Back to the grassroots

The march of about 15,000 farmers and adivasis from Nashik to Mumbai has once again foregrounded rural distress in the political discourse. We may be back to the June 2017 moment, when an agitation that began in Punthamba in Ahmednagar district reverberated across to Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh and after that to Sikar, Rajasthan. Now, farmers in Odisha are demanding a support price of ₹5,000 a quintal for paddy. A restive rural population should be viewed against a larger context — of 2017-18 not having been a good agriculture year, either for Maharashtra or for the country as a whole. If the country’s agriculture growth has been pegged at 3 per cent this fiscal, against 6.3 per cent last year, the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2017-18 , released last week, observes that “as per the second advance estimates of 2017-18 the production of cereals, pulses, oilseeds and cotton is expected to decrease while production of sugarcane crop is expected to increase”. With respect to rabi crops, it notes: “Area under rabi crops (as on January 5, 2018) is 31 per cent less over the previous year.” Horticulture, which accounts for a third of the State's farm economy, is expected to take a hit as well, with unseasonal February rain damaging grape vines in 11 districts.

By flagging the MSP issue, the Maharashtra march has implicitly questioned the budget’s promise of raising support prices to 150 per cent of the cost of production. The moot point here is whether the cost of production includes unpaid family labour and income forgone by way of rentals and interest on owned land and other properties. By pressing for an enlarged definition of cost (called ‘C2’), the protesters have forced Maharashtra and other State governments to take up this issue with the Centre. While the budget has set aside a substantially higher food subsidy amount for 2018-19, presumably for implementation of its MSP promise, implementation modalities would need to be sorted out at the earliest. The Maharashtra government has agreed to relax the eligibility criterion for loan waivers and address implementation issues, such as issuing clear land titles. However, States could consider moving away from loan waivers to providing direct income support to small farmers, as the Telangana and Karnataka governments have sought to do.

Above all, a coherent policy must replace a knee-jerk response to agriculture issues. This should go beyond a single-minded focus on MSP to improving marketing infrastructure, and addressing ground-level concerns in crop insurance payouts. While implementation of the Forest Conservation Act was a valid demand of the protesters, others deserve scrutiny — such as parcelling out common land into individual plots and ‘linking’ westward flowing rivers to the Godavari. With water scarcity assuming alarming proportions, prudent water management has become central to improving the fortunes of farming.

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