Killing fields

In today’s hyper-connected world, human tragedy has become a spectator sport. Whether it’s individual pain or societal catastrophe, social media and live television can transmit it to millions of voyeuristic eyes in milliseconds. But such attention is also equally fickle. So Gajendra Singh’s fifteen minutes of fame were summarily ended last Saturday by the Himalayan tragedy of Nepal’s earthquake, the suicide of a lone farmer being no match for the distress of millions. With an earthquake to comment about, the political class stopped wrangling about Singh’s suicide and turned its attention elsewhere. But even if this had not happened, there was no indication that the crisis facing India’s agriculture sector would have found a meaningful response from politicians or policymakers. While the reaction of the political class was a contemptible exercise in extracting political capital out of an act of terminal despair, the response from those tasked with coming up with solutions was equally lacking in substance. The Centre’s response has upped compensation for crop loss by 50 per cent of the slab — which experts have pointed out is not enough to cover even half of what the average farmer invests per acre. There has been talk of tweaking minimum support prices and calls for providing greater crop insurance. While widespread crop loss caused by unseasonal rain and hail may have been the immediate trigger for the current distress of farmers, particularly in North India, the sector is grappling with deep, structural issues which cannot be addressed by such palliatives, more so, when these have been demonstrated failures.

We need a paradigm shift in the policy approach. One that fixes the skewed fertiliser subsidy policy (which has twisted nutrient use, leading to degradation of vast tracts of fertile land), improves seed quality for better productivity, and is fashioned around a holistic water management policy. Key issues such as lack of market access for farm produce, lack of storage infrastructure and connectivity, lack of protection from the consequences of climate variations, and lack of access to credit have not been solved by the clutch of assistance schemes currently in existence. Doing more of the same is clearly not enough. Structural issues such as land holding and inheritance laws, which have led to fragmentation of holdings, also need a major overhaul. The structure of the rural economy has also changed, with services and agribusiness contributing a greater share of rural incomes than mere farming, requiring a shift in policy focus.

Globalisation has only accentuated the problems facing Indian agriculture. The global agri-commodity super-cycle has long peaked. This has led to a secular contraction in rural incomes, which has compressed consumption demand. The fall in rural consumption growth has hurt industry as well. While the problems faced by the latter receive relatively quicker attention, the plight of those who farm are neglected.