The Congress has also been callous towards the Indian farmers. Else what made them put the Swaminathan commission report in cold storage since 2006? Instead of shedding crocodile tears all parties should adopt the Swaminathan commission report and implement it after making the required changes, in 3 months.
@Balakrishnan Sreenivasan: the gajendra singh episode has highlighted the ugliness about lutyens pet project AAP. who ruled india for 800 years and then a further 60 years post independence? who has led our dear farmers to this plight? give us a break, media.
Farm produce are necessary commodities for a country to survive, not luxury commodities. Farmers should be an affluent class in a country. Look at US for example. Alas in our country they are the most languished class. One of the reason is that the farm sector is mostly un-organized. This sector , if organized, can get fair price for their produce. Indians have been too used to view food as a subsidized commodity. Let us allocate more for food as a percentage of our overall spending. We can do without the latest mobile phone, but not without our farmers and the food which they produce.
@expose: trying to blame 800 years of misrule followed by 60 years of further misrule cannot be corrected in 10 months. cholbe naa lutyens media, cholbe naa.
@expose: In any economy, necessity should be cheapest, luxury the most expensive. You are reverting the logic here!
Air is even more necessary than food. How about Rs.50/kg of oxygen?
65% of the population is farmers. If ALL of them become prosperous, wheat should sell at Rs. 1,000/- per kg.
The reason Indian farmers are poor because there are too many farmers - and most don't want to improve their techniques by taking risks.
Politicians of all major political parties are directly responsible for the plight of the farmers in the country and they abet farmer suicides by not paying them adequate MSP, stealing their lands by manipulating acquisition,not paying compensation in time,not adequate fertilizer,not enough irrigation and so on. In 1947 when our population was 30 cr we as a country imported poor quality grains from the US and USSR to survive. Today with 125 cr population we are surplus in grains and we export them. It is all a tribute to he farmer and the effort of the Indian farmer.Indian politician has cheated, looted the Indian farmer and kisaan and filled his own coffers and driving the farmers to large scale suicides. Time has come when the farmers rise up to show the cunning politicians their place and their and their family members mouths should be filled with cow dung and garbage by dragging them out of their cars and houses.
Suddenly everyone seems to have become a sympathizer of farmers. Oh, what great low! Just because some progress is being made in India now, these "intellectuals" and "great hearted politicians" talk a lot. Talking big, sitting in London, will not do. Calling yourselves great economists and intellectuals, big theorists and foolish analysts, come down to reality. What do you know about India? You and your clan of "high-brow" thinkers, what have you done to the nation? You say 3 lakh farmers commited suicide? Just keep your mouth shut, and there are people who are working for the nation.
@RABINDRANATH MUKHERJEE: what do you eat then.. do you want to import wheat and rice from other countries on top of crude oil. INDIA already pushed to the corner by Crude import... Do you think the crony capitalist give jobs and change everything?
@RABINDRANATH MUKHERJEE: what did you eat at breakfast man? what a rage!!...if you don't know Mr.Ghatak its your fault....by the way its is not necessary to live in India to understand and love India....you guys worship Bill Gates, Obama, Hollywood etc...but have problems if an Indian lives outside India....by the way most people who cause damage to India(the politicians) live inside India
16 in 1,00,000 farmers commit suicide. What right things do other 9,99,984 do? Nobody talks about the responsible, overwhelming majority of farmers because it doesn't win browny points!
Income distribution WASN'T, ISN'T and WILL NOT BE equal. Those who think it should, are jholawallas. Skill demand in farming (as it is practiced) is much lower than in surgery. By arguing in favor of income distribution equality, you are arguing against specialized skills.
AND finally, farming will continue to be less and less attractive profession because if farming could increase the productivity, in last 65 years we'd have become a prosperous nation.
The best is to bite the bullet and accept that farming can't feed ever increasing population and depoliticize a lot of issues around farmers.
Government Minister or officials have no idea how to turn a village from loss-making units to profit making units. Block Development Officers with responsibility to develop villages have proved themselves useless during the last 65 years from independence. This work should now be outsourced to private firms having experts (i) to audit a village to know its weaknesses and strengths and to suggests measures to upgrade its capabilities in terms of agriculture, farm produce and cottage industries (ii) to give agriculture input suggestion for boosting production and protection of agriculture harvest (iii) to encourage farmers to take crop insurance coverage for protection (iv) to make pan-India data available of demand and supply of agriculture and farm-produce and to advise farmers to sell produce in profitable markets(v) to provide services of trainers for skill development of farmers and villagers. If private players are involved to upgrade capabilities of villagers and to make villages profit making units, farmers suicide would be a thing of past. In fact, village development works through experts would be source of employment generation of entire population rural and urban alike. Government agencies can contract to lowest bidder the work of village development to private players with necessary mandate and overview/review the work done by private players on year to year basis. People's forum can also be involved in yearly appraisals.
@Observer: you did not even understand the argument...air is not produced by human, it is natural (by the way - even clean air is sold in some countries at a premium, as the air we breath is mostly polluted!!)....nothing comes free my friend..it is easy to say"necessity should be cheapest"...but who will pay for the cost of production? somebody has to , right? For taking risks and improving techniques, there should be economic incentives...if incentives are at right place, innovation will come automatically.
