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Providing a Level Playing Field for the Small Farmer

MEETA RAJIVLOCHAN AND M. RAJIVLOCHAN*

A spectre is haunting India, the spectre of farmers’ distress. Try as our

policy makers would the phantasm just does not seem to go away. If any-

thing, its continued expression in frequent suicides by farmers suggests

that the hitherto comprehensive solutions that are being tried simply do not

work. The solutions that have been suggested are so comprehensive that

one has a sneaking suspicion that those who propound them are only paying

lip service to the farmer in distress. Those to the left of the spectrum insist

that the only solution lies in turning back the clock on globalisation andreturning to protectionism, those on the right insist that the small farm is no

longer a viable proposition and that these small holders need to be shifted

to urban occupations so that the business of farming can be conducted by

large corporations which are better suited to the task. What will happen to

the small farmer in the interim is anybody’s guess. Given that for India,

the processes of economic liberalisation and of integration with the world

economy by now seem inevitable, is it possible that an appropriate solution

might lie in that old hat formula from management schools that suggests

that when in grave trouble try to convert your perceived weaknesses intoyour strength. We suggest that the time has come to think out of the box,

as it were, and make use of our extremely large mass of small and marginal

farmers to rejuvenate our agriculture.

Chapter 18 of

R.S. Deshpande and Saroj Arora

(eds), Agrarian Crisis and

Farmer

Suicides, New Delhi: SagePublications, 2010, pp. xxi +



394 MEETA RAJIVLOCHAN AND M. RAJIVLOCHAN

Over 114 million of India’s 127 million farmers operate small farms.

On each of them, some five persons, their immediate family, is dependent.

That is some 635 million people. Howsoever much as our planners might

want, it would be impossible to relocate them to some industrial gulag.

The majority of these farmers practice dry land farming. Many of them

have some skills in agriculture but not enough to enable them to move

away from the production of low-value cereals and pulses to market

gardening and other high-value agri-products. There are three constraints

here, one, that most farmers have little idea of how to access the market.

Two, that there are virtually no infrastructural facilities available for

storing perishable commodities. A rough estimate suggests that almost

40 percent of all such produce in India simply perishes before it gets out

of the hand of the farmer. Three, that most farmers have little access to

improved farm technology and knowledge.

Farming, we need to remember, was the first industry in the world.

Over the years it has evolved continuously in terms of technology such

that today, being a successful farmer means by definition, considerable

knowledge of ‘sunrise’ crops, seed varieties, crop rotation cycles and ap-

propriate farming techniques. Farming requires as much skill as any

industrial enterprise but the small farmer of today is not necessarily in the

profession of his ancestors. Over the years, there has been a huge change in

the composition of the farming community with many of those belonging

to the ranks of the balutedars or of landless labour or pastoralists moving

into farming for lack of alternative occupations. These new entrants into

farming are severely handicapped by their lack of adequate knowledge.

In these days of the internet, the urban consumer takes availability

of information for granted. He certainly does not depend on the govern-

ment to provide him with information. The television, the newspapers

and magazines, all go out of their way to educate the city dweller onvarious things that are pertinent to urban living. There is no such source

of information for the farmer. The 59th round of the NSSO survey says

that the farmer is mostly dependent on informal and unreliable sources

of information for getting knowledge about farming operations. Only

18 percent of the farmers across the country were aware of things like

bio-fertilisers; only 8 percent were aware of the World Trade Organ-

isation (WTO), only 29 percent were aware of the Minimum Support

Price, only 5 percent were members of self-help groups, 71 percent did not

belong to any cooperative. No wonder we find that the farmer often getsseduced into buying a faulty product by companies that wish to make a

quick profit and that his ability to make a quick buck in the market place



Providing a Level Playing Field 395

is so limited. After all, one’s ability to make use of opportunities would

be substantially dependent on the quality of knowledge with which one

works.

