‘Don’t agree with tax on farm income’

CHANDIGARH Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy stirred up a hornet’s nest by proposing tax on agriculture income. Though finance minister Arun Jaitley quickly ruled out taxing farmers, chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian later waded into the raging debate by advocating tax on rich farmers. The controversy comes just days after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath announced ₹36,350-crore farm loan waiver and Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh set up an expert group to assess the agriculture debt and suggest ways for its waiver to help farmers. HT asked Prof MS Swaminathan, known as the ‘Father of Green Revolution’, his views on the twin issues: problems in our country. Small and marginal farmers are fairly well defined now. They could be given inputs at a lower rate so that they are able to enhance productivity and marketable surplus. Loan waiver is an easy method of solving the debt problems of farmers. In the long run, it will come in the way of establishing a viable agriculture credit system. I have always recommended that procurement and pricing should be the pathway for supporting small farmers. The price recommended by the National Commission on Farmers namely C2 (total cost of production) plus 50% should be implemented. year and farmers should be enabled to earn more income from cubic volumes of soil and air. Punjab farmers are very enterprising and the Punjab Agriculture University should do more work to help them to take to new technologies. The NCF has given detailed recommendations on how to promote an evergreen revolution movement in Punjab and other green revolution areas. The evergreen revolution based on the integration of ecology and technology will provide increased yield in perpetuity without ecological harm. It is unfortunate that even after 10 years, the major recommendations of NCF have not been implemented. We had given suggestions on how to make farmers suicides a problem of the past.