Empowering The Small Farmer:
Key To Finding A Way Out Of
The Current Agrarian DistressBy Meeta & Rajivlochan
19 December, 2007
Countercurrents.orgThe small farmer might be the solution to the ongoing crisis in the farming sector in India. Policies need to be geared towards helping small farmers perform agricultural operations and marketing their products with greater efficiency. Instead current policies are hoping to dispossess farmers of their livelihood and push them into some hitherto non-existent industrial gulag
A spectre is haunting India, the spectre of farmers’ suicide. Try as we might, insofar as we are able to do at the moment, with all the research and rationality we command, it just does not seem to go away. If anything its continuation and occasional resurgence simply suggests that the hitherto comprehensive solutions that have been tried to exorcise it simply do not work. And then, almost as if in an infantile rage, the suggestion comes for providing some Final Solution to the distress of the farmers: get the farmers out of farming; do away with globalisation; do away with all money lenders; have more dams, canals and wells to increase irrigation or, the most self defeating of all, write off farm loans. Chances that such Final Solutions would succeed are slim. You just cannot wish away the small and the marginal farmers just as you cannot wish away their propensity to take loans for routine farming operations from thuggish informal sources. Yet those making policies do not seem to give up hope and keep on suggesting ways and means of getting the farmers to stop farming and hand over significant agricultural operations to someone else, preferably an MNC.[3] These have been some of the more enduring of policy suggestions that have come up frequently in the recent past. As also the suggestion that the smaller holdings should simply be dissolved and those dependent on them be asked to seek urban employment. But the trouble is that simply because the American corporate farm works huge swathes of land should not encourage us too to hope for the same in India. Yet, the more our policy makers discuss the processes of economic liberalization and of integration with the world economy the more they identify the small land holdings of the Indian farmer as a major weakness.[4] The presumed solution following from such beliefs focuses on increasing the size of land holdings by shifting those with presumably unviable holdings to non-farm occupations.[5]
Given that for India, the processes of economic liberalization and of integration with the world economy by now seem inevitable, is it possible that an appropriate solution might lie in that old hat formula from management schools that suggests that when in grave trouble try to convert your perceived weaknesses into your strength. In this paper we suggest that to be the case, especially, we suggest, the time has come to think out of the box, as it were, and make use of our extremely large mass of small and marginal farmers to rejuvenate our agriculture. If for that it is important that we re-tool the skills of these farmers to cope with the changing circumstances then that is an option that we as a society and our government will simply have to take since there is no other viable and humane alternative.
To recapitulate some of the commonly listed causes for the current distress of farmers in India:
§ Globalisation, resultant competition and exploitation by big capital and its minions.
§ Peculiar banking practises in India and the non-availability of loans from formal sources for farming operations.
§ Social and cultural distress among farmers.
§ Fragmented holdings of an unviable economic size.
§ Absence of adequate appropriate research in new methods of farming and the exhaustion of current farm research to cope with contemporary circumstances.
§ Inability of the official machinery to provide appropriate services to the farmers and provide them with adequate succour.[6]
Solutions that have been considered practicable under the present administrative and political set up and that have been practised till now are broadly encompassed by the various schemes implemented by the state governments in Maharashtra and AP and those that fall within the purview of the PM’s package for farmers’ relief.[7] These have essentially involved, with some important exceptions pertaining to the involvement of big capital, turning the perceived causes of farmers’ distress on their head, in so far as it is practically feasible, and hope that the distress will go away.
The PM’s special package of Rs 3750 crores and the Maharashtra government’s separate package of Rs 1075 crores for the six districts of Vidarbha have already been trying fitfully to help the farmers but the results do not seem to be encouraging. These packages include a slew of measures to relieve agrarian distress ranging from a moratorium on loan repayment to watershed development to the distribution of cows, farm implements and so on.
However, the one thing which the government has studiously avoided doing is to allow people in distress to take responsibility for their own lives and to decide for themselves how best they need succour. At best this indicates on the part of officialdom, a well meaning but hardly credible belief in their own omniscience. At worst it indicates their willingness to use the name of the farmer, to distribute largesse to a wide variety of interest groups whose formally stated goal is to make a private profit.
