Spotlight
New Delhi,
26 May 2017
Small Farmers’ Plight
AGRICULTURE ON REVERSE
By Moin Qazi
His speech if of mortgaged bedding, On his kine he
borrows yet.At his heart is his daughter’s wedding. In his eye foreknowledge of
debt he eats and hath indigestion He toils and he may not stop. His life Is a
long-drawn question Between a crop and a crop -Rudyard Kipling, The Masque of
Plenty
As the world transitions
from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) – which aim to end poverty and hunger and promote sustainable
development – small farmers hold an important key.
In India,
small and marginal farmers – those who work on less than two hectares (five
acres) of land – constitute 80% of total farm households, 50% of rural
households and 36% of total households. Sadly, the plight of these farmers is
very distressing. Agricultural productivity levels have been stagnant for the
past ten to 15 years. An estimated 70% of the country’s arable land is prone to
drought, 12% to floods, and 8% to cyclones. NITI Aayog recently highlighted
that the agricultural sector is 28 years behind its time.
Despite the fact that agriculture is their primary source of livelihood,
small farmers have little access to technology and irrigation techniques. This
makes them one of the most vulnerable groups to climate change. Farming for
them is grinding physical work, largely supported by their family, with each
new generation being pushed into increasingly smaller plots of land. From
threshing and bundling to separating grains by hand, crops have to be planted,
picked, harvested and hauled by hand.
Years of market-oriented reforms have unleashed a wave of capital and
entrepreneurialism across India.
High-end sectors such as information technology have made impressive strides
leading to adulatory portrayals of India at home and abroad as an
economic juggernaut. Despite this success, the benefits of reform have yet to
extend to the hundreds of millions who toil on the land. The government has
slashed or phased out subsidies for some crops, shredding a key safety net.
The result is a growing social crisis. Fueled by crushing debt for
buying transgenic seeds, failing crops on account of soil abuse by fertilisers,
squeezing of prices by big multinational and government, indifferent farmers
are trekking to cities. Here an equally cruel fate awaits them, but they are
saved the shame of humiliation in the eyes of their own fellow villagers. A
sense of deep despair runs through the lives of farmers. They have lost all
hopes –and also the will to fight. Many of them are taking a permanent escape
from this physical and emotional pain by ingesting deadly pesticides.
The Green Revolution was a success, but it came at a heavy price. It
relied on high-yielding seeds, fossil fuels for fertilisers, modern methods of
plant breeding and massive use of pesticides and equipment. A heavy dependence
on irrigation led to massive water mining. This did increase agricultural
productivity but depleted the soil and consumed far too much water. The States
that were the front-runners during the Green Revolution now suffer from soil
degradation, ground water depletion and contamination along with declining
yields.
Two decades back, the government embraced the global marketplace and
began cutting farm subsidies as it liberalised the managed socialist economy.
The farmers’ costs rose as the tariffs that had protected their products were
lowered. Many farmers switched to new genetically engineered cotton seeds which
are resistant to a deadly pest called ‘bollworm’ and produced far higher yields
and healthier crops with less use of pesticides. The seeds can be more
productive and became standardised in many regions of Maharashtra.
However, they can be three times more expensive to maintain than traditional
seeds.
Peasants borrow loans from moneylenders at exorbitant rates of interest
for all their needs — from buying expensive transgenic seeds and high-cost
fertilisers to food for themselves and their cattle. They hope for a better
yield in the times to come but this never happens. Eventually, they find
themselves in a debt trap as they keep pursuing a vain mirage of a golden crop
bonanza. As borrowings mount, many farmers are driven to suicide. Owing more
than they earn, the steadiest of these workers have become gamblers of the
highest stakes, betting their land and their lives on a better crop.
According to the 70th
Situation of Agricultural Households in India
conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), 90 per cent of India’s farmers
have less than two hectares of land. The survey says the average farm household
makes less than Rs. 6,500 a month from all sources of income. They are only kept afloat by government schemes that funnel money
to them and by periodic waivers of farm loans.
To improve their lives, farmers need a way out of agriculture and
into the manufacturing or services sector. In fact most small-scale
farmers would happily sell their land, if only they could be provided
employment in lieu of it.
India’s
developmental failure since 1947 has been its inability to move the huge mass
of people involved in agriculture to industry and services. As the share of
agriculture in the national output pie falls, any crisis hurts those dependent
on it disproportionately.
Despite the fact that agriculture is
typically their primary source of livelihood, smallholder farmers have little
access to technology and insecure access to irrigation, making them one of the
most vulnerable groups to future climate change. Farming for them is grinding physical work, largely
parceled by family-- threshing and bundling and separating grains by hand--with
each new generation into increasingly smaller plots of land, and planted,
picked, harvested, and hauled by hand.
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1947: “Everything
can wait, but not agriculture.” What India is witnessing today is exactly the
reverse. All the other sectors in the Indian economy are surging ahead.
Agriculture is the only one which is moving in the opposite direction. Within
this self-perpetuating cycle of misery, wrapping a noose around the neck are
all-too-friendly exits for farmers. While their deaths might bring personal
escape, they leave behind crippling emotional, financial and physical burdens,
inherited by those left to farm the dust: the women who did not die.-- INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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