The serious problem in agrarian India is: THE LANDOWNERS DO NOT CULTIVATE, THEY JUST RENT OUT THE LAND TO LABOURERS!
Trust me as a practitioner in a bank in north Kerala for 10 years. In the first few months, I sanctioned loans to individuals who showed their title to land and I inspected each of their pieces of land for evidence of banana cultivation, at the approved rate less margin per acre of cultivation. I was happy in my subsequent inspections to see the banana plants blooming there. When the time for harvesting approached, I kept a good watch to see that the loans were repaid.
In addition to normal farm loans, all the banks were lending out to the landowners jewel-backed loans at a very, very low interest rate.
During that time, a year of drought happened and heavy winds also destroyed the plants. I was sympathetic to the borrowers and recommended to my higher authorities extension of repayment time without penal interest and even waivers in some cases.
Actually, in my visits to the farms those days, I came to see the actual people who worked on the farms - they were not the landowners, they were labourers who had taken the land on 'paattam', which term stands for lease! None of these labourers got the benefit of any subsidised loan ('cause they did not have title to land); no jewel loans for them (they would not have had gold anyways, even if they had, they could not produce the evidence for having farm land to get a loan); they had to take the risk of borrowing from extortionists at high interest rate and absorb the loss if any drought or famine happened. No govt scheme could help them too as they are not the farmers as per any record!!
The land owners always got their money; they got loans at subsidised interest rate and if the crops failed, they still did not lose; if the govt gave any compensation or LOAN WAIVER, they would still get that money on the basis of land records without having had to invest any money for agriculture.
NOW TELL ME, HOW ARE WE GOING TO HELP THE ACTUAL FARMERS WHO ARE THE LANDLESS LABOURERS??? THEY ARE THE ONES WHO COMMIT SUICIDE BECUASE THEY CANNOT FACE THE EXTORTIONIST WHO CHARGE 300% INTEREST AND HARASS AT THE DOORS OF THE FAMILY IF THE LOAN AMOUNT IS NOT REPAID.
come on man !! we have enough articles . do some thing to show and replicable like grameen bank . lot of youngsters are trying to do some thing about help them.
There is no sense in this article. Farmers are stupid. Govt's stupider, but the stupidest are the "fake expert" economists like Mammohan singh, chidambaram, fat monty and now this ghatak. If a eonomist cannot formulate a model with data and prove a policy' efficaciousness then he is no good. Our finanz revenue dept can do better modeling than these fakes. Please prof, get the farmers a good DIY suicide manual. They can fill reasons as to Y they went for suicide as a option and U can statistically analyse crap. Use UR brains, get data from modi and give him a viable policy. We can do with some good intellectual exercise here. A prof will have some BRAINS.
Air is even more necessary than food. How about Rs.50/kg of oxygen?
65% of the population is farmers. If ALL of them become prosperous, wheat should sell at Rs. 1,000/- per kg.
The reason Indian farmers are poor because there are too many farmers - and most don't want to improve their techniques by taking risks.
Income distribution WASN'T, ISN'T and WILL NOT BE equal. Those who think it should, are jholawallas. Skill demand in farming (as it is practiced) is much lower than in surgery. By arguing in favor of income distribution equality, you are arguing against specialized skills.
AND finally, farming will continue to be less and less attractive profession because if farming could increase the productivity, in last 65 years we'd have become a prosperous nation.
The best is to bite the bullet and accept that farming can't feed ever increasing population and depoliticize a lot of issues around farmers.
Trust me as a practitioner in a bank in north Kerala for 10 years. In the first few months, I sanctioned loans to individuals who showed their title to land and I inspected each of their pieces of land for evidence of banana cultivation, at the approved rate less margin per acre of cultivation. I was happy in my subsequent inspections to see the banana plants blooming there. When the time for harvesting approached, I kept a good watch to see that the loans were repaid.
In addition to normal farm loans, all the banks were lending out to the landowners jewel-backed loans at a very, very low interest rate.
During that time, a year of drought happened and heavy winds also destroyed the plants. I was sympathetic to the borrowers and recommended to my higher authorities extension of repayment time without penal interest and even waivers in some cases.
Actually, in my visits to the farms those days, I came to see the actual people who worked on the farms - they were not the landowners, they were labourers who had taken the land on 'paattam', which term stands for lease! None of these labourers got the benefit of any subsidised loan ('cause they did not have title to land); no jewel loans for them (they would not have had gold anyways, even if they had, they could not produce the evidence for having farm land to get a loan); they had to take the risk of borrowing from extortionists at high interest rate and absorb the loss if any drought or famine happened. No govt scheme could help them too as they are not the farmers as per any record!!
The land owners always got their money; they got loans at subsidised interest rate and if the crops failed, they still did not lose; if the govt gave any compensation or LOAN WAIVER, they would still get that money on the basis of land records without having had to invest any money for agriculture.
NOW TELL ME, HOW ARE WE GOING TO HELP THE ACTUAL FARMERS WHO ARE THE LANDLESS LABOURERS??? THEY ARE THE ONES WHO COMMIT SUICIDE BECUASE THEY CANNOT FACE THE EXTORTIONIST WHO CHARGE 300% INTEREST AND HARASS AT THE DOORS OF THE FAMILY IF THE LOAN AMOUNT IS NOT REPAID.