Debt relief constitutes a large portion of these packages. Many commentators have pointed out that bailing out the banks by writing off their NPAs and one time loan write off schemes can have little permanent impact on the economic status of the farmer. Improving farm income and risk management are far more important.
The relief packages do recognize this problem and try to put in place measures for supplementary income generation. One strategy adopted is investment in irrigation projects; another is the adoption of individual beneficiary schemes. Even before the present packages, the distribution of improved agricultural implements, seeds and milch animals have been important mainstays of agriculture plan schemes for many decades. Feedback about these schemes has indicated a number of problems in implementation. The problems range from distribution of milch animals to farmers who have no access to fodder to feed the animals to farm implements which are unsuited to the local area and so on. Invariably, officials at all levels respond to such criticism by saying that if only implementation was proper and due attention paid to forward and backward linkages, conceptually the schemes are very good. Conceptually speaking however, all these schemes assume that the needs of farmers can be adequately anticipated by planners at the centre and the state governments. There is little data to support such an assumption.
These schemes are part of a larger belief that the government knows best. This is not to deny that governments have access to some of the best planners, all the statistics in the world and well meaning bureaucrats too. The point is that, however well meaning and well informed any official might be, local conditions are so varied that it is not feasible to anticipate all that any specific farm populace might need. Such decisions need to be left to the people. In the absence of such a mechanism, these schemes benefit the middlemen who supply agricultural inputs far more than they benefit the farmers.
The reports from Vidarbha indicate a wide variety of factors as being responsible for distress. In some cases it is crop failure, in others it is a faulty procurement and marketing mechanism and in many others the distress has to do with lack of support services for health, education and agriculture extension. The point remains that there is no magic formula which will fit all problems. The government tries to address this issue by placing a contingency fund at the disposal of the district administration which is used to provide assistance for education, health and such other measures as might be needed. But this is a small amount meant only for emergency situations; the bulk of the funds are tied up in schemes with pre-defined parameters. The object of the planning process should be not just to address emergencies but to enable people to prevent them. And that is where the problem lies.
Minimally one imagines, it would be important that the farmer be asked about what he wishes. That is the one thing which the government does not seem to be interested in doing. The doubts raised by the most well meaning of commentators about the wisdom of local decision-making range from ill informed arguments to expressions of plain prejudice. One favourite argument is that the farmer does not have access to information about improved technology and more efficient crop cultivation methods so he cannot make an informed choice. But if such is the case, then common sense suggests that it is the task of the government to make this information available to the farmer through an efficient extension machinery and then leave it to him to decide whether or not he wishes to cultivate melons or oranges, whether to adopt vermiculture composting and whether to buy Holstein-Friesian cows or otherwise. Yet agriculture extension is the one item which has received minimum investment or attention.
The idea of letting people decide for themselves is something which Indian officialdom seems to be most uncomfortable with. Unfortunately, much to the glee of those who love to bait the government, the demon of distress has refused to go away.[8]
The two major solutions currently proposed, namely to write off farm loans and to increase irrigation potential are self defeating. Most field observers would be the first to admit that these strategies can do little to improve the capacity of the farmer to earn more in the present circumstances. Between 1990 and 2002 the government was able to add an additional 7.13 million hectares of area under irrigation to bring the total to 37.05 million hectares. The total net sown area in 2003-04 was 141 million hectares.[9] No doubt the wheels of progress move slowly but if they continue to move as slow as this, the majority of those who need help, would perish before a helping hand reaches them. Any solution needs to provide some actual help in the foreseeable future rather than plain promises. Regarding the matter of writing off farm loans it needs to be noticed that such an exercise would certainly improve the balance sheets of the banks but it would do nothing to improve the farmer’s creditworthiness. Moreover once it is recognised that the farmer is unable to repay loans, then it would still be important to ensure that the financial assistance reaches him in some direct manner and consistently without forcing the financial institutions to extend loans which may have to be written off in the future.
