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09 Mar to 15 Mar 2016
No signs of doubling the farmers’
By Devender Sharma
The average income
a farmer gets from
farming activities,
including what he
keeps for his family
consumption at home, in
17 States of India is Rs
20,000 a year. In other
words, the monthly
income of a farmer in
these States is a paltry Rs 1,666.
Yes, you got it right. Rs 1,666 only.
Now, put yourself in this picture frame.
If you were a farmer and able to make only
Rs 1,666 per month what would you like
to do? Wait for another five years? Live on
hope, thinking woh subah kabhi to aayegi
..
So when Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley, while presenting the budget 2016,
yesterday in Parliament said: “We need to
think beyond ‘food security’ and give back
to farmers a sense of ‘income security’” I
waited with an abated breath. But when
all that he promised was to double farmers’
income by 2022, still good five years away,
all my hopes came tumbling down.
Five years, the Finance Minister wants
the farmers to wait. After five years,
and even if the promise is realised, the
income of farmers in these 17 States will
go up to Rs 3,332 a month. I can imagine
the Economic Survey, to be presented
in 2022, proudly stating that because of
the continuous efforts, the government
has succeeded in doubling farmers
income. Certainly, what an ‘achievement’
economists would say. But by that time,
adjusting for inflation, even the Rs 3,332
would be equivalent to Rs 1,666 that a
farmer is able to make now.
This surely is a sense of ‘income security’
that the government has promised.
At a time when agriculture is in deep
crisis, with agrarian distress lomming
large over the past several years,
something that even the Economic
Survey 2016 brings out quite in detail,
I was expecting the government to
income in next five years
perform an immediate surgical operation.
Considerting that the spate of farmer
suicides has jumped from the existing
nationwide average of 42 a day, to 52 a day
in 2015, agriculture required an urgent
attention. Just mentioning agriculture
some 50 times in the budget speech
provides no succour to a sector which is
languising in neglect and apathy.
Prevailing farm crisis is not an outcome
of low agricultural productivity. It is not
as if the farmers do not know how to
increase crop productivity as a reult of
which his income continues to stagnate.
Productivity is important but if it is not
backed by remunerative price, a farmer
will continue to suffer. Take the case of
Punjab, India’s frontline agricultural
State. Punjab farmers produce 4,500 Kg/
hecatre of wheat and 6,000 kg/hectare
of paddy – a very high crop productivity
indeed – in an area that has 99 per cent
assured irrigation. All the development
indices that the government is projecting
in this year’s budget , including expanding
irrigation, are already existing in Punjab.
And yet, according to the calculations of
the Commission for Agricultuiral Costs
Ground Reality
and Prices (CACP) the net income from
a hectare of cultivating wheat and paddy
(the usual cropping pattern followed in a
year) is about Rs 36,000, which comes to
a monthly realisation of Rs 3,000 only.
Compare this with the basic monthly
salary of Rs 18,000 a chaprasi will get after
the 7th pay Commission is implemented. I
will not be surprised if a newly-appointed
chaprasi also becomes eligible to pay
income tax soon after he joins service.
Economic Survey 2016 therefore is
wrong when it says that the central
challenge to Indian agriculture is low
productivity. The primary challenge, let
me make it clear, is what the Finance
Minister spelled out, and rightly so, is –
‘income security’.
Talk of farmers income and mainline
economists as well as the mainline media
spare no effort to brand you a leftist. On
several TV channels yesterday I was
appaled to see how panelists were visibly
disappointed even at the emphasis on
the word ‘agriculture’ in the budget
speech. What is not being understood
is that agriculture has turned unviable
not because it is unproductive or is not
paying enough but has been deliberately
kept impoverished all these years. Let me
explain. In 1970, the minimum support
price (MSP) for wheat that the farmers
received was Rs 76 per quintal (100 Kgs)
In 2015, 45 years later, the MSP for wheat
was raised to Rs 1,450 per quintal, an
increase by 19 times.
In the same period, the basic salary
(plus Dearness Allowance) of government
employees has gone up by 120-
150 times; of college teachers and
university propfessors by 150
to 170 times; of school teachers
by 280 to 320 times; and of top
executives of India Inc by a
whopping 1,000 times. While
the salaries of employees were
raised phenomenally in the past
45 years, farmers were starved
of their legitimate dues. If only
the wheat price had been raised
by the same yardstick, hiking it
100 times at least, the MSP for
wheat should have been at least
Rs 7,600 per quintal. The
arguement is that if wheat prices go
up, food inflational will skyrocket. It is
therefore obvious that farmers had been
penalised all these years merely to keep
food inflation in control.
