13/01/2015
An Uncertain Hobbesian life
India’s small farmers have been struggling for centuries now and they need social and governmental action to change their future
Of India’s 121 million agricultural holdings, 99 million are with small and marginal farmers, with a land share of just 44 per cent and a farmer population share of 87 per cent. With multiple cropping prevalent, such farmers account for 70 per cent of all vegetables and 52 per cent of cereal output. According to National Sample Survey Office data, 33 per cent of all farm households have less than 0.4 hectares of land. About 50 per cent of agricultural households are indebted. In Sultanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, cultivation cost per hectare for wheat has increased by 33 per cent in five years. Such farmers face an uncertain Hobbesian life: poor, brutish and short.
Rain-fed agriculture has been practised since antiquity in India, with Indus Valley farmers growing peas, sesame and dates. Greek historian Herodotus had noted in The Histories: “India has many vast plains of great fertility. Since there is a double rainfall, the inhabitants of India almost always gather in two harvests annually.” With the British era came the zamindars, the ryots and penury. As Tirthankar Roy notes in The Economic History of India, 1857-1947, “from 1891 to 1946, diminishing returns coupled with growing land-shortage and yield deceleration led to an acute crisis, particularly in Bengal.” India’s marginal farmers have been worse off for centfarming
Alleviating marginal farming
Our policymakers recognised this dependence on rain and formulated policies focussed on supporting canal-fed crops and improving agricultural productivity. This they coupled with incentive structures, pricing regimes and input subsidies. A bewildering array of schemes was launched — Small Farmers Development Agency (1971), Integrated Rural Development Programme (1980), Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY, 1999) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Skewed by a bureaucratic approach, these schemes focussed on creating yearly jobs and roads, while resisting decentralisation and localised decision-making. Individual symptoms were mitigated, while long-term food security and ecological sustainability were ignored.
The Drought Prone Area Programme (1974) was “concerned with drought proofing rather than livelihoods and growth-focussed development.” The National Policy on Farmers (2007) focussed on improving farmer income through better risk management and an improved price policy. Implementation, sadly, was lacking, with less than 30 per cent of small and marginal farmers borrowing from institutional credit systems.
The Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (2011) allocated Rs.10 lakh to each district to prepare and implement the Comprehensive District Agriculture Plan with the participation of local panchayats. The discussions were mostly chaired by the local minister or district collector, with little reflection on farmers’ needs. Best practices were mostly ignored.
