Farmers’ Fresh Stir
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
The conferment of Bharat Ratna to the late M.S. Swaminathan brings to the forefront the subject of farmers and their conditions of life and living for which the agricultural scientists had a definite contribution. But just after that, there has been a fresh agitation by farmers with various demands which include legally binding minimum support price (MSP) of 23 crops.
It is well known that MSP is fixed at a level of at least 1.5 times of the all paid-out costs incurred by farmers.Experts have opined that this should receive a statutory legal backing and the MSP should be fixed at 50% above the comprehensive cost of production which includes actual cost incurred to grow crops and assumed values for other items such as family labour, fertilisers and chemicals etc.
With no legal backing, it is a fact that over 80% of the country’s farmers have been unable to sell their crops at the MSPs fixed by the government. Most analysts believe that the ruling dispensation has little concern for the farming community and is not serious in ensuring how their income increases.
However, it is quite benevolent towards the rich and reports indicate that the ruling party has allowed tax concessions of around Rs 1 lakh crore every year to Indian domestic corporate houses but most of them were not increasing their investments. According to Prof. Atul Sood of the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU, multinational companies were involved in tax abuse to the tune of Rs 75,000 crore per annum.
Meanwhile, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi recently at Chhattisgarh maintained that the party’s government would accept all the demands of the farmers, apart from a law guaranteeing MSP. In fact, Kharge unequivocally stated that the Congress has decided to implement the Swaminathan Commission recommendations, which are accepted to change the lives of 15 crore farming families. Recalling the unfulfilled promises made since 2014, the party president recalled Modi’s had said that “farmers’ incomes will be doubled” and promised “Rs 15 lakh in every account and two crore jobs every year”. Now other guarantees are being given, which they contend are also false.
The Congress recalled that consistently Modi, since his days as Gujarat chief minister, had advocated MSP and went back on his words after becoming Prime Minister. It is a known fact that he endeared himself to the farmers in North India only through his public pledge for 50% profit over input cost and doubling their income to 2022. Congress spokesperson, Pawan Khera, showed videos of Modi’s affirmations on MSP and Swaminathan recommendations and also referred to the Report of the Working Group on Consumer Affairs in March 2011 which, under his chairmanship, had said that “higher prices would motivate farmers to increase production”. However, the government took a U-turn and in an affidavit in the Supreme Court pointed out that giving 50% profit plus input cost was impossible.
According to government sources, farmers from both Punjab and Haryana benefited immensely from increased procurement of paddy and wheat at MSP as well as from multiple farm schemes during the last 10 years under NDA compared to the previous 10-year period when UPA was in office. In the case of Punjab, total procurement of paddy in 10 years of UPA (2004-05 to 2013-14) was 1263 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) which went up to 1686 LMT during the NDA government (2014-15 to 2023-24). Similar has been the case of Haryana.
Meanwhile, an analysis by the Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP) showed that farmers in Punjab are already getting MSP that is 50% higher than the comprehensive cost (C2). Applying C2+50% formula in Punjab results in a cost of Rs 1503 a quintal while the current MSP is Rs 2275 a quintal, which is 51% higher than the comprehensive cost (C2) or Swaminathan Committee formula. However, the comprehensive cost for a farmer growing the same commodity in Bihar and Bengal works out to Rs 1745 a quintal and Rs 2003 respectively. This means that they are getting less than 50% over the comprehensive costs under the C2+50% formula.
Apart from MSP procurement, experts have suggested the need for a more decentralised and dynamic framework that might play a role in supporting sustainable, agro-ecological and economic transitions across different regions. The government needs to look into this aspect to ensure that small farmers at the grass-root level get the right price for their produce.
While Europe’s farmers are protesting the EU’s drive to fight climate change, among other issues, Indian growers are more focused on state-set assured prices for their crops. They also want the government to honour a promise to double their incomes, complaining that costs of cultivation have jumped over the past few years while incomes have stagnated, making farming a loss-making enterprise.
With a stagnant rural sector and a huge population dependent on agriculture, there is an imperative need to make agriculture more profitable. It goes without saying that the path shown by Swaminathan is evolving an integrated approach can help solve the challenges facing Indian agriculture. The objectives of government policy should be to develop an effective system, based on research and modern technological inputs to facilitate high productivity and ensure crop diversification for value addition and increasing incomes of farmers for which training programmes for small farmers are needed.
In this connection, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research should provide inputs about crop diversification suited in specific areas and set up experimental farms in this regard, preferably at the block level. Unless this is done at the grass-root level, it would be difficult for farm incomes to increase. The approach should be to target over 80% of farming households having a holding size of less than a hectare.
Additionally, there have been suggestions to set up farm management cooperatives that would manage for a fee, i.e., increase productivity without any rights to the land. These farms would benefit from economies of scale and their owners would have the option of seeking non-farm work. But even the allocation for the flagship scheme MGNREGA cannot guarantee employment for more than 40 days.
The point that needs to be stressed is that if industry can be given so many incentives, why not agriculture, which employs a huge section of the population. Moreover, agriculture contributes 17% to India’s economy. But corporate houses are powerful enough to extract benefits from the government while agriculture, though providing food to livelihood to a substantial section, cannot get the attention it needs. Even food and fertiliser subsidy is being criticised though nobody talks about the incentives given to industry for their new projects or expansion plans.
If the country has to develop in a balanced manner, the ruling dispensation has to give sufficient attention to the rural and farm sectors as they cannot be allowed to languish. Some economists have stated that if the farmers’ demands for MSP are met, there may be food inflation. It can only be said that there is no justification of the rural poor subsidising the rich and middle- income sections through cheap food when prices of all other items have escalated. — INFA