Farmers Betrayed : In between the Devil and Deep Sea.

The recent killing of farmers in MP once again highlighted the
distress of farmers in different parts of India. It is often the small and marginal farmers are at the receiving end of the crisis in agriculture. Loans and waiving loans are useful in the short-term, though in the long term it does not address the causes and consequences of agrarian distress in India. The present government has taken farmers for a ride , promising many things and delivering nothing!! They simply betrayed millions of farmers and fifty percent of the people of India who are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.

And there are indeed political and economic reasons for this and this has also to do with the major shift of the political economy of development itself. The neo-liberal economic development is driven by largely urban-centric economic growth model. Such a growth model depends largely on Foreign direct investment and finance capital market and export driven market in specific sectors.
This very model further marginalised the small and medium level entrepreneurs and small and marginal farmers.

Despite significant economic growth largely focusing on few cities, the small town and rural India is still an agrarian economy at ground level, with close to 15 percent of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) coming from the agriculture sector. The contribution of agriculture to the GDP has been declining over the years, but the number of people involved in the sector still hovers around 50 percent of the population . The fact of the matter is that some of the poorest of the poor in India are agricultural labours . Small and marginal farmers are largely vulnerable poor Though 50% population's livelihood is based on agriculture, its share in the DGP is decreasing almost every other year.Agriculture and its allied sectors contributed over 51.73 per cent to the GDP in 1954-1955; it was reduced to 13.94 per cent in 2013-14.

It is also important to realize that reasons for farmers distress in different states are not the same. Rubber farmers in Kerala are in distress due to the decline of prices in the international market and also due to the relative cheaper availability of synthetic rubber. That may not be the case of cotton farmers or crop farmers elsewhere.

In fact, there are multiple reasons for Farmers distress in different places : a) Low productivity b) Crop failure due to change in weather ( unexpected drought or rain) c) Increasing cost of production due to the labour cost, electricity, fertilizers etc e) Sudden market fluctuation. f) Middle -men- and not getting the right price g) Lack of support system f) Sudden attack of pests ( and consequent issue of pesticides) . The real issue is for farmers who manage 1 hec to five four hectors- and sometime up to six hectors. These are marginal and small scale farmers. They are hardworking- and they are not the land owning class. They work in the field along with the workers. The big problem is that the small and marginal farmers are the receiving end.

The problem is that fiscal and economic policies of the countries are often designed to stimulate macro -economic growth through investment ( FDI) - stock market- and focusing on the big ticket guys and then marginalizing the entire rural sector where majority of the people live. The present economic growth model favors the big corporation and those big corporate retailers in farm produces.

The real reasons for the farmers distress are economic, social, political and environmental. Most of the farmers don't want their children to become farmers. They want their children to get educated and get a job in the service or manufacturing sector. This very sociology has implications and eventually there will be more and more fallow and uncultivated land. This will be taken over by big corporate for corporate farming.

Many people tend to think it is lack of money within the the government. It is simply the lack of priorities where crony capitalism call the shot.

Unless there is a structural reform that focus on investing and strengthening sustainable agriculture through a multi-prong approach, the issue will remain. Any kind of band-aid will not help. The present neo-liberal growth model is primarily urban centric growth model and largely based on service sector, and particularly what I call finance capitalism. So there are a whole range of reasons for the challenges in the farming sector.

I have written a piece earlier on the reasons for the decline of agriculture in Kerala. The reasons are structural - as the economy moved from subsistence agrarian semi-feudal society to a service sector society , largely driven by expatriate income. As there has been a relative empowerment of marginalized sessions in Kerala, the the erstwhile agricultural workers( largely from Dalit communities) decreased substantially , resulting in a deficit of labours with more increase in demand , resulting in the high wage. This may not the case in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharastra as there is significant difference in the context of economy, ecology and climatic conditions in these states.

Unless we analyse the situation of each state and come out with broad structural reforms, there is nothing substantial will happen. Initiatives like NREGA too was a basically a short-term 'social protection' initiative without much a clear vision of reinvesting and rebuilding rural economy and agriculture in India. The problem in India is not the lack of money. It is the lack of priorities. Giving loans and waiving loans for political gains will not transform the present conditions.

It is time to rethink the present model of urban-centric finance capaital driven growth model. Such a model along with a very semi-feudal type crony capitalism has created huge inequality in India where rich corporate become rich and poor farmers end up committing suicide. The rich loots the bank and get away with billions of hard -earned money of people. In a country of 1.2 billion people, 198,000 people have a combined income of $785 Billion. In a country the richest 1% of the population owns 58% of the total wealth, the further marginalization of marginalized and poor farmers is simply by design and not merely by default. Farmers are victims of an economic development model, largely driven by few big family driven corporations of the rich people. While such corporate loots the money of people through Banks, there is hardly substantive investment in the rural and agricultural sector. As of 2016, the total number of non-performing assets in the public and private sector bank is around 6 lakhs crore!! The public sector banks have non-performing assets 1.54 lakhs crore. It is not merely one Vijay Mallya, there are so many of the rich and powerful crony capitalist corporations have a field day. To save the rich and powerful , Modi once again did a drama of demonetization to fill the coffers of the banks so that more loans can be availed by the rich cronies . But it drained off the cash of people working in the informal and farming sector where they deal in cash. Demonetization further increased the stress of the farmers.
While the rich are becoming richer in the stock market, farmers simply don't have irrigation facilities, market, fair price and they are at the receiving end of government and the big corporate.

The present Modi government high on promises has been very low on performance. When it comes to the farmers, they were high own rhetoric prior to the election though they did nothing to change the reality of distress of farmers. Farmers are now between the devil and deep sea. And any amount of rhetoric and media manipulation will not solve the issue of the farmers distress in any of the states in India. This is a government for the big billionaire cronies and not for the half a billion of small farmer in a remote villages Because even if they die of hunger or commit suicide because of deep economic distress , the crony media in the republic of lies are busy pedaling stories of hate and cows!!