nepal and Bhutan, that the NDA government has focused much on the agricultural sector.
“Bihar is the only state in the country where the government has constituted a agriculture cabinet,” he said.
“Our NDA government had first decided to adopt a strategy to change the fate of the state while developing agriculture,” he added. During the previous tenure of the government, he said, Rs 20.43 crore was allotted to agriculture in the annual budget, which was gradually increased to Rs 800 crore in the 2011-12 financial year. “In the 2012-13 fiscal, the state government has decided to allot more than Rs 1,200 crore for agriculture in the budget and invest more than Rs 10,000 crore in the sector and its allied fields,” Modi added.
The minister claimed that the sale of agriculture equipment like tractors and power tillers has witnessed a sharp rise in the past five years across the state with farmers showing interests in adopting scientific methods of agriculture. He appreciated BAU’s role for applying such scientific applications in agriculture. BAU vice-chancellor M.L. Choudhary said the mela’s main aim was to give farmers opportunities like direct interaction with agriculture scientists for improving their knowledge base, visit to the varsity’s farmhouses and to witness other scientific measures for the farmers’ welfare.
Health minster Ashwini Kumar Choubey, who was also present at the occasion, said the government would continue to assist BAU so that farmers in the state could yield record harvest.
