Inspired by the success of the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP), Budget 2025-26 announced the launching of the Prime Minister Dhan Dhanya Krishi Yojana (PM–DDKY) scheme in association with the States, selecting 100 districts and benefiting about 1.7 crore farmers.
While the ADP covers agriculture and water resources as one of the five sectors, what is the rationale for launching a new scheme? Will it complement the ADP or remain a redundant one? An assessment report of ADP by the Institute for Competitiveness and Social Progress Imperative (2020) reveals that agriculture, water resources and financial inclusion are challenging areas to drive change for most aspirational districts. Hence, it is imperative to implement the PM–DDKY as a dedicated scheme to boost agricultural productivity and growth in aspirational districts. With a renewed focus on pulses and millets, the scheme aims to promote sustainable agriculture, crop diversification, integrated farming systems/agroforestry, and high-yielding variety seed production.
District selection criteria for PM–DDKY include low productivity, moderate cropping intensity, and below-average credit offtake. So, PM–DDKY must adhere to the 3Cs framework of ADP: convergence of Central and State schemes, collaboration of Central and State-level nodal officers and district collectors, and competition among selected districts using the “Champions of Change” (CoC) monitoring dashboard.
District-level database
State governments can consider a district-level database curated by the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and Tata Cornell Institute for selecting additional aspirational districts which are far away from achieving desired outcomes in the sector. This approach can reduce the district selection bias and duplication of areas of interventions.
Third, the ADP identified 49 performance indicators and 81 data-points, of which 10 indicators like net irrigated area, crop yield per acre, certified seed distribution, crop insurance, farmers’ access to electronic markets and APMCs, livestock artificial insemination, animal vaccination, and 12 data-points are considered for agriculture and water resources sector. This accounts for 20 per cent of total composite score used to rank district performance in agriculture and water resources. District administration should revisit the performance indicators or add some new indicators and their measurement for ‘delta’ ranking capturing period incremental change.
Implementing agencies, viz. NGOs, community-based organisations, and farmer producer organisations must put a concerted effort into planning, and executing the scheme in alignment with the ADP.
Dey is Associate Professor, and Jay Thakur a doctoral scholar, at IIM Lucknow. Views are personal