Other solutions following from the above analyses and often mentioned by the mandarins of the Planning Commission focus on increasing the size of land holdings by shifting those with unviable holdings to non-farm occupations. Such solutions, we submit, completely obfuscate the very economic basis of farming operations. Historically farming has never been a ‘stand-alone’ profession as it were.[10] It has always been accompanied with other income generating activities, whether or not directly connected with the primary occupation of farming.[11] Even in regions untouched by commericalisation of agriculture during the colonial period where agricultural production in the village was mostly for local consumption and not the market, even here historians have noticed the subsidiary production of goods for the market if only to obtain cash in order to pay land revenue.[12] We submit that any analysis, if it is to hold out hope for a constructive solution, must focus on institutional strengths rather than on weaknesses. Harping on weaknesses would rather be the sure-fire road to disaster. Moreover, in this paper we do not propose to analyse the causes of farmer suicides, however important these may be for there is a certain circularity of argumentation and absence of seredipitous thinking in this kind of a search under current conditions. Actually one suicide is as distressing and merits as much attention as a large number of them. And we do think that managing the well being of the people by a government cannot be left either to an unending search for causation or merely in the hands of experts who get unduly engrossed in statistical data ignoring all other details that are not amenable to simplistic statistical analysis.[13]
Without going into the lacunae inherent in the unending search for causation about farmers distress and the problems inherent in implementing a package for the solution of the current farming crisis[14], we suggest that it is important to come up with a solution that is both humane and which takes into account the peculiar constraints that characterise the institutional set-up of agriculture in India.[15]
Institutional constraints that need to be addressed
India today has a population of several million farmers operating small farms (over 92% of 127 million farmers) and it would be neither immediately possible nor desirable to relocate them to the factory shop-floor.
The majority of these farmers practise dryland farming. The most optimistic scenarios have shown that even were the entire irrigation potential of the nation to be harnessed, this would still cover only about 40% of the present cultivable area in the country. The remaining 60% and the population dependent upon it cannot be wished away or sent to the gulag.
Many of these farmers have some skills in agriculture which however need to be upgraded.
The world market for valuable agriculture crops such as horticulture and medicinal plants, organically grown food crops which can easily be grown in dryland areas and also value added agri-products is rapidly increasing. (Many fruit crops like mango can also be grown in dryland conditions.) But most farmers, even when they are skilled producers, have little idea of how to access this market.
Present infrastructure for agri-marketing is such that in the case of most food crops and some cash crops, only half the crop is actually utilized the rest simply goes waste.
For knowledge inputs, these farmers are almost entirely dependent upon private sector agencies. Extension services of government are more or less non-existent.
Farming we need to remember, was the first industry in the world. It is also one of the few industries which is environmentally friendly. Over the years it has evolved continuously in terms of technology such that today, being a successful farmer means by definition considerable knowledge of “sunrise” crops, seed varieties, crop rotation cycles and appropriate farming techniques. Farming requires as much skill as any industrial enterprise but the small farmer today is not necessarily in the profession of his ancestors. Over the years there has been a huge change in the composition of the farming community with many traditional farmers moving to more lucrative professions and many of those belonging to the ranks of the balutedars, landless labour and pastoralists, moving into farming for lack of alternative occupations. Their knowledge about farming techniques and agri-marketing remains somewhat inadequate. Given that farming today is far more technology and knowledge intensive, these new entrants into farming are severely handicapped by the lack of any systematic knowledge inputs. To worsen things, over the years, the extension functions in agriculture, as far as the government is concerned, have simply taken a backseat to a point where it can safely be said that most such information is provided to the farmer today by a variety of private agencies which are marketing their products.