This is the reason why the NDA
government has backtracked on its
promise of providing 50 per cent profit
over the cost of production. Farmers
income, seen through the hike in MSP,
has only been raised by a nominal 3.2 to
3.6 per cent every year. So while every
else in the organised sector gets a hefty
pay hike, farmers are being deliberately
ignored. I thought it was an appropriate
moment for the government to make up
for its ‘anti-farmer’ image. The enhanced
public sector investment in agriculture
has to be accompanied by steps that
can boost farm income. If only the
government had announced a Rs 3-lakh
crore economic bailout package for the
farming community, and followed it up
by setting up a National Farmers Income
Commission to ensure that farmers get a
guaranteed monthly take home income
package, the wheels of economic growth
would have spiralled. More income into
the hands of 60-crore farmers would have
not only provided them with ‘income
security’ but also created a huge domestic
demand thereby leading to the revival of
industrial growth.
This in reality is the only prescription
for Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas.
Presents
gorgeous model
Why It’s Better to Ferment Paddy Straw Than Burn It
At a farm fair in Punjab, Vivian Fernandes
comes across an entrepreneur who tells
farmers why paddy straw is not for burning.
By turning paddy straw into manure through
fermentation, an engineer turned entrepreneur
says he has tackled Punjab’s twin problems of postkharif
atmospheric pollution and water logging in
the south-west region.
Sanjeev Nagpal, Sampurn Agri Ventures. Photo
by Vivian Fernandes
Sanjeev Nagpal of Sampurn Agri Ventures has
set up a plant in the border district of Fazilka to
digest paddy straw anaerobically and produce
manure rich in silicon which plants need for cell
formation. He says, in the process it can drain out
the district’s excess groundwater caused by seepage
from canals that irrigate it. Rising water tables are
destroying kinnow orchards in the Abohar area,
which is Punjab’s citrus hub.
Punjab produces 20 million tonnes of paddy
straw every year. Its high silica content makes it
unpalatable for cattle. Since the cost of rolling it into
compact bales and transporting it to power plants is
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not economical, farmers tend to burn the straw at
the onset of winter to prepare the fields for wheat
sowing. This poses a health hazard to people in the
state and cities like Delhi.Conservation agriculture
can help as can fermentation to produce manure.
Nagpal’s stall at a farm fair in Abohar, Punjab,
advertises that burning one tonne of paddy straw
releases about 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide, 60 kg
of carbon monoxide, two kg of sulphur dioxide, 200
kg of ash and three kg of particulate matter. But
when digested for 35 days, it can produce 600 kg
of manure, which sells for Rs 5,000 a tonne or even
Rs 8,000 when mixed with neem cake to repel pests
like nematodes.
Sampurn Agri Ventures’ plant can process
15,000 tonnes of straw a year, or the output of 7,500
acres. Nagpal says the Haryana government has
agreed to lift his entire production of manure for free
supply to farmers. The manure has orthosilicic acid,
a silicon supplement, which gets depleted when
rice is grown without let. In natural conditions
it is produced about below the surface but usually
beyond the reach of rice plants.
Nagpal says he has innovated on technology
bought from Germany. A by-product from
fermentation is gas rich in methane, about 12,000
cubic meters of it, for which he gets a subsidy. He
hopes to compress the gas and sell it as auto fuel.
The slurry left behind has calcium sulphate and can
be spread over soils to neutralize their alkalinity.
The drained water in the Fazilka area is saline.
To scrub the water of salts, Nagpal employs shrimps,
which need calcium carbonate for shell formation.
The shrimp he exports to Dubai. Technology and
thoughtfulness, it seems, can turn waste into
wealth.
Model: Eashita
Hobbies: Modeling, Dancing
Photography: Yatish YKR (www.portfoliofashion.com)
Modeling Agency: Kaalia International Talent Management (www.kaalia.com)
Smart Mummy
Presents
Smart mom- Alka Sharma,
Smt Alka Sharma, MA (Political Science with PG
Diploma in Management from Bharati Vidya Bhavan
is a successful entrepreneur in capacity as proprietor
SKS TEX INDIA. initiates her Managerial skill in
balancing Business, House hold and above all takes
care of her son Kunal studying in Engineering. Planing
meticulously has proved herself successful mummy
Congrats on INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY.
Similarly, If anyone among you can also
handle family, house, Profession smartly, then we
request you to send your photo and details to us
on this email: aryavarthexpress@gmail.com
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