The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Avoiding an unequal social bargain

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Thursday, Jul 06, 2006

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Avoiding an unequal social bargain

M.S. Swaminathan

Grass-roots democratic institutions need to be revitalised and involved in managing food and water security systems.

RAJIV GANDHI understood the wisdom of Gandhiji's doctrine that Gram Swaraj is the pathway to Poorna Swaraj and launched the Panchayati Raj movement. Schedule 11 of Constitution Amendment 73 entrusts panchayats with the responsibility of managing natural resources and fostering sustainable agriculture. Representative democracy through elected members, one third of whom are women, and participatory democracy through gram sabhas are powerful tools for ensuring a pro-nature, pro-poor, pro-women, and pro-livelihood orientation to all rural and agricultural development programmes.

The National Commission on Farmers, in its four reports submitted to the Union Minister for Agriculture so far, has emphasised the need for community managed food and water security systems promoted with the help and oversight of gram sabhas. The gram sabha can serve as a pani panchayat to ensure that rainwater is not only harvested but is used in a sustainable and equitable manner. The trend now is to bypass these grass-roots democratic structures, which represent the vision of Rajiv Gandhi for a peaceful and prosperous India, and to resort to depending on private trade to manage food and water security systems. Unfortunately, this will result in an unequal social bargain since those who control the market place are both rich and politically powerful. The Indian enigma of the coexistence of great technological and intellectual capability, on the one hand, and extreme poverty, deprivation, and malnutrition, on the other, will continue to persist if we do not revitalise and empower the grass-roots democratic institutions.

In a country with a high prevalence of poverty and malnutrition, the government should always retain a commanding position in the management of the food security system. This will call for a grain purchase policy that takes into account the changes in the cost of production (such as a rise in diesel price) subsequent to the announcement of a minimum support price (MSP). Traders will give a price above the MSP when they expect prices to shoot up with in a few months. As Amartya Sen has often stressed, we should not forget the lessons of the Bengal Famine of 1942-43, when millions died of starvation not because there was no food in the market but because the surplus stocks were in the hands of private merchants. Building a sustainable food security system will require attention to both the availability of sufficient stocks and who controls them. Global wheat stocks are down this year and the political leadership of the country should decide how to ensure the food security of 1.1 billion children, women, and men in an era where much of the foodgrain stocks will be controlled by national and international grain traders and cartels.

The year 1968 marked the beginning of the first Green Revolution when Indira Gandhi released a special stamp titled "Wheat Revolution." Green Revolution implies enhancing food production through raising productivity per units of land, water, time, and labour. The productivity pathway is the only one available to population rich but land hungry countries like ours for achieving a balance between human numbers and food production. Even early in 1968, I called for the mainstreaming of environmental concerns in agricultural research and development to avoid the adverse ecological consequences of exploitative agriculture. Later, I coined the term "evergreen revolution" to indicate the pathway to improving productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological or social harm. This term has now come into widespread use internationally.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been calling for a second green revolution. It will be appropriate to restrict the use of this term to enhancing the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of dryland farming, i.e., raising crops solely based on rainwater. If the first green revolution benefited farmers in irrigated areas, the second should help farm families in rainfed, semi-arid areas. In both cases, the pathway used for yield enhancement should be the evergreen revolution approach.

If we are to achieve a second green revolution covering rainfed areas, the first important requisite is opportunity for assured and remunerative marketing for dryland farm products such as pulses, oilseeds, millets, vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat. Due to shortage of wheat and rice in government stocks, the Government of India plans during 2006 to purchase millets, ragi, bajra, and jowar for use in the public distribution system (PDS). These "underutilised crops" are rich in micronutrients and minerals and should be referred as "nutritious cereals" and not as "coarse cereals" as is being done now. The decision to include ragi, bajra, jowar, and other millets in the PDS should be a permanent one. This will help to enhance nutrition security, on the one hand, and the productivity and economic sustainability of improved dryland agriculture, on the other. There is a large untapped reservoir of dryland farming technologies and we can see a drastic rise in the productivity and production of crops in these areas if farm families are supported by credit, insurance, a fair price and assured market for their produce, as happened in the 1980s when Rajiv Gandhi launched an Oilseeds Technology Mission.