Field experience suggests that the farmer desires to make profits as much as anyone and is willing to take risks too. However he does not have the information necessary to evaluate those risks. What is needed is (1) to help him in the evaluation, (2) to provide him information about markets for which purpose information and communication technology is needed, (3) to facilitate market access and (4) to provide ability to store farm produce adequately till it reaches the market. As of now in the absence of appropriate storage and transport facilities, almost 40% of the farm produce in India goes waste. The crux of the matter lies in the availability of all this information at village level where it is most needed.In these days of the internet, the urban consumer takes availability of information for granted. He certainly does not depend on the government to provide him with information. The television, the newspapers and magazines, all go out of their way to educate the city dweller on various things that are pertinent to urban living. There is no such source of information for the farmer. In fact, the 59th round of the NSSO survey says that the farmer is mostly dependent on informal and unreliable sources of information for getting knowledge about farming operations. Only 18% of the farmers across the country were aware of things like bio-fertilisers; only 8% were aware of the WTO, only 5% were members of self-help groups, 71% did not belong to any cooperative.[16] No wonder we find that the farmer often gets seduced into buying a faulty product by companies that wish to make a quick profit and that his ability to make a quick buck in the market place is so limited. The statement in the Communist Manifesto concerning the idiocy of rural life may fit the Indian farmer in so far as government planners, the mass media and many other urban-based analysts are concerned. No one seems to be interested in creating situations wherein the farmers would be empowered, their supposed ignorance of things, technologies and institutions, be reduced. After all, in the current world where knowledge is power, one’s ability to make use of opportunities would be substantially dependent on the quality of knowledge with which one works. The massive misuse of fertilisers, pesticides and sundry other agricultural inputs in large parts of the country should be sufficient to alert us to the dangers of unregulated private enterprise.
The farmer far more than any city resident, is dependent on a variety of services, which only the government can and should provide. Quite apart from agricultural extension, regarding the quality of education and health services in rural India, the less said the better. In fact farmers are more vulnerable groups because the conditions in which they live are far less hygienic and more disease prone than urban living normally is. If the government dispensary is closed down or the doctor is unavailable, there are a variety of private service providers to whom the city resident can turn. But for the farmer the absence of a competent doctor can be and often is a life-threatening problem.
The current favourite solution often given out by the government to these problems depends on privatizing various services like agriculture extension, health and education even though no systems have been put in place to check capitalist cupidity. The official checks on seeds, fertilizers and pesticides have already been parcelled out to private players in all but name. Many of our administrators seem blind to the fact that private providers are able to provide mild satisfaction in urban communities mainly on account of the readiness of the urban consumer to demand value for money and also the availability of a number of options to choose from. Farmers do not have such luxuries. The great hesitation of private banks and telephone companies to have rural customers is an important pointer. The government has never been able to enforce the so-called Universal Service Obligation on anyone. The consistent reluctance of qualified doctors, teachers, engineers and other professionals to serve in rural areas merely reinforces a point that the votaries of privatisation consistently ignore.
Even more dangerous is the focus on contract farming and the great desire shown by a variety of government agencies, well-meaning and otherwise, to let big business into farming. Perhaps such officials have the idea of vast plantations in mind and of how easily such enterprises lend themselves to mechanisation and technology up-gradation. The sub text to all such policies seems to be that the government does not have or rather does not wish to make the investment necessary to re-tool the skills of the small farmer so if big business wishes to do so in their own interest, there is no harm in such an enterprise. For contract farming to succeed, a precondition is that the law of contract must first be enforceable, not only on paper but also in fact. Given the present state of our legal systems, it is difficult to conceive of the smallholder enforcing any contractual obligation against a large financial entity.
Involvement of private capital, whether of an MNC or cooperative, in infrastructure development, whether it is storages, market yards, roads is both, possible and desirable. But the use of such agencies for large-scale contract farming in the hope that these agencies will then make the necessary effort to upgrade the skills of the farmer and thereby obviate the need for public investment in extension, research and health, is likely to produce a cure worse than the disease. [17]
The conduct of Agri-business requires at the backward end, large scale and consistent production of farm sector goods which meet industrial quality standards. Hence Agri-business development by definition implies considerable organization in the farming sector with a view to be able to deliver on these three parameters of scale of production; consistency and quality. The European Union has been able over many decades to organize it’s farm sector accordingly. Growers are aware and able to meet these requirements. At the forward end, India needs superior logistics with respect to transport, marketing, shipping and customs clearances to handle the demands of agri-business. This too the European Union has been able to do; it’s financial institutions and governments have clearly defined goals of enhancing export value and of increasing business. However when we look at the Indian economy, we find significant lacunae at both the backward and forward ends.
