No one asks the farmer

However, the one thing which the government has studiously avoided doing is to allow people in distress 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 recognise this problem. 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 that are unsuited to the local area. Officials insist that conceptually the schemes are good 8212; if only the implementation was proper and due attention paid to forward and backward linkages. Conceptually, however, these schemes assume that the needs of farmers can be adequately anticipated by Central planners and 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. But however well meaning and well informed any official might be, it is not feasible to anticipate all that any specific farm populace might need. These schemes benefit the middlemen who supply agricultural inputs far more than they benefit farmers.

Reports from Vidarbha indicate a variety of factors as being responsible for distress. In some cases it is crop failure, in others it is a faulty procurement mechanism or lack of support services for health, education and agriculture extension. Government tries to address this issue by placing a contingency fund at the disposal of the district administration to provide assistance for education, health and other measures. But the bulk of the funds are tied up in schemes with pre-defined parameters.

Minimally, it would be important that the farmer be asked about what he wishes. The government resists this. 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. If so, 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 he wishes to cultivate melons or oranges and whether or not to buy Holstein-Friesian cows.

The idea of letting people decide for themselves is one Indian officialdom seems most uncomfortable with. Isn8217;t it time the people stood up for themselves?

Rajivlochan is author of the book 8216;Farmers Suicides: Facts and Possible Policy Interventions8217; Pune, YASHADA