DISQUIET GROWS AT FARMS ACROSS INDIA

The farming community is grappling with a problem of plenty, with rising production bringing down prices. A deeper issue is low public investment in farming. The crisis has sparked a fierce political debate and could have an impact on the 2019 Lok Sabha e

of food, as Nobel laureate economist Amaryta Sen argued. “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat,” Sen wrote (Poverty and Famines, 1981).

While subsidies helped ignite a Green Revolution, they were never balanced with public investments for sustainable growth. Policymakers took the Green Revolution for granted for far too long, not realising the technology had run its course. Yields had begun falling by mid-1980s.

This fall could have been made good by higher investments. The rate of growth for farm investment in the 1980s and 1990s was a lowly 8-12%. This trend continued up to the 10th Five-year Plan. With such low spends, farm growth hobbled at 2.4% or so. Investments in other sectors by contrast were up over 35%. The 10th and 11th five-year plans (2002-07 and 2007-12) saw some improvements in the rate of farm investment.

India’s net irrigated area still languishes at slightly more than 40%. The government has already tapped the easy areas; the ones most fertile and better irrigated. So, the scope for horizontal expansion is limited. The way to go now is to ‘expand vertically’. In other words, higher productivity will require huge investments.

The real problem is still the same: too many subsidies, but too little investment. If one looks at overall public resources being spent on agriculture, three-fourths appear to be still going primarily into subsidies, while only a fourth goes into investment. So, despite loan waivers, politicians may soon find farmers hollering on the streets again.