Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath has ap­point­ed the new boards to gov­ern the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) and the Live­stock and Life­stock Prod­ucts Board. This took place at the min­istry's head of­fice on Wednes­day. The new board of di­rec­tors to gov­ern Namde­v­co in­cludes Robert Ram­samooj (chair­man), Suresh Bob Kow­lessar, Dr Ro­hanie Ma­haraj, Sta­cy Bar­ran, Dr David Ian Dol­ly and Lillawat­ti Ras­tao­gi. The five-mem­ber team to gov­ern Live­stock and Live­stock Prod­ucts Board in­cludes Carl Khan (chair­man), Farouk Mo­hammed, Dr Ri­d­ley Hold­er, Dr David Kan­ga­loo and Shi­raz Khan. The board mem­bers will serve a pe­ri­od of two years with ef­fect from to­day.

The boards were ap­point­ed in sep­a­rate in­duc­tion cer­e­monies. Bharath spoke of the role each board would play in the ex­e­cu­tion of the min­istry's ini­tia­tives and by ex­ten­sion the the Gov­ern­ment's plan. He con­grat­u­lat­ed the new board mem­bers and en­cour­aged them to work with the ex­ist­ing man­age­ment to as­sess the op­er­a­tions and make the nec­es­sary im­prove­ments to meet the ob­jec­tives of the rel­e­vant in­dus­tries. He not­ed that it was a man­date from Cab­i­net that the min­istry re­duce head­line in­fla­tion and con­trol the price of food.

This, he said, could be done by the man­age­ment of the sup­ply of food as food se­cu­ri­ty had as­sumed mon­u­men­tal pro­por­tions of at­ten­tion and aware­ness. Bharath urged the boards to take se­ri­ous­ly the sig­nif­i­cant part they had to play in the de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor. "It is im­per­a­tive that we put the in­fra­struc­ture in place to grow the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and re­duce our food im­ports but the board of di­rec­tors need to pro­vide guid­ance in the for­mu­la­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure," he said. He fur­ther told them that "we have talked the talk, now let us walk the walk," as he re­ferred to the growth, pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion of lo­cal food.