Agriculture : Shift in Priorities

Bowing to the eternal need of vote bank politics, the rulers relented and the farmer's agitation has been called off and dust has settled in Singhu border or has it?

The farmer's agitation were ruffling plenty of feathers around. A large number of perfectly sane and intelligent citizens were shouting hoarse in its favour and an equal number of equally sane citizens were in opposition. Even my barber had an opinion about it and why not, as a votedata he has to have an opinion about the annadata.

And it is here lies the entire controversy for and against the farmer’s protests. How come anyone be my annadata or my food provider. I pay my hard earned, tax paid money for my food, nobody gave it to me for free. Or maybe since I do not get it for free I do not count. And my food may not be even grown in my country. A few months ago we were having onions from Turkey, Egypt and Afghanistan. Quite a large part of the pulses and definitely cooking oil is sourced from abroad. So the idea of a hardworking, skin and bones farmer somewhat gets muddled in the process. 

So what exactly is the image of an Indian farmer?

The skin and bones image sadly is true. Half a billion Indians are dependent on agriculture and even today lives below ₹50 a day. The farm laws are supposedly made to make their lives better. These laws are an attempt to clean out some of the outcomes of short sighted developments.

But there is plenty of slip between the lip and the cup!

To answer this question lets go back a little. On Independence about 45% of our GDP came from Agriculture, we were on the brink of a food crisis and moving from one tight spot to another. Today contribution of agriculture has reduced to almost 15% of our GDP and we have enough food grains to tackle any crisis in foreseeable future. However the prospects of the farmers hasn’t changed at all. Their hand to mouth existence hasn’t improved dramatically.

Nobody mentions that the share of Agriculture has reduced from 45% to 15% of Indian GDP in the last 70 years whereas Service sector contribution has increased from 30% to 60% in the same timeframe. This seems at odds with our current perceptions. Don’t we have the largest population in the world? Didn’t we have the largest food shortage just a few years prior to independence? Don’t we have a sword of food shortage hanging on our head?

No we do not. We have more than enough to feed our population, but then why do we have the skin and bones picture of an indian farmer. 

Lets lay down the points.

Today we waste upto 16% of the foodgrains every year for the lack of proper storage. which translates to nearly 3kgs per man,woman and child per month, and sadly can be the difference btween adequate nutrition and development of our future unborn citizens. The only way is adequate storage and the government is not going to do it anyway. private equity is the only solution. The farm laws could have provided a direction.