Ever since Deng Xiaoping extolled the virtues of wealth, China has been frogmarching towards affluence. I was invited by the Chinese government last month and had the opportunity to look at their agricultural sector and got an insight into the difference between what goes on in this country and what happens there. Why is Indian agriculture going down the tube, while China is prospering?

A population explosion might be one of the explanations. In India, the population is growing at 1.9 per cent annually, as against the 1.5 per cent growth in food grain production. The Malthusian theory, in which population growth overtakes food production, has been in operation since almost a decade. Food availability is at an all-time low of less than 400 grammes per capita, while the norm stipulated by the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, is 500 grammes. With the availability of pulses (the primary protein supplement for most vegetarians) down to 26 grammes, the country is inching towards a hunger trap. Wheat imports have started again after seven years. Against this background, the claim of the chairman of the National Commission of Farmers last June that India is self-sufficient' in wheat seems hollow. Farmers are dying: more than 14,000 have taken their lives. This does not happen in China.

China and India have a comparable number of farmers: the former with 900 million, constituting about 70 per cent of the population, the latter with about 650 million, 65-70 per cent of the population. In both countries the average holding is 0.5-1 hectare (ha). Unlike in India, however, where the rich farmers of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Andhra and even Tamil Nadu, to an extent, can hold hundreds of acres, China has millions of farmers spread all over the countryside. Of the 230.4 million ha of arable land, 69 per cent is under grain crops, principally rice. This shows that China's food policy will continue to be grain-centred, unlike India's.

China harvested 432.9 million tonnes of food grains, which is 4.71 tonnes per ha. India's best is 220 million tonnes with an average yield of less than one tonne. In terms of the infrastructure and investments in agriculture, India comes next to the us, but China has much more to show on farmers' fields. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the Rice Project Directorate in Hyderabad have been talking about a hybrid rice for almost a decade, but one doesn't see it in the field in a big way. In contrast, the