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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Farm policy: Dis-ease of doing the business of agriculture -Pravesh Sharma

Farm policy: Dis-ease of doing the business of agriculture -Pravesh Sharma

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published Published on May 26, 2017   modified Modified on May 26, 2017
-The Indian Express

As the Modi government completes three years, here are three potentially game-changing steps it could now take to harness the sector’s unrealised potential

Amidst the predictable tidal wave of opinion pieces to mark the Narendra Modi government’s third anniversary, one little event last week squeezed its way into the inside pages of a few newspapers. This was a call for a “farm strike” in Maharashtra from June 1, entailing, among other things, cutting off vegetable and milk supplies to Mumbai and Pune. Those behind the proposed stir have demanded a comprehensive loan waiver for farmers, fixing minimum support prices for produce at 50 per cent above production cost, free power, and so on.

Agricultural policy has, for long, been an arena for quick fixes. Recall how governments in the eighties and nineties could neutralise large-scale farmer mobilisations by Mahendra Singh Tikait in western Uttar Pradesh or, for that matter, Sharad Joshi in Maharashtra. In the current standoff, too, we are likely to see some messy compromise being made, with every side declaring victory.

However, there’s something beyond the usual populist demands Maharashtra farmers seem to be saying. It has to do with the ease of doing the business of agriculture. While the regulatory and operating environment for industry and services has been made progressively less stifling over the past two decades, agriculture still exhibits the worst of policy neurosis.

There is no visible sign that “ease of doing business” in agriculture even figures on the policy checklist of government, either at the Centre or in states. Even so, with the Modi government looking stronger than ever, it is tempting to suggest three potentially game-changing and pro-farmer steps for the sector that can be taken in the immediate term. These could, in turn, signal the government’s resolve to address more deeply-rooted problems over the long term.

First and foremost, leasing of agricultural land needs a total freeing-up. It shouldn’t matter whether the lessee is another farmer, an urban dweller or a company. Except for tribal areas and some eco-sensitive zones, which can be excluded for the time being, it makes no logical sense today to tie down resource-starved farmers to handkerchief-size holdings that keep them in eternal poverty. Safeguards against land grab and diversion to non-agricultural use can always be built into any liberal leasing policy. There could also be government agencies to act as intermediaries to create agricultural land banks and deal with lessees, in order to protect the interests of small landholders.

A liberalised leasing policy — sans any ceiling on the land an individual lessee or company can take up for cultivation — would enable large-scale mobilisation of capital, technology, machinery and inputs. Apart from realising the true productivity potential of now-fragmented land holdings, it can lay the foundations of an agro-processing revolution to create millions of unskilled/semi-skilled jobs. The Centre’s current draft model land leasing law is too restrictive and not ambitious enough to achieve the above vision.

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The Indian Express, 25 May, 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/farm-policy-dis-ease-of-doing-the-business-of-agriculture-4672449/


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