Smart Farming
Is there a concrete plan to link the farmers with the markets?" The question was posed to the Narendra Modi government by a Member of Parliament during the just concluded winter session. The 25 day long Parliament session, which saw path breaking legislation like 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections, witnessed lawmakers from different parts of the country wonder why market prices of 10 out of the 14 kharif (summer) crops were lower than their minimum support prices (MSPs) during the harvest season in October 2018 or whether there was any proposal to waive off loans of farmers up to Rs 3 lakh. Overall, there were about 400 queries from the 789 member strong Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha on issues specific to the agrarian economy. Crisis in agriculture seems to be troubling every second lawmaker.
Agriculture may account for just 17 per cent of India's wealth ($9 trillion or about Rs 64 lakh crore Gross Domestic Product or GDP) but it accounts for close to 50 per cent of employment generation. A crisis in the sector is also not a new phenomenon as growth has been eluding it for several years now. But what triggered the volley of questions from the MPs was the stark realisation that the much publicised efforts subsidies, freebies, MSP, farm loan waivers may not even be providing symptomatic relief to the long standing farming problem despite India registering a record foodgrain production of 284.83 million tonnes in 2017/18.
Farmers, it seems, remain poor even during a bumper crop season. Official estimates indicate that as many as 22.5 per cent farmers were living below the poverty line in 2013, while the All India Financial Inclusion Survey, conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development in 2015/16, found that the average monthly income of an agricultural household in India was Rs 8,059, without adjusting for inflation. As many as 52.5 per cent agricultural households have debt. A NITI Aayog study states that while farmers' income in nominal terms rose 9.18 times in the 1993/94 to 2015/16 period, the real farm income (which takes out the effect of inflation) had only doubled in 22 years.
Throughout 2018, and even before, farm distress was visible in the form of protest marches all over the country. Several states saw change in government during this period the recent ones being the BJP's losses in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh primarily due to farmers' ire. The fact that primary agri produce prices continued to remain muted in spite of the increase in MSPs for 22 kharif and rabi crops