Contrary to what many of the doomsayers propound, the entrance of

the MNCs might help the farmer. Minimally these companies would

lessen the stranglehold which a large variety of middlemen have on the

agriculture marketing system in India at present. At the same time, unless

we can equip the farmer with the knowledge inputs he needs to benefit from

a globalised market, there is little prospect that such globalisation would

lead to a significant improvement in his economic status. Involvement of

private capital in infrastructure development, whether it is storages, market

yards, roads, agri-processing is both possible and desirable. But the use of

such agencies for large-scale contract farming in the hope that these

agencies will then make the necessary effort to upgrade the skills of the

farmer and thereby obviate the need for public investment in extension

and research is likely to produce a cure worse than the disease. The very

quality that guarantees the efficiency of business, the need to make a

profit, also means that due safeguards against cupidity need to be put in

place. The massive misuse of fertilisers, pesticides and sundry other agri-

cultural inputs in large parts of the country should be sufficient to alert us

to the dangers of unregulated private enterprise.

In the present case, all that the government really needs to do by

way of safeguard is to provide the farmer with agriculture extension

services, improved marketing infrastructure and better health services.

Globalisation is by no means coterminous with privatisation of all these.

Rather privatisation of these services would ensure that the farmer

remains in no position to profit from global economic processes.

Selling off a loss making Public Sector Unit (PSU) or privatising the

scavenging services of a municipal corporation is a very different pro-position from privatising extension and health services in rural areas.

Many of the votaries of privatisation seem blind to the fact that private

providers are able to provide mild satisfaction in urban communities

mainly on account of the readiness of the urban consumer to demand

value for money and also the availability of a number of options to choose

from. Farmers do not have such luxuries. The great hesitation of private

banks and telephone companies to have rural customers is an important

pointer. The government has never been able to enforce the so-called

Universal Service Obligation on anyone. The consistent reluctance ofqualified doctors, teachers, engineers and other professionals to serve in

rural areas merely reinforces a point that is consistently ignored.




As of now, providing support services to the farmer seems to be the

last thing on anyone’s mind. Or is it that only businessman, whether

MNC or trader, need a level playing field? Perhaps it is about time that

we provided our farmers with one too.

The one lacuna in all these attempts, well meaning and otherwise, is a

failure to factor in the present institutional structure of Indian agriculture,

its strengths and weaknesses. What the management gurus call a

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis is

we suggest, a much needed exercise for Indian planners. Yet, the more

our policy makers discuss the processes of economic liberalisation and

of integration with the world economy the more they identify the small

land holdings of the Indian farmer as a major weakness.1 The presumed

solution following from such beliefs focuses on increasing the size of

land holdings by shifting those with presumably unviable holdings to

non-farm occupations.2

Given that for India, the processes of economic liberalisalization

and of integration with the world economy by now seem inevitable, is

it possible that an appropriate solution might lie in that old hat formula

from management schools that suggests that when in grave trouble try

to convert your perceived weaknesses into your strength. In this chapter,

we suggest that to be the case, especially because, the time has come to

think out of the box, as it were, and make use of our extremely large mass

of small and marginal farmers to rejuvenate our agriculture. If for that it

is important that we re-tool the skills of these farmers to cope with the

changing circumstances then that is an option that we as a society and

our government will simply have to take since there is no other viable

and humane alternative.

To recapitulate some of the commonly listed causes for the current

distress of farmers in India:

1. Globalisation, resultant competition and exploitation by big capital

and its minions.

2. Peculiar banking practices in India and the non-availability of loans

from formal sources for farming operations.

3. Social and cultural distress among farmers.

4. Fragmented holdings of an unviable economic size.

5. Absence of adequate appropriate research in new methods of

farming and the exhaustion of current farm research to cope withcontemporary circumstances.

e




6. Inability of the official machinery to provide appropriate services to

the farmers and provide them with adequate succour (Radhakrishna

2007).

Solutions that have been considered practicable under the present

administrative and political set up and that have been practiced till now

are broadly encompassed by the various schemes implemented by the

state governments in Maharashtra and AP and those that fall within the

purview of the PM’s package for farmers’ relief 4. These have essentially

involved, with some important exceptions pertaining to the involvement

of big capital, turning the perceived causes of farmers’ distress on their

head, in so far as it is practically feasible, and hope that the distress will

go away.

