In the Indian context it is difficult to identify a farmer, and needless to say, unless the farmer proper is identified, planning for the farmer is bound to fail or be misled. Half a century back, people engaged in cultivation were identified in four groups as (a) agricultural labour, (b) marginal farmer (having less than five acres), (c) small farmers (having land more than five acres but less than ten acres) and (d) big farmers (possessing ten acres or more).
But soon India achieved self sufficiency in production of food grains, the idea of consumer’s India emerged, and the population of India got divided into two clear groups, rich and poor, BPl and APl. Farmers as the major economic class, about 66 per cent of India’s population, lost their identity as farmer and feel suffocated. The thrust of the Government being on consumers, thought and action for the welfare of the farmers lag behind so far as priority is concerned.
Knowing pretty well that 83 per cent of the BPl families enumerated in India are themselves producers of food grains, giving support of subsidized food grains to them is totally an erroneous planning. Obviously, therefore, rice/wheat given to them as subsidized ration came back to the market and resold to traders at a price little higher than the subsidized price. Thus subsidy given to the producer-consumer, approximately Rs 34 per kg, is shared by the traders too, and thus paves way for food grains to be recycled, an unhealthy economic practice came into being.
On the other hand, film stars like Amitabh Bachan and Shahrukh Khan, who are professionally not cultivators, but being recorded tenants of some land only can avail all benefits of a farmer like loans for cultivation, interest subsidy, crop insurance, loan-waiver etc. In Indian context, there is no bar for Ambani, Adani, Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi to be a farmer if he is a recorded tenant of a little bit of land anywhere in India.
A trend has developed among businessmen to purchase fallow land as much as they can only to avail crop loans at 2 to 6 per cent of interest, to utilize in their business as capital, which otherwise could have been 12 to 14 per cent rate of interest. So money meant for agricultural sector and subsidy thereof is utilized otherwise under the nose of administration, and deserving farmers at the grassroots fail to find loan. If the Government sits complacent by budgeting Rs 10,000 crore to farm sector as bank loan, still it will certainly fail to augment the economic condition of farmers unless real farmer in the farm land is identified.
Agriculture, not being remunerative at all now-a-days, people engaged since generations have started shifting their business otherwise, leasing out their land mostly to agricultural labours who hardly use modern technology. Thus the skilled ones who had technical know-how are now staying out of agriculture.
Traditionalism in cultivation has again begun to bring back production to 1950 level shortly if it goes on as it is. The lease being verbal one, it doesn’t endow authority to the leaseholder to avail loan, subsidies, and other benefits. It goes to the recorded tenant who has the record of right over the land, and not to the farmer engaged practically in agriculture. The leaseholder failing to get bank loan for want of documentary support avails it from the local lenders with a high rate of interest.
The leaseholders, therefore, with the intention to earn maximum from the land use maximum doses of fertilizer without taking care of soil health of which the Prime Minister cries so loudly. Quality of land gradually deteriorates unexpectedly. Being a casual cultivator why should he take care of the soil health at all! He will rather care for maximum extraction from the land. Very shortly, therefore, the agricultural land gets orphaned, unless farmer proper is identified, and properly authenticated to avail the benefits given to farmers through different plans and schemes of the Government.
The Government schemes and plans meant for farmers don’t recognize the leaseholders unless the lease is documented. The tenant, in apprehension of rights over land might be shifted, doesn’t agree for documentation of the lease. At last, conventional verbal agreement takes place and the leaseholder cultivates without recognition as a farmer. Unfortunately, he fails to sell his produce in the authenticated market for want of registration and forced to sell at a distressed price in the local market to local traders. Pressure of the land owner, local money lender, and distress sale of his produce accumulating soon after the yield, annihilate the real farmer, in the field. In the list of farmer suicides in the country, these leaseholders topped in number.
The system doesn’t recognize him as a farmer. He can’t get his crop insured, and if insured, the benefit goes to the landholder. Thus any plan to upgrade the financial status of the farmer will fail at the grassroots unless the farmer proper is identified.
It is no wonder that there are landholders, who are already settled in other economic professions, and who neither have the hope of return to agriculture, nor can recognise their land, are recognized as farmers for all practical purposes only because of the fact that they are the recorded tenants. land and cultivation is no more their livelihood.
Unless land becomes the livelihood or lifeline of a person, none else will take care of land as well as of production. In the hands of leaseholders, though cultivation is their livelihood, the soil health is not safeguarded unless their ownership, may be temporarily, is authenticated. Tenants, who have no interest in cultivation and diverted to other profession for their livelihood, do not want to give up their possession over the land, even for a year to the lease holder for the purpose of cultivation with due documentation. A verbal lease will not serve the purpose of crop insurance legally that the Prime Minister pleads as a means to save the farmers from economic downfall. Thus unless the farmer proper in the farmland is identified, no plan or scheme to uplift the farmer practically cultivating in the farmland will reach at the farmer proper. A rethinking to define the term ‘farmer’ is necessary before planning to safeguard the interest of the farmers is stepped up.
(The writer, a highly-educated farmer, lives at Khari in Subarnapur , Mob-7077982854)