the agrarian crisis opening blog

The green revolution ended in the year 2000 when the gains achieved due to the efforts of the earlier years started to be eroded. It took eight long years to realize that new efforts on a war footing were required to address the rot that had set into agriculture. With declining productivity and an increase in the dependent population agriculture ceased to be a remunerative career for many farmers across the country.

According to a recent survey,

75% children of farmers do not want to remain in the profession and want to move to cities. There appears nothing wrong with this trend superficially but the problem will arise when the best would be second-generation farmers choose to stay from their fields.
This does not augur well for the future of a country whose food demands are soaring at a rapid pace and the country is fighting hard to make ends meet. Today more than any other time this sector needs to be rejuvenated by the innovation that educated second -generation farmers will bring to this sector.

Nevertheless, while we may try to take the moral high ground we need to understand the problems at the grass roots:

While national income has grown at an average of 10%, income of farmers has grown by only 2%.

Access to fresh credit is limited despite what the government may want to say, thus relapse into the hands of the moneylender is a foregone conclusion. Waiving of old loans will be ineffective as long as fresh credit is not made available.

300 farmers in the killing fields of vidarbha have committed suicides even after the farm waiver package came into effect.

The CAG report has revealed that money meant for various farm welfare programs does not reach at all. It thus is a case of the money not reaching where the mouths really are.

Further and here I refer to the article which appeared in the Hindu dated 19-05-2008, Mr.P Sainath revealed that while the government is not ready to recognize that dry land farmers holding land more than 2 hectares are in dire need of loan waiver as they are too big , the same government is giving entertainment tax breaks to IPL owners as they are not big enough .the logic behind this move which will only make these people bigger billionaires and millionaires defies logic.

While a lot has been made out of the 60,000 crore waiver that has been extended to farmers, very few actually realize that the very Radhakrishnan committee report that the government is quoting here had actually recommended that loan waivers of 60,000 crore be extended every financial year over a period of 5 years since 2002 as it had estimated the total relief amount payable as 300,000 crore.
The fact that the government went in for a populist move in an election year making a political issue out of distressed farmers is shocking to say the least.

The tenth five-year plan had stated a target of 4% as far as agriculture was concerned but what was seen was a dismal 1.8% and that too in a sector that still employs 60% of our total population.

With 80,000 farm suicides reported over the decade it remains to be seen what more needs to happen that will stir the government into action.

The fact that the much touted loan waiver covers only those farmers who took credit from institutional sources alone seems to trivialize the entire issue. Institutional credit today covers hardly 5%