The PM’s special package of Rs 37.50 billion and the Maharashtra

government’s separate package of Rs 10.75 billion for the six districts

of Vidarbha have already been trying fitfully to help the farmers but the

results do not seem to be encouraging. These packages include a slew of

measures to relieve agrarian distress ranging from a moratorium on loan

repayment to watershed development to the distribution of cows, farm

implements and so on.

Debt relief constitutes a large portion of these packages. Many com-

mentators have pointed out that bailing out the banks by writing off their

Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) and one-time loan write-off schemes

can have little permanent impact on the economic status of the farmer.

Improving farm income and risk management are far more important.

In fact the two major solutions currently proposed, namely, to write

off farm loans and to increase irrigation potential are self-defeating.

Most field observers would be the first to admit that these strategies can

do little to improve the capacity of the farmer to earn more in the presentcircumstances. Between 1990 and 2002 the government was able to add

an additional 7.13 million hectares of area under irrigation to bring the

total to 37.05 million hectares. The total net sown area in 2003–04 was

141 million hectares (CWC). No doubt the wheels of progress move slowly

but if they continue to move as slow as this, the majority of those who

need help, would perish before a helping hand reaches them. Any solution

needs to provide some actual help in the foreseeable future rather than

plain promises. Regarding the matter of writing off farm loans it needs

to be noticed that such an exercise would certainly improve the balancesheets of the banks but it would do nothing to improve the farmers’

creditworthiness. Moreover once it is recognised that the farmer is unable




to repay loans, then it would still be important to ensure that the financial

assistance reaches him in some direct manner and consistently without

forcing the financial institutions to extend loans which may have to be

written off in the future.

The relief packages do recognise this problem and try to put in place

measures for supplementary income generation. One strategy adopted is

investment in irrigation projects; another is the adoption of individual

beneficiary schemes. Even before the present packages, the distribution

of improved agricultural implements, seeds and milch animals have

been important mainstays of agriculture plan schemes for many decades.

Feedback about these schemes has indicated a number of problems in

implementation. The problems range from distribution of milch animals

to farmers who have no access to fodder to feed the animals to farm

implements which are unsuited to the local area and so on. Invariably,

officials at all levels respond to such criticism by saying that if only im-

plementation was proper and due attention paid to forward and backward

linkages, conceptually the schemes are very good. Conceptually speaking

however, all these schemes assume that the needs of farmers can be ade-

quately anticipated by planners at the centre and the state governments.

There is little data to support such an assumption.

These schemes are part of a larger belief that the government knows

best. This is not to deny that governments have access to some of the best

planners, all the statistics in the world and well meaning bureaucrats too.

The point is that, however well meaning and well informed any official

might be, local conditions are so varied that it is not feasible to anticipate

all that any specific farm populace might need. Such decisions need to

be left to the people.

In the absence of such a mechanism, these schemes benefit the

middlemen who supply agricultural inputs far more than they benefitthe farmers.

The reports from Vidarbha indicate a wide variety of factors as being

responsible for distress. In some cases it is crop failure, in others it is a

faulty procurement and marketing mechanism and in many others the

distress has to do with lack of support services for health, education and

agriculture extension. The point remains that there is no magic formula

which will fit all problems. The government tries to address this issue by

placing a contingency fund at the disposal of the district administration

which is used to provide assistance for education, health and such othermeasures as might be needed. But this is a small amount meant only for

emergency situations; the bulk of the funds are tied up in schemes with




pre-defined parameters. The object of the planning process should be not

just to address emergencies but to enable people to prevent them. And

that is where the problem lies.

However, the one thing which the government has studiously avoided

doing is to allow people in distress to take responsibility for their own

lives and to decide for themselves how best they need succour. At best this

indicates on the part of officialdom, a well meaning but hardly credible

belief in their own omniscience. At worst it indicates their willingness

to use the name of the farmer, to distribute largesse to a wide variety

of interest groups whose formally stated goal is to make a private profit.

