Opinion Out of My Mind: Playing with lives

Farmers’ suicides were a big issue 10 years ago. The issues are familiar. Subsistence farms are always at the edge of economic failure even in normal times. These farmers would gain from alternative employment if they could find it. Then there are small farmers who can make a decent income if things go right. They borrow to sow and repay when harvest comes in. If harvests fail, they lose out. What we gather from Kalyanvat’s case is that the officials just follow rules. Less than 33 per cent crop failure means no relief. Why has no one re-examined this rigid rule? I am sure Akbar did it more generously.

When suicides were last a big issue during UPA-I, all the emphasis was on usurious interest rates. Banks had been nationalised 45 years previously to correct rural credit deficiencies. Yet here we were with the same problem and still are. What is needed is a scheme for universal crop insurance which can cover farmers if crop failure is below the sarkari norms, not political quarrelling. A lot of Indian agriculture is very low on productivity, farmers are stuck with low income and precarious farms because there has been slow growth of manufacturing which would have offered alternative occupation. Sixty per cent of workers producing 20 per cent of national income tells you we need a drastic transformation in agriculture.

Political name-calling is a luxury MPs can afford but the country needs a solution to a human tragedy. It will not come by cleaving every farmer to his land. Nor will it come by highlighting a tragic suicide and forgetting about it. Ten years ago, there were inquiries and reports including a fine one by Narendra Jadhav, member, Planning Commission. It was shelved because the agricultural season had passed on. Yet again they will enjoy making farmer suicides into political football and forget it next week.

There has been a longer-run change in agriculture. For 45 years after Independence, planning was all about heavy industry, restricting all other activities. In 1992, when the discussions for WTO were active, it was discovered by Ashok Gulati that there had been a negative tariff against Indian farmers on the excuse of encouraging food self-sufficiency. All this while industries got tariff protection, which is why they were so inefficient.

The result of such neglect and skewed credit policies has meant that large farmers have gained. They are more productive and more politically vocal. They keep getting fertiliser, power and water subsidies, often ruining the soil and water table. Then they benefit from MSP which increases year on year. During UPA-II, this was a major cause of inflation. Large farms are more productive. They should be weaned off the subsidies and a better deal is needed for smaller farmers.

All this makes the land Bill urgent. India needs a smaller, more robust agriculture. It needs to take the landless workers and subsistence farmers off land to get into industrial employment. This has nothing to do with being pro-corporate. There is no point in romantically keeping the poor in their poverty as Congress seems keen to do. The poor need manufacturing and infrastructure jobs. The land Bill may just be the answer.