India’s farm crisis is of the middle peasant

 CONTEXT:

1. Prime Minister has defended his government’s agricultural reform laws by invoking Chaudhary Charan Singh and pointing to the “dayaniya sthiti (sorry plight)” of marginal farmers.
2. These below-one-hectare cultivators accounted for 51 per cent of India’s total operational holdings in 1970-71, a share that crossed 68 per cent in the last 2015-16 Agriculture Census.
3. He further quoted the legendary peasant leader as saying that marginal farmers could never eke out an honest existence, no matter how much they worked their small piece of land.
4. The suggestion here was that the crisis of Indian agriculture is of the chhota kisan and the government’s reform measures are aimed at uplifting this stratum of smallholders.

 

BACKGROUND:

1. The above understanding of “crisis” isn’t the most helpful, whether from an analytical or even political perspective.
2. To begin with, as the political scientist Paul R Brass has shown, Charan Singh didn’t believe agriculture policy should focus on the one-hectare farmer.
3. The redemption for those tilling tiny uneconomic plots lay in non-farm employment, especially in rural small-scale and cottage industries.
4. Charan Singh, in fact, advocated both a maximum ceiling of 27.5 acres and a minimum floor of 2.5 acres that would provide decent subsistence and also prevent large-scale capitalist farming.
5. His ideal was the efficient yeoman farmer who actively cultivated his own land with minimal engagement of outside labour.

 

FARM CRISIS:

1. Today’s farm crisis is not of the impoverished chhota kisan, but of Charan Singh’s khudkasht peasant-proprietor who has seen better times.
2. It is this rural middle class — which experienced a roughly four-decade spell of prosperity from the 1970s and now has its back to the wall — that’s at the forefront of the agitation against the farm reform laws.
3. Sugarcane, perhaps, has contributed more than anything else to the rise of west UP’s rural middle classes. 

 

 

WHY FARM CRISIS?

1. INTENSE PRESSURE OF POPULATION ON LAND: Demographic pressure has pushed down the land: man ratio to less than 0.2 hectares of cultivable land per head of rural population. It has also progressively pushed down the size structure of landholdings.
2. SEED: Shortage of inputs like seeds and irrigation facilities.
3. FERTILISER: Despite subsidies on power, fertilizers, etc., input costs have been rising faster than sale prices, further squeezing the meagre income of the small farmers and driving them into debt.
4.  SHORTAGE OF MONEY: Landless or marginal farmers lack the resources to either buy or lease more land or invest in farm infrastructure—irrigation, power, farm machinery, etc.—to compensate for the scarcity of land. As land scarcity intensifies with population growth, farming progressively becomes a less viable source of livelihood.
5. MODERN TECH MISSING: Introduction of latest technology has been limited due to a number of reasons. Access to modern technology could act as a boost to productivity through improved variety of seeds, farm implements and farming technology. According to a Niti Aayog paper, there has been no real technological breakthrough in recent times.

 

 

WAY AHEAD:

1. Productivity of labor, land, fertilizer and water have to improve.
2. Massive private investments need to take place in storage and processing for the country’s 2 per cent share of global agricultural exports to increase.
3. Market supremacy won’t reform India’s agriculture, but a combination of markets and institutions might. 
4. An idea that has gained much traction in recent days is cooperative farming.
5. There are several variants of cooperation ranging from collective action in accessing credit, acquiring inputs and marketing to production cooperatives that also include land pooling; labour pooling; joint investment, joint water management and joint production. 

 

CONCLUSION:

1. These khudkasht kisan have been the change agents of Indian agriculture. Being serious full-time farmers who have produce to sell, unlike marginal subsistence cultivators, they know what agriculture is.
2. They aren’t impressed with contract farming, which has failed in sugarcane for lack of enforcement, and view deregulation of produce markets as a further step by the government to escape responsibility. Their anger and insecurity is genuine.
3. They need to be talked to, and more important, listened to. Not doing that would be the greatest injustice to Charan Singh — and also Lal Bahadur Shastri and C Subramaniam.