Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The rising agrarian distress in India -Jayati Ghosh

The rising agrarian distress in India -Jayati Ghosh

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Feb 28, 2018   modified Modified on Feb 28, 2018
-Livemint.com

To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs

Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed by slower output growth, higher costs and increased vulnerability to a changing climate. And there is a slew of new problems resulting directly from government policies.

In retrospect, it is quite remarkable that the rampant and rising agrarian distress of the mid-1990s to mid-2000s did not lead to more farmers’ protests. Instead, there was a surge in farmers’ suicides, especially in dryland regions, and a significant rise in short-term distress migration.

But farmers certainly played a role in the loss of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2004, and the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime sought to meet some of their concerns through an increase in public spending in rural areas, including through agriculture component plans in each state, a focus on agricultural credit and enhanced extension activities, and the rural employment guarantee scheme, which was used extensively by workers from small and marginal farmer households. These were relatively limited measures, but they nonetheless marked a shift in the direction of policies, which was aided by the global recovery in agricultural prices.

Even though the National Commission on Farmers, better known as the Swaminathan Commission, was set up by the UPA regime, there was no real effort to implement its recommendations, and the second UPA tenure did nothing to take these ideas forward. They may have been too politically contentious and economically demanding to be adopted within the neoliberal economic paradigm.

After all, the commission proposed extensive land reforms: including distributing ceiling surplus and waste lands, preventing diversion of prime agricultural land and forest to the corporate sector for non-agricultural purposes, and ensuring grazing rights and access to common property resources. It argued that higher productivity in agriculture could only be achieved with substantial increases in public investment, especially in irrigation, drainage, land development, water conservation, and promotion of conservation farming and biodiversity. It proposed comprehensive groundwater and surface-water management, to give all farmers sustained and equitable access.

The commission emphasized the expansion of formal credit outreach to the poor and needy in rural areas; reduction of interest rates on institutional loans to 4% simple interest (with government support), a moratorium on debt recovery, including loans from non-institutional sources, and the waiver of interest on loans in distress areas and during calamities. On the insurance front, it suggested that an integrated credit-cum-crop-livestock-human health insurance package should cover the entire country and all crops, with reduced premiums, along with an agriculture risk fund to provide relief to farmers after natural calamities.

Please click here to read more.

Livemint.com, 28 February, 2018, http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/A4w6VLUHthnpGb6kPsIprJ/The-rising-agrarian-distress-in-India.html


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close