Farmers’ anger is symptom of deeper agrarian crisis
University of Agriculture, told The Sunday Guardian that education and marketing of farmers’ produce can bring prosperity to farmers in India.
“Farmers should be educated about agriculture, means and methods,” Singh said.
Amit Kar, head of agricultural economics department at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Delhi, told this newspaper: “The price of sowing has increased, while the land holdings of farmers have reduced drastically due to expansion in the family. The output has decreased, while the cost of output produce has also not gone up much. All these factors have increased the farmers’ woes over the past few decades.”
Kar also agreed that the lack of knowledge of marketing techniques and the lack of enthusiasm among farmers to go the extra mile to push for a better price for their produce also cause a problem. Kar also said that apathy towards the farming community by suc- cessive governments over the years has led to a deep crisis.
According to information revealed by the Madhya Pradesh government in a written reply to Congress MLA Ram Niwas Rawat, at least 287 farmers, including agricultural labourers, have committed suicide in Madhya Pradesh in the past three months. Among them, 106 are farmers and 181 are agricultural labourers, who ended their lives between November 2016 and February 2017. Between July 2016 and February 2017, a total of 818 farmers committed suicide in Madhya Pradesh alone.
Experts believe that the loan waiver announcement by the Uttar Pradesh government triggered the Mandsaur violence. Following the announcement, farmers in other states too started demanding loan waiver from their respective governments, failing which violence erupted. “When one state waives agricultural loan, farmers in other states start expecting the same from their govern- ment. Due to this, some farmers who have the capacity to repay some amounts, stop repaying in the anticipation that their loans would be waived,” Kar said, adding that since over 50% of the agricultural land in India is rain-fed, a bad monsoon has significant ramifications in the lives of farmers.
However, experts believe that the present government is doing much more than the earlier government in the rural and agricultural sectors. “The present government has increased the rural budgetary allocation like never before since the country’s Independence,” Kar said. Ramandeep Singh said that the government is helping farmers through all possible means. Agricultural officers and analysts are present at every block level to assist farmers with queries related to agriculture, including market and weather forecasting, seed quality, soil health, etc., but most farmers are either not aware of this or do not avail such facilities, he said. Ministry of Railways’ Twitter handle has become a major contact point between the Railways and passengers, with the handle receiving as many as 6,500 tweets from the public every day, seeking solutions to the problems they face on board.
Tweets by passengers at the Twitter handle @RailMinIndia are immediately followed by a response from the authorities. The complaint is forwarded to the concerned railway official of the division/zone and efforts are made to resolve it.
The handle @RailMinIndia has over 2.7 million followers. Till now, it has received about 3.78 lakh tweets.
Most of the complaints pertain to poor quality of food served, dirty linen and compartments, overpriced meals, and lack of water facility inside the coaches. In one of the tweets, a passenger had asked the authorities to fix the charging point.
Apart from complaining about the lack of amenities, passengers also tweet about errant staff. In one such tweet, a passenger had complained about the ticket checker accepting bribe and giving away a seat to a passenger on the waiting list.
According to a railway official, a dedicated team of 150 staffers across 68 divisions of the Indian Railways keep a close watch on passengers’ messages and resolve their woes within a stipulated time period. This special cell to monitor social media interaction was established in July 2015.
“Out of 6,500 tweets that we have received so far, 3,000 were in the form of complaints, all of which have been resolved. Soon after being notified about a new tweet, the social media team gets in action to address the complaints after verifying the passengers. The messages are then forwarded to the respective divisions for further action,” he said.
Tweets are classified as critical, non-critical, suggestions and others. For every actionable tweet, a ticket is opened and each ticket is monitored at various stages in the system until it is resolved. Critical tweets are communicated via SMS or phone call.
A station master told The Sunday Guardian on the condition of anonymity: “We have to be on our toes all the time. At times, we even receive tweets from the ministry to provide help to passengers.”
Under the medium-term plan, the Ministry of Railways plans to integrate feedback from all customer channels. An integrated customer complaint system consisting of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and CP Gram is being developed.