Modern Indian Agriculture

Agriculture has been one of the most fascinating and interesting topics among the policymakers for the simple reason that there is scope of enormous improvements across all the dimensions. Though a lot of improvements are being suggested and discussed in the prominent think-tanks, many forgot to understand the ground realities associated with agriculture and overall situation of a farmer. I’m writing this blog to explore the possible ideological change that farmers can bring by effectively using government policies.

Agriculture is by far the toughest business, the simple reason being ‘investment-driven and fragile returns’. The reason I’ve used the term — ‘fragile’ is because the end product for farmers is heavily dependent upon uncontrollable factors like weather, insects caused by wrong fertilizers and many more. If the fortune turns out to be in favour of the farmer and he has good food produced, then comes the next sequence of problems, and these problems (unlike the earlier ones) are practically solvable. Before the recent ‘liberal’ reforms in ECA and APMC act, the farmer has to rely on the local markets for selling his food.

Though the new reforms are highly appreciable, there are major questions which will remain unanswered. Freeing the market won’t help farmer because he will eventually try to find the local market to save his transportation cost. Now let’s understand his situation in the market after taking the necessary loan and putting a lot of efforts, when he takes his food to the local market: he has already spent money in bringing the food to the market, he also has to repay the loan along with the responsibility he has of his family. Hence he can’t bargain much and has to satisfy himself on whatever he gets despite being the creator of the food. The bargaining power of a farmer must be improved in order to gain control over the supply chain. This is just not a simple change, this will not only enable the farmer to gain more control but also bring a needy change in the mindset of the farmer to think like a businessman. This will make farmers more exposed to the market and help in gaining market perspective.

But what is the way to do that? Farmers must focus on the overall by-products they can get from a seed. This is also important because we are producing excess food and government usually stops export if the prices go high in domestic markets. The general problem of planting one crop in the particular area can’t be solved immediately, instead, farmers must think of other products which can be derived from the crop. For example, sugarcane farmers can also do the production of sugar, cotton farmers can sell to different industries where cotton is raw material. But all these initiatives can’t be done alone, for this, farmers must unite and explore the possibilities through co-operative model of farming. The future is surely for food processing, and thus farmers must know the other products they can generate through their single crop. If they’re made aware about it, they can start food-processing through co-operative model (keeping the demand in mind)and ensure their prosperity. The storage culture has to be inculcated effectively on the village level so that farmers can store their grain and take them to the market wisely. The government can make farmers aware about all these modern techniques through effectively communicating with gram-panchayats.

Government has not utilized the bottom-most pillar of Panchayati raj system — gram panchayat. Surely, the government is putting all the efforts to improve the lives of farmers and recent announcements during the lockdown are proof that. Other than this, initiatives like Direct Income Transfer, generation of bank accounts through PMJDY has been pivotal in providing direct financial help to the farmers.

But as the government is still not getting away from the mentality of ‘licence-raj’ era, and if it still wants to have control over this sector, they must provide modern facilities to them. Here are some of the interventions government can do :

1. Better Functionality of Agri-universities :

More studies on market & climate-driven crops & their feasible by-products is required, hence more wide network agricultural universities are essential. This will help in understanding the available options of low water requiring crops and thus reducing the dependency of ground-water. Cloning of current water-consuming crops to less water consuming breed will be pivotal in ensuring less dependency on groundwater keeping the crop unchanged.

2. Less favouring of consumers over farmers :

Every government tries to save consumers from inflating prices by imposing restrictions on the export. This has to end. The government must let farmers’ take advantage of high prices, consumers can eat what fits their pocket. Giving MSPs to farmers and subsidizing the food for consumers won’t help in the long run.

3. Giving more power to gram-panchayats :

The bottom-most yet important part of Panchayati-raj system is yet to be utilized fully. Now that we have solid penetration of bank accounts, much more agricultural interventions can be done effectively. Apart from monetary support, a cultural shift in the methods of agriculture can be brought by community learning and making people available about market trends.

In the end, as compared to every other sector, agriculture sector stakeholders should also be given more freedom to pursue innovative ideas, food-processing cultural and overall entrepreneurial approach towards farming. This basic demand will at-least give a small, modern yet essential push which is required to observe qualitative growth in this sector.

Related posts:

Outsourcing is the foreign supplier’s method of receiving services. This is typically used by companies where there is either a shortage of work for specific positions or labor costs are too high. If…

May you find this story to be a drawbridge into the joyous castle of contentment in all your relationships. A long time ago, in the early days of England when Arthur and his court ruled at Camelot…

If there is an unwritten list of responsibilities we have as wives, I believe that speaking encouragement and love to our husbands is on that list. I was thinking about how I could be better at this…