Kolkata, March 17: India can feed half of the world, if quality of production goes up somewhere near to the best, Manipal Global Education Services chairman Mohan Das Pai said Saturday.
"India can feed half of the world if productivity can move up to near best in class," said Pai, adding that productivity was the problem, not land and labour.
Speaking about the disguised unemployment in the agriculture sector country wide, he said: "You don't require so many people to grow the miserly amount of food that you grow. We have to migrate people from agriculture to industry" following what China did 20 years ago."
Pai attributed most of the problems faced by India to the expanding gap between the growth rate of primary sector and the secondary and tertiary sector.
"...the divergence of 8-10 percent (industry & service) and 3 percent (agriculture) is so enormous that the gap is becoming extremely visible, that's what is hurting India's politics, creating anger in eastern India, the Maoist problem and all kind of problems...", said Pai, a former CFO of Infosys.
"We have to improve our industrial sector. It is only industry that can absorb a large number of people, so we have to reorient strategy in India."
