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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | What Lies at the Foundation of the Prolonged Agrarian Crisis in India? -Shinzani Jain

What Lies at the Foundation of the Prolonged Agrarian Crisis in India? -Shinzani Jain

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published Published on May 6, 2021   modified Modified on May 7, 2021

-Newsclick.in

The deeper rot in agriculture can be overcome through more far-reaching reforms, starting from an overhaul of pre-capitalist land relations and relations of production that continue to shackle productivity and are at the root of aggravating poverty, unemployment and inequality in rural India.

It has been more than five months since farmers from different parts of the country began protesting in Delhi. They have been unflinching when it comes to their demands – repeal the three Farm Laws and the Electricity Amendment Bill and make minimum support price (MSP) a legal right. Assured prices for their produce has been a longstanding demand of farmers in India over many years. This was also a crucial demand made by farmers’ movements that culminated into long marches to Mumbai and Delhi in 2017 and 2018.

Today, a vast majority of the peasantry in India finds itself in a crisis in which they are not even receiving a minimum price for their produce which would cover the cost of cultivation and human labour. At the same time the input costs of fertilisers, seeds, pesticides and electricity have been increasing. In a survey conducted with farmers from Madhya Pradesh, Newsclick found that the actual costs incurred by farmers are far greater than the government’s estimates, as projected by the Central Government’s Commission of Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). Hardly able to meet their costs of cultivation, they are forced to borrow at every step. Low returns for their produce have been forcing farmers into economic crises and perpetual indebtedness. Agriculture has been unviable as a source of livelihood for the farmers of the country over the last two decades.

Between the 1980s and early 2000s, agricultural yields (productivity per hectare) stagnated. Growth within the agricultural sector has been low and volatile. According to the Planning Commission’s ‘Agricultural Strategy for the Eleventh Plan’, agricultural GDP growth declined from 3.62% during 1984-85 and 1995-96 to 1.85% between 1995-96 and 2004-05. In the last two decades, agricultural growth has dwindled from 8.6% in 2010-11 to -0.2% in 2014-15 and 0.8% in 2015-16. The contribution of agricultural sector to GDP has decreased from 54% in 1950-51 to 15.4% in 2015-16. Paradoxically, the agricultural sector was the only sector retaining a growth rate of 3.4% in 2020-21, while all other sectors collapsed as a result of the prolonged lockdown by the Indian government in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite stagnation and unviability, agriculture continues to engage a large chunk of the population in India. According to the Economic Survey 2020-21, about 54.6% of the total workforce in the country is still engaged in agricultural and allied sector activities which accounted for approximately 17.8% of India’s Gross Value Added (GVA) for the year 2019-20. Even as the contribution of the industrial and service sector increased in GDP, these sectors failed to absorb the surplus labour engaged in agriculture. This hints at the phenomena of ‘jobless growth’ within the two sectors, which did not translate into real per capita income growth for the bulk of the workforce employed in agriculture.

Over the years, increasing fragmentation of agricultural landholdings has contributed to decreasing viability of agriculture for the majority of small and marginal farmers in the country. Since the first Agricultural Census in 1971, the number of landholdings in India has more than doubled – from 71 million in 1970-71 to 145 million in 2015-16. The number of marginal landholdings (less than one hectare) have increased from 36 million in 1971 to 93 million in 2011. As the number of landholdings increased, the average landholding size has more than halved, from 2.28 hectares to 1.08 hectares, between 1970-72 and 2015-16. At the same time, the number of landless agricultural labourers has increased from 106.8 million in 2001 to 144.3 million in 2011 as opposed to a decrease in number of cultivators, from 127.3 million in 2001 to 118.8 million in 2011. For the first time, the number of agricultural labourers has exceeded that of farmers, in the absence of availability of alternative employment.

Declining profitability, increasing input costs, lack of alternative opportunities, stagnating productivity and declining growth rate are, however, merely symptoms of an agrarian crisis which is much older and deeper than these contemporary and mainstream points of discussion. The agrarian crisis is a result of a history of compromised and negligent policies by successive governments in India.

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Newsclick.in, 6 May, 2021, https://www.newsclick.in/What-Lies-Foundation-Prolonged-Agrarian-Crisis-India?fbclid=IwAR0XVfphVb3nuDEPYf4eCGQpWElcZ1BYGjExbLDTaX-nI-uh1jkTAU96XEc


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