Farmers in the ancient India were well-up and lived with honour and dignity. Even a couple of decades after Independence, the farmers enjoyed almost the same status in the society.
But what happened subsequently that cultivation was denounced and denigrated as a mean and despicable job and people engaged traditionally in cultivation began to say good bye to agricultureIJ As per the 29th Sample Survey, 43 per cent of farmers wish to quit cultivation soon for an alternative engagement. As 50.4 per cent of work force in India is reported to be engaged in agriculture sector, living in financial distress is cause why they intend to quit farming.
The production of food grain has increased remarkably from 50,062,000 metric tonnes in 1950 to 241,50,000 metric tonnes in 2011, the per capital income is reported to have increased from which it is imperative that with high production the economic condition of the farmers should have been better. But they commit suicide in distress instead.
With induction of new technology during the Green Revolution in 1968, capital investment became necessary to purchase inputs like fertilizer, pesticides and high-yielding seeds. Prior to that farmers used their own and indigenous seeds and compost was available at their respective backyards. labour was the only investment a farmer contributed or managed in exchange with other farmers of the locality.
The Green Revolution tantalized farmers with high production and thereby capital investment increased day by day until the production came to a point of saturation. The cost of production increased spirally though fixation of MRP by the Government accordingly would have saved the farmers from financial declination. But the Government fixed the MSP, not keeping in view the actual cost involved in agricultural production , but in apprehension of threat of rise in the price of food grain leading to inflation. More unfortunate was that the MSP declared was not enforced upon, and left in the hands of businessmen who, looking at the bumper production, purchased paddy at a rate much below the MSP, though they delivered rice to FCI warehouses as per the MSP. So the benefit of bumper crop went into the pockets of the middlemen.
In 1999 a big number of sugarcane farmers of Karnataka burnt their sugarcane in their field itself, as the sugar mills did not lift their stock of canes on the scheduled time, only to restart cultivation for the next year.
The need of the hour is capital investment in agriculture. Indian agriculture being exposed to natural calamities like drought, flood, hail storm and cyclone, is prone to cause distress. Farmers are forced to sell their produce much below the MSP. So natural calamities, that appear almost in alternative years, and distress sale of agricultural produce together have made farmers economically weak. loan availed either from the bank or privately from the locality when not paid duly adds to the farmer’s distress.
Each nut of an industry is insured on one hand and the industrialist sells his product on MRP on the other. The Government may say that the scheme of crop insurance has already been introduced and gram panchayat at the grass-root is the basic unit to calculate crop loss. But the State has to declare an area as drought affected for crop insurance. Gram panchayats are politically chosen as it happened in 2011 in Odisha. Secondly 65 per cent of Indian agriculture is rain-fed and rain becoming too erratic in these years. If each village is not taken as the unit for crop insurance, due justice cannot be given to each farmer. To give protection to the investment of capital and labour in agriculture, which is the minimum requirement to save the farmer from economic degeneration, each plant need to be insured independently.
In fixation of price of agricultural produce, all the conditions of industry should apply. Of course with this the prices of agricultural produce will shoot up and the Government is apprehending that this would cause high inflation in Indian economy and argue that common people will face hardship in day to day life. This is a typical capitalistic thinking, where the economy is flourishing and a few persons are gaining at the cost of the majority. Even in the present condition the portion of income the people spend for food is very less compared to the amount they spend for unnecessary and luxurious items which are costly. In all respect industrial status need to be granted to agriculture to save farmers from economic deterioration. Unless bold steps are taken to make ultivation remunerative, it will be seen within a decade that farmer, as a class feeding India, will vanish opting for other remunerative business.
(The writer lives in Khari, Sonepur, Mob- 7077982854)