Prime minister has set a highly ambitious goal of doubling farmers income by 2022. At the time when the country is observing severe agrarian crisis and farmer community is just surviving anyhow, this vision seems more like a pre-election rhetorical promise or a kind of new year resolution.
What are the hurdles?
1) Irrigation is getting costlier. Water level is going down day by day. Farmers now needs moters,pumps and machines with higher capacity of extracting water. How costly these machines are we already know.
Technologies like drip irrigation and other micro irrigation systems are also costly which farmer can not afford.
2) Cost of fertilizers and pesticides is equally high(4000 and 6000-8000 Rs/acre respectively ).
3) Since the earning of farmer is very low, transportation cost can not be ignored.
4) Minimum Support Price remains too low. Food policy analyst Devinder Sharma says that In 1970,the MSP for paddy was Rs 51 per quintal. 46 years later, in 2016, the MSP for paddy has been fixed at Rs 1470 per quintal. This is an increase of 29 times. In the same period,monthly salary of government employees has gone up by 120 to 150 times and that of college teachers by 150-170 times;of school teachers by 280-320 times.
However, government defend this by saying that increasing MSP will lead to food inflation.
5) Mandis works as per the bidding process where both government and private merchants come and purchase. The problem with this system is that government usually do not give the cash to farmers during purchase. Farmers can't wait at this point of time since they are already having expenditures pending debt. Private merchants take advantage by lowering the bid and get farmer entrapped.
6) Governments have also failed to regulate and monitor the mandis because of rampant corruption by officials deployed.
To be continued......
What are the hurdles?
1) Irrigation is getting costlier. Water level is going down day by day. Farmers now needs moters,pumps and machines with higher capacity of extracting water. How costly these machines are we already know.
Technologies like drip irrigation and other micro irrigation systems are also costly which farmer can not afford.
2) Cost of fertilizers and pesticides is equally high(4000 and 6000-8000 Rs/acre respectively ).
3) Since the earning of farmer is very low, transportation cost can not be ignored.
4) Minimum Support Price remains too low. Food policy analyst Devinder Sharma says that In 1970,the MSP for paddy was Rs 51 per quintal. 46 years later, in 2016, the MSP for paddy has been fixed at Rs 1470 per quintal. This is an increase of 29 times. In the same period,monthly salary of government employees has gone up by 120 to 150 times and that of college teachers by 150-170 times;of school teachers by 280-320 times.
However, government defend this by saying that increasing MSP will lead to food inflation.
5) Mandis works as per the bidding process where both government and private merchants come and purchase. The problem with this system is that government usually do not give the cash to farmers during purchase. Farmers can't wait at this point of time since they are already having expenditures pending debt. Private merchants take advantage by lowering the bid and get farmer entrapped.
6) Governments have also failed to regulate and monitor the mandis because of rampant corruption by officials deployed.
To be continued......
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