Parliament must meet to discuss grim agrarian crisis 

In its poll manifesto in 2014 the Bharatiya Janata Party had committed itself to implementation of all the recommendations made by the National Agriculture Commission (Swaminathan Commission) in 2006. “But immediately after coming to power, the Government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court, saying that this could not be done,” points out P Sainath, well known commentator on rural and agrarian crises and inequality, in a YouTube live session on ruralindiaonline. Org.

“No explanation required for why you lied to the nation and public to get votes on this promise, when you had no intention of implementing it,” he lamented while criticising the indifference of successive Governments to the agrarian crisis.

Taking a dig at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s claim that farm income was on course to double by 2022, Sainath says it is a bit of a joke. “Mr Jaitley never clarifies whether he means nominal income or real income. If it is nominal income, everybody’s income is going to double or treble over a few years but farmers don’t see any increase in their real income,” he adds.

Prices of seeds, pesticide and fertilizer have steadily and relentlessly increased over the last two decades, he points out. No Government during this period, he declared, had taken steps to check farm input costs. Instead they allowed the manufacturers and dealers to bleed the farmers white.

In Vidarbha (Maharashtra) it cost the farmer ₹4000 in 2003 to grow cotton in an unirrigated acre of land. In 2017 the cost has gone up to ₹10-15,000. No wonder during the last three years agriculture related income has either stagnated or declined.

While prices of seeds have gone up, the germination rate has gone down from 80% in the nineties to 60% – which means that farmers are paying more for less even as corporations are making a killing.

“Minister after minister keeps saying that they have doubled farm credit but the question is who is getting that credit? It is not going to the farmers,” claimed Sainath and quoting from a research added, “The lower end of loans has collapsed and loans above one crore have exploded. Now who are these people who are taking loans in crores ? I know a few names: Anil, Mukesh and Ramdev.”

“Despite increase in agricultural credit, there is tremendous diversion in credit from small and marginal farmers to large businesses and corporate houses.”

The ongoing protests by farmers are not about loans or loan waivers, he emphasised. Loan waiver can provide relief, is a tool or mechanism but is not a solution; protests are the manifestation of the crisis. Calling upon people to understand farm crisis through lives of farmers, he ridiculed the ‘bogus and manipulated figures’ in government advertisements.

Sainath resented the suggestion that the Government may not have enough resources to address the crisis. The government, he sarcastically said, had enough public money to give it to businessmen like Vijay Mallaya but not to farmers.

“From 2006-07 budget onwards, there used to be an annexure: statement of the revenue forgone. The forgone revenue included direct corporate income tax—which in 2015 was ₹78,000 crore, customs exemptions on gold, jewellery and diamonds about ₹73,000 crore. These concessions largely benefitted top 1-5 % of the population.”

“In 2015, the amount was ₹5,34000 crore for one or two % of the population as against an amount of ₹ 56,000 crore for 40 million families of farmers,” he said.