The country can produce as much pulses and oilseeds as is needed through a synergy between technology and public policy, since there is a stockpile of improved varieties of dryland crops. The new hybrid arhar (pigeon pea) strains can trigger a pulses revolution. The largest section of consumers in India is the farming population. By helping farmer-consumers to have greater marketable surplus because of higher productivity, we can eliminate substantially poverty-induced hunger and malnutrition in the country.

Lester Brown recently pointed out that the world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices. While import of wheat, pulses, sugar, and oilseeds may be necessary during 2006 to prevent an undue rise in prices, we should avoid the danger of making this a habit. Our food budget should be managed with home-grown food, since agriculture is the backbone of our rural livelihood security system. The proposed National Rainfed Authority can have as its sole mandate the launching of a second green revolution in dry farming areas beginning with pulses and oilseeds. The present policy, if continued in the long run, may help some traders and multinational companies to become rich, but will render millions of farm women and men in rainfed areas paupers.

Another step that should be taken in dryfarming and tribal areas is the establishment of community managed food and water security systems. Such a system will involve the establishment by local self-help groups of grain and water banks. The grain bank could be built with local staples and could help to avoid distress sale as well as panic purchase. The water bank can be established by community water harvesting. Conservation, cultivation, consumption, and commerce can become an integrated food management system under the control of local communities. By promoting such decentralised community management systems, with the gram sabhas providing policy oversight, we can address concurrently endemic hunger caused by poverty, hidden hunger arising from the deficiency of iron, iodine, zinc, and Vitamin A in the diet, and transient hunger caused by natural calamities such as drought, floods, cyclones. It will also be prudent to develop such a system in the context of potential adverse changes in temperature, precipitation, and sea level arising from climate change and global warming.

Increasing privatisation of our food and water security systems has important implications for the food, income, and work security of small and marginal farmers, and agricultural labour. The WTO agreement entered into at Marrakesh in 1994 resulted in an unequal trade bargain. The growing privatisation of food and water security systems is already leading to an unequal social bargain. The poor will not be able to withstand the tragedy of distress sales and inundation by low-cost foods and fruits from rich countries whose agriculture is driven by heavy inputs of subsidy, capital, and technology. We will never be able to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal in hunger and poverty elimination if we do not insulate the farmer-consumers from unfair trade and social bargains.

Universal PDS

A universal PDS, which alone can save the economically underprivileged sections of society from chronic under-nutrition, will need annually about 40 million tonnes of foodgrains. If we assume that about 160 million families will use the PDS, and that each family gets an allocation of 20 kg a month, we will need annually about 38 million tonnes to support a Universal PDS system. By enlarging the minimum support price to a wider range of foodgrains and purchasing them for use in PDS, we can launch both a second green revolution and a universal PDS. Also, through community grain and water banks, we can help to start a "Store Grains and Water Everywhere" movement. The prices of essential commodities will then remain stable and affordable to resource-poor consumers. Market manipulation of prices of essential commodities can also be checked. While foodgrain imports will provide a breathing spell in controlling price rise and inflation, a second green revolution in dry farming areas, stimulated by assured and remunerative marketing opportunities, will help to promote simultaneously food and livelihood security to millions of small and marginal farmers and landless labour.

To conclude, import/export of pulses, oilseeds, and wheat may be necessary in years of shortfall or surplus. What is important is to recognise that imports of pulses and oilseeds serve as indicators of our failure to launch a green revolution in dryfarming areas, in spite of having the technologies and resources to do so. This is not just a matter for national pride or shame, but a human tragedy of vast dimensions where millions of children, women, and men are condemned to a life of malnutrition and poverty. Imports of crops of importance to the income security of farm families in rainfed areas implies generating more unemployment and misery in such areas. The mindset where the term "consumers" applies only to the politically powerful urban population and ignores the population living in rural India, who are both farmers and consumers, will have to be destroyed if our country is to achieve Poorna Swaraj.

(The writer is Chairman, National Commission on Farmers.)

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