The farmers have done their sums

The farmers have done their sums
Yoginder K. Alagh

Going back to the village is always a useful experience. We are now in the Deccan plateau. The soil out here is good alluvial stuff, but it is an arid region. The first farmer we talk with has canal irrigation. Madhav Namdev Aher farms six hectares at Loni Khurd. He is well off. But he is unhappy. Why, I ask him. ``Everything is more expensive,'' he says. ``Seeds, the medicine I sprinkle, the pesticides I use.''

I check up the brands of the various items he uses and discover that they are companies with big names. ``You are buying good stuff,'' I tell him. ``Your output is going up. Prices of what you sell are also going up. Farmers always complain.'' But he is not easily persuaded.``You are the arthashastri,'' he says. ``We know you. This is not the first time you are coming here.'' He rattles off the prices from the last time I was there. In term of numbers, he says, he is worse off. I am drinking his chash, so I won't contradict him. The other farmers who have gathered around also nod in agreement. ``Why don't you tell your friends in the government about our problem?'' they say. I promise them that I will do so after checking up the facts. ``If you are right, we will make noise,'' I tell them.

``You don't believe us?'' one of them asks. I am close to breaking the unwritten rule of the chaupal. Trust. ``It is not that,'' I interject hastily. ``This has to happen, if we are to complain convincingly.'' I walk away, leaving not too good an impression behind me. I can see that years of familiarity save me from being ticked off. Before I go, one of the kisans asks me why thy are not given loans to build a pucca house. I insist that the banks do give housing loans. Also the budget gives many tax breaks. They look at me pityingly. A professor who doesn't know his facts. ``The banks don't give such loans to kisans, unless we can give zamanat. We have already taken loans for crops and tubewells,'' they say. They don't pay any taxes anyway, I tell myself. I mutter something about second mortgages as I beat a not-very-dignified retreat.

The next village, Nirmal, Pimpri, is dry. Here they are really poor. Vishwa Nath Patil owns five hectares. The rains have not been good. There was not enough retained moisture in the soil. There was no winter rain. Even if it rains now, we will only recover our seed. What are we to do? This is the land of good Marathi cooking and beautiful people. I talk of tree crops and how, with water conservation and trees, people are making money. There is money to be made, I tell them, in shahi zeera, khus, jaiphal and the other spices which add the punch to what is euphemistically called Marathi chicken and in the henna the women use. Dr Bhaskar Gaekwad, who was walking with me and runs the local Krishi Vigyan Kendra -- one of the best in India -- can show them the technology for some of these crops which will grow here. He had at my instance gone to CRIDA and knows the ropes.

But you can't win in the village. Vishwa Nath tells me that he is already growing trees in around a hectare with the horticulture the university at Rahuri has propagated. Mangoes, ber, anar, and so on, are common here. His trees need a year more and then they will bear fruit. But he doesn't have the money to last out. They won't give him a loan on his dry land. A past loan has to be repaid, but the rains have failed twice now. Trees are not collateral, even when they are a year away. I go away shattered, promising to do ``something''.

Seeing the level of disquiet among the farmers, I decide to check on the prices they pay versus the prices they get. I go to the CACP Report of 2000. I had started publishing them in 1982 as chairman of the Agriculture Prices Commission, and they continue coming out. Taking 1989/90 as a base, I find that the prices of the intermediates the farmer buys, have gone up by 229 per cent in 1997/98, the last year for which data is available. But in the same period, the prices they get of what they sell has gone up by 199 per cent.

This is the period of liberalisation, of the state not selling seeds and pesticides any more. Withdrawal of the state does not mean competition. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating. The large companies of the private sector are very necessary, but we must organise competition for them. Alternate delivery channels to the kisan are important. This is the question of credit to farmers' organisations -- coops, small companies and so on. Covering the last mile has always been our Achilles heel.

Why can't we have an appropriate economic policy for tree crops -- the so called minor forest produce? Forest products are on OGL, with a low tariff. We need the relative profitability of these crops to improve. Also credit. The Capoor Committee tells us that the experiment on cyclical credit in 1989/90 was discontinued. This was started by me as a part of the Special Foodgrains Programme in 1989. The Capoor Committee wants it back, since this will finance the tree and the watershed development cycle. But is anyone listening?