Economic and social transformation of 82% of Small and Marginal Farmers

LOST IN REPEAL

Mita Bora

mitanathbora7@gmail.com

70 per cent of its rural households of our country still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, with 82 per cent of farmers being small and marginal.While a tiny percentage of farmers enjoy rich lives and another small percentage lead a middle class life, a large majority of farmers in India still live in poverty.

A look at the farmer's suicide statistics show that out of 5,579 suicide committed by farmers, as many as 5,098 are committed by farmer labourers. A total of 4 lakh farmers committed suicide between 1995 to 2018, the onus of much of which lies on the age old antiquated agricultural laws, non-supportive of the real farmers. And though governments of the past through their policies of liberalisation and privatisation, claimed to revolutionise all industries, they could not solve the miseries of the vast section of farm labourers, the poorest of poor amongst them; who remained exploited and driven to suicide.

Come 2020, three new Farm Laws were passed.

On 5th June 2020, three Farm Laws -- The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and 'The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act-2020' -- came into effect.

Thereafter, over 221 days that these laws were in force, they were met with protest and agitation from the state of Punjab to across the nation and the world over, from declaring the protest being a social and economic agitation to giving it political shape, till the Supreme Court put a stay on the laws in September 2021.

And on 19th November 2021, PM Narendra Modi took a decision to repeal the laws. Interestingly, what he said while repealing the laws has caught the attention of all.

"I apologise for not being able to explain to some farmers what we wanted to do through the agriculture laws. We have decided to repeal the three farm laws and will withdraw all three bills in the upcoming Parliament session."

"Despite the efforts made by our agricultural economists, scientists, and progressive farmers, we could not convince the importance of the farm laws to the farmers."

"Our government brought the farm laws for the welfare of farmers, especially for the welfare of small farmers, in the interest of the agricultural world of the country, in the interest of the country, and for the bright future of the village poor."

The question is, if laws were revolutionary, were designed to provide independence to farmers and free them from their past sufferings, why wasn't farmer's community acceptable to the laws and allowed them to be implemented for a year or two to see whether it really changed their lives.

However, what got lost in the process is the huge turnaround the present government brought in the Agriculture sector and its related activities.

For example, the Farmer's Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 proposed an electronic trading platform for direct and online trading of produce. Entities that can establish such platforms include companies, partnership firms, or societies.

As many experts now say –

"While the merits of the laws — giving farmers the choice to sell and traders/processors/retailers to buy from outside regulated APMC mandis, allowing both sides to enter into direct supply contracts and doing away with stockholding restrictions on agri-businesses — cannot be doubted."

"Throughout the protests, interests of those farmers who are not wealthy and do not own vast tracts of land were missing. With the U-turn, Modi has condemned them to another quarter-century of economic subjugation."

"The much-needed disruption of the rural hierarchies has been stalled; the transformation of India's agrarian economy from a locally managed to an industrialized one where small and marginal farmers would have emerged as partner-entrepreneurs by tapping into the myriad opportunities has been scuttled. And all this has been done by a relatively small group of rich landholders and middlemen who see in the reforms an erosion of their political and financial clout and had staked their lives on thwarting the liberalization."

"These laws were meant to bring free-market choices for the average farmer who would now get the opportunity to enjoy the freedom to directly sell their farm produce intra-state or inter-state at a market price to private players outside the physical premises of markets notified under state Agricultural Produce Marketing legislations. That also meant that the influential interest group that had so far controlled this ecosystem would be loathed to let this disruption happen"

A look at the eNam (National Agriculture Market) that is an online trading platform for agricultural commodities in India, one that facilitates farmers, traders and buyers with online trading in commodities, has more than 1.11 crore farmers and 1.14 lakh traders registered and trading online. eNam had covered 90 commodities across 16+ states and 2 UTs.

The best part is that farmers can avail the facility of partial payment in cash(as per the limits set by the respective states) and remaining in their bank account for e-NAM trade.

A glimpse at one of the success story.

MuskuVidyasagar, resident of the Velkatoor village, BalkondaMandal, aged 45 years old owns seven (7) acres of land where he cultivates Paddy, Maize, and Soybean crops. He has been a seller in the market yard Nizamabad for last 15 years and all through, he was made to perform sale activity through Commission Agents. He has been a witness to open manual auction, electronic and now e-NAM and e-NAM (Direct Purchase) modes of selling in the market yard. In his own words, he says "he never had access to prices of commodities of other markets and earlier used to stay back in the market yard for two to three days till completion of weighment and wait 20 to 30 days for receiving his payment as there was total lack of transparency in price realization and deductions made by commission agents. It was understandable that he was made to sell his produce at the rate offered by the local purchaser, never offered clarity on deductions made and the purchasers have been offering lower rates showing the reason of the presence of high moisture content in the agriculture produce brought by him.

Taking the e-Nam option, he sold 26.16 quintals of soya white in e-NAM (Direct Purchase center) saved an amount of Rs.1427.00 through additional commission and Rs.1501.00 by way of reduced hamali charges. On a quantity of 26.16 quintals, he received a benefit of an amount of Rs.2929.00 in a single transaction of produce worth Rs 70,000.00(approx). Thus, by selling away his 270 quintals of Soya, Vidyasagar has become richer by more than Rs 30,000.00 off his agri produce, which otherwise would have gone to fill coffers of Commission agents. Further, he received the payment for the produce within 24 hours of selling through online transaction. Online payments on the portal increased from Rs 3.38 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 70.62 crore in 2017-18. Between April and July of this this financial year, they crossed Rs 68.17 crore.

Example of an eNamMandi Trading Details.

APMC's JALNA

Price in Rs. Modal Price 4,470

Max Price 4,960

Commodity Arrivals 13,429

Commodity Traded 13,058

And still why did these farmers fail to see what could transform their lives positively.

Many leaders said that they could not strategise the communication to the last mile farmers.

So who were responsible to communicate the benefits of the law to the farmers?

Who were responsible for awareness and sensitization of the farmers once laws were brought to force?

Who planned communication process and the timeline to reach to the poorest of the poor farmers?

What technology, methodology, language, tools was used to break down the laws in simple understandable format to convey the right message to the farmers?

Have a large section of the farmers, being uneducated, misled by protestors?

Had farmers been provided by wrong representations and diluted versions of the three historic Farm Bills?

If so, isn't farmer's education the key to empowering them and freeing them from the clutches of multiple problems.

Time to bring transformative change not in policy but also in strategy for farmerswellbeing. Let strategy start with educating farmers to empower them with decision making ability, so that they don't have to depend on others to explain to them what economically and socially beneficial to them.

Let them read, understand, analyse all laws affecting their lives and decide for themselves whats good or not good for them; what needs agitation and what needs acceptance.