Minimally one imagines, it would be important that the farmer be

asked about what he wishes. That is the one thing which the government

does not seem to be interested in doing. The doubts raised by the most

well meaning of commentators about the wisdom of local decision-making

range from ill informed arguments to expressions of plain prejudice. One

favourite argument is that the farmer does not have access to information

about improved technology and more efficient crop cultivation methods so

he cannot make an informed choice. But if such is the case, then common

sense suggests that it is the task of the government to make this infor-

mation available to the farmer through an efficient extension machinery

and then leave it to him to decide whether or not he wishes to cultivate

melons or oranges, whether to adopt vermiculture composting and

whether to buy Holstein–Friesian cows or otherwise. Yet agriculture ex-

tension is the one item which has received minimum investment or

attention.

The idea of letting people decide for themselves is something which

Indian officialdom seems to be most uncomfortable with. Unfortunately,

much to the glee of those who love to bait the government, the demon of

distress has refused to go away.6

One reason for the continuing distress, we suggest is that most of the

curent solutions focus on the idea that the small farm is an unviable enter-

prise and then try to increase the size of land holdings by shifting those with

unviable holdings to non-farm occupations. Such solutions, we submit,

completely obfuscate the very economic basis of farming operations.

Historically farming has never been a ‘stand-alone’ profession as it were

(Rajivlochan and Rajivlochan 2007). It has always been accompanied

with other income generating activities, whether or not directly connected

with the primary occupation of farming. Even in regions untouched bycommercialisation of agriculture during the colonial period where agri-

cultural production in the village was mostly for local consumption and




not the market, even here historians have noticed the subsidiary production

of goods for the market if only to obtain cash in order to pay land revenue

(Kessinger 1982). We submit that any analysis, if it is to hold out hope for

a constructive solution, must focus on institutional strengths rather than

on weaknesses. Harping on weaknesses would rather be the sure-fire road

to disaster. Moreover, in this chapter we do not propose to analyse the

causes of farmer suicides, however important these may be for there is a

certain circularity of argumentation and absence of seredipitous thinking

in this kind of a search under current conditions. Actually one suicide is as

distressing and merits as much attention as a large number of them. And

we do think that managing the well being of the people by a government

cannot be left either to an unending search for causation or merely in the

hands of experts who get unduly engrossed in statistical data ignoring

all other details that are not amenable to simplistic statistical analysis

(Rajivlochan and Rajivlochan 2006).

Without going into the lacunae inherent in the unending search for

causation about farmers distress and the problems inherent in imple-

menting a package for the solution of the current farming crisis11, we sug-

gest that it is important to come up with a solution that is both humane

and which takes into account the peculiar constraints that characterise the

institutional set-up of agriculture in India (Rajivlochan 2006a).

INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS THAT

NEED TO BE ADDRESSED

1. India today has a population of several million farmers operating

small farms (over 92 percent of 127 million farmers) and it would

be neither immediately possible nor desirable to relocate them to

the factory shop-floor.

2. The majority of these farmers practise dry land farming. The most

optimistic scenarios have shown that even were the entire irrigation

potential of the nation to be harnessed, this would still cover only

about 40 percent of the present cultivable area in the country. The

remaining 60 percent and the population dependent upon it cannot

be wished away or sent to the gulag.

3. Many of these farmers have some skills in agriculture which

however need to be upgraded.

n




4. The world market for valuable agriculture crops such as horti-

culture and medicinal plants, organically grown food crops which

can easily be grown in dry land areas and also value added agri-

products is rapidly increasing. But most farmers, even when they

are skilled producers, have little idea of how to access this

market.

5. Present infrastructure for agri-marketing is such that in the case of

most food crops and some cash crops, only half the crop is actually

utilised; the rest simply goes waste.

