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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A full-blown agrarian crisis? -Devinder Sharma

A full-blown agrarian crisis? -Devinder Sharma

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published Published on Oct 10, 2017   modified Modified on Oct 10, 2017
-DNA India

India is frittering away gains of the Green Revolution and fast turning into a net food importer


In 2015-16, India imported Rs 1,402,680,000,000 or 1.40 lakh crore worth of agricultural commodities. This was more than three times the annual budgetary allocation for domestic agriculture.

Well, if you think the increasing reliance on food imports in one year — 2015-16 — is merely an aberration, hold your breath. According to commodity traders, the agricultural import bill has jumped six times in the past 13 years, from $4.7 billion in 2004 to reach a peak of $25.7 billion in 2017. Such massive imports come at a time when India is reeling under a terrible agrarian crisis. Ideally, instead of allowing huge foreign exchange outgo on imports, this staggering amount of money should have gone to Indian farmers.

There is something going terribly wrong. From an exalted position of food self-sufficiency built so assiduously over the years, India is frittering away the gains of Green Revolution so easily and fast turning into a net food importer. It hasn’t drawn any lessons from the way it deliberately destroyed the Yellow Revolution — self-sufficiency in edible oils — by simply reducing the import duties in a phased manner over the years to almost zero. From a near self-sufficiency in edible oils achieved in 1993-94, when only 3 per cent of imports were required to meet the domestic requirement, India now imports roughly 60 per cent of its needs valued at over Rs 76,000 crore.

And still, policymakers appear more than keen to allow imports at the drop of a hat. Using the argument that imports are necessary to contain rising food prices, policymakers are opening up to cheap and subsidised agricultural imports and that also at zero per cent duty. No wonder, despite a bountiful harvest, the imports continue to pour in. The more the imports, the more severe a blow it strikes to the livelihood security of small farmers. With no takers for their produce, small farmers are the first to abandon farming and migrate to urban centres in search for menial jobs. With job creation already at its lowest, uprooting small farmers to force them into the cities does not make any economic sense.

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DNA India, 2 October, 2017, http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-a-full-blown-agrarian-crisis-2549693


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