The inability of Indian growers to work together in a co-operative form with a few exceptions such as the dairy industry in Gujarat and the sugar industry in Maharashtra is a serious weakness. Whether for production or for marketing, co-operative working is a major strength of the European system. The flower auction at Aalsmeer in the Netherlands which has an annual turnover running into 26 billion Euros is a co-operative effort of farm growers who wanted a better price for their produce. The only parallel organization in India is the AMUL dairy co-operative which procures and markets the milk of millions of producers. However this is done with a view to processing the product and adding value. The more apt comparison in India would be with the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees at the District level which exist solely for the stated purpose of obtaining a better price for the grower. Today nearly all these Marketing Committees are dysfunctional and they run solely at the dictates of a few powerful traders to the extent that if there is a marriage in the homes of one of these traders, the committee could remain closed for days on end. Given the capital intensive nature of industrial production and the strength of the marketing agents, it would be difficult for Indian growers to obtain more remunerative prices without getting together not just in form but also in spirit. Currently the Maharashtra leaders have been discussing the idea of privatizing the functioning of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees. Our legal system is so weak that in effect this may well mean a mere change of masters from the trader to say a private company like the ITC or Reliance. In the European Union as also the USA, constant competition prevents the emergence of market monopolies and the legal system is the main bulwark of that competition. Behemoths like Standard Oil in the past and Microsoft Corporation today have had to restructure as a result of legal verdicts in anti Trust litigation. A similar scenario in India is well nigh unthinkable.
Weaknesses of the Indian legal system: the Indian legal system is perceived to be strong on formalities and weak on substance. As a result the legal system becomes a major hindrance in getting a just enforcement of contract within a speedy time frame to help business. Certain reform of the legal system would be needed.
Low quality awareness and low sensitivity to documentation: In the international market today, in order to sell your product, the producer needs to have a track record of good quality and also documentation of each stage of the process to sustain their claim to quality. Today as per European Union norms, agri products should be traceable to field of origin. This means extensive documentation of the crop while it is still in the field; the need to allocate row and batch numbers and to ensure that this information is stamped on each package throughout the chain of production. Growers need to be made aware of these requirements.Weak Extension network: To meet international agri business standards, Indian growers need to have access to regular soil testing facilities and information about how to handle pest attacks; better seeds and crop practices and so on. However the extension machinery of the Agriculture Department is not up to the mark. A large number of surveys show that Indian farmers have little information about many of the issues mentioned above.
The regulatory framework: At the forward end, logistics by way of transport, freight handling and customs suffer from serious deficiencies. Here it is not so much goal orientation which is the problem but goal definition. Indian governmental agencies continue to be caught up in a regulatory mindset which produces little results and stifles growth. Also it needs to be noticed that they do not do much regulation either. There is confusion about what goals the agencies are supposed to follow; sometimes this is increase in revenue; sometimes it is checking of those who violate rules to make a quick buck but in the process neither gets done. Agri products are perishable and have limited shelf lives; as such they need a very finely tuned customs and transport set up to achieve international competitiveness. The shelf life of a flower stalk could be as low as 7 -10 days. In such circumstances, the loss of some hours can be killing. But Indian port authorities are lackadaisical to say the least. As of now, the dwell time of exports is 4 days while the airport infrastructure policy aims to reduce this to 12 hours. The dwell time of imports is 4 weeks and the policy aims to bring this down to 24 hours.
Under such circumstances what can be done?
Any practicable solution needs to take account of all the above and also to ensure due community participation and ownership so that expenditure is dictated by local needs and not by a few centralised schemes, packages and/or ideas. The following measures would take care of the most pressing needs of farmers today:
1. Provide knowledge inputs through an agriculture extension worker, perhaps one for every 2500 population, with the worker being located at the headquarters of the group gram panchayat. He would be paid by the village panchayats for whom he works while the funds for this would be reimbursed by the Government.
