The farmers involved in the farmers’ movement are not fighting for any ego. They are seeing the fate of the promises made by governments on agriculture for decades. Seeing the people around him getting separated from farming.
It was known that people’s eyes are on the books of those banks, which had more than two trillion dollars of NPAs. Because of this, banks were seen with a bad eye. The solution has been found. All the bad loans of banks will be taken out and deposited in another bank and its name will be the bad bank. This will happen that all other banks will become good. You can read the Economic Survey 2016–17 on how the arguments for bad banks are framed. The statement of a great man of the 5th century is brought out and an attempt is made to tell the bad bank as the good bank. The farmer also commits suicide by drowning in debt, gets ruined, he does not have a bad bank to get rid of the debt. There is a bad bank for corporates. Similarly, subsidies are not only available to the farmers but also to the auto and textile industries so that they make technological improvements. The government is giving money for improving the technology in the private sector. If you want money from the government in different ways, then go corporate. By showering lakhs of crores of rupees on the corporate, for the remaining 80 crores, a free ration is being given along with the bag. In this way, a bad bank is a bad child who will be raised by a good government.
The year of doubling farmers’ income in India is 2022. Between July 2018 and July 2019, the Ministry of Statistics of India has conducted a survey. An attempt has been made to find out the income and expenditure of agricultural households. The government is not only talking about these figures of the National Sample Survey Office that the farmer of India earns only 27 rupees a day from plowing. Earning less than half a dollar. In Europe, the cow gets a subsidy of 2 dollars. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and professor at Columbia University has said that it is better to be poor in developing countries than to have a cow in Europe, which gets a subsidy of about $ 2 a day. In 2018–19, a farming family in India was earning Rs 10,218 a month from farming and other activities. In 2012–13, it used to be Rs 6,426 per month. In six years, the farmers have reached 10,000 by crawling from 6 thousand, so you can understand how their earnings are increasing. You can understand what would have happened in the two years of the epidemic, 2020, 2021. Analyzing the National Sample Survey, Abhishek Waghmare of Business Standard has said that in six years, after taking out the price of inflation, only the income from agriculture has increased by 21 percent. Accordingly, in 2018–19, the farmer of India was earning only Rs 3,798 from farming. In 2012–13 he had a debt of Rs 47,000 which has become Rs 74, 121 in 2018–19? Not only this, the sample survey shows that the size of the farmers’ land has become smaller than before.
It is visible in this survey that farmers are not earning from farming. He is becoming a laborer to feed his stomach. Will this worry the government or will the government be happy. The government must be happy that people are leaving agriculture. A committee was formed under the chairmanship of Ashok Dalwai to suggest doubling the income of the farmers. Which has reported 14 volumes. On page 144 of Volume 2 of the Ashok Dalwai report, it is written
For a significant increase in the income of farmers, people will have to be removed from agriculture and sent to the non-farming sector, which has high productivity. Rather some farmers have also started leaving farming. This pattern can be understood from the census data of 2001, 2011.
It is not that this time only people are leaving agriculture. According to the 2011 census, 2000 farmers are leaving agriculture every day. This means that even after leaving agriculture, the income from farming is not increasing. Today fewer people do farming than before but those few people are also earning less than before. The farmer is being forced to leave farming. Between 2002–05 and 2011–12, about 3.5 crore farmers left agriculture. Did the income double?
After the first lockdown, the condition of these people running from cities to villages in the scorching sun is telling about how much they were earning in the cities. These pictures are telling that this time the village was left, then they returned, when the village itself is destroyed, then where will these people return next time. The cities which the workers built with their cheap labor did not support the workers. Right now we are talking about doubling the income of the farmers, but when we talk about the increase in the earnings of these laborers working in the cities in the last ten years, then the balloon will burst. While the road of the locality is broken, but Netaji is showing the dream of building a flyover fifty kilometers away. After twenty years, it will be known that some corporates have become self-sufficient in the matter of agriculture in its name and are doing arbitrariness. As happened in America. Many poor countries have been ruined because of these policies. Ramesh Chand, the current member of NITI Aayog, wrote a report in 2017 that by 2022, the share of agriculture in India’s total working population will come down to 55 percent, then income will double. So the income of the household is being doubled by evicting people from the house.
Amazing economics. In any such company, if more than half the people are fired, then its earnings will double. This idea should get a Nobel. Companies will rule over their cheap lands by expelling farmers from villages. The same companies will take packages of thousands of crores from the government to run textile and automobile companies in the cities.
In 2016 it was announced that the income of farmers would be doubled in 2022. So it becomes important to know how many farmers were thrown out of agriculture in these five years, even then will we be able to see farmers’ income doubling?
We need to remember again and again that we are discussing data from July 2018 to July 2019. This survey was not done after 2014. Happened after 4 years. We don’t know what was the impact on farmers’ income during demonetization. Still, when will the survey from July 2019 to July 2020, July 2020 to July 2021, do not know. Big surveys of elections are done in weeks. But such important surveys keep coming and going on their own accord. Obviously, the condition of the farmers would have worsened after Kovid.
The farmers involved in the farmers’ movement are not fighting for any ego. They are seeing the fate of the promises made by governments on agriculture for decades. Seeing the people around him getting separated from farming. They have come to know that the income by going to the cities is very less. Somehow worth living. As a result of that, 80 crore people are being given free food grains. This is because they are not getting wages. Corporate profits are increasing, man’s wages are decreasing. From above it is also necessary to keep the worker alive for wages, so the government is giving free food grains by spending lakhs of crores. The government is also giving subsidies for the corporate to get cheap laborers. By law, the company should deposit the provident fund of its employees, but the government came up with a plan that the company’s share would be deposited from public money and the profits would be of the entire company. Do you understand this game?
The Reserve Bank has said in one of its surveys that there has been a decline in employment generation since 1991. So it should be kept in mind that they are being driven out of farming into poverty in a new place and not being driven out of poverty. Urban poverty is at a terrible level, only then economist Jean Dreze has talked about starting MNREGA in cities. If there is no MNREGA, what will happen to the poor?
Originally published at https://mr-gn.blogspot.com on September 19, 2021.
