The art of betrayal
Doubling farmers' income by 2022 sounds likes a cruel joke
THE NARENDRA Modi government failed to help the farmers on the price front. It informed the Supreme Court through a sworn affidavit that the government could not pay as per the Swaminathan Commission recommendations.
Another major problem in agriculture is the unprecedented increase in the price of inputs such as seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and diesel. The Swaminathan Commission recommended the supply of subsidised and affordable cheaper inputs. But during the last three years, we have witnessed
an unprecedented increase in these prices. The failure to regulate a proper pricing mechanism has further pauperised the farmers.
What's worse, instead of paying a minimum price to our farmers, the Modi government decided to import five metric tonnes of wheat, in spite of the bumper wheat production in the country. The government brought down the
import duty to zero from an earlier 25 per cent. This would only benefit few big corporate importers and the exporting countries like Australia, USA, Italy, France and Ukraine at the cost of destroying our own farmers. Importantly, in all these countries, agriculture continues to be heavily subsidised.
Another betrayed promise has been the poor implementation of MGNREGA. A minimum of 80,000 crore was required, but only a paltry
48,000 crore was allocated last year. Also, most of the agricultural loans are cornered by agribusinesses—only 8 per cent was available for farmers, the lowest in 63 years. Moreover, the disruptive consequences of demonetisation has led to a further fall in farm incomes. In this scenario, the declaration of doubling the income of farmers by 2022 sounds likes a cruel joke on Indian farmers.