Farmers Uprising in India Corporate Take-Over and the Widening Rich-Poor Divide
The G20 Summit show-cased the best of India to world leaders. The moon-landing and the lavish Ram Mandar opening gave further political boost the BJP government led by PM Modi. However, the farmers uprising in northern India has struck like a bolt of lightning and the BJP government is in trouble just before the elections.
The farmers uprising in North-West India is a complex agro-economics issue which also shows the mis-management of agriculture sector by successive State and Centre governments. Farm production and pricing issues are complex and farm experts are divided. The earlier protest by farmers was only the beginning of what we are likely to see in future. There are likely to be continual rounds of confrontations between the government of any political party and the farmers of India.
False promises will be made to farmers and broken. For example, doubling of small farmers real income was promised by BJP a few years ago. It was not kept because it made no viability sense! The days of small farmers are numbered but the proud kisan-jawan sons of farmers of Panjab and Haryana have not been given a dignified way to get out of farming through higher education and alternative employment.
In a very short time, PM Modi, reaching for the stars, has been brought down to earth. Subramanian Swamy, an Indian politician and economist, himself a Hindu nationalist and a member of the BJP, does not mince his words about Modi and his poor grasp of economics. Swami believes that Modi has specialist advisors but he tells them what advice to give him!
The situation has been made worse by the authoritarian style in which Modi government has mishandled the whole farm issue. Today, an aerial view of Panjab and Haryana gives the impression of a war zone! Tear gas canisters have been ped from a drone on thousands of farmers on the road to Delhi at the border between Panjab and Haryana. Police has sealed roads by erecting barriers of barbed wire, spikes and cement blocks. The army has been called in, The fortified road blocks on national highways manned by armed men in uniform give the impression of confrontation between two countries. The revolt is spreading rapidly to other northern states and even the rest of India.
The present farm crisis is the result of political mismanagement of agro-economics and agro-ecology - the relation between agricultural crops and the environment. For decades, agricultural diversification has been preached by experts at universities like the Punjab Agricultural University, but never put into practice through government agro-policy and pricing mechanisms. Minimum Support Price (MSP) could have been used to move farmers away from wheat and rice production to other commodities while saving Panjab from long term environmental damage including the ping water table. Also, the smooth employment transition from agriculture to industry, IT and services through better education has been neglected. Non-agricultural sectors have been kept away from Panjab.
The agricultural and allied sectors are the most important for the Indian economy. About 60 percent of the Indian population works in agriculture contributing about 18 percent to India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Take-over of agriculture by the corporate sector is pushing small but proud farmers to become labourers.
That is unlikely to be acceptable to the farmers.
Gurmukh Singh OBE
Principal Civil Servant retd UK