CHANDIGARH: Two days after the Centre handed out a proposal to farmer unions, agriculture experts and agri-economists have termed it a diversionary tactic to avert the present crisis as the main demands are unresolved.
The government has offered guarantees on buying five crops — cotton, maize and three pulses arhar, tur and urad — from farmers at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for five years. The proposal envisages that farmers would have to enter into an agreement with three Central cooperatives — Cotton Corporation of India, National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India, and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India.
Agriculture expert Devinder Sharma said the farmers were demanding something else while the Centre placed something different on the table. “The government appeared to divert the attention from real demands. Farmers want structural changes in agricultural price policy. But they were offered old wine in new bottle by telling them to diversify from wheat and paddy cycle to pulses and other crops,” he said.
When asked the cost to exchequer if the Centre were to accept MSP on all crops, he said, “As per CRISIL Market Intelligence and Analytics report, such a guarantee will cost the government around Rs 21,000 crore for the marketing season 2023-24.’’
When the government can waive loans of the corporate sector of around Rs 15,000 lakh crore, why it can’t offer similar relief to farmers, he asked.
Dr Sukhpal Singh, a prominent agricultural policy expert said the Centre’s proposal is like contract farming. “The proposal should be okay for Punjab farmers as they will have the option to move out of the wheat-paddy cycle. As the Punjab government is promoting moong, it is unclear why the state is not part of the Central proposal. The legalisation of MSP, as the farmers are demanding, is not doable in the given market conditions,” he said.
Agriculture economist Sucha Singh Gill said that the Centre is adopting double standards. “The Centre wants to project farmers as unreasonable agitators. It wants to indirectly bring contract farming and thus help the corporate lobby,” said Gill.