The Centre as well as farmers should resolve the issue rather than prolonging it. This would be beneficial for the entire country
The continuing protests by the farming community for the last 20 days might be one of the biggest challenges of the Narendra Modi-led Government. Though the Centre is seized of the issue, the confrontation still continues. Perhaps it is time to look back and see how India went from being one of the largest food grain importers after Independence, to achieving self-sufficiency.
Former Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and his successor Indira Gandhi were responsible for the Green Revolution in India. The food crisis began in the last year of the Jawaharlal Nehru era, as the first two Five-Year Plans did not pay adequate attention to agriculture. In 1949 the Indian food situation was difficult and the foreign exchange position was worse. In November 1949 Nehru made his first visit to the US and during his talks with US President Harry Truman he mentioned the scarcity of food in India. Truman’s response was positive, but bureaucratic hurdles, resistance in the US Congress, red-tapism and other difficulties, including the US’ bid to barter wheat for strategic materials, ensured that there was no pact in the end.
As a result of the continued food shortages in some of the States, India witnessed riots. It was then that the country resorted to PL480 food grains as part of the US’ policy of ‘Food for Peace.’ However, soon, India faced a crisis in the supply of food grains from the US, as President Lyndon Johnson’s food politics was a puzzle even to his administration. However, it had a happy ending because, by the time Johnson left office, India experienced a Green Revolution.
Prime Minister Shastri had in his very first month in office in June 1964 indicated a policy shift from heavy to light industry and towards consumer goods and agriculture. Shastri asked his Agriculture Minister Chidambaram Subramaniam to chalk out a new strategy to increase production. By giving the slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” Shastri inspired both, farmers as well as farm scientists, to sow the seeds of the Green Revolution.
Meanwhile, within a few months of his second term in office, Lyndon Johnson decided to take a tougher approach to food grain supply to India and Pakistan. Johnson told his puzzled officials, “I will take care of the problem.” He always waited till the last minute before personally authorising the shipments. Then American Ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, called the supply the “ship to mouth” programme as it never went through the warehouses.
After Indira Gandhi took over as the Prime Minister in January 1966 she continued the focus on agriculture. One of the first things Indira Gandhi sought from Johnson during her first visit to Washington as Prime Minister in March 1966 was food aid. Though Johnson was bowled over by her charm he made it clear that the two primary conditions for the US’ aid — self-help and more focus on agriculture — were necessary.
Things began to change for the better as India ushered in an era of expansion in the farm sector, which started with the introduction of high-yielding varieties of wheat in the late 1960s. With all the push for agriculture, coupled with the efforts of leading scientists like Dr MS Swaminathan, slowly India began to see improved yields and got closer to solving the chronic food shortages in the country.
Indira Gandhi made the Green Revolution a priority of her Government and along with new hybrid seeds, initiated State subsidies and ensured the provision of electricity, water, fertilisers and credit to farmers. Agricultural income was not taxable.
The result was that India became self-sufficient in food. This was something that Indira Gandhi wanted to achieve with all her heart, particularly given her frustration with Johnson’s erratic and conditional food aid. Once, as soon as she hung up after talking to Johnson, Indira Gandhi is reported to have said angrily, “I don’t ever want us to have to beg for food again.”
She hit back at Johnson and signed a declaration calling for an end to “imperialist aggression” against the Vietnamese people. Lyndon Johnson’s response was swift and food grain shipments to India slowed down. But later, once Johnson was satisfied that the Green Revolution in India was on track, he became liberal and tried to get the support of other countries to share the burden with the US.
The World Bank, too, started a consortium for food supply. Today, India has achieved self-sufficiency as food production has gone up from less than 50 million tonnes (MT) in 1947 to 292 MT in 2019-20.
Meanwhile, Government investment in agriculture rose sharply, too. Apart from that, institutional credit, remunerative prices and the availability of new technology at low prices were facilitated. By the 1980s not only had India become self-sufficient in food grain production, it was exporting farm produce to pay off its debts and loaning it to food-deficit countries, too.
Over the decades, successive governments have thrown sops at farmers, including large subsidies on power and fuel, but there has been little sustained or strategic effort to modernise the sector. The Modi Government, too, came up with several schemes for growers and is now talking of an ‘Evergreen Revolution’ in the farming sector.
However, the new farm laws seem to have created apprehensions among the farmers, who have been protesting on Delhi’s borders since November 26. Though the Government has held six rounds of talks with farmers’ organisations, there seems to be a trust deficit and the Opposition parties, too, have joined hands with the growers to attack the Government. The Centre as well as farmers should resolve the issue rather than prolonging it. This would be beneficial for the entire country. No one wants to see the nation’s “annadata” suffering in the fields and on the streets, too.
(The writer is a senior journalist)
