12. Governance of Sustainable Agriculture Schemes in India with Special Reference to Bio-fertilizer Project and Analysis

Chemical fertilizers are one of the significant elements which boost the green revolution in India in achieving the goals of self-sufficiency in food production. This positive outcome had also brought negative side effects such as salinity, decreases in soil fertility, insect resistance to pesticides etc., which had further affected environment to large extent and had led to land degradation, water contamination, groundwater depletion and climate change. These problems in agricultural land and water resources could only be solved to some extent with usage of bio-fertilizers, bio-pesticides and adoption of organic farming techniques which are eco-friendly. The Government of India had implemented policies and programmes for improving the production, distribution, and promotion of bio-fertilizers. An attempt has been made to analyse the governance mechanism in improvising the market of bio-fertilizer in India while understanding the roles, capacities, and relationships among the diverse actors involved in governance process. It has been found that usage of bio-fertilizers is limited as compared to involvement of population in agriculture sector due to various governance issues in agriculture sector like low institutional capacity, lack of economic stability, poor accountability and transparency, no responsiveness, lack of participation and access to information.