Thursday 25 February 2016

FARMING SECTOR CRITICALLY ILL - ON VENTILATOR


India is a country of 240 million households and around half of them are involved in agriculture. Unlike what is witnessed in the developed countries we have predominantly small farmers with less than 2 hectares of land each, who rely on rain God to irrigate their land. For the first time in over 100 years we are facing four back-to-back drought years and farmers in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra and U.P are being suffocated to the point of extinction. To this if you add the lop sided arithmetic that while our farmers number just over 50% of the total population, these growers contribute little more than 10% of GDP you will easily understand their plight. India’s farming households have a large potential market, but often receive only a fraction of what you, the consumer, pay.

The land ceiling acts restrict the amount of land a farmer can own. This, along with partitions of farms, generation after generation, has led to fragmentation of the farmland. Most of the farms in our country are today very small and are not enough to support a family with a decent standard of living. So those who were proud farmers two generations back are forced to send their grandsons to work as labourers in the cities and sacrifice the healthy village life for dingy urban slums.

Agriculture growth was projected at 4% in the 12th five-year plan (2012-13 to 2017-18). So far, because of the successive drought years, agri-growth has slumped to about 1.7% annually. A negative growth in food production this year could further aggravate the situation. Modiji and his Neeti Aayog clearly need to bring back focused attention on agriculture and farm distress. This may be required even for BJP’s political survival. Another year of drought and unabated suicides by farmers in many parts of India will come surely come to haunt the NDA in the next election. So, how does one change such an agriculture system into one which can be more productive, more resource-efficient and more profitable?

The solution is multifaceted. To increase productivity, reduce post-harvest losses and meet consumer demand, farmers need to access technology and information; also infrastructure such as waterworks, roads and storage facilities; and markets and financial solutions such as credit and insurance. This requires the collaboration of various stakeholders, from governments, businesses and NGOs to farming and academia.

1. Planning: Plan a profitable crop. The new Soil health card should reach all the farmers and they should be advised professionally about the nutrient application requirement of the farm, without which there is tendency to apply more of the wrong kind of fertilizer to the soil. This excess application is not only destroying the soil, but also making farming unviable. So step 1 is preparing soil and choosing the correct crop.

2. Nurturing: Professional advice for judicious use of inputs like water and pesticides. There is a need to reduce the gap between the best and the worst yield in the village. Later reduce yield difference between the best farm in the village and the yield at the research centre.

3. Cooperative farming: farm labour is becoming expensive, thus arises the need for advanced technology and farm mechanization. For the small farmers it just does not make sense to purchase any equipment of their own because there is not enough work for any size of machinery on any one farm. The solution is to have equipment that can be hired on an hourly basis by the farming community. This is being facilitated by IFFCO, the leading cooperative in India but we need cooperatives in every village.

4. Better targeted subsidies: Massive amounts of public money are spent in subsidies (Rs 75000 crore per year for just fertilizers) which do not actually reach their target demographic. This money could much better be spent doing things that only the government can do, like providing irrigation. Only around a third of Indian farms are properly irrigated. With solar energy being the new Modi thrust area, why can’t we have solar powered pumps for borwells?

5. Minimum Support Price: Governments set MSPs for the produce, which are supposed to be the minimum prices that farmers will get, but they also end up becoming the maximum prices as no trader will want to pay the farmer an amount much higher than the MSP. The bargaining power of the farmer is reduced because they do not have long term storage space for their grains. The states have their own prices which are generally slightly above the MSP. All this makes farming frankly unprofitable or barely profitable. Consequently, they cannot build up any capital to reinvest and improve the productivity of their farms, or save for the draught. In Indian rupee terms India is offering about Rs.1400 per quintal and Pakistan Rs.2000 per quintal of wheat. Ironically, the price offered by the Pakistan government to its farmers approximates the promise Modiji made during his election campaign which is part of the BJP manifesto—50% profit margins over cost of production. Clearly, this is the biggest failure on the government’s part - failure to keep its promise made explicitly in the BJP manifesto.

6. Failure to keep out middle men: Pulses are grown extensively by poor farmers in pockets of southern Rajasthan. The farmers sell their produce unprocessed and normally through a chain of middlemen. As the dal is unprocessed and the middlemen charge huge cuts, farmers receive a tiny fraction of the price paid by the consumer. Moreover, since the farmers are scattered and not unionized, the middlemen and traders are able to dictate the prices, causing further loss to the farmers. Why can’t farmer’s cooperative run their own mills? This will force traders to buy at a higher price, thereby benefiting the farmers. Since the mill will be located in the village, it will significantly cut transport costs. Finally, farmers who are part of the cooperative are able to control the process of dal making and selling and will receive a share of any future profits. If Kurian could do this for milk then why can’t the Amul model be tweaked for our agricultural produce?

7. Government should facilitate linking the farmer cooperatives to market players such as an organized retailer, a processor or an exporter. It should invite private Indian investments and FDI in building food cold chains, food processing, packaging, food storage facilities and hold people accountable for letting food grains rot in the open railway yards. The plan should cover the entire value chain, from production at farm level to the marketing at the consumer end – from field to the dinner plate.

8. Crop Insurance: This is an excellent move by the government of the day and it should reach all the farms. It is necessary to protect the farmers from natural calamities and ensure their credit eligibility for the next season. It envisages a uniform premium of only 2 per cent to be paid by farmers for Kharif crops, 1.5 per cent for Rabi crops and 5% for annual commercial and horticultural crops.

