“Mr Manpreet Badal, give up your subsidy”

Jasmine Sandhu 
A Punjab farmer

As per the National Crimes Record Bureau, 270,940 farmers committed suicide in the period 2001-2011. That makes it 16,740 deaths every year and 46 suicides per day: a reality which no political party is willing to face. For a country which employs half its population in the farm sector, a sector which contributes 6 per cent of the GDP, the state allocates a meagre twentieth of the total public investment. The inequality does not stop here. The farmer each year has to beg for loans for buying fertiliser, seeds, pesticides and other inputs. Earlier, farmers could store seed, but hybrid seeds and commercial farming no longer enable them to do this. The new technology demands application of expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers. In a good year, a farmer makes a profit. But in a bad year, he is wiped out. Banks and private moneylenders haunt him, the weather gods fail him, and governments offer no help.

I am a woman farmer of Kapurthala, but not a marginal one. I own 34 acres. I can afford to pay for the five tubewells in my land, but I have been living on the dole of the state government. Last September, my conscience woke up as I read a newspaper report, "Another Farmer commits suicide". 

Debt was the culprit, but so was I. I contributed to his demise since I was taking away an economic benefit which I was not morally entitled to. The subsidy which the state exchequer was shouldering could have been used to improve the civil hospitals. Half the debt which the marginal farmer accumulates is due to a family member falling ill and he bearing exorbitant bills in private hospitals. No hospital of the stature of PGI has come up in the last four decades. Unfortunately, after Partap Singh Kairon, the vision of the successive chief ministers has been myopic. The state school system is in a shambles. 

Why cannot we volunteer to give up subsidy and ask that our hospitals and schools be improved? Uniforms and textbooks are not available to poor schoolchildren even as my son goes to an expensive university in the US. Half the ministers and MLAs also avail themselves of this subsidy. The Badals, Finance Minister included, are large land-owners.

Taking my social responsibility seriously, last September I wrote to the Chairman of Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd that my subsidy be cancelled and bills be sent to me. I am still waiting to hear from them.

There is a systematic loot of money and water, the precious resource. No one is talking about the fast-depleting water level in the state. No one is advocating that free power to farmers for tubewells makes them irresponsible in using water. Why should not the state give the subsidy directly to the marginal farmer in his account and impose water bills on those owning more than 10 acres? The state is not helping the farmer by paying his power bills. He will benefit more if he gets better medical facilities and affordable good schools for his children so that they get an opportunity to come out of the clutches of poverty. The farmer is a stoic brave man who tills, ploughs and nurtures food for all of us. Have you ever heard of an industrialist committing suicide? A peasant is a proud man, practising solid traditions and honesty. The moneylender does not need goons or police. He just shames him by naming him as a defaulter in the village square. The meagre loan which the poor farmer took for buying seeds and pesticides has compounded at an irrational and immoral rate. To escape the shame of not being able to feed his family, he drinks the very pesticide for which he had taken the loan. Mind you, we get meagre loans; not hundreds of crores that banks give to corporates who then swindle them.

Farmers constitute 58 per cent of the population and 84.87 per cent of the total landholdings belong to marginal and small farmers. We are in such large numbers but we are so small in structure financially that no one notices us. We are the invisible people; we have no lobby, we are too scruffy to be interviewed by posh anchors, we cannot fund political parties, our faded turbans, torn clothes and inexpensive shoes have no takers in Niti Aayog.

The government promises to procure at the minimum support price. But in practice, mandis purchase only  from large farmers and the small and marginal ones are forced to sell to the moneylender who is also, incidentally, the guy doing business in the mandi. He determines the price of the produce and later sells it at a higher rate, while the farmer goes into further debt. It's a vicious cycle. The Green Revolution helped the nation become self-sufficient in food. But in this process, 75 per cent of the groundwater has been overexploited in Punjab, the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides has harmed the soil and waterlogging is another major problem in some parts.

There is a sense of loss, a community decaying and dying due to the apathy of political class. The courage and commitment to pull back rural India from the brink is absent. The land of five rivers has never failed the nation in working hard to make the country grain-sufficient. We need honest economists to chart a plan for the next decade which should be "a scared document" to be implemented by the successive governments. This Assembly of 117 will either sink us or save us. 

But let's volunteer to give up a subsidy when we can afford to pay the bills. Let's not cheat the marginal farmer and his children. Contribute to the fabric of society and help make the farmer debt-free. Nations grow when they work collectively for the good of society. A special request to the Finance Minister, Mr Manpreet Badal: Please give up your subsidy. Lead.