GILLIAN LUCKY

I agree whole­heart­ed­ly with the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by the Prime Min­is­ter that Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter, Sen­a­tor Vas­ant Bharath, has tak­en on his job "with such pas­sion and such dri­ve" that it is dif­fi­cult to think of any per­son who pre­vi­ous­ly held the port­fo­lio who dis­played sim­i­lar fore­sight and ded­i­ca­tion. Of course it is hoped that hav­ing re­ceived this well-de­served pub-lic ac­cla­ma­tion that Min­is­ter Bharath will not find him­self wound­ed by po­lit­i­cal dag­gers held men­ac­ing­ly in the hands of those who one day hope to sit on the throne.

But Min­is­ter Bharath is no fool and has proven him­self ca­pa­ble of ad­her­ing firm­ly to his be­liefs, even if in ap­par­ent con­flict with the di­rec­torate. This was ev­i­denced most clear­ly when the min­is­ter pub­licly stood his ground to de­fend the farm­ers whose crops had been de­stroyed in or­der to pre­pare the land for hous­ing. And while the mat­ter was even­tu­al­ly re­solved, the fact is that Min­is­ter Bharath re­it­er­at­ed that there must be re­spect for agri­cul­ture, the farm­ers and the land.

In the be­gin­ning

From day one, Min­is­ter Bharath hit the ground run­ning and, un­like some of his col­leagues who took their places in front of the cam­eras and ob­scene­ly ex­ploit­ed every pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty, this min­is­ter be­gan a clin­i­cal and com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of his min­istry, ob­vi­ous­ly mind­ful of his Gov­ern­ment's man­i­festo promise to cre­ate a food-se­cure na­tion. His be­hind-the-scenes hard work and vi­sion for his min­istry have paid off and the good news is that the cit­i­zen­ry will reap the ben­e­fits of the sig­nif­i­cant strides made in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. The ini­tia­tives tak­en in the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry have con­tributed to the re­duc­tion in the in­fla­tion rate be­cause, as Min­is­ter Bharath ex­plained, "there is more food in the sys­tem and the cost of food has re­duced." So thanks to Min­is­ter Bharath, the im­age of agri­cul­ture has been pos­i­tive­ly en­hanced and the im­por­tance of food pro­duc­tion has fi­nal­ly been re­alised. One can on­ly ex­pect that with the min­is­ter's con­tin­ued im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to boost the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor that this is one area in which the Gov­ern­ment would have ful­filled its cam­paign promise.

Agri­cul­ture on top

Too many in­di­vid­u­als who held the post of Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture lacked the vi­sion, pas­sion and dri­ve to take the min­istry for­ward and to max­imise its po­ten­tial. One for­mer min­is­ter pub­licly chas­tised his leader for giv­ing him the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry be­cause, ac­cord­ing to him, af­ter all his years in the trench­es, he de­served much bet­ter than a "pump­kin and bha­gi" as­sign­ment. That com­ment on­ly served to show that in our coun­try, for decades, we showed lit­tle or no re­spect for those who take care of the land and pro­duce food for do­mes­tic and for­eign con­sump­tion.

It is quite iron­ic that al­though food is re­gard­ed as one on the three ne­ces­si­ties for hu­man sur­vival, the peo­ple who have been placed in charge of this min­istry con­sid­er it some kind of de­mo­tion or sign of their in­com­pe­tence. In­ter­est­ing­ly, when ap­point­ed, Min­is­ter Bharath nev­er com­plained about his suit­abil­i­ty for or dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the min­istry and to­day he can boast of ac­com­plish­ments of na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. It is hoped that his suc­cess and that of his min­istry will act as an in­spi­ra­tion for those who are still to prove them­selves wor­thy of hold­ing Cab­i­net po­si­tions.

In your gar­den

The an­nounce­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter that she has start­ed a home kitchen gar­den should en­cour­age the pop­u­la­tion to fol­low suit. It is so easy for those at the top to start and set trends and the cul­ti­va­tion of sim­ple pro­duce is a fash­ion that should be fol­lowed. Get­ting fam­i­ly mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in kitchen gar­den projects will strength­en bonds and pro­vide mean­ing­ful qual­i­ty time. In the same way chil­dren are en­cour­aged to take good care of pets, they should be urged to take care of plants. It is all about mak­ing the project ex­cit­ing. If tak­ing care of a rock was a big busi­ness in the US many years ago, when chil­dren were beg­ging par­ents to buy them a "pet rock," then get­ting young minds in­ter­est­ed in grow­ing plants should not be dif­fi­cult. We just need the right cheer­lead­ers.

Pro­mot­ing lo­cal con­tent

Who would ever have thought that the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry would have been the cheer­leader for pro­mot­ing lo­cal con­tent in an im­por­tant as­pect of our life-our di­et? The com­mit­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter to re­quest that the cater­ers at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre serve dish­es re­flect­ing greater lo­cal pro­duce is a com­mend­able un­der­tak­ing and all who vis­it the cen­tre, es­pe­cial­ly for­eign­ers, will be able to en­joy tasty meals with a lo­cal flavour.

Min­is­ter Bharath has in­di­cat­ed that KFC has agreed to be­gin serv­ing chips made from lo­cal­ly-pro­duced sweet pota­toes and that the lo­cal con­tent will al­so be in­cor­po­rat­ed in the meals served in the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme. With so much ac­tiv­i­ty buzzing in the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry, the ques­tion must be asked: why were these ini­tia­tives nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly ex­plored? The an­swer must lie in the fact that Min­is­ter Bharath has lead­er­ship qual­i­ties which he has been able to ef­fec­tive­ly har­ness in awak­en­ing the pow­er­ful gi­ant with­in a min­istry that was left sleep­ing.

Even more food

Farm­ers through­out the coun­try must be ex­cit­ed with the re­ju­ve­na­tion of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and must make the most of the op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed for their de­vel­op­ment and over­all ben­e­fit. Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, restau­rants and hote­liers have been ap­proached to in­clude in their menus lo­cal dish­es. Fur­ther, lo­cal­ly grown foods are be­lieved to be health­i­er as there is greater su­per­vi­sion from cul­ti­va­tion to har­vest­ing. It is as though the doors to a whole new world filled with promise have been opened be­cause of the vi­sion of a man and his ded­i­cat­ed team.

And that should come as no sur­prise be­cause Min­is­ter Bharath is well ed­u­cat­ed and high­ly qual­i­fied and has made his min­istry fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able and po­lit­i­cal­ly at­trac­tive. The chal­lenge is to sus­tain the in­ter­est and con­tin­ue the im­ple­men­ta­tion of plans that work in the de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor. I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late the min­is­ter on his suc­cess and look for­ward to even greater ac­com­plish­ments in his min­istry.