6. For knowledge inputs, these farmers are almost entirely dependent

upon private sector agencies. Extension services of government

are more or less non-existent. To meet international agri-business

standards, Indian growers need to have access to regular soil

testing facilities and information about how to handle pest attacks;

better seeds and crop practices and so on. However the extension

machinery of the Agriculture Department is not up to the mark.

A large number of surveys show that Indian farmers have little

information about many of the issues needed to produce goods

that meet international quality standards.

7. Weaknesses of the Indian legal system: the Indian legal system is

perceived to be strong on formalities and weak on substance. As

a result the legal system becomes a major hindrance in getting a

just enforcement of contract within a speedy time frame to help

business. Certain reform of the legal system would be needed.

8. Low quality awareness and low sensitivity to documentation: In

the international market today, in order to sell your product, the

producer needs to have a track record of good quality and also

documentation of each stage of the process to sustain their claim

to quality. Today as per European Union norms, agri-productsshould be traceable to field of origin. This means extensive

docu-mentation of the crop while it is still in the field; the need

to allocate row and batch numbers and to ensure that this infor-

mation is stamped on each package throughout the chain

of production. Growers need to be made aware of these

requirements.

9. Poor logistics: At the forward end, logistics by way of transport,

freight handling and customs suffer from serious deficiencies.

Here it is not so much goal orientation which is the problem butgoal definition. Indian governmental agencies continue to be

caught up in a regulatory mindset which produces little results and




stifles growth. Also it needs to be noticed that they do not do much

regulation either. There is confusion about what goals the agencies

are supposed to follow; sometimes this is increase in revenue;

sometimes it is checking of those who violate rules to make a

quick buck but in the process neither gets done. Agri-products are

perishable and have limited shelf lives; as such they need a very

finely tuned customs and transport set up to achieve international

competitiveness. The shelf life of a flower stalk could be as low

as 7 to 10 days. In such circumstances, the loss of some hours

can be killing. But Indian port authorities are lackadaisical to say

the least. As of now, the dwell time of exports is four days while

the airport infrastructure policy aims to reduce this to 12 hours.

The dwell time of imports is four weeks and the policy aims to

bring this down to 24 hours.

The statement in the Communist Manifesto concerning the idiocy of

rural life may fit the Indian farmer in so far as government planners, the

mass media and many other urban-based analysts are concerned. No one

seems to be interested in creating situations wherein the farmers would

be empowered, their supposed ignorance of things, technologies and

institutions, be reduced. After all, in the current world where knowledge

is power, one’s ability to make use of opportunities would be substantially

dependent on the quality of knowledge with which one works.

The farmer, far more than any city resident, is dependent on a variety

of services, which only the government can and should provide. Quite

apart from agricultural extension, regarding the quality of education and

health services in rural India, the less said the better. In fact farmers are

more vulnerable groups because the conditions in which they live are far

less hygienic and more disease prone than urban living normally is. Ifthe government dispensary is closed down or the doctor is unavailable,

there are a variety of private service providers to whom the city resident

can turn. But for the farmer the absence of a competent doctor can be and

often is a life-threatening problem.

The current favourite solution often given out by the government to

these problems depends on privatising various services like agriculture

extension, health and education even though no systems have been put in

place to check capitalist cupidity. The official checks on seeds, fertilisers

and pesticides have already been parcelled out to private players in allbut name.




Even more dangerous is the focus on contract farming and the great

desire shown by a variety of government agencies, well-meaning and

otherwise, to let big business into farming. Perhaps such officials have

the idea of vast plantations in mind and of how easily such enterprises

lend themselves to mechanisation and technology up-gradation. The sub

text to all such policies seems to be that the government does not have or

rather does not wish to make the investment necessary to re-tool the skills

of the small farmer so if big business wishes to do so in their own interest,

there is no harm in such an enterprise. For contract farming to succeed, a

precondition is that the law of contract must first be enforceable, not only

on paper but also in fact. Given the present state of our legal systems,

it is difficult to conceive of the smallholder enforcing any contractual

obligation against a large financial entity.

