Performance audits in J&K Departments 

Pheran Diaries – 11 

By: Dr Sanjay Parva

In a land where the farmer pleads for a working irrigation pump, the agriculture and allied department operate from a marble-tiled office with teas served at the table. If this isn’t mockery, what is?”

For too long, heads of these 8 departments talked in Jammu & Kashmir, talked about in the previous articles of this series, have enjoyed uninterrupted promotions, plush offices, and inflated budgets — without being held accountable for outcomes. If agriculture and allied sectors have to be turned into the mainstay of the UT’s economy, this must end.

You can’t run an economy on paper files and tea meetings. If departments meant to serve farmers fail to increase productivity, market access, or rural income, the heads must be audited, publicly ranked, and demoted if found ineffective.

Let’s Talk Numbers First.

In the financial year 2023–24, the government spent a total of ₹654 crore on salaries and administrative overheads of the following agricultural and allied departments in J&K:

Department Salary/Admin Cost (₹ Cr) Output/Revenue (₹ Cr) Loss/Gap

Agriculture Production Dept. 182 24 -158

Horticulture 96 83 -13

Sericulture 58 5 -53

Floriculture 47 3 -44

Agri-Marketing & Procurement 66 12 -54

Animal/Sheep Husbandry 205 93 -112

TOTAL 654 220 -434

The math is embarrassing. For every ₹100 spent, barely ₹33 is earned. The rest vanishes into an ocean of bureaucratic inefficiency, nepotism, and obsolete models of extension.

Promotions Without Performance Is Injustice to the Farmer.

An officer who presides over declining sericulture or rotting fruit mandis still gets transferred to another department with full seniority. No one asks: What did you build? What did you change? Who benefited?

• J&K’s silk production dropped by 37% in five years, yet the Sericulture Director was awarded a departmental commendation.

• Floriculture department has a greenhouse budget of ₹5 crore, yet local florists in Anantnag and Ganderbal import flowers from Delhi.

• Animal Husbandry’s Artificial Insemination (AI) coverage hovers below 30%, but the department submitted a 100-page ‘vision document’ in 2023 to justify promotions.

What use is vision without visible impact?

Introduce Performance-Linked Audits. No Output, No Upgrades. Period.

Here’s the model that must be implemented:

1. Annual Output-Based Scorecards: Every department head must be evaluated on defined metrics — increase in farmer income, yield growth, new market access, infrastructure creation.

2. Third-Party Evaluation: Independent auditors — not internal review boards — must verify claims. No more inflated achievement reports.

3. No Promotions Without Minimum Scores: Officers must meet 60% threshold across core KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to be eligible for grade upgrades.

4. Publish Performance Dashboards: Every 6 months, release public dashboards listing the top and bottom-performing departments and their officers.

Accountability breeds efficiency. Opacity breeds empire-building.

Farmers Know the Truth. Ask Them. They will name the corrupt officers before you ask.

Time to Trim the Flab.

Over 2,400 Class A and B officers are employed across these departments. Fewer than 5% have any field performance reviews. Most senior officers spend more time in Srinagar’s Civil Secretariat than on farms.

• Many officers own private orchards or nurseries. Their conflict of interest goes unchecked.

• Scheme after scheme is designed without field-level feedback — from mushroom kits to dairy subsidies.

• Training programmes are conducted only on paper. Farmers get no actual skill-building.

It’s time to end the taxpayer-funded joyride.

Reform Is Not Optional Anymore

If the Government of J&K is serious about reviving agriculture, it must begin with bureaucratic accountability. A reformative move would be:

• Freeze promotions for 2 years across low-output departments.

• Audit 10 years of budgets vs outcomes.

• Transfer underperforming officers to non-executive roles.

• Empanel agri-tech professionals to lead field innovation wings.

For decades, agriculture officers got away with the line: “We’ve submitted the file.”

But files don’t grow crops. PowerPoints don’t irrigate fields. Conferences don’t feed cows.

If Kashmir’s agriculture must survive, it cannot afford the dead weight of unaccountable leadership. No output, no promotion. It’s that simple.

An author, a communications strategist, Dr Sanjay Parva was a debut contestant in 2024 Assembly elections. Opinions expressed are of the author, and may not necessarily reflect editorial views of Ziraat Times.

Email: [email protected].