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Crop damage & delivery of compensation

In order to make compensation fair and right based the crop loss assessment needs to be shifted from the block level to individual cultivators It must cover the prevailing level of land rent plus the input cost
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Families of farmers, who commited suicide, stage a dharna outside the district administrative complex demanding release of compensation, in Bathinda. Tribune photo: Pawan Sharma
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THE unseasonal rainfall and hailstorms accompanied by fast winds in the month of March 2015 have extensively damaged rabi crops, mainly wheat, mustard, pulses and vegetables, in the states of UP, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab.  The preliminary estimates indicate the loss to the extent of 113 lakh hectares of crops.  It is also estimated that the wheat loss is expected to the extent of 3-5 per cent of the production in the current season.  

At the national level, this loss may be around Rs10,000  crore or more.  The country can afford to compensate this loss on account of well-being of the farmers and food-security needs of the country.  The farmers whose livelihood depends on the successful harvest of the crop cannot bear this loss. The poor farmers meet their family needs and also repay loans of the banks and money lenders after crop harvesting. Unsure of any support and unable to bear this loss, a large number of farmers have committed suicides. 

Vagaries of nature

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Agriculture is affected adversely by vagaries of nature cyclically after every four to five years in some parts of the country.  In order to help the farmers in distress the country has to set up some principle-based norms to access this loss and the amount to be paid as compensation.  Earlier norms for crop loss assessment was that the crop damage was fixed at 50 per cent or above at a block level, this has now been reduced to 33 per cent. But the assessment unit remains the block.  The rate of compensation per acre was earlier Rs 4,500 for dry land and Rs 9,000 for irrigated land.  This has been now revised to Rs 6,750 per acre for dry land and Rs 13,500 for irrigated land.  The raise in the rate of compensation and lowering of threshold level of crop damage criteria for eligibility by the Union Government is appreciated.  But several issues remain unresolved even now.  How is the compensation rate per acre fixed and what does it include?  This is not spelled out.  In many cases it does not cover the commercial rate at which the land lease contracts take place. 

Fixed rates

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The governments keep compensation rates fixed for many years and revise them when there is huge loss and enough public cry is made and demonstrate  it as an act of benevolence towards the farming community rather than ensuring a dignified right of the farmers to get compensated for crop damage.  The compensation needs to be fixed keeping in mind the ongoing land lease rent plus the cost of inputs for that crop, as estimated by Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) for each region every year. 

Needed a fair criterion

The assessment of crop loss needs to be changed from block level to farm level.  Sometimes, in the same village the crop of some farmers is damaged completely  while the crop of other farmers is not damaged.  This especially happens in the case of crop loss by hailstorms.  The present criterion is not fair as it leaves many farmers uncovered whose crop damage is complete.  

It leaves out farmers from many villages if crop damage at block level is below the threshold level of crop damage.  This criterion is outdated and does not fit into commercial farming.  The loss has to be assessed crop wise and farm wise, rather than block wise for purpose of fair compensation. 

The present mechanism of crop damage assessment follows three steps.  In the first stage, assessment is made by the state government through the state Revenue Department, which exclusively relies on the reports of village patwaris supposed to be based on girdawari (the record of crops cultivated by farmers) of land.  The report prepared by the state Revenue Department is submitted to the Agriculture Ministry of the Union Government as a second step.  

Dependence on the patwaris

The Union Government sends a Central Team to the state to verify the assessment made by the state Revenue Department.  As a third step, the Central team makes its report available to Union Agriculture Ministry which then take up the matter with the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Disaster Management to make the funds available to the state government for disbursement among the farmers. 

There are several problems with the present system of crop damage assessment. Most serious problem is that it is solely dependent on the village patwari and his record of girdawari.  The village patwari in the British period and the immediate years after Independence used to assess the village wise and crop wise yield potentials to fix land revenue for collection by the Revenue Department.  

His record was counter-verified personally by tehsildars, Sub-Divisional Officers (SDO) and DC/Collector.  This practice has been abandoned for many years.  There is no system of verifying girdawari made by patwaris by their senior officers as land revenue has become a very nominal amount and has been abolished in states like Punjab.  The girdawaris by patwaris are no longer a reliable record of the crops sown or crop loss.  

