The Centre is not solving farmers’ issues, and is beating them up for raising them
The government needs to move beyond the optics of subsidies and loan waivers to mitigate the farmers’ crying distress.
October 2 is the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the icon of non-violence, and of Lal Bahadur Shashtri, who gave us the slogan ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’.
This year, October 2 saw the Delhi police lathi-charge and use tear gas on protesting farmers, who were trying to enter the national capital to conclude their 10-day Kisan Kranti Padyatra.
We are hurtling ever closer to the 2019 elections. The BJP, full of politically astute leaders, understands the importance of optics very well. The pictures of elderly farmers facing baton-wielding policemen — flooding voters’ social media timelines since October 2 — have the potential to harm the party electorally.
The farmers were not demanding anything particularly radical when the government decided to use force on them. Under the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), they had begun their protest rally from Haridwar on September 23, and had been marching peacefully for the past 10 days. The rally was to conclude at Kisan Ghat in Delhi.
After Tuesday’s row, the farmers were eventually allowed to enter the capital on October 3, and the government accepted most of their demands.
The tears, tear gas and blood on October 2, thus, just strengthen the Opposition’s charge that the BJP’s spontaneous response to protest seems to be the use of force.
Also, this sends across a dismal message to the farming community — while farmers will be part of emotive slogans and political rhetoric, the government seems to have no real solutions to their problems. If they resort to agitations to highlight their issues, they will be met with state violence.
This is not the first major protest by farmers in recent years.
Thousands of farmers had gathered in Delhi last year too.
In Maharashtra, the kisan long march had caught the nation’s attention.
Over the past year, farmers in several states have dumped their produce — milk, vegetables — on the roads.
Tamil Nadu farmers stayed put at Jantar Mantar for weeks last year, eating rats and drinking urine to get the government’s attention.
In Madhya Pradesh, last June, six protesting farmers were shot dead by the police.
On the other hand, we have heard several announcements from the government’s side — both state and Centre — running into hundreds of thousands of crores to help farmers. Several states have announced farm loan waivers. In July, the Centre announced a hike in Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farmers, which it claimed was “historic”.
Where are all these crores going?
The political answer is that announcements make governments look good. Implementation and its assessment come later — usually after the next election.
The economic answer is that a lot of money is being poured into the output side of things — MSPs and loan waivers come into effect after farmers have sowed, tilled and harvested the crops.
The hiking of MSP — the minimum price at which government procures, or buys crops from farmers — has limitations. The government does not procure all crops, and farmers have been known to cultivate the crops it does even if they are not suitable to the soil, or the farmers’ capabilities. The declaring of MSP does not mean crops actually sell at the price — according to a report, data compiled by various farmers’ federations shows 94 per cent of farmers sell their produce below MSP.
Also, the MSP the Centre declared is lower than what the farmers were hoping for. A report by the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) under Professor MS Swaminathan, father of India’s Green Revolution, had recommended that the MSP be calculated using the C2 formula, which takes into account the cumulative input expenditure borne by the farmer. The government, going back on its pre-2014 poll promise, calculated it using the A2+FL formula, which includes only paid out costs and imputed family labour. A2+FL is about 38 per cent lower than C2.
The policy of loan waivers has similar problems — in state after state, UP, Maharashtra, Punjab, we have seen its benefits reach only the comparatively well-off farmers who own land, or amounts as ridiculous as Re 1 being waived. Also, loan waivers don’t cover those who borrow from private, informally operating moneylenders. This is a huge section, because institutional borrowing requires the farmer to show collaterals — something farm labourers don't have.
Significantly, according to government data — which it cited in Parliament in July this year to show that farmer suicides have gone down — suicides by farmers indeed went down in 2016 from 2015, but suicides by farm labourers saw a spike of 10%.
What the farming sector needs is rational policies — scaling down export restrictions, which mean that a bumper harvest usually spells disaster for farmers, streamlining the field to market journey of produce — and investment on the input side of operations, including research and farm modernisation.
What successive governments in the country, led by both the BJP and the Congress, have been doing is trying to fix farmers’ issues through doles and subsidies, to keep their ‘saviour image’ alive.
The politics in this is obvious — long-term solutions will take time to bear fruit, by which the next election will be over. Loan waivers make governments look good immediately.
But keeping the bread producers of the country hostage to vote-bank politics is bad economics, bad politics, and terrible governance.
In 2013, then-Gujarat CM Narendra Modi had asked farmers to donate their farm equipment for the iron to be used in the construction of the Sardar Patel statue.
The Prime Minister is an innovative man when it comes to establishing a connect with the voters. If only his government would show the same originality and freshness of ideas in fixing India’s farm crisis.