Opinion Cottoning on
Our government changes its colours faster than a chameleon. Yesterday,it was announcing relief packages for...
Our government changes its colours faster than a chameleon. Yesterday,it was announcing relief packages for distressed cotton growers; today it announces export bans on cotton. How can this government profess to be pro-poor? Yes,we have been witnessing the passage of one pro-poor bill after another in the Lok Sabha. But how can we take NREGA,Right to Information Act and now the Food Security Act as legislations designed in good faith when we see the government yielding to the pressure from textile mills to impose a ban on cotton exports? It appears that nothing has changed over so many decades: we still subsidise industry at the expense of farmers,announce relief measures to farmers on the one hand and take it all away through a regressive price policy. It is policymaking through pressure points. Clearly,the rich textile lobby is in a far better position to exert pressure than poor cotton farmers,once farmer suicides become yesterdays news.
The decision to ban cotton exports defies reason. Our cotton farmers have proved competitive in the international market. In the recent past India has emerged as a major exporter of raw cotton. This success is impressive given the fact that the cotton production in the USA,the worlds second largest producer,is heavily subsidised. Add to this the pathetic state of rural infrastructure in India and the accomplishment of Indian farmers seems even more remarkable. Instead of encouraging them by building much-needed infrastructure and by facilitating exports and relieving their long felt distress,the government has decided to ban their exports,nipping in the bud the process of their recovery. The decision both tarnishes Indias image as a reliable exporter and has triggered a downward spiral in domestic prices.
Most intriguing is the deafening silence from the Left,supposedly the champions of all causes on behalf of the poor. Why are they not protesting against this blatantly anti-poor measure? They would be denouncing the government,and trade,if cheap imports had made cotton prices take a dive. They protest against real and imagined threats from multinationals or from trade agreements. They rail against the hardship caused by the ups and downs in the market but they watch passively when the government makes back-room deals with rich mill owners to keep poor farmers from gaining from favourable market conditions. Under which ethical code is this justified?
It used to be the case that all anti-farmer policies were justified through clever semantics: refer to farmers as landlords or kulaks and identify industry with workers. It worked. It made us,white-collar city dwellers,feel comfortable in that we were on the side of the downtrodden and exploited. However,that trick can hardly work in the present case. The vast majority of cotton farmers are small farmers on dry land. Many of them have been in distress for years. Cotton grown by poor farmers is raw material for the textile mills,which need to get more efficient,with better management and technology,and compete in the international market. But they shouldnt be helped through export bans.
One argument sometimes heard is that an export ban has not affected small farmers since they had already sold off their produce right at the beginning of the season. But this understanding is naïve. The arrival of cotton in the market varies across agro-climatic regions. Therefore,an export ban affects all farmers irrespective of their land holding and indeed most cotton farmers in India are small farmers.
What about the rest of the opposition? Not much has been heard from them either,although they were overflowing with impassioned rhetoric about farmers suicides not too long ago. One would expect that local opposition parties like the Shiv Sena and its estranged cousin MNS would take up the cause of the farmers of Vidarbha. But that of course is wildly unrealistic. Instead,they have been busy scoring points over each other by invoking ridiculous symbols of identity politics,celebrating Maharashtras golden jubilee year (the Shiv Sena was orchestrating Maharashtra Geet sung by a chorus of record-breaking size,while the MNS was trying to outdo them by producing a similarly oversized Puranpoli,the Marathi sweet). Maharashtra politics has reached,perhaps surpassed,levels of absurdity visible previously only in UP and Bihar.
The poor cotton farmer is caught between an insensitive ruling party on the one hand,and an opposition equipped only to play identity politics on the other. Confused civil society groups on the left,though motivated,have become mostly irrelevant. When will Indian politics engage with such,real,issues of substance,with pro-poor rhetoric giving way to pro-poor policy?
The writer is a policy researcher with Pragati Abhiyan,Nasik
express@expressindia.com
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