Cooperatives can turn our agriculture around

Brazil has adopted two measures to keep agriculturists rooted to the soil, with a fair bit of success. The first is, uprooting the well-heeled from their lands through the policy of “not serving its social function” ironically recognised by the Brazilian constitution.

The measure is revolutionary, if not draconian. Groups of landless farmers pressure the Government to legalise their claims on the land they are squatting on that belongs to the large farmers. Roughly 7.8 million hectares have been acquired through this admittedly ham-handed approach, and some 3.7 lakh families have benefited.

Our Constitution clearly would not permit adoption of this rough and ready measure. Hence, it is bound to be struck down by the courts if the Government somehow makes bold to usher it in.

The second, however, is less revolutionary and would sit well with our grassroots democracy traditions. It consists in people, typically the sharecroppers, banding themselves together into a cooperative and acquiring land with government-guaranteed/subsidised loans. The Government in either case gives all assistance to encourage benign farming practices, such as eschewing use of pesticides, if possible, or using lesser quantities of chemicals, regenerating soil through crop-rotation, and so on.

Empowering sharecroppers

The Indian Government would do well to launch its much-awaited and talked-about second Green Revolution by taking a cue from the Brazilian initiative on empowering the sharecroppers. It is this segment that is increasingly getting disenchanted with low-paying farming and migrating to urban areas in droves in search of their own El Dorado.

The UPA Government’s flagship programme —MNREGA — is up against flak for its perceived lack of direction, and for not creating solid assets for the nation. It can be tweaked to be a major subset of a rejuvenated and reinvented grassroots land reform policy.

Small farmers and sharecroppers doing or pretending to do sundry work in rural areas such as laying of roads, digging of canals, and so on, under MNREGA, to keep the wolves away from their doors, must be restored to the vocation they love dearly —farming. The food processing industry should be a natural adjunct, lest there are wastages, and the harvest is utilised to the optimum.

And there can be no better way of doing this than through an Amul-like movement whose lynchpin is a producers’ cooperative.

In such a dispensation, the small farmers would not be under the yoke of kulaks and zamindars, but would be their own masters. Farmers would pool their lands and do cooperative farming on a large scale, adopting best farming practices, and share the rewards at the end of the labour. There would be no outside shareholder to usurp or cut into their hard-earned profits.

PURA, the antidote

The Government align the much-maligned MNREGA with grassroots agrarian reforms, and also see the whole exercise holistically as steps in halting the inexorable exodus from the rural areas to urban. The result would be Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas or PURA, which the former President, Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, talks about passionately, acquiring a whole new meaning.

The rural folks have always had a genuine grievance — they are bypassed by most of the modern conveniences the city-folks deservedly or undeservedly get to savour. Restoring farming its pride of place, indeed, would have many multiplier effects, not the least of which would be the decongestion of cities and dismantling of its eyesore — urban shanties — that lie cheek in jowl with sprawling bungalows. Indeed, agriculture ought to be the base, the foundation of any economy. If the US could ride the self-inflicted financial crisis of 2008 with a fair bit of success, the credit should go to its agrarian and allied sectors, principally the food processing industry.

The Union Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, came out with the unpalatable truth, albeit bluntly, when he said that the urban folks who splurge and allow their wards to splurge, resent even a single rupee increase in food prices that will benefit the farmers.

Inclusive growth

The inclusive growth we talk about incessantly should not be addressed in terms of caste but in terms of economic backwardness. Rural India has remained a backwater for too long. The lofty principle underpinning PURA is that if rural folks are given facilities on a par with those enjoyed by their urban brethren, they won’t bestir from their traditional rural homes.

Agriculture reforms’ success is anchored on the success of land reforms and, therefore, the latter must precede the former. The gargantuan problems arising out of urbanisation have their roots in the unpardonable neglect of the rural areas and farming by successive governments.

(The author is a New Delhi-based chartered accountant.)

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