Page 31 - Tehelka Issue 15 August 2018

Farmers earn lower AGRICULTURE
returns if there is
excess production
during a particular
backbone of procurement system- season. They are One of the reasons for less procure-
farmers are dissatisfied over the MSP ment in states other than Punjab and
hike. Guni Prakash, a farmer leader again in the eye Haryana is the lack of awareness. He
from Haryana is a worried lot for diesel of the storm if apprised that they are mobilizing the
prices have shot up. A revision of about farmers in Uttar Pradesh about the
200 per quintal in the MSP of paddy production falls due MSP mechanism and inform them to
would be absorbed by spiralling cost of to natural calamity come forward for higher price.
diesel and labour, he tells. Farmers in Land acquisition under Section 17
Punjab and Haryana pay high lease cost by Government in the last few years in
( 30,000 – 50,000 per acre) which has these commodities. Moreover, farmers Uttar Pradesh is another issue that has
not been incorporated in MSP. get merely a fraction of the price paid undermined farmers’ income. Land ac-
While farmers have their own by the consumers for their produce, quired has not been put to a productive
concerns over the fair price of crop, while the lion’s share is appropriated use. Farmers in Uttar Pradesh are fight-
Economists assess the present situa- by the middlemen; thereby causing ing against the misuse of Section 17 and
tion as precarious where the politics farmers to suffer regressive income demanding the ownership back. Prime
has overshadowed economics. Profes- distribution. Minister Modi said he should give a
sor Satish Verma, RBI Chair Professor Farmers are used merely as a vote chance to the farmers for direction in-
at Centre for Research in Industrial bank as we observe the trend that debt teractions as he does with industrialists.
and Rural Development, Chandigarh relief and price hikes are announced There are a plethora of issues; a meagre
analysed that Agriculture is a double- before elections. Economics does not increment, per se, in few crops cannot
edged sword that mostly works against support doles. But economics has taken turn the tide.
the farmers. He observes that farmers a back seat. There is an urgent need to According to All India Kisan Sang-
earn lower returns if there is excess ramp up public investment in farming harsh Coordination Committee (AI-
production during a particular season. and take measures to raise the produc- KSCC), an outfit comprising of 200
Farmer is again in the eye of the storm tivity. The exhilaration over MSP revi- farmers’ organisations across India, the
if production falls due to a natural sion is short-lived and farmers need a Central Government which promised
calamity. The Government would sustainable solution to wade through the farmers 50per cent prifit on com-
release the accumulated stocks of the the agriculture crisis. prehensive cost (C2) as mentioned in
agricultural commodities and augment The state of affairs in the largest pro- Swaminathan Commission’s Report,
domestic supplies by imports from ducing state of India-Uttar Pradesh- is has betrayed the farmers by adopting
abroad to dampen the inflated prices of miserable as farmers mostly engage the same formula of A2+FL by which
in to distress selling. Ajay Anmol, the the UPA Government under the Prime
Convenor of Kisan Andolan in Uttar Minister Manmohan Singh fixed the
Pradesh told that farmer of this state MSP for crops. It held a protest march
is a dejected lot for he has not experi- from Mandi House to Parliamentary
enced the MSP procurement system. Street on 20 July terming MSP of Modi
“A higher or lower MSP is irrelevant as a fraud.
for farmers if they are not entitled to it. MSP hike announced by the Govern-
The dynamics of agriculture are such ment does not meet the farmers’ expec-
that the more we produce the less we tations. While PM Modi claims that he
earn and the less we produce, the less has fulfilled his poll promise, there is no
we earn. Even a single crop loss pushes guarantee of remunerative minimum
the small and marginal farmers into a support price. After the announcement,
debt trap and it takes years and gen- the real challenge is in implementation.
erations to repay”. The major constraint faced by the farm-
He added that India is predomi- ers during the procurement process is
nantly an agricultural country and Fair Average Quality of Crops, which is
we do not have an agriculture policy. difficult to maintain. Furthermore, mal-
It is imperative to frame an agricul- practices in the issue of the certificate
ture policy to guarantee our farmers by agents to farmers and selling it un-
a profitable income. MSP needs to be der MSP in the name of farmers make
revised to match the inflation but at the ground level implementation of
the same time, infrastructure support such proposals extraneous.
for the farming sector also needs to be
stimulated. LETTERS@TEHELKA.COM

TEHELKA / 15 AUGUST 2018 31 WWW.TEHELKA.COM

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