Three Years Of Modi Govt: Reaping What You Sow

It is quite tantalising, actually. If you go by rhetoric, slogans, promises and acronyms, then the Narendra Modi regime is the best thing that happened to the agriculture sector in India since the Green Revolution. But even die-hard fans of Modi do realise that despite noble intentions, the deep rooted crisis in Indian agriculture is still a persistent and heartbreaking story. It is not a surprise then that cynics guffawed when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley claimed in his Budget speech that the government will take steps to double farm incomes by 2022. At the moment, that does appear a tall order.

One popular expression used by Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign was the concept of Five F. It meant from ‘farm to fibre to fabric to fashion to foreign’. It set high expectations of how the Indian farmer can reap benefits of modern technology and marketing by integrating with global markets. Three years down the road, that campaign slogan remains just that, a slogan.

But make no mistake. The regime has made efforts, from seemingly small to high profile and bombastic. Take neem coated urea. It was observed during the UPA regime that coating urea with neem would prevent massive diversion of subsidised urea that often resulted in “fertiliser riots” because of artificial shortages. Typical of many UPA initiatives, this one too went virtually nowhere. The Modi regime, however, ensured that all urea is now neem coated and that the subsidies will now be transferred electronically, eliminating corruption. Even more important, research has shown that neem coated urea is so much more effective that it has actually reduced the use of fertilisers and improved soil quality.

What has been more hyped has something to do with this regime’s obsession with the digital world. It has been announced that all the mandis in the country will be interlinked to create a single national market for farmers to sell wherever they get the best price. It might happen some day. But the fact is that Indian farmers are still in the clutches of brazenly corrupt food procurement agencies and middlemen who pocket most of the profits. The NDA regime in Maharashtra has started a bold move whereby farmers can now sell their produce directly to consumers in cities and towns. But their Herculean struggle to do this, even as vested interests keep sabotaging the effort is a sobering lesson realpolitik.

It is crop insurance where the efforts of the government will have maximum impact. Crop insurance schemes have been around for a long time. But most farmers could never access it. This regime has made a concerted effort to increase the coverage of crop insurance. As of today, almost 40 per cent of farmers have access to it. A credible and accessible insurance against crop failures is the most powerful instrument to help farmers in distress. It may not prevent all farmer suicides; but will definitely save thousands of precious lives and families.

In any case, agriculture is a state subject and it is state governments that can make the most difference. Perhaps the Modi regime could learn from the spectacular success of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shiv Raj Singh Chauhan. The state was a laggard in agriculture till the early years of this century. But Chauhan has taken steps that have brought about an almost magical transformation. In no country or state in the world has agriculture grown at more than 10 per cent a year consecutively for a decade. Madhya Pradesh under Chauhan has achieved this. Just wheat production has gone up by almost five times in just about a decade to more than 20 million tonnes. Most of what Chauhan has achieved is through common sense policies: improved irrigation by investing in small dams, guaranteed power supply to farmers during peak season and guaranteed pick of farm produce from procurement centres with minimal interference from officials.

And yet, laudable as his achievements are, Chauhan has not been able to help millions of small farmers who live on the edge of survival. The real solutions lie elsewhere. Food security is no longer a problem for India since both output and GDP have far outstripped population growth. What India really needs is for more Indians to move out of dependence on agriculture. It is simply absurd for an aspiring superpower to have more than 50 per cent of its population depending on agriculture for a livelihood. Forget the developed economies, the figure is just about 10 per cent even for emerging economies.

The real test for the Modi regime lies here: Can more than 300 million Indians find sustenance beyond agriculture? Perhaps that’s why analysts wonder if the Modi regime has done something really substantive for the Indian farmer.