Involvement of private capital, whether of an MNC or cooperative, in

infrastructure development, whether it is storages, market yards, roads

is both, possible and desirable. But the use of such agencies for large-

scale contract farming in the hope that these agencies will then make the

necessary effort to upgrade the skills of the farmer and thereby obviate

the need for public investment in extension, research and health, is likely

to produce a cure worse than the disease (Rajivlochan 2007a).

Another solution sometimes suggested as an alternative to the MNC

model is the cooperative model but here we need to recognise that the

inability of Indian growers to work together in a co-operative form with

a few exceptions such as the dairy industry in Gujarat and the sugar

industry in Maharashtra is a serious weakness. Whether for production

or for marketing, co-operative working is a major strength of the

European and American systems. The flower auction at Aalsmeer in

the Netherlands which has an annual turnover running into 26 billion

euros is a co-operative effort of farm growers who wanted a better pricefor their produce. The only parallel organisation in India is the AMUL

dairy co-operative which procures and markets the milk of millions of

producers. However, this is done with a view to processing the product

and adding value. The more apt comparison in India would be with the

Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees at the District level which

exist solely for the stated purpose of obtaining a better price for the grower.

Today nearly all these Marketing Committees are dysfunctional and they

run solely at the dictates of a few powerful traders to the extent that if

there is a marriage in the home of one of these traders, the committeecould remain closed for days on end. Given the capital intensive nature

of industrial production and the strength of the marketing agents, it




would be difficult for Indian growers to obtain more remunerative prices

without getting together not just in form but also in spirit. Currently

the Maharashtra leaders have been discussing the idea of privatising

the functioning of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees. Our

legal system is so weak that in effect this may well mean a mere change

of masters from the trader to say a private company like the ITC or

Reliance. In the European Union as also the USA, constant competition

prevents the emergence of market monopolies and the legal system is

the main bulwark of that competition. Behemoths like Standard Oil in

the past and Microsoft Corporation today have had to restructure as a

result of legal verdicts in anti Trust litigation. A similar scenario in India

is well nigh unthinkable.

Under such circumstances what can be done? In order to ensure that

growers get some benefits from integration with the world economy, we

need to ensure that they get some part of the value chain or at least an

option on it, without selling all of it off to the multinational and then hope

that it will show a little goodness of heart and pass on some benefits to

the farmer. Such a belief in the milk of human kindness is unrealistic to

say the least.

Any practicable solution needs to take account of all the above and

also to ensure due community participation and ownership so that ex-

penditure is dictated by local needs and not by a few centralised schemes,

packages and/or ideas. The following measures would take care of the

most pressing needs of farmers today:

1. Provide knowledge inputs through an agriculture extension

worker, perhaps one for every 2500 population, with the worker

being located at the headquarters of the group gram panchayat. He

would be paid by the village panchayats for whom he works whilethe funds for this would be reimbursed by the Government.

2. Provide health inputs through a nurse or paramedical staff, in a

ratio of one for about 500 population. Currently the nurse to

population ratio in rural areas in India is about 1:2198 which is

about 17 times lower than the US nurse to population ratio of

about 1:129. Even if the Indian ratio were to be increased to 1:500,

this would still be about one-third of what obtains today in most

developed countries. The National Rural Health Mission provides

a much needed emphasis in preventive health care but does notaddress the issue of curative health. Curative health services by

the government are so skeletal that the majority of expenditure on




health is today in the private sector. We also need to remember

that health indebtedness is one of the major reasons for farmers’

suicides. We submit that without going into any elaborate schemes

for health insurance, the mere presence of diagnostic services at

village level may make a tremendous difference.

3. Make these functionaries directly accountable to and paid by the

local panchayats, the government merely being a funding agency.

The principle of ‘subsidiarity’ which states that functions should

be handled at the lowest level possible, needs to be followed.

