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Patna: Bihar has become the first state in the country to constitute an agriculture 'cabinet' with an aim to improve the agrarian sector and address the plight of the farmers.
The new 'cabinet' is headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and will have in it ministers of 18 departments including water resources, irrigation, energy, rural works, sugarcane industry, animal husbandry and disaster management.
The chief minister's agriculture advisor Mangal Rai, former director general Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), is a special invitee to this cabinet. The first meeting of the agriculture cabinet is to take place Tuesday.
However, the Bihar government has given highest priority to the agriculture sector and increased its budgetary allocation from Rs.25 crore to almost Rs.844 crore in 2011-12.
The news of a cabinet exclusively for the agriculture sector was cheered by the farmers.
In the last five years, Nitish Kumar has repeatedly said that he wants to have one or two agriculture product from the state on the plate of every Indian in the coming years.
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