9. Research: We should start by doubling funding for agriculture research. Train the trainers. We must allocate more funds to transfer knowledge to the farmer. We must formulate policies to accelerate and incentivize research, and incorporate technology as a resource-liberating tool to help the farmer. Unfortunately, as production increases, price of produce falls for which we need better post-harvest marketing solutions.

10. We should buy directly from farmers: Besides helping the farmers to get the maximum price we will get it fresh, at a lesser price and the authenticity of the place of production and carriage will be there. If you are in a society then you must get contact of local or nearby farmers and support them by allowing them to supply their fresh farm produce e.g. Fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulses. This will build a great rapport among the smart citizens and the farmers.

Friday 12 February 2016

THE TWIN EVIL THAT BREEDS WITHIN

I am sure by now, particularly after Arnav Goswami’s outburst got viral, you all know about the haloed campus of JNU where their leftist student union leaders, the “well-educated”, “literate”, “knowledgeable” Indians are shouting in support of Afzal Guroo, that too in the capital of this intolerant country, where supposedly opinion is stifled, where free speech doesn’t exist. In this meet the leftist students not only idolized Afzal Guroo and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs but shouted slogans “India go back, Kashmir ki azadi tak jung chalegi. Bharat ki barbaadi tak jung chalegi”. And this was a cultural event…..whose culture you might ask! Students, whose education is being subsidized by our tax money, are imbibing, fostering and propagating a culture which is anti-national!


Cut, cut, cut……….Clap. Scene 2: In Jammu & Kashmir, no less than the J & K High Court Bar Association, holds an extra-ordinary general meeting to pay “glorious tributes” to “Shaheed Maqbool Bhat” and “Shaheed Mohammad Afzal Guroo” who according to the Bar Association, were hanged in “most barbaric, inhuman and brutal” manner for fighting for Kashmir’s freedom. This is a resolution passed by them in J & K and they suspended work on 9th and 11th February, to “pay homage to the martyrs”


Cut, cut, cut………Clap. Scene 3: In the Rohith Vemula case, we were told that he was protesting against the death penalty and not in support of Yakub Memon, but in the news clips we can see these elements glorifying terrorists, calling them “Shaheed” and even worse, praying for “Bharat ki barbaadi”.


Is there a pattern emerging in all this? Politicians of both religious and left and left of centre (LLCT) hue – Owasi, Pappu and Muffler all rushed to Hyderabad to express their solidarity with the protestors and anger against an intolerant and oppressive government. I am eagerly waiting for them to visit the JNU campus and show their unflinching support to the J&K Bar Association.


JNU is, and has always been a pro-naxal and pro-extremist institution, which has disguised anti-national and anti cultural ideology in the name of ultra elite and post-modernism. They are a bunch of hypocrites when it comes to the practice of abhorrent caste system in their campus and the hostels. Mainstream left has sidelined the OBC, SC, ST to such an extent that these marginalized groups had to form their own party BAPSA and contest elections. It is fashionable in JNU to call Indian army as “rapists” but the irony is, JNU has the most number of sexual abuse cases, and one ex- president of JNU who was a member of a progressive leftist party which claims ” bekhauf azaadi” had charges of sexual harassment against him. JNU campus organizes plays like Gadha Puran, celebrates Mahisasur Diwas to show their pseudo-intellectual superiority by castigating our proud heritage and the LLCT that financed the University has chosen to turn a blind eye towards all this!


We all have been students and we know that if you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, but then again if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain! This is called growing up. Leftism and youth both share common characteristics, namely immaturity and idealism and this can be tolerated and pampered to some extent but if that means idolizing the terrorists, we have a problem in our hand. Leftist radicalism is seen as ‘just a phase’ that a person simply grows out of as he/she matures. Youth is characterized by an abundance of time that adulthood can rarely provide. It comes with a particularly acute sense of individualism whereas adulthood entails the responsibility for one’s own self, one’s friends and family and one’s country and the world. Communists are more engaged in their own make belief world and they speak in different voices to suit different occasions.


For all those who think the freedom of speech is under threat, let’s be clear, it is rather the monopoly of freedom of speech that is threatened. If the LLCT is so much for freedom of speech then why didn’t it didn’t allow Tasleema Nasreen to stay at Kolkata, her favorite city? Politically their hypocrisy is even more baffling. They opposed Israel's occupation of West Bank and Gaza but never raised any voice against Chinese occupation to Tibet or Russian occupation of Baltic countries and Afghanistan.


But do you know why they chose Afzal Guroo, Maqbool Bhat and Yakub Memon as their brand leaders? Why is it that the Muslim communal icons were fancied? After all the Marxian dictum is -'religion is the opium of people' then why softness towards the religious obscurantism of the Muslim fundamentalists? This is their intellectual hypocrisy for not only are they both anti-national, but they both enjoy many similarities.


Both the Communists and the Muslim communalists are internationalists in character. The Communists attempt to 'ape Russia and China' for everything. The Muslim Communalists on the other hand are emotionally attached to Perso-Arabic socio-culture with Saudi Arabia as their international centre.  They are both thriving in secular India which they intend to destabilize, but dare not go to their haloed land of ideals for the fear of being persecuted. They both do not believe in the concept of nationalism and while one puts ideology before the nation, the other puts religion ahead of the country. The Muslim communalists believe in pan-Islamism in which there is no place for motherland. As supra-nationalists they do not have faith in nationalism. To run down the pre-medieval heritage and culture of this ancient land emerged as their common programme. Patriotic association that constitutes a nation with common heritage and culture in which hearts and minds move in one direction is not acceptable to either of them.



So the twin demons of Communism and Muslim fundamentalism are conceived by falsehood, and nurtured by ignorance, must be exorcised by truth. The government of the day cannot remain a mute spectator.