“The next war will be fought for water and food grains”, prophetic words already haunting India. A country, which in 67 years, failed to provide adequate irrigation to its farmers, is now hitting the final nail into their coffin by resorting to land grab as a means to “wean away” the farmers from agriculture towards skilled labor. Talk to any spokesperson of the present day administration and they will tell you that farming is no longer profitable as it used to be back in the day because the land holdings have reduced over the years due to land area being split between siblings as a share to the property they were entitled to as heirs. So a land owner has smaller land holding which is not profitable enough to sustain a family and hence the farmers are committing suicide day after day. Several newspapers are carrying this story without stopping to check for facts. Frankly, no political party cares why a farmer is killing himself all they care is the political fallout of the suicides should not harm them during elections. It is this short term vision that is hampering proper analysis of the problem and subsequent finding of a long term solution to it.
I am neither a farmer, land owner nor an economist but I have my own theory on why such stark agrarian crisis has hit India. I would like to articulate a few points and hope to initiate a discussion on its merits / short comings. Firstly, the administration has to overcome a large deficit of lack of irrigation facilities accumulated over past 60 years and for this they have to come up with innovative plans to set up small scale irrigation projects (bunds etc.) in fertile areas so that farmers do not have to depend on rains for sustained farming. The land will be provided by farmers and capital can be provided by the administration. There will be easy land acquiring as farmers desperately need irrigation. This is a perfect win-win solution with long term benefits. This will also sustain the water table as farmers will be weaned away from using ground water. I am not saying nobody has thought about this solution but maybe this is common sense solution and hence not always sought out.
The second argument for weaning away farmers from agriculture is the argument “60% of work force producing 15% of GDP”. I am flabbergasted that the administration can even say such a thing. The main reason why 60% of farmers cannot product 60% of GDP is because of lack of adequate irrigation, supply of proper fertilizers and pesticides and lack of scientific farming. Instead of making agriculture more profitable by fixing raw material issues the administration is fixing this with trying to reduce number of people employed in agriculture by snatching away their land using “land acquisition bill”. This is equivalent to saying if there is not enough food; tell your family to go eat elsewhere instead of striving to get more food to the table. Again, this is a common sense solution but the administration has set its eyes on some other aims. There is also an option to encourage farmers to employ co-operative farming – wherein contiguous farmlands could be irrigated by farmers on cost / profit sharing basis and gain from the benefits of economies of scale. Not so long ago, individual dairy farmers were not making much money but co-operative dairy farming has led to “while revolution” in India and today it is the largest producer and exporter of dairy products. Why cannot we replicate this in agriculture and horticulture? Again, common sense is not so common.
There is one last bit in this puzzle. The rich folks don’t want the poor to be able to afford good food so that the demand can be controlled and prices remain stable. The administration is trying to tackle the inflation by killing the demand rather than fixing the supply side issues listed above. This has become a classic battle of the haves v the have nots because the powers that be are unwilling if not unable, to think straight and address the right issues instead of fighting the losing battles. In closing, the agrarian crisis has been in the making for last 3 decades but the simmer is provided by attempts of present administration to tackle the issue in a way detrimental to the farming community. Unless a rethink is done almost immediately, this crisis will blow in to a full scale class war – that much can be guaranteed.
So long….
I am neither a farmer, land owner nor an economist but I have my own theory on why such stark agrarian crisis has hit India. I would like to articulate a few points and hope to initiate a discussion on its merits / short comings. Firstly, the administration has to overcome a large deficit of lack of irrigation facilities accumulated over past 60 years and for this they have to come up with innovative plans to set up small scale irrigation projects (bunds etc.) in fertile areas so that farmers do not have to depend on rains for sustained farming. The land will be provided by farmers and capital can be provided by the administration. There will be easy land acquiring as farmers desperately need irrigation. This is a perfect win-win solution with long term benefits. This will also sustain the water table as farmers will be weaned away from using ground water. I am not saying nobody has thought about this solution but maybe this is common sense solution and hence not always sought out.
The second argument for weaning away farmers from agriculture is the argument “60% of work force producing 15% of GDP”. I am flabbergasted that the administration can even say such a thing. The main reason why 60% of farmers cannot product 60% of GDP is because of lack of adequate irrigation, supply of proper fertilizers and pesticides and lack of scientific farming. Instead of making agriculture more profitable by fixing raw material issues the administration is fixing this with trying to reduce number of people employed in agriculture by snatching away their land using “land acquisition bill”. This is equivalent to saying if there is not enough food; tell your family to go eat elsewhere instead of striving to get more food to the table. Again, this is a common sense solution but the administration has set its eyes on some other aims. There is also an option to encourage farmers to employ co-operative farming – wherein contiguous farmlands could be irrigated by farmers on cost / profit sharing basis and gain from the benefits of economies of scale. Not so long ago, individual dairy farmers were not making much money but co-operative dairy farming has led to “while revolution” in India and today it is the largest producer and exporter of dairy products. Why cannot we replicate this in agriculture and horticulture? Again, common sense is not so common.
There is one last bit in this puzzle. The rich folks don’t want the poor to be able to afford good food so that the demand can be controlled and prices remain stable. The administration is trying to tackle the inflation by killing the demand rather than fixing the supply side issues listed above. This has become a classic battle of the haves v the have nots because the powers that be are unwilling if not unable, to think straight and address the right issues instead of fighting the losing battles. In closing, the agrarian crisis has been in the making for last 3 decades but the simmer is provided by attempts of present administration to tackle the issue in a way detrimental to the farming community. Unless a rethink is done almost immediately, this crisis will blow in to a full scale class war – that much can be guaranteed.
So long….
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