IIM-A students go to AP villages to study crop holiday issue

Kodurupadu and Korukolu in Andhra Pradesh were model villages during late sixties and seventies for Green Revolution.

These villages played a key role in turning East and West Godavari districts into a rice bowl. But things have changed of late. The same farmers or their descendents have now declared crop holiday and skipped this kharif season, with farming becoming unviable and unremunerative.

Students of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, pursuing Agri-Business Management course, are coming to these villages in December to study this phenomenon.

Coming from varied backgrounds ranging from B.Tech, B.Pharm, to MBBS, these students will go to these villages in two groups and assess the situation as part of Rural Immersion Module.

“Farmers in these villages played a big role in introducing high yielding varieties of paddy during Green Revolution and made strides. But now they are a dejected lot and are thoroughly convinced that they will land up in debts if they continue farming,” Mr Akkineni Bhavani Prasad, General Secretary of Kisan Service Organisation, told Business Line .

Thousands of farmers in these two districts had dumped kharif season and are seriously thinking of skipping rabi too as there is no change in the situation.

Mr Bhavani Prasad has been assisting IIM-A in completing the module in Andhra Pradesh. The module is compulsory for all agri-biz management students in the Post Graduate Programme. It is done in two phases – April and December every year. The latter phase is called the implementation phase.

“They approached us to help their students in completing the module. We have told them that a study in these two villages would be ideal. We told the institute that a study of the agrarian crisis by its students would help to some extent in resolving the issue,” Mr Bhavani Prasad said.

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