Curbing farmer suicides should be priority

Farmer suicides and hardship in the agriculture sector continue to haunt Telangana till date. Since the separate state of Telangana came into existence in June 2014, there so far have been 3503 suicides.

According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Telangana farmer suicides are second highest in the country after Maharashtra. The primary reasons for farmer suicides in the state can be attributed to crop failure and the burden of indebtedness.

The State Government has utterly failed to provide crop insurance commensurate to industry standards leaving already thin-skinned farmers even more susceptible to the caprices of nature. Crop failure further hinders the farmer’s ability to pay back loans and two successive crop failures lead to an inevitable debt trap.

While the scheme brings relief to farmers by increasing subsidies and reducing cost of inputs thereby reducing cost of cultivation, it does not address the root cause of the crisis in the state which is lack of institutional credit to farmers. Private moneylenders often charge humongous interest rates.

Though some banks and financial institutions cover 30 percent of the credit requirement, farmers are still forced to fetch the remaining 70 percent of the credit requirement from private sources due to the absence of alternative institutional credit mechanisms.

Other reasons that have made farmers more vulnerable to financial crisis and forced them to take the extreme step of suicide are absence of a support system and unprofitable prices. The MSPs are a major part of the incentive structure in agriculture but unless these MSP announcements are backed by government support in the market, these MSPs don’t mean much.

Over the years, MSP announcements for crops other than food grains have not been accompanied by procurement from the government. In the absence of any system to protect prices of agricultural output, agriculture sector becomes far more vulnerable to the fluctuating market prices compared to other sectors of the economy.

The scheme proposed by the TRS government provides for deputation of an agricultural extension officer for every 5,000 acres to monitor and report whether or not a farmer availing the subsidy is engaging in cultivation of crops.

However, the government’s weakness in monitoring and execution as reprimanded by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India several times in the past combined with direct cash transfers in the absence of a price protection mechanism could result in reduction of areas devoted for crop cultivation coupled with more leakages and counterproductive subsidies. his would negatively impact inclusive growth and bring down the growth rate of agricultural production, jeopardizing the nation’s food security. Instead of incentivizing better farm practices and encouraging productivity, without a strategy to ensure price stabilization, the farmer investment support scheme in its current form will only discourage the small and marginal farmers who form the foundations of our nation’s food security.

The Mukhyamantri Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana launched by Shivraj Singh Chauhan government in Madhya Pradesh, which literally translates to price difference payment scheme, offers a feasible solution to providing relief to farmers in the state by paying them the difference between the official MSP and the price at which they sell their crops in the market. This difference is paid directly to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries which are linked to their Aadhaar.

On registering, farmers are given a registration reference number which they need to use while producing mandi receipts and making a claim. Following this, they receive a claim reference number which they can use for tracking purposes.

Farmers who hope that their commodities will be selling for much lower than expected, can register in advance regardless of whether they shall avail the benefits of the scheme after selling their produce. The scheme is an outstanding remedial approach to solve the agrarian crisis which the TRS government can emulate in the state, thereby laying emphasis on the outcomes as well.

The Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana prevents an emergency financial crisis by providing a dashboard with information on the cash outflow against the quantum of claims. This scheme simultaneously addresses the concerns of leakages, poorly targeted beneficiaries and fiscal responsibility in the Telangana government’s input farm subsidy scheme.

The State’s agriculture sector is now in a state of crisis owing to the mal governance of TRS leadership in resolving the issue in its 3(4) years and the prevalent agricultural structure in the state. In the last three years, the incumbent party has made announcements of its initiatives with much glorification and media blitz and yet the antecedent conditions continue to torment the agriculture sector in the state.

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, a largely successful scheme implemented all across India, has failed to take off in the state with the state government not even doing the bare minimum of raising awareness about the scheme nor obliging to contributing its share required towards the implementation.

During the Telangana agitation, the TRS party had promised to bring relief to farmers but under the current dispensation, KCR’s monocratic government remains apathetic to the appalling agrarian distress in the state.

It is high time that the government lays down a comprehensive strategy to revive our agriculture sector that includes not just monetary support but structural support via better market access, price protection and access to institutional credit.

While this move to provide relief to the farmers on the input side, if implemented with due care will prove beneficial, the state government also needs to refocus their efforts towards strengthening the support system on the output end.

By: G Kishan Reddy