Farmers are back on the street in New Delhi as they had said they would be. Before lifting their year-long siege of the National Capital of Delhi in December 2021 against the reforms-oriented three farm laws, the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (conglomerate of farmers’ organizations) had warned that they would be back if all their demands were not met.
The three farm laws were repealed by Parliament in November 2021 on the eve of Assembly elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh from where the majority of protesting farmers had arrived here.
There has been no word during the last year on the demand for mandatory payment of the minimum support price (MSP) for 22 notified farm commodities after the government set up a broad-based committee to look into the matter. The Morcha had 'rejected' the panel on the ground that it was headed by the very bureaucracy that was involved in the framing of “anti-farmer” farm laws. However, even if the farmers are skeptical about the recommendations of the panel, the likelihood of suggestions emerging before the 2024 general elections look bleak.
Meanwhile, the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 was introduced in the Lok Sabha last year and was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy for examination. Farmers are protesting privatization of power distribution which might impact power subsidy for irrigation of their fields.
Farmers have returned to Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds feeling betrayed, let down and neglected.
The interim period has been a challenging one for agriculturists in the face of phenomenal rise in input costs particularly diesel, labour, fertilizer and transportation, without commensurate returns. Thus voices seeking loan waivers are becoming louder. Loan waiver (“karz mafi”) may not be economically sound but makes sense when we consider that about 52 per cent of the country’s farmers are unable to return their loans as agriculture remains a loss making activity. It is the only sector where the buyer sets the price of the produce, not the seller!
Despite a bumper crop, or because of it, onion and potato growers are in crisis this year. Prices have slumped far below production costs and growers face lack of access to storage and cold storage facilities that are controlled by traders who have formed cartels and laid down harsh conditions including advance security and high rentals for storing farmers’ produce. This season potato farmers did not get a price that will meet their input costs even under the Market Intervention Scheme of the central government. Voices of protest are rising in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. In Maharashtra, hundreds of farmers including women trudged miles from the onion belt of Nashik towards the Mumbai Mantralaya to seek grants for loss of produce so as to sustain themselves and their families.
When farmers say they are neglected, they are pointing to the lack of consultations with them and decisions being imposed on them that hit their livelihood.
The decision to import edible oils on concessional duty and the open market sale of 5 million tonnes of Food Corporation of India wheat have come around the same time as the farmers' harvest hits the market, resulting in lower than minimum support price for them. As recently as late February, the government off-loaded about 2 million tonnes of wheat for bulk buyers, like flour mills, at base price set around the MSP. Wheat crop has already been harvested in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh with farmers fearing that open stocks in the market will hamper the price their new harvest will fetch. Wheat from Punjab and Haryana will also arrive in mandis from April 1.
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Also, if one looks at the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of sugarcane payable to farmers, there was an increase of only Rs 15/- per quintal linked to a basic recovery of 10.25 per cent in 2022-23 over last year. In 2021-22, it was raised by only Rs 5/- per quintal and in 2019-20, there was zero raise. Clearly this does not even cover the cost of inflation. Sugarcane prices are payable to farmers by mill owners and often the government has come to the rescue of industry by extending export incentives and enhancing cane diversion to ethanol. Yet, arrears to sugarcane farmers run into crores of rupees. They are normally settled politically around election time.
The government sees agriculture as an enterprise/industry but the back-end suppliers of material and raw material i.e. the farmers, held fast as they are in the trap of loans and debts, and are a neglected link in the supply chain. If that was not the case, farming would not be a loss-making activity for the 85 per cent small and medium farmers. “By keeping farmers in debt, the country cannot dream of progress. The government talks of extending loans to farmers, but not about giving remunerative price for their produce which keeps them in debt,” lamented Yudhvir Singh of the Morcha in a talk with this writer. It is no surprise then that loan waiver remains a standing demand of farmers.
It cannot be emphasized enough that over 40 per cent farming is rain-fed, which means that farmers depend on the rain gods for irrigating their fields and therefore go for crops that require less water, mostly millets and small millets which have restricted market. No doubt overuse of irrigation water and chemical fertilizers otherwise have created imbalances and underground water depletion but if farmers are not diversifying their crops to the extent they should, it is because they seek incentives and remunerative prices for cash crops, which is not coming.
The Union budget 2023-24 this year showed a mere five per cent hike for agriculture over revised estimates of last year. The target of doubling farmers’ income by 2022 has not been met. As per the latest estimates on agricultural household income based on the Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households released in 2018-19 by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the average agriculture household income was found to be Rs 10218/- per month. There was no mention of doubling farmers’ income in this year’s budget proposals.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre has steered cleared of loan waivers despite parties of all hues, BJP included, resorting to such promises in the states mostly in order to win elections, even if implementation is tardy.
Farmers wanting to throw away the yoke of debt had raised a similar demand for loan waiver before the 2019 general elections with the NDA government. The rival Congress-led front had promised the waiver of outstanding loans of farmers and a minimum income support guarantee to five crore poor families in its election manifesto. Thus cornered, the NDA hastily announced in the interim budget of 2019-20 that Rs 6,000 per year will be distributed in three installments to small and medium farmers under PM-Kisan scheme, which helped the ruling dispensation romp home with a brute majority.
Now, with the Lok Sabha elections just a year away, pleas for loan waiver are again gathering momentum. So far, the central government has shown no inclination to entertain farmers’ organizations after the withdrawal of the three farm laws. Whether the Ramlila Ground rally of farmers will make a difference is anybody’s guess. Governments agree for a meeting only if they are willing to relent.
Looking at the limited incentives for the farm sector in the Union budget, cut in outlays for rural schemes as under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), losses to onion and potato growers, unhappy wheat, mustard and sugarcane farmers and above all cries for “karz mafi”, the government may raise the dole under PM-Kisan Yojna on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. Ironically, the majority of farmers may be appeased by this.
(Gargi Parsai is a senior journalist based in New Delhi)