Why farmers march
Only something truly extraordinary could impress the media usually consumed by politics, elections and scandals of various sorts. Some 30,000 people walking along a busy highway the last week has been that blue-moon event. The Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha march of farmers from Nashik to Mumbai is unique not just because of its size or endurance but also its peaceful and non-disruptive nature, not normally associated with such demonstrations. Its leader, Dr Ashok Dhawale, has displayed dignity and maturity in his interviews, in sharp contrast with the fiery orations accompanying most mass mobilisations.
The marchers are demanding complete loan waiver (Maharashtra has a partial one) as also of water and power charges, minimum support prices 50 per cent higher than costs of production for all crops as recommended by the National Commission on Farmers chaired by Dr M S Swaminathan, compensation for the damage caused by recent hailstorm and pink bollworm attack, and implementation of the Forest Rights Act.
Why do farmers in Maharashtra (and those in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat recently) turn to the government with such omnibus demands? Simple answer: They consider the government to be the default agency of the first and last resort, and not without reason.
Governments, both central and state, have been acutely aware of the need to bring about changes in rural India as a prerequisite of development. The Second Five Year Plan (1956-61) brought agriculture into the ambit of the planning processes, which has continued ever since. Thus, the government became the agency to break the rural poverty logjam. Its efforts have produced mixed results so far.
The government strategy was to reduce the vulnerability of agriculture through irrigation, improving productivity through better seeds, application of fertilisers and pesticides and advice, greater and easier availability of farm credit, and later, market support, promotion of diversification and coverage of risks. Providing relief became the overriding consideration when droughts struck (196566, 1972, 1974, 1986, 2003, 2009, 2014 and 2015, to list the most significant such occurrences). Farmer suicides highlight both the misery and the need to provide immediate succour.
Both major irrigation and crop productivity enhancement (commonly called the Green Revolution) achieved commendable results in their initial phases. But they suffered from limitations as well: Not being accompanied by localised effective water harvesting and use programmes in case of irrigation and being selective in crops and regions in case of the Green Revolution. The spread of hybrid vegetable varieties and gene-modified Bt cotton of the last two decades still leaves dryland crops such as pulses, oilseeds and coarse grains uncovered. Income from them fluctuates, condemning vast sections of peasantry to vulnerable positions.
The impact of government intervention in asset creation/rejuvenation and diversification has been at best one-off: Production and productivity moved from one equilibrium to another, higher one, but still on a plateau. The vicious circle shifted to a higher level, but was not broken and a virtuous one did not replace it.
Most agriculture development programmes aim at poverty elimination. They must move from relief to longer-term livelihood restructuring. Confucius said that he gave a hungry man a piece of fish, which satisfied his hunger for a day. Teaching him how to fish would have taken care of him for life. Augmenting assets to enhance their productivity, education and skills training to improve employability on a sustained basis, all attack factors that cause poverty and attempt to break the poverty trap. They teach the man how to fish and hopefully, provide him a fishing tackle.
Average farmers are barely able to cope with their survival concerns. They can hardly be expected to mount an effort to make a significant impact on the constellation of factors responsible for the vicious circle. Even those with better resources would find such enterprise daunting. Consider this: You have inherited a decrepit property, whose rental does not pay for even the minimum maintenance. You realise you need to invest effort and money to upgrade it, but would you do so? Farmers are no fools to invest resources they do not have into what they know is a losing proposition.
Yet they cannot suffer in silence. Their cry for succour is all-inclusive in its scope and addressed to the only earthly authority they know: Mai-baap Sarkar. The government usually responds by doling out palliatives, rather than systemic remedies.
Rural distress has seldom registered on urban conscience. This writer was invited to deliver a lecture on the political economy of Indian peasantry a couple of months ago to a highly educated, knowledgeable and sensitive audience. The common refrain of all the comments at the end of the lecture was “we never knew all this!”
The current protest may not break the rural vicious circle, but it has made India more aware of Bharat’s distress. E P Unny’s pocket cartoon ( The Indian Express, March 12, 2018) has a telling speech bubble: “I am a farmer. May I gherao your attention please?”
That is an achievement of sorts of the long march from Nashik, but it still has miles to go.