Plough To Plate, Hand Held By The Indian State

Context: The distinct characteristics of India’s agriculture require that a reformed state must ensure farmer, consumer welfare.

Issues associated with Indian agriculture: The following issues deeply requires state interventions too.

• Wrong economic framework: Based on the notion that a progressively reduced role of the state would automatically deliver greater economic growth and welfare to people.
  • However, it is the state that has played (in the past) the leading role in provisioning the most critical aspects of life: water, sanitation, education, health, food and nutrition.
• Low returns: Due to a variety of limiting factors, from uncertainties of the weather to soil fertility and water availability, increasing returns to scale are very difficult to achieve in farming.
• In competition with the economies of scale: While the economies of scale can generate profits even by cutting their costs, nothing of such sorts happens in agriculture. (Skewed balance of power)
  • Of nine crore rural families who draw their main income from unskilled manual labour, four crores are small and marginal farmers.
  • Agriculture cannot be organised in an assembly line: Because of integral dependence on annual climatic cycle.
    • All farmers harvest the crop at the same time.
    • 86% of India’s farmers are ‘small and marginal’, cannot afford warehousing facilities.
    • Inelastic demand resulting in price crash during periods of extra supplies.
• Unregulated markets: Only 17% of farm produce passes through mandis. Thus, during drought, vulnerable farmer either starve or get pauperised, being forced to buy very expensive commodities.
• Biased credit market and exploitation by money lenders: High-interest rates as 60%-120% per annum create a debt trap.
  • Cumulative and cascading spiral of expropriation. E.g. Oppressive caste system, with poorer, ‘lower’ caste farmers left with no protection.
• Negative consequences of Green Revolution:
  • It made farmers dependent on water-intensive crops. More than 300,000 farmers committed suicide in the last 30 years.
  • Reported steady decline in water tables and water quality; Around 90% of India’s water is consumed in farming, and of this, 80% is used up by rice, wheat and sugarcane.
  • Falling yield response to application of increasingly expensive chemical inputs, which mean higher costs of cultivation, without a corresponding rise in output.

Way forward:

• Expand basket of public procurement: Procurement must be local and follow the logic of regional agroecology to include more crops, more regions and more farmers. Benefits
  • Can ensure higher and more sustainable farmer incomes.
  • Greater water security and better consumer health: Diversify to include millets, pulses and oilseeds to reduce agri-water consumption in stressed areas.
• Ensuring steady market: Allot 25% of actual production as proposed under 2018 Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA) scheme.
  • Localise farm-market operations: Locally procured crops can be incorporated into Anganwadi supplementary nutrition and school mid-day meal programmes.
  • It will help tackle India’s twin syndemic of malnutrition and diabetes; through Public investment in specific infrastructure for millets and pulses.
• Infrastructure expansion: To provide farmers access within a radius of five kilometres, India needs 42,000 mandis, and there is a need for reforms to ensure transparency and farmer-friendly operations.
• Focus on rural India: United Nations estimates that in 2050, 800 million people will continue to live in rural India; thus the prosperity of rural India is indispensable in all negotiations.