The Narendra Modi government is
pushing ahead with policies that disadvantage farmers at a time when Indian
agriculture is already in deep crisis. By JAYATI GHOSH
ONCE AGAIN, the spectre of agrarian distress, which
is unfortunately never far from the surface in much of India, is rearing its
ugly head. Across the country, farmers, especially small cultivators, are
facing severe problems with already dire outcomes. There has been a spike in
farmers’ suicides in several States. Among several other signs of acute
hardship are reports that once again more people are migrating from the
countryside in search of work to cope with collapsing livelihoods at home. This
is occurring even in places where such outcomes have not been so common in the
past few years and at a time of the year (just before the rabi harvest) when
they are less expected.
In Maharashtra, it is estimated that there has been a
40 per cent increase in farmers’ suicides in the past seven months compared
with the corresponding previous seven-month period. In West Bengal, the State
government appears to be in denial mode even though the number of farmers who
have committed suicide this year in Bardhaman district alone is 106. Reports
from Rajasthan, Punjab and elsewhere also point to more suicides by those from
the farming community.
Of course, it is shocking that it takes something as
drastic and final as a suicide to generate public acknowledgement of severe
economic distress. It is even more shocking that the tendency among officialdom
is to downplay the increase by changing the classification of some of these
deaths into suicides by “non-farmers” (if they do not have land titles, for
instance, or are women) or attributing them to “personal reasons” rather than
severe economic adversity.
Indeed, the Central government recently told the
Supreme Court that the number of farmers who committed suicide had decreased since
2009 and that factors other than agrarian and financial distress also led the
farmers to take their own lives. Such arguments suggest a cynically callous
attitude to farmers and their families, and they are also an attempt to deny
the basic problems that farmers face and the extreme difficulties of their
situation whether or not they take the drastic step of killing themselves.
Agriculturalists in different parts of India are feeling the pressure for
different specific reasons. In much of northern and western India, unseasonal
rain and hailstorms have battered standing crops of pulses and vegetables, and lower
harvests are the primary source of concern here. It is estimated that nearly
one-third of the acreage under the rabicrop has been affected. In West Bengal,
potato farmers are struggling because of too much output; post-harvest potato prices
have collapsed and the appalling but continued lack of adequate storage
facilities means that farmers are forced to simply let their crops go to waste.
In Maharashtra, farmers face a double whammy: cotton and sugar prices are down
even as bad weather has meant lower output. In southern India, agriculturalists
are suffering the impact of the global decline in prices of cash crops,
accentuated by the adverse effects of the various trade agreements signed by
the Central government.
Yet, despite the variations, there are some
underlying similarities. In all parts of rural India, farmers are facing what
has been called a “scissors crisis”, which is driven by the rising cost of
inputs without a commensurate increase in output price. This puts them on an
uncertain trajectory where their reliance on (typically very expensive) debt to
finance their operations tends to grow over time and any unexpected movement
can have extreme consequences. An adverse weather change, for example, can lead
to a drastic decline in economic capacities such as the ability to recoup input
costs, leave alone the ability to repay loans. So, the greater underlying fragility
of the process of cultivation makes farmers even more vulnerable to what may
not otherwise be such a major change in the weather pattern. The inadequacy of
institutional mechanisms to deal with the risks associated with farming (such as crop
insurance and functioning price stabilisation schemes) means that cultivators
are forced to deal with these almost entirely on their own.
The rising cost of inputs reflects more than just
input price changes, and indeed, the price of one of the most important elements
of cost of cultivation, that of fuel, has actually been low or stable in the
recent past because of low world oil prices (even though these price declines
have not been transmitted fully to Indian consumers). Instead, rising input
costs are part of a process of the declining technological viability of
cultivation. Soil quality has worsened because of excessive use of chemicals
over long periods as well as erosion and waterlogging in some areas. Irrigation
is both scarce and ever more expensive as declining water tables make the use
of groundwater the privilege of those who are rich enough to keep digging deeper
and deeper to extract it. The emergence of new pests resistant to chemical
pesticides and the uneven performance of genetically modified seeds that are
supposed to reduce reliance on chemicals have complicated the possibilities of
pest control and thereby affected crops. And so on.
Continued in Part-2... (Published in Frontline.in)
No comments:
Post a Comment