CENTRE PLANS TO TRAIN FARMERS IN WAYS TO HIKE SECONDARY INCOMES
NEW DELHI : To double farm income by 2022, the Modi government is working on training farmers so as to increase their income from secondary sources of income, and also not accounting for part-time farmers in its calculations. Experts say that while the first is a laudable move, the second is just statistical jugglery. There are around 120 million households that currently depend on agriculture for their livelihood. “Our target is to double farmers’ income, not farm income,” agriculture secretary SK Pattanayak said.
NEWDELHI: To double farm income by 2022, the Modi government is working on training farmers so as to increase their income from secondary sources of income, and also not accounting for part-time farmers in its calculations.
Experts say that while the first is a laudable move, the second is just statistical jugglery.
There are around 120 million households that currently depend on agriculture for their livelihood. “Our target is to double farmers’ income, not farm income,” agriculture secretary SK Pattanayak said, explaining that his ministry would take into account both farm and non-farm income sources of farmers. “That is why we are focusing on skills and creating secondary sources of income in the rural sector,” he said. The standard measure of farm income is the rate of growth of agriculture GDP, which must jump 100% if farm incomes are to double. To many economists, this looks simply unattainable. The NDA government had unveiled its target of doubling farm income in six years in the Union budget for 2016-17.
Pattanayak said farmers would also gain from transparency in agricultural trade due to the Goods and Services Tax. “Traders, who dealt in cash only, can’t hide their incomes any longer. Farmers will automatically demand higher prices if they find out the real rates for their produce,” he said.
Still, according to calculations by economist Ashok Gulati, a professor with the think-tank ICRIER, even if farm GDP were to grow at a targeted 4% in 2018-19, the remaining year of the current government’s tenure, average farm growth for five years would still work out to 2.3%, the lowest in two nearly two decades. In 2017-18, agricultural growth is expected to slow to 2.1%, compared to 4.9% in the previous year, according to official forecasts. “The goal of doubling farmers’ income is stupendous, cannot be achieved in a business-asusual scenario and will need something dramatic. So far there is nothing to show that it is possible. Even retaining earlier growth levels looks difficult,” Gulati said. If the government is looking at doubling “nominal” income of farmers – which denotes income not adjusted for inflation – then it is possible and has happened before, according to economist Abhijit Sen. If the increase is to be “real” – or income that is adjusted for inflation – then it’s a tall order, he added.