Articles
Agitation of Farmers Against the Three Farm Laws (2020)
Dt :2/2/21
Agitation of Farmers Against the Three Farm Laws (2020)
Dr T H Chowdary*
The stubborn and prolonged agitation of farmers predominately from Punjab and around Delhi, for the past many weeks calls for a fundamental appraisal of farming/agriculture in the country and the farmers’ economic situation. Farming is essential because without food production, people won’t survive and the nation cannot thrive. That farming and related trades and the people engaged in them should be specially treated is accepted by all nations. It is this universal acceptance of the special situation of farmers and farming that has, over the decades in our country led to the following special treatment:
· For the last several years, every year Rs. 70,000 to Rs. 1 lakh cr of farmers’ debt is written off or given to the farmer as input subsidy etc.
· While all property owners have to pay a property tax, farmers owning land are not to pay any property tax.
· The agricultural incomes are exempt from income tax.
· Fertilizers are heavily subsidized by the Union Government
· Water is given to them free although it costs a lot to store and distribute water.
· Waters are lifted from the rivers and distributed. The cost of the electrical installations and cost of energy for lift irrigation are borne by the state and not by the beneficiary farmers. This runs into thousands of crores of rupees .
· In certain states, farmers’ crops are insured. The insurance premium is borne by the state itself.
· In order to ensure that the cost of farmer’ s produce is not more than a price that the crops get , Union and the State governments procure a number of farm products at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) .
2. All this financial support to the farmer and farming is considered essential for a nation to be fed . To implement the Food Security Act, government is the single largest buyer of paddy and wheat and this at the minimum support price. It feeds over 80 cr of people under Food Security by supplying wheat and rice to the poor people at no price or nominal price to them. The Food Security provision alone is costing the government something like Rs. 60,000 cr a year.
3. The input costs for farming have increased by leaps and bounds because of the introduction if Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme under which the labouring people in rural areas are paid wages for very little work for scores of days . Therefore the wages for labour has increased, especially during transplantation, harvesting and preparation of the land for transplantation as these are season- bound and whatever is the wage, labour has to be engaged.
4. All these costs are being incurred by the nation in the conviction that food production is essential. But is food alone sufficient for people to live and prosper ? Are not health services and medicines and education not essential ? Without good health and some amount of education , what will be the people worth ? Improvement of the people is also a social good that has to be undertaken by the State . But are we spending even a fraction of what is being given as subsidies for farming, for the health workers that is, doctors and nurses and education workers, that is teachers and lecturers? While asserting that the State’s spend on farmers is justified whatever the cost , will the medicine men, health workers and teaching people be justified to agitate like the farmers and stall health services and education services?
By raising these questions I am not inciting or pitting the men in the medical, health and education services against farmers. But they are also essential has got to be accepted . Would they be justified in demanding that they would stop medicating and teaching unless they are given such consideration and value and remuneration as farmers? In Belgium, teachers pay is exempt from income tax.
5. Actually, in India the present system of farming and agriculture cannot be sustained for long. This situation was foreseen by the greatest economist, statesman, law- maker and reformer, the late Dr B R Ambedkar. In the Manifesto for the SC Caste Federation of India to fight the first general elections in 1952, he postulated that the problem of poverty and agriculture are linked . His positions was :
· The population is increasing enormously . It must be controlled by drastic measures.
· The land for farming per person is coming down precipitously because of uncontrolled rise in population and partition of the father’s holding among children,
· Because of the division of the property, the land inherited by family members is distributed in different areas of farming, thus reducing the size of farm land per farmer, in successive generations and the small one distributed in different locations.
· Agriculture must be radically reorganized. The agricultural land should be consolidated into contiguous economic units of say 10 acres and given to those who actually cultivate it.
6. This involves the acquisition of farm land by the State, compensating the owner. Banks were nationalized. The share holders of the banks were compensated . For eg: the person whose land is taken over can be given a bond which gives in perpetuity a reasonable payment linked to the inflation.
7. Agriculture should be mechanized. Government should establish machine tractor stations and the machinery should be given on hire to farmers who can’t afford to buy and own the machinery.
8. A paper which was written by me and published in the journal South Asia Politics is appended herewith. It is my request that the experts whom the Supreme Court constituted a committee to study the issues raised by the farmers agitation and suggest a solution, may kindly go through Dr .Ambedkar’s analysis and remedy. (955 words)
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