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A common minimum programme for 2007

M.S. Swaminathan

All political parties must work to end farmers' distress. Agricultural progress must be seen in its human dimension rather than in statistical terms.

2007 MARKS the 60th year of our Independence and the beginning of the 11th Five Year Plan. The achievements of the country during the past 60 years are many, including adherence to a democratic system of governance and avoiding famines of the kind that were frequent during the colonial rule. The most prominent inadequacy relates to human development as measured by indicators such as child and adult malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy, infant and maternal mortality rates, and access to sanitation and clean drinking water. Nearly 70 per cent of our population is still rural with farming as the principal source of livelihood. The approach paper to the XI Plan recently approved by the National Development Council mentions, "economic growth has failed to be sufficiently inclusive, particularly after the mid-1990s. Agriculture lost its growth momentum from that point on and subsequently entered a near crisis situation, reflected in farmer suicides in some areas." Unless the country regains its lost momentum in this sector, there will be widespread agrarian distress and the prospect of reverting to a ship-to-mouth existence.

The National Commission on Farmers (NCF) has pointed out that while public policy and investment triggered progress earlier, policy inadequacy and investment decline have taken us to the farmer suicide and food import era. Several significant steps have been taken during the last two years to remedy the situation, but their implementation has been slow. The time has come for the leaders of all major political parties to re-visit the advice given by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947 when he said, "everything else can wait, but not agriculture," and adopt the ending of farmers' distress as a national common minimum programme.

Confucius wrote 2,500 years ago, "Despite the many accomplishments of mankind, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." It is time we realise the wisdom behind this statement and introduce public policies, which can promote land care in its totality, including the conservation of prime farmland for agriculture. Soil health cards will enable farmers to participate actively in the soil fertility enhancement movement. For example, provision of deficient micronutrients such as zinc, boron, and sulphur leads to a 30 to 70 per cent increased yield in many dryland crops. Organic manures should receive the same subsidy or support as mineral fertilizers since soil organic matter content is often low.

The second major step relates to rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge, and conjunctive use of surface and ground water. The Union Ministry of Water Resources has proposed the observance of 2007-08 as the year for more income and crop per drop of water. A detailed strategy has been prepared for this purpose for implementation from June 1, 2007, to May 31, 2008. The effective implementation of this programme will help to shift the emphasis from the quantitative to the qualitative aspects of water use. The System of Rice Intensification, now getting popular in Tamil Nadu, can help save considerable quantities of water. What is proposed to be demonstrated in one village in every block of the country is the benefit of synergy among crop, water, nutrients, and implements.

Thirdly, timely availability of credit at an affordable rate of interest and the wider adoption of insurance will help to reduce farmers' distress. Agricultural insurance now covers only about four per cent of farmers. Risks are increasing in farming due to meteorological and marketing factors. The position is likely to get worse in the years ahead due to global warming and climate change. Studies in the agrarian hot spot areas of Vidharbha have shown that credit is needed not only for agriculture but also for digging tube wells, healthcare, and domestic needs such as marriage. Integrated group insurance packages, with low transaction cost and the village as the unit of assessment, are needed to save farmers from moneylenders. The NCF has recommended the provision of credit to farm families at four per cent interest as well as the issue of Kisan Credit Cards to women. Also, the credit cycle should cover four to five years in drought-prone areas. The proposal for financial inclusion should be converted into reality on the antyodaya principle.

Fourthly, the spread of appropriate technologies and the inputs needed for applying those technologies are essential for good harvests. Market-linked farming systems, diversification, and value addition will involve concurrent attention to livestock, fisheries, and fodder and feed production. Crop-livestock integration helps to increase income as well as household nutrition security. Further, it facilitates organic farming. The poorer the household, the greater is the need for multiple sources of income. Similarly, the smaller the farm, the greater is the need for marketable surplus through higher productivity.

Our country has immense potential for promoting integrated systems of farming involving appropriate crops and varieties as well as large and small ruminants. The poultry industry is growing at a fast pace and more efforts are needed for producing feed grains and for establishing fodder and feed banks to support backyard animal husbandry. The green revolution in wheat and rice in the late 1960s, and the milk revolution later were both triggered though concurrent attention to all the links in the production-consumption-commerce chain. Key centralised services were introduced to support decentralised production. We owe much to the late C. Subramaniam and to Varghese Kurien for this management innovation.

Experience in the heartland of the green revolution, namely, Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, has shown that intensive rice-wheat crop rotation has led to the depletion of the aquifer and the spread of alkalinity and salinity. Therefore, both in the traditional fertile crescent region of north-west India, as well as in the emerging fertile crescent of Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, and Assam, there is need to promote conservation farming and green agriculture. Conservation farming is based on soil health enhancement and efficient water management. Green agriculture involves the adoption of integrated pest management, integrated nutrient supply, and other ecologically sound techniques. For a population-rich but land-hungry country like ours, an integrated system of conservation farming and green agriculture is the pathway to sustainable food security. Unfortunately, extension systems are in a disarray.

We should tap the opportunities provided by the panchayat raj institutions and modern information and communication technologies to overcome the knowledge deficit in rural areas. The Gyan Chaupal or the Village Knowledge Centre based on an integrated application of the internet, cable TV, community radio, cell phone, and local newspaper can ensure last mile and last person connectivity in knowledge and skill empowerment. Expenses incurred on such natural resource conservation and knowledge empowerment measures do not attract the trade distorting provisions of the WTO.

The issue of prices

Finally, farmers need for their survival assured and remunerative prices. Today input costs are rising and output prices are falling. The uneconomical nature of farming is the single most important cause of the agrarian crisis. Industrialised countries extend substantial support to their large farmers, since they know that farming will become extinct if such support is not extended. We have a difficult situation since unlike industrialised countries, where only three to four per cent of the population are in farming, agriculture is the primary occupation of two-thirds of our population. The least we should do is to provide a minimum support price (MSP) that is 50 per cent more than the cost of production and make purchases for the Public Distribution System and Food Security Reserve at the market prices together with an incentive bonus.

Private-public partnership is prescribed as a solution for the economic problems of small farmers. Vidharbha is a test case to measure its ethical dimension. In contrast to the prosperity of textile mills, cotton farmers there live in debt and distress. According to a Maharashtra Government Report, the MSP during 2005-06 for cotton was Rs.1,760 as against the cost of cultivation of Rs.2,585 per quintal. The suffering of the rainfed cotton growers of Vidharbha can be ended if the members of the Cotton Mills Federation visit Vidharbha and extend a little of their prosperity to them. Suicide-generating imports of highly subsidised cotton from abroad should give way to redressing the economic problems of our cotton farmers.

In farming it is said "we reap as we sow." Whenever investment in irrigation and agriculture goes up, as during the Sixth Five Year Plan period (1980-85), agricultural growth rate tends to be even higher than the general GDP growth rate. In the past, we have had several "dream budgets" for industry and the share market. Is it too much to expect that in the 60th year of our independence, there will be a dream budget for the 70 crore of our population depending on agriculture for their survival? The important additional benefits of such a farmer-centric dream budget will be the strengthening of internal security and external sovereignty.

We need a shift in mindset to one that measures agricultural progress in its human dimension rather than in statistical terms. The draft National Policy for Farmers' proposed by the NCF for adoption during 2007 calls for the mainstreaming of the human dimension in all agricultural strategies and programmes. The adoption and implementation of such a policy for farmers should be a pan-political parties' initiative during 2007.

(Dr. Swaminathan is the Chairman of the National Commission on Farmers.)

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