Farm distress: Loan waiver no solution

Farm distress: Loan waiver no solution

FPJ BureauUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 04:19 AM IST
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(Photo by Money SHARMA / AFP) |

The farmer protest in the national capital on Friday focused yet again on their multifaceted problems. Their organisations had worked hard to stage a show of strength to highlight their worsening plight. They, however, erred in offering the platform to the politicians. By themselves, farmers have a big say in the national affairs.

Politicians of all hues can ignore them at their own peril. Besides, every Opposition leader, who paid their cause lip sympathy last Friday, had been in power at one time or the other except that gadfly, the AAP leader, Arvind Kejriwal. How can, for instance, Rahul Gandhi, distance himself from the poor plight of the farmers given that the Congress Party had been in power across the country for over four decades. Had agriculture received its due in the early decades after freedom, the sector would not have been in such dire straits.

The Congress governments, relying on the general ignorance and unawareness of the earlier generation of farmers, merely considered them a vote-bank. This when farmers were the backbone of the economy in the early years following Independence. However, over the years, their share has reduced with other sectors accounting for a far larger portion of the GDP. One of the biggest blunders of the Congress Party was to neglect the farm sector, leaving it to rely on non-mechanised, labour-intensive methods, while most developed countries had managed to grow far more from far fewer human hands.

From the initial two-thirds of the population depending on the farm sector, the number has come down to only about fifty per cent, but it is still far too high for it to be able to support the farming families. The reasons for over-dependence on agriculture are many, but a major one is the lack of opportunities in various other sectors. Lack of formal and vocational education in the countryside adds to the woes of the farming communities. However, so long as the Congress enjoyed a near-monopoly over the levers of power, the problems facing the farm sector remained under the radar. But the rise in competitive politics has helped make the farm sector distress a recurrent problem on the nation’s agenda.

Regardless of the geography, farmers throughout the country find themselves in the same boat. Lack of remunerative farming is the number one problem. The constant complaint is that the sale price of farm produce is lower than the cost of inputs. The minimum support price for various crops, too, does not seem to be the answer to their woes. Because a) the state agencies are unable and unwilling to procure the entire produce, and, b) middlemen pocket huge commissions. The Modi Government tried to break the monopoly of the agricultural mandis, presenting a model bill for requisite amendments in the law governing the agriculture produce marketing committees. Being a state subject, most States baulked at the thought of taking on the entrenched vested interests in the ‘mandis’. As a result, the stranglehold of the traders continues undiminished. Farmers do not get full price for their produce.

Also, the weather cycle of droughts and floods which affects a vast section of the farmers remains to be overcome with better irrigation facilities and a recourse to modern crop patterns. Another problem which increases farm distress is that marginal farmers get a raw deal from the big land-owners, with State goodies cornered by the latter. But the answer to the farm distress is not the periodic loan waiver. It only postpones the problem, while burning a big hole in the pocket of the lending institutions. The most durable solution is to ensure that farmers use the best practices, get the maximum yield from their holdings, and are able to market the produce at a cost-plus basis.

Even the generous scheme of the State agencies, such as the one in Madhya Pradesh which pays the difference between the market price and the minimum support price, or the one in Telangana which pays per-acre financial compensation, offer no long-term answer to their long-term woes. A vast number of farmers need to shift to other vocations. That may not be possible so long as they lack skills of any sort and there are no employment opportunities elsewhere. Two, governments have to free marketing of agricultural produce, including permission to export.

Also, market forces have to be allowed to fix rates of farm produce, keeping them artificially low in the interest of the general population ends up short-changing the food growers. Structural reforms in the farm sector require an all-party consensus. Unfortunately, it cannot be built so long as the politicians continue to exploit farmers for their own partisan ends.

-Editorial

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