On farm front, red is the new green

POLL PLANK: AGRARIAN CRISIS

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 20

Village after village and house after house, we come across badly Photoshopped photographs framed and placed on shelves. The dash of gaudy red and green in the background of the photographs stares us in the face.

The photographs are of young and middle-aged men; at the bottom date, month and year is mentioned. And above it, names are mentioned preceded by the word “Late”.

Story behind each photograph starts with crop failure or hospitalisation, continues with debt and ends with pesticide.

It is different in the homes of agricultural labourers. You don’t see photographs there. Nobody remembers the dead there? When you are not even sure of your survival, there is no time to remember the dead, says a leader of agricultural labourers.

We are in Punjab’s cotton belt, Green Revolution’s laboratory for a “bright future”, where farmers and agricultural labourers are posing questions to candidates irrespective of their affiliations. Posters and hoardings, “banning their entry into the village” welcome the nominees.

The media has been reporting agrarian suicides since the mid-1990s, but 2015 finds a special mention as it was the worst year on account of cotton crop failure.

The state government, in its report, had stated that 449 farmers and agricultural labourers had committed suicide then — and the trend continued even in 2016.

As per a government’s survey, 6,926 debt-ridden people in Punjab’s countryside took their lives between 2000 and 2010; among them, 43 per cent were Dalit agricultural labourers.

Now, three universities of the state have undertaken a fresh survey. Insiders tell us that in the past five years, around 7,000 suicides have been reported.

The government claims farmers owe Rs80,000 crore to banks and arthiyas.

It is not for the first that agrarian crisis has become a poll plank. In 2007, the SAD had announced in its manifesto that it would give jobs to members of families of farmers and agricultural labourers, who committed suicide because of debt.

“Can Akalis tell us which promise they have fulfilled completely in 10 years? he asks. “Even Rs3 lakh compensation they are paying against the promise of Rs5 lakh to families of suicide victims was fulfilled after a long struggle.”

Now, several farmer organisations are demanding a complete loan wavier as a short-term measure. The list of demands is exhaustive when it comes to long-term measures.

Almost every party is making promises. But experts feel that none of them is able to touch the pulse of the crisis because they have yet to understand its root. Renowned economist Sucha Singh Gill says that seeds of crisis lie in the model of agriculture which starts with the Green Revolution.

“By early 1990s, net income of farmers started shrinking. So, for almost two decades, it was evident that agriculture was becoming unviable for small and marginal farmers. But governments of the day did not pay heed,” he says.

With highly mecahnised farming after the Green Revolution, the requirement of labour came down drastically, hitting agricultural labourers badly.

Agrees Prof Ranjit Singh Ghuman, CRRID, Chandigarh. “When marginal and small farmers started coming out of agriculture, they had no other option because non-farming employment avenues lacked opportunities for them,” he says.

The marginal farmers were neither educated and nor skilled to get employment in non-farm sectors.

Ghuman adds the way all parties have shown lack of understanding of the agrarian crisis, it seems the trend of suicides won’t stop in near future.

What parties promise

Congress: Loan waiver, continuation of free power to farmers, law to prevent kurki of farmers’ land, compensation to be raised to Rs 10 lakh for families of suicide victims.

AAP: Loans of small and marginal farmers will be waived. Besides, interest on loans of other farmers will be waived to make peasantry debt-free by December 2018.

SAD: The government had, in the Budget session last year, announced that it would introduce pension for farmer above 60 years on the pattern of contributory pension scheme.