2. Provide health inputs through a nurse or paramedical staff, in a ratio of one for about 500 population. Currently the nurse to population ration in rural areas in India is about 1:2198 which is about seventeen times lower than the US nurse to population ratio of about 1:129. Even if the Indian ratio were to be increased to 1:500, this would still be about one third of what obtains today in most developed countries. The national rural health mission provides a much needed emphasis in preventive health care but does not address the issue of curative health. Curative health services by the government are so skeletal that the majority of expenditure on health is today in the private sector. We also need to remember that health indebtedness is one of the major reasons for farmers’ suicide. We submit that without going into any elaborate schemes for health insurance, the mere presence of diagnostic services at village level may make a tremendous difference.
3. Make these functionaries directly accountable to and paid by the local panchayats, the government merely being a funding agency. The principle of subsidiarity which states that functions should be handled at the lowest level possible, needs to be followed.
4. Use information and communication technology tools to strengthen these knowledge and health services and to facilitate access to market information for farmers. A combination of newspapers, radio, television, telephone and the internet could be used. The only word of caution needed is about avoiding a one-size-fits-all solution. For states with good infrastructure and resources, internet kiosks may be a viable option but states like Madhya Pradesh faced a major revenue generation problem with the model of a Common Service Centre / internet kiosk. How to provide this information to the farmer should take into account specific local conditions instead of the details being dictated by some centralised norm.[18]
5. Ensure a free, competitive marketing system instead of the present system that is heavily weighted in favour of the merchants. Provide e-markets and electronic auction halls which are connected to the national/international marketplace in each district for the sale of farm produce. The use of such marketplaces would considerably improve prices for produce; they would also improve traceability, tagging systems which are so important for supply chain management. Another option could be to set up such modern market places in select urban centres and to connect these with collection centres in each district.
6. Allow the creation of storage, grading and product handling facilities thereby ensuring that the percentage of produce utilised increases. This would mean more investment in warehousing and better transport facilities.
7. Provide direct cash subsidies to farmers to replace the present system of offering subsidy to companies (whether fertiliser, electricity or irrigation companies) in the name of the farmers. This would imply allowing the farmer to take his own decision about how to use the subsidy rather than the government taking the decision for him. If all farmers with a landholding of up to 10 acres (which means over 90% of all farmers in India) were to be given a subsidy of about Rs 5000 per hectare, it would be a tidy social security net and this would still be less than 10% of the agriculture GDP in India.[19]
ConclusionSmall farms, if provided the requisite knowledge inputs, could well be the key to an economic upturn in the fortunes of farmers. Much however would depend on the availability of these inputs and on the willingness of the government to provide these. Given the present institutional constraints, policy makers in India need to look at concrete options to enable smallholders to survive not only with dignity but as constructive units in the economy. All field experience shows that it is entirely possible to increase productivity of small farms, provided that due policy support is available. This proviso is a crucial one. It also reflects a basic difference in the underlying assumptions of the strategies proposed. The present strategy which focuses on big business, the private sector and contract farming as a solution to the knowledge gap and setting up of big irrigation projects by government as a solution to the infrastructure gap, sees the farmer as a foot soldier who can have no resources or initiative. All resources are to be provided by big brothers, whether in the government or outside. The alternative solution which suggests that all we really need to do is to empower the farmer by providing knowledge and health inputs and enable him to find his own solution means giving up the big brother role. This is something the government will have to do.
[1] Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the inputs from the National Workshop on Globalisation, Agrarian Crisis and Farmers’ Suicides (23- 24 November 2007) at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie, where this paper was first presented and to the seminar group of the course on History of India 1947 – 92 at the Panjab University for their critical feedback on earlier drafts. Their respective employers do not necessarily share the views expressed in this paper. A version of this paper appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai.
[2] Meeta is in the Indian Administrative Service, Maharashtra Cadre 1990 batch currently posted as the Director, State Institute of Rural Development. Rajivlochan teaches Contemporary Indian History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh.[3] M Rajivlochan, “Throwing the farmer to the wolves”, The Economic Times, March 23, 2007.
[4] For an alternate version see for example G S Bhalla, Condition of Indian peasantry, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2006 where Bhalla uses NSSO data to highlight the dismal condition of the peasantry in India and argues tat it would be dangerous to endanger the livelihood of the salla nd marginal farmers who constitute over 80% of the landholders in India.
