By: Vijay Kumar Verma ( Editor-ICN Group )
The debt ridden farmer tries to find a solace in death and thus also relieving his family of the debt burden.The paper promises the parties make can’t feed an empty stomach.
SHIMLA: Farmers since times immemorial have not only been the source of crops to feed the subjects but also source of revenue to the rulers through taxes (lagaan). Neither were there any subsidies in the historical times nor any other benefits to help the farmers.
From those days of lagaan to the present times of umpteen doles, the plight of farmers does not seem to have changed much going by the statistics of their endless suffering. It is a proven fact that enough is never enough for anyone.
The marginal farmers are those who own a holding of less than one hectare of land while a small farmer is defined as one owning 1 to 2 hectares of land. Those having 2 to 4 hectares of land are classified as small medium and those with 4 to 10 hectares as medium farmers those with land holdings higher than 10 hectares come under the category of large farmers. These 5 percent landholders own one third of the country’s cultivable land.
Unfortunately the recent political gimmick of waving farm loans ignited in UP and spreading to other states in no cure of the problem. While all loan woes of the farmers may not be farm loans and many of the loans may not be bank loans, the village sharks are always there to make the most.The instigated farmers fail to look beyond the instant provocation and short term benefits.
It is indeed strange to find if the benefits of MNREGA are still to percolate to the targeted poorest of the poor? Are the huge funds still being usurped by the middlemen or the gram pradhans despite the fear of RTI law which itself had been born from the rampant misuse of such funds?
The large forces of idle farmers generated by such schemes have little benefitted any of the ruling parties, they fail to realise. If the benefit of 100 days of assured wages was truly reaching the beneficiaries then what leads to their starving. Incidents like Pipli Live continue to bait and invite the politicians to shed crocodile’s tears and make a hue and cry against the ruling parties.
If we peep a bit more into such bad loans it will be found that in many cases the loans had not been raised for farming needs alone but for social needs as well. And more so, the loans were not raised from banking institutions but from village sharks.
The debt ridden farmer tries to find a solace in death and thus also relieving his family of the debt burden. In most of the cases the aggrieved family fails to get the promised financial help from the ruling parties. The paper promises the parties make can’t feed an empty stomach.
Beyond the instant cure of farm loan wavers is the assurance of Minimum Support Prices on not only grains but on all the farm produces. The farm loans is a recurrent phenomenon. For how long can one seek or for how long a government can afford to wave. For the next crop again the weird story will be replayed. And if once it is established that the farm loans are meant for ultimate waver, then the sincere debt servicing too will come to a halt.
A look into the commodity trading prices and the retail prices indicate the huge margins of upto 100 percent the traders make in the bargain.The farmer who feeds the nation with his relentless toil round the year continues to remain the poorest of beneficiaries is there always to suffer. One wonder whom the umpteen doles of low interest farm loans, fertiliser and seed subsidies, free power, tax free income, MANREGA etc benefit if the state of affairs continues to persist.
None of the goverments have ever tried to promote cooperative farming or merging small landholdings in sectors for participative efforts by the members for sharing benefits proportionate to the amount of land contributed.
There is hardly a guidance from governments for controlling the yields to the desired levels so that it does not get wasted. Unfortunately in our country a large percentage of the commodities produced get wasted due to cyclical glut in one product or the other.With the lack of such unguided farming the poor farmers will continue to suffer.
