The Union government’s new Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY) promises to knit together 36 Central schemes and an unspecified number of State programmes under a single roof. Modelled on NITI Aayog’s Aspirational Districts template, the plan will channel Rs 24,000 crore a year for six years into 100 low-productivity districts, beginning with the rabi season in October. The aim is plain: lift yields, diversify crops and create local, value-added jobs by merging cash transfers (PM-KISAN), insurance (PMFBY) and dozens of smaller, technical interventions.
District-level “Dhan Dhaanya” committees will steer the effort and may court private partners where helpful. In theory the logic is sound. Fragmented programmes breed overlap, leakage and administrative fatigue. A common dashboard of 117 indicators, monitored monthly, could sharpen accountability and reward results.
The insistence on district-specific action plans recognises that oil-seed shortfalls in Rajasthan and pulse deficits in Bihar will not be solved by uniform diktat from Delhi. Yet the scheme’s debut coincides with a steady fall in agriculture’s share of the Central Plan — from 3.5% in 2021-22 to a projected 2.5% by 2025-26. Consolidation must not become camouflage for dwindling public investment or for a quiet retreat to public-private partnerships that serve corporate balance-sheets better than farmers’ fields. Annual funding of Rs 24,000 crore — barely 0.1% of GDP — is modest for an initiative that aspires to remake productivity gaps dating back decades. Success therefore rests on three tests.
First, States, panchayats, co-operatives and farm unions must help design and audit the district plans; without genuine participation, “convergence” will be a spreadsheet fiction. Second, PPPs must target critical gaps — oil-seed research, pulse procurement, water conservation — and be judged by transparency and farmer income, not ribbon-cutting. Third, the Centre must ring-fence core outlays even as it rationalises schemes. Uniformity can be useful; parsimony, less so. If PMDDKY is to seed self-reliance, it will need more than a tidy dashboard. It will need unflinching finance, collaborative federalism and the patience to let local knowledge guide national ambition.