[5] Would they be eager to shift away from the land unless attractive alternatives are available? The question is answered in brief by Prakash Singh, The Naxalite Movement in India, Rupa, New Delhi, 2006, with his deep experience of handling social disturbances where he notices the possibilities of those being pushed into a corner taking recourse to the gun for a resolution of their problems.
[6] Report of the Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness, chairperson R. Radhakrishna, Banking Division, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, July 2007.
[7] Details can be seen on the website of the Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavalamban Mission, Government of Maharashtra, www.vnss-mission.gov.in. Highlights of PM’s Package for Vidarbha include spending money. The broad allocation is as follows: Irrigation, Major, Minor, Micro: Rs 2495 crore; Debt Relief: Rs 712 crore; Seed Replacement: Rs 180 crore; Horticulture projects: Rs 225 crore; Supplementary income generation (pregnant milch animals, chilling plants, fodder etc): Rs 135 crore; Agriculture Extension: Rs 3 crore. The highlights of Government of Maharashtra’s Special Package for Vidarbha include: Capital Formation Fund: Rs 370 crore; Subsidy on rescheduled crop loan: Rs 225 crore; Compensation to Cotton Farmers: Rs 134 crore; Watershed Mission: Rs 100 crore; Organic Farming (vermiculture etc): Rs 30 crore; Agricultural Allied Activities (Milch animals, poultry, sheep and goats etc): Rs 30 crore. The focus is on spending the money and not so much on asking the farmers what their needs are.
[8] A look at the reports concerning the distress of farmers on the website http://indiatogether.org would be illustrative.
[9] Central Water Commission, Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, http://www.cwc.gov.in/main/webpages/statistics.html.
[10] See Meeta and Rajivlochan, Farmers suicide: facts and possible policy interventions, Yashada, Pune, 2007.
[11] Mridula Mukherjee, in her study of Punjab agriculture documents that usury was the preferred form of investment for any disposable income among the agriculturists of Punjab during colonial times. See her Colonizing agriculture: the myth of Punjab exceptionalism, Sage, New Delhi. 2005. She also notices that a large chunk of the income in rural Punjab came from government service in the form of salaries and pensions. A healthy rural community would be substantially dependent on such sources of income other than agriculture. The soldiers of the Indian military too came mostly from an agricultural background, their military incomes providing an important supplement to their agricultural income. A significant amount of rural usury too was in the hands of the farmers even when it was the village bania who took the blame for being usurious.
[12] See for example Tom G Kessinger, “Regional economy 1757-1857: North India” in The Cambridge economic history of India volume II: c. 1757 – c. 1970, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 1982, esp. p. 250ff.
[13] Meeta and Rajivlochan, “Why the farmer reaps despair”, The Indian Express, September 26, 2006. Also see Meeta and Rajivlochan, “Evaluation of existing studies” in Farmers suicide: facts and possible policy interventions, Yashada, Pune, 2006 as also Meeta and Rajivlochan in “Books” in The forsaken drylands: Seminar, August 2006, no. 564.
[14] See for example G S Bhalla, Condition of Indian peasantry, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2006 where Bhalla uses NSSO data to highlight the dismal condition of the peasantry in India and argues that it would be dangerous to endanger the livelihood of the small and marginal farmers who constitute over 80% of the landholders in India.
[15] M Rajivlochan, “Suicide epidemic among farmers”, The Economic Times, September 09, 2006.
[16] “Situation Assessment” in Meeta and Rajivlochan, Farmers suicide: facts and possible policy interventions, Yashada, Pune, 2007, 106 - 122.
[17] M Rajivlochan, “Suicide by farmers: remedy lies in better governance”, The Tribune, May 24, 2007.
[18] Rajora, Rajesh, Bridging the digital divide. Gyandoot — The model for community network, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, Mumbai, 2003.
[19] M Rajivlochan, “The plight of farmers: A case for direct subsidies”, The Tribune, August 17, 2006 and “He's Left with Nothing”, The Times of India, March 29, 2007.
Contact: Meeta: [email protected] , Rajivlochan: [email protected].
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