4. Use information and communication technology tools to streng-

then these knowledge and health services and to facilitate access

to market information for farmers. A combination of newspapers,

radio, television, telephone and the internet could be used. The

only word of caution needed is about avoiding a one-size-fits-all

solution. For states with good infrastructure and resources, internet

kiosks may be a viable option but states like Madhya Pradesh faced

a major revenue generation problem with the model of a Common

Service Centre/internet kiosk. How to provide this information

to the farmer should take into account specific local conditions

instead of the details being dictated by some centralised norm

(Rajora 2003).

5. Ensure a free, competitive marketing system instead of the present

system that is heavily weighted in favour of the merchants. Provide

e-markets and electronic auction halls which are connected to the

national/international marketplace in each district for the sale of

farm produce. The use of such marketplaces would considerably

improve prices for produce; they would also improve traceability,

and help set up the tagging systems which are so important for

supply chain management. Another option could be to set up suchmodern market places in select urban centres and to connect these

with collection centres in each district.

6. Allow the creation of storage, grading and product handling

facilities thereby ensuring that the percentage of produce utilised

increases. This would mean more investment in warehousing and

better transport facilities.

7. Provide direct cash subsidies to farmers to replace the present sys-

tem of offering subsidy to companies (whether fertiliser, electricity

or irrigation companies) in the name of the farmers. This wouldimply allowing the farmer to take his own decision about how to use

the subsidy rather than the government taking the decision for him.




If all farmers with a landholding of up to 10 acres (which means

over 90 percent of all farmers in India) were to be given a subsidy

of about Rs 5000 per hectare, it would be a tidy social security net

and this would still be less than 10 percent of the agriculture GDP

in India (Rajivlochan 2006b, 2007b).

Small farms, if provided the requisite knowledge inputs, could well be

the key to an economic upturn in the fortunes of farmers. Much however

would depend on the availability of these inputs and on the willingness

of the government to provide these. Given the present institutional con-

straints, policy makers in India need to look at concrete options to enable

smallholders to survive not only with dignity but as constructive units

in the economy. All field experience shows that it is entirely possible to

increase productivity of small farms, provided that due policy support is

available. This proviso is a crucial one. It also reflects a basic difference

in the underlying assumptions of the strategies proposed. The present

strategy which focuses on big business, the private sector and contract

farming as a solution to the knowledge gap and setting up of big irrigation

projects by government as a solution to the infrastructure gap, sees the

farmer as a foot soldier who can have no resources or initiative. All

resources are to be provided by big brothers, whether in the government

or outside. The alternative solution which suggests that all we really need

to do is to empower the farmer by providing knowledge and health inputs

and enable him to find his own solution means giving up the big brother

role. This is something the government will have to do.

NOTES

* Meeta Rajivlochan is in the Indian Administrative Service, Maharashtra cadre,

1990 batch; M. Rajivlochan teaches contemporary Indian History at the Panjab

University, Chandigarh. A shorter version of this chapter appeared in the Economic

and Political Weekly, Mumbai, March 15, 2008.

1. For an alternate version see for example Bhalla (2006), where Bhalla uses

NSSO data to highlight the dismal condition of the peasantry in India and argues

that it would be dangerous to endanger the livelihood of the small and marginal

farmers who constitute over 80 per cent of the landholders in India.2. Would they be eager to shift away from the land unless attractive alternatives

are available? The question is answered in brief by Singh (2006), with his deep




experience of handling social disturbances where he notices the possibilities

of those being pushed into a corner taking recourse to the gun for a resolution

of their problems.

3. Details can be seen on the website of the VNSSM. Highlights of the PM’s

package for Vidarbha include spending money. The broad allocation is as

follows: Irrigation, Major, Minor, Micro: Rs 24.95 billion; Debt Relief:

Rs 7.12 billion; Seed Replacement: Rs 1.80 billion; Horticulture projects:

Rs 2.25 billion; Supplementary income generation (pregnant milch

animals, chilling plants, fodder etc): Rs 1.35 billion; Agriculture Extension:

Rs 0.03 billion. The highlights of the Government of Maharashtra’s Special

Package for Vidarbha include: Capital Formation Fund: Rs 3.70 billion;

Subsidy on rescheduled crop loan: Rs 2.25 billion; Compensation to Cotton

Farmers: Rs 1.34 billion; Watershed Mission: Rs 1.00 billion; Organic

Farming (vermiculture, etc.): Rs 0.30 billion; Agricultural Allied Activities

(Milch animals, poultry, sheep and goats, etc.): Rs 0.30 billion. The focus

is on spending the money and not so much on asking the farmers what their

needs are.

