Tractor sales have gone up by more than 40 per cent since 1993, sales of pumpsets by 14 per cent and that of power-tiller by 62.8 per cent. Power tiller sales jumped 14 per cent last year, after dropping stiffly the year before. Tractor sales grew more slowly than in 1998-99, at 4 per cent and sales of electrically-powered pumpsets continued to increase at a steady plod of 3 per cent.

"India is experiencing the kind of growth Europe experienced sometime ago, but at a much rapid pace," Renault Agriculture chief Bruno Morange told this correspondent recently. That belief brought Renault tractors and other multinationals in the business, like New Holland and John Deer, to India.

The trend is endorsed by Krishi Bhavan. "Special efforts will be made to raise the productivity and production of crops to meet the increasing demand for food generated by unabated demographic pressures and raw materials for expanding agro-based industries," promises the `National Agriculture Policy'.The policy obviously takes into account, the fact that mechanisation is the only option the country has for raising crop production. Almost every inch of the 125 million hectares of cultivatable land available has been ploughed through. A boost in crop yield is the only answer to food security for the coming decades, when the Indian appetite for foodgrain is estimated to grow to 325 million tonnes from 200 million tonnes now.

"Crop intensity has increased," say Krishi Bhavan sources, admitting that mechanisation had not quite progressed at the desired pace, because of infrastructure glitches. According to one estimate, cultivable lands stretch almost across 165 million hectares of the country, of which less than 35 per cent were being "tilled through mechanical power sources."

To cultivate the remaining 65 per cent of the land, farmers have to fall back on the traditional buffalo or bull-driven plough, the hoe, harrow and sickle. Policy-watchers dismiss the assumption that poverty bound the Indian farmer to his antiquated tools.

The share of private investment in agriculture jumped from 67 per cent in 1993-94 to 76.4 per cent in 1998-99. Obviously, the cultivating community is ploughing back into the land. The Union Government does its bit too, through subsidies on machinery purchases. The Union Government subsidises purchases of both tractors and power-tillers.

Infrastructure glitches hurt cultivators more, they say. The Indian farmer is powerless, for instance, where power supplies are weak or erratic. The average availability of power is only a kilo watt (kw) per hectare in the country and is at best, expected to grow to two kw per hectare by 2020.Tractor sales have traditionally been confined to the `green revolution' belt, Punjab, Haryana and the west of Uttar Pradesh, where landholdings are large. In some parts of India the tilling community have opted for `group farming' to circumvent the problem of fragmented landholdings and tractor sales have gone up. In the course of a decade, tractor sales have doubled from 6,071 in 1990 to 16,891 last year, but most of the tractors have gone to Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Statistics gathered by power tiller manufacturers show that West Bengal, where landholdings are small, accounted for the highest sales in power-tillers in the 1999-2000 fiscal.

Farmers in West Bengal bought up 5,270 power-tillers, compared to 1,649 by those in Karnataka (the next highest sales) and 1,506 by Assamese cultivators. Power-tillers did not sell in Haryana at all and only six sold in Punjab.

"Mechanisation has to be area-specific and crop-specific," said an agronomist, by way of an explanation. Power tillers sell more, where farmers grow more than one crop on the land and tractors sell where farms are large enough for mechanised ploughing.

Only 697 tractors sold in Himachal Pradesh last year, compared to 28,815 in Madhya Pradesh and nearly as many in Punjab and Rajasthan. Tractor sales were low in Kerala (778) and Assam (519) compared to sales in power tillers. The road signs are clear. Indian farms are buying machines and chucking away crude tools, to grow more and grow more cheaply. Even the chock-full barns this year have not been able to disturb the trend.