O J's Corner : Reflections

Lip service to farmers
will not do

Indian farmers are not comparable to farmers of America and other Western world. Our farmers are puny in terms of the extent of cultivable land he possesses, the production and productivity, as well as finance and subsidies available for cultivation.

For him the land area was small, the tools available were his hands and shovels and irrigation was what the rain Gods provided by way of their bounty. If the rains failed, his crop failed and his future was dismal.

In the West, green revolution and the industrial revolution grew hand in hand. The farmers who possessed land in quantities of ranches benefited from the innovations of the industrial revolution. Large-scale mechanisation was introduced to deal with the vast extent of cultivation. Productivity and production increased by leaps and bounds.

Since independence, Indian farmers were not given a fair deal. The plan allocation for agriculture in all the five year plans were negligible. Farmers somehow continued their agricultural operations.

Introduction of green revolution through the services of Dr Norman Borlaug helped them a lot. The US had helped us with grains through PL 480 supply scheme, when we were going abegging for grains.

For geo-political reasons we gravitated towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Our leaders cannot be faulted for taking decisions with the intention of reaping concurrent benefits.

Now times have changed and we must grab all opportunities to improve the lot of the farmers with the help of others, if needed, be they Americans, Israelis or Chinese who can help us increase our productivity.

Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, after taking a tour of the Vidarbha region along with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, has pointed out that the Central Governments from time to time since Independence have failed to provide succour to the farmers.

Pawar said 16,000 farmers ended their lives during the last 10 years, which constituted 15 per cent of the total suicides in the country.

Only 2.5 per cent of the budget was being allocated for agriculture. Irrigation got 0.35 per cent while telecom got 14 per cent

Pawar suggested that the government should increase procurement price and hike food subsidy. This should ensure an optimum situation under which the common man should not be burdened with soaring prices.

Irrigated areas of cultivation should be increased, instead of leaving the farmers at the mercy of the monsoons.

Pawar also pointed out that when the rains failed, the farmers were not able to pay up the loans they had taken from banks. Then they took recourse to private money lenders at unaffordable interest rates.

I would say more than all these factors, we have assumed that our farmers can be left to fend for themselves without sufficiently caring for them all these years.Now we have exposed them to competition from farmers of the Western countries where they get all the comforts from governments.