As an institution the patwari has forgotten the skills of assessing crop loss.  Most of the patwaris sit in their offices in the cities/towns and never visit villages.  Our discussion with some senior revenue officers and leaders of BKU brought out that Patwaris have collected data from villages through mobile phones from village namberdars/sarpanches without visiting those villages.  The institution of patwari is corrupt and functions in a partisan way.  

The patwaris are, now, only custodians of land records of the owners.  They are  no longer keeper of records of cultivators.  The Punjab Government many years back decided that the patwari cannot enter the name of a tenant in his girdawari unless the owner gives an affidavit that he has leased out his land.  In the land records, the actual cultivators are the land owners even if they have rented out their land.  

If compensation is paid as per girdawaris, it will be paid to owners of the land rather than actual cultivators.  Some of the studies bring out that in the states like Punjab and Haryana between 20-30 per cent land is under the tenancy system.  

The present mechanism not only leaves out the tenants but also the poorest of the poor, the agricultural labourers from payment of compensation who also suffer from the crop damage.  

The state governments submit the report to the Union Government based on faulty record of patwaris. The Central team visits some areas/villages which are reported in the state government report crossing threshold level of damage in a few days field visit guided by the local officials.  

Make it fair and right-based

In the present situation, April 15 was fixed as deadline for state governments to prepare assessment report to be submitted to the Union Government.  By this time in many parts of the country the wheat crop will be harvested and the central teams will not be able to verify the claims/assessment prepared by the state government.  This will become a factor in delaying the payment of compensation to the distressed farmers.   

In order to make compensation fair and right based, the crop-loss assessment needs to be shifted from block level to individual cultivators.  The compensation must cover the prevailing level of land rent plus the input cost.  

The compensation will reach the actual cultivator if the present system is changed and the actual assessment is made by experts from the agricultural universities and the agricultural departments in coordination with officials of the Revenue Department by visiting damaged fields and recording the name of actual cultivators. 

Fifty per cent of the compensation should be paid to the cultivators and to agricultural labourers as an ad hoc payment within 15 days.  The entire compensation must be cleared through cheque payments within one month from when harvesting begins.

— The writer is Professor of South Asia at Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh


Farmers’ suicides: Unreliable data 

The Punjab government has ordered a “fresh survey” on farmers’ suicides. This was done on three occasions in 2012. In three years, no step has been taken to conduct this survey. 

According to recent reports, the years to be covered in the survey are from 2012 to 2104. An amount of Rs 15 lakh will be sanctioned and this is to be divided among Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjabi University and Punjab Agricultural University. Each university will receive Rs 5 lakh. 

The previous report on rural suicides submitted by the universities, had covered some districts up to 2008, others up to 2010 and yet others up to 2011. District Sangrur was covered up to 2008 by the Punjab Agricultural University. Subsequent to the report, a few Sangrur district families were given ad hoc compensation, although their cases were from later years and their data did not find a place in the survey. A good research work presents data that is as complete as possible and congruent so that data can be compared. 

Suppose we wanted to compare all rural suicides in 2011. This would not be possible using the present report as large areas were omitted for those years. In order to make a survey that is acceptable from the research point of view — and be fair to the victim families in all the districts — the period of the survey must be uniform for all the districts. Years left out in the case of some districts should be incorporated in the data. The Rs 5 lakh research sanction is grossly inadequate. 

At the time of the previous survey, all the universities complained of the state’s niggardly grant for the work. The universities said that students visited every village and met either the sarpanch or a village elder to collect the data. The police used much the same methodology when they “investigated” rural suicides and concluded that in five years an all-Punjab grand total of seven rural suicides had occurred. 

With such micro-budgets, the universities will again employ students to gather the data and these enumerators will inevitably adopt a “hit-and-miss” method. Making such a paltry grant is a way of ensuring that the data is defective and reflects only a small fraction of the actual number of cases. The states give lakhs in cash awards to sporting medallists in national and international competitions, but a survey that will surely form the basis for the state’s policy and in turn influence Central policy with regard to rural development gets virtually nothing. 

The importance of this census cannot be understated. Some years ago, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had assured the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee that rural suicides simply didn’t happen in Punjab. It was subsequently denied any measure of help when the Centre granted relief packages to states affected by rural suicides. The Punjab government should sanction a higher amount so that an accurate and complete survey report is produced. — Inderjit Singh Jaijee

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