4. A look at the reports concerning the distress of farmers on the website

http://indiatogether.org would be illustrative.

5. Mridula Mukherjee, in her study of Punjab agriculture documents that usury

was the preferred form of investment for any disposable income among the

agriculturists of Punjab during colonial times (Mukherjee 2005). She also

notices that a large chunk of the income in rural Punjab came from government

service in the form of salaries and pensions. A healthy rural community would

be substantially dependent on such sources of income other than agriculture.

The soldiers of the Indian military too came mostly from an agricultural

background, their military incomes providing an important supplement to

their agricultural income. A significant amount of rural usury too was in the

hands of the farmers even when it was the village bania who took the blame

for being usurious.

6. See for Bhalla (2006) where Bhalla uses NSSO data to highlight the dismalcondition of the peasantry in India and argues that it would be dangerous to

endanger the livelihood of the small and marginal farmers who constitute over

80 per cent of the landholders in India.

REFERENCES

Bhalla, G.S. (2006) Condition of Indian Peasantry. New Delhi: National Book

Trust.Central Water Commission (CWC). Water Information. Ministry of Water

Resources, Government of India. Available online at http://www.cwc.gov.

in/main/webpages/statistics.html (last accessed on 2nd June 2010).




Hardikar, Jaideep and P Sainath (2010) Reports Concerning the Distress of

Farmers. Available online at http://indiatogether.org/agriculture/suicides.htm

(last accessed on 2nd June, 2010).

Kessinger, Tom G. (1982) ‘Regional Economy 1757–1857: North India’, in

Dharma Kumar et al. (eds.)The Cambridge Economic History of India Volume

II: c. 1757–c. 1970, p. 250ff. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.

Mukherjee, Mridula (2005) Colonizing Agriculture: the Myth of Punjab

Exceptionalism. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Rajivlochan, M. (2007a) ‘Suicide by Farmers: Remedy Lies in Better Governance’,

The Tribune, May 24.

——— (2007b) ‘He’s Left with Nothing’, The Times of India, March 29.

——— (2006a) ‘Suicide Epidemic among Farmers’, The Economic Times,

September 9.

——— 2006b. ‘The Plight of Farmers: A Case for Direct Subsidies’, The Tribune,

August 17.

Rajivlochan, Meeta and M. Rajivlochan (2007) Farmers suicide: Facts and

Possible Policy Interventions. Pune: Yashada.

——— (2006a) ‘Why the Farmer Reaps Despair’, The Indian Express, September

26. Also see Meet and Rajivlochan, ‘Evaluation of existing studies’, in

Farmers suicide: Facts and Possible Policy Interventions. Pune: Yashada.

As also Meeta and Rajivlochan in ‘Books’, in The Forsaken Drylands:

Seminar, August 2006, No. 564 being a review of the report ‘Suicide of

Farmers in Maharashtra’ submitted to the Government of Maharashtra by

Srijit Mishra et al., and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development, Mumbai

and ‘Causes of Farmer Suicides in Maharashtra: An Enquiry’, final report

submitted to the Mumbai High Court, March 15th, 2005 by Ajay Dandekar

et al. Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Rajora, Rajesh (2003) Bridging the Digital Divide. Gyandoot—The Model for

Community Network . Mumbai: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.

Singh, Prakash (2006) The Naxalite Movement in India. New Delhi: Rupa.

Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavalamban Mission (VNSSM). VNSSM, Governmentof Maharashtra, details available online at www.vnss-mission.gov.in

(last accessed on 2nd August, 2009).

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providing a level playing field to the small farmer

Documents