Farmers’ plights are galore. They have been grossly neglected by all the Governments since independence. Now, the farmers in Odisha and across the country are staging protests and demonstrations. For years now, a deep agrarian distress has been spreading fast.
The Navnirman Krushak Sangathan, a farmers’ body in the State has been staging protests for price , pension and prestige. It demands a Minimum Support Price ( MSP) Rs 5,000 per quintal of paddy which at present is Rs 1,525. The cost incurred for harvesting one quintal of paddy is Rs 2,344 taking all details of expenditure into consideration. The price fixed by the Central Government per quintal of paddy is markedly low and logically unacceptable.
The farmers therefore sustain loss in farming. The Government has not yet implemented the recommendation of the Swaminathan Committee report which clearly states that the farming community should get 1.5 times of the cost incurred in the farm. Both the State Government of Odisha and the Centre are apathetic to the distressed and deplorable conditions of farmers who really are the productive forces of the country.
Even the recommendation of the Odisha Government to enhance price of paddy to Rs 2,990 is not just. Moreover, the price of black gram has been reduced to Rs 4,000 per quintal which was Rs 6,000 in the previous year. The farmers of the costal districts are selling black gram at lower price which is less than the fixed price of the Government ie Rs 5,400 per quintal. It is the bounden responsibility of State Government to constantly strive so that MSP is hiked.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi is clamouring for improvement of the conditions of the farmers of the country. But why the UPA Government headed by Congress had not taken steps to implement the recommendations of report of the Swaminathan Committee and moreover, did the Congress rule of 60 years take any concrete steps to ameliorate the distressing conditions of the farmersIJ
While the Maharashtra Government firmly assured the 25,000 agitating farmers to redress their grievances and fulfil the reasonable demands apprehending an impending threat to the Government, the Odisha Government is yet to be sincere in this regard. The Odisha Chief Minister appears mindless to the suicide of hundreds farmers due to crop loss and loan burden. The National Crime Records Bureau has revealed that 101 farmers had committed suicide in 2016 which is four times more compared to the 27 suicide death in 2015. So long the State Government has not implemented any sound policy for agricultural growth, the poverty and misery cannot be eradicated and distress migration would continue to haunt the State.
The NKS has been persistently demanding pension for the farmers when they attain old age and become unable to work in the farms. While the present State Government ensures pension for different people like the Government servants, artists, freedom fighters and even masons, it has never thought of granting pension to the poor farmers who are the productive forces of society and backbone of the country.
A Government servant works in the office for public service and the farmer works in the field for the food stuff for his family and society. Can a nation survive without food stuffIJ While a Government servant retires from the service he gets pension till death and after the death of pension holder, his family gets pension. Even a farmer in possession 5 acres of land with family members of five, receive hardly 20 per cent of the salary of a State Government peon from its farm produce. It is pertinent to mention here that 66 per cent of the population of Odisha are engaged or employed in agricultural sector. As reported the monthly income of a farmer does not exceed more than Rs 1,500. It is fiendishly hard and even downright impossible to maintain his family. So their children suffer from undernourishment.
Viewed from the farmers’ status and prospects of other States like Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, MP, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu etc, the conditions of the farmers of Odisha are pathetic and precarious.
While more than Rs 8 lakh crore borrowed money by rich business elites and industrialists have led to mounting Non Performing Asset (NPA) of the banks and chance of recovery of these loans remote, a farmer commits suicide for non payment of a loan of some thousands of rupees only. If 40 per cent of NPA had been utilised for agriculture, the economic status of the country would have been markedly changed.