Farmers in India remain in poverty - but why?

Every year, about 11,000 people who work in farming in India are listed as having killed themselves. The actual number is probably much higher, and in recent years the number of suicides is increasing. High levels of debt, the impacts of climate change and  government policy are all factors in the despair of small-scale farmers. In this episode of Human Rights Magazine, Aditya Sathe explores the reasons behind the poverty of India’s famers, and possible solutions. 

Human Rights Magazine is produced by The Upstream Journal magazine. The host, Derek MacCuish, is editor of both. If you agree that informed reporting on human rights and social justice issues is important, your support would be welcome. Please rate the podcast wherever you listen to it, and tell your friends about episodes that you find interesting. Why not consider making a financial contribution to help us cover costs?  You are always welcome to email with your comments.

Transcript

Intro by podcast editor Derek MacCuish:   

Every year, about 11,000 people who work in farming in India are listed as having killed themselves. The actual number is probably much higher, and in recent years the number of suicides is increasing. High levels of debt, the impacts of climate change and  government policy are all factors in the despair of small-scale farmers. In this episode of Human Rights Magazine, Aditya Sathe explores the reasons behind the poverty of India’s famers, and possible solutions.

Host of this episode Aditya Sathe: 

A couple years ago, in 2020, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed the farm bills in hopes of regulating supply in the agriculture industry. These bills were made up of three main sections: Essential Commodities, Trade, and Price Assurance. These laws defined what it means for a good to be an essential commodity and set rules about how much of these goods can be stored by suppliers and at what prices. They also wanted to privatize agricultural trade and let companies farm through private contracts. While the bills were intended to boost production and trade of farm produce to everyone, some farmers worried that markets might hoard the produce and drive up prices. Hence, farmers took to the streets to protest, and successful it was, as the bills were eventually repealed.

 Host: However, these protests were not a result of immediate response towards the bills, but more of long time neglect and frustrations piling up within the farming community of India. To understand more about the long term causes that have been in play regarding this issue, I spoke with Mr Devinder Sharma, an expert in agriculture policy and long time advocate for human rights to be addressed in Indian agriculture. I first asked him to talk about why the bills negatively impacted the farmers and what were the short term factors which led to the protest.

Devinder Sharma (summary): The protests in 2020 were a result of a livelihood issue, with lots of losses faced by farmers and the agriculture industry in India. It is simply because there is a lack of budget allocation, pricing, and financial security given to farmers. Hence, the overall farmers crisis is a result of flawed economic thinking.

Host: As Mr. Shama ended on a thought provoking rhetorical question, I attempted to dig deeper into exactly why this problem has persisted. So, to follow up, I asked Mr Sharma if there were any long term implications to the issue. For background understanding, I will explain the context. In 1991, India had begun to pile up severe debt and found it difficult to balance payments. Trade had slowed and borrowing was becoming harder to finance. As a result, policymakers decided to liberalize the Indian economy and boost growth in industry. From here, Mr. Sharma will explain how it connects to the farmers issue.

Devinder Sharma (summary): Economic planners after the 1991 crisis decided to follow western economic design to target growth in industry as the primary form of economic growth. They failed to realize that 60% of the country produces agriculture. This caused a paradigm shift in the economy.

Host: Speaking about western countries, Mr Sharma followed up his points with some comparisons to agriculture in other countries.

Devinder Sharma (summary): Situations of farmers in India have been seen worldwide. The US farming population decreased during Nixon’s presidency due to a shift away from agriculture. The European Union also saw severe losses in farming, however they were given stimuli to help, which India has not done.

Host: However, there are indeed some other perspectives on this entire issue. To delve deeper into other takes, I spoke with Dr Nilanjan Banik, who is a professor of economics and an expert in econometric analysis. To begin, I asked him for his thoughts on why farmers are currently protesting and what persistent institutions have been in place causing this issue to continue long term.

Nilanjan Banik (summary): There are three types of farmers: small, medium, large where large farmers mostly in Punjab and Haryana, and there are water guzzling crops in these regions. To incentivize moving away from water guzzling crops governments are trying to remove MSP in these states but that is not any social issue. Only large farmers are protesting because they fear the government moving away from their own crops in Punjab and Haryana. Since 1991, agriculture has been on a decrease because people are moving from agriculture to industry, manufacturing. So the government has chosen for the economy to be driven mostly by industry and the big cities.

Host: From here we can see the other perspective of the issue: that the economy naturally progresses from agriculture to manufacturing as technology progresses and so in order to grow, the government incentivized labor to move into the big cities and work in areas such as manufacturing, textiles, and construction. After presenting these two different takes, it is important to understand what each side thinks the government should do to appropriately ensure human rights in agriculture are preserved. So, I asked Mr Sharma and Dr Banik the same. What follows is their responses, respectively.

Devinder Sharma (summary): To solve the issue, farmers need to be given a guaranteed price for their produce, and to do that economic thinking about how agriculture is a secondary mode of growth to industry needs to change. There is an improper proportion of the budget being allocated to agriculture with respect to the proportion of the population which uses agriculture as livelihood. This flawed planning was because policymakers wanted people to move out of agriculture into manufacturing, so they can get cheap labor done from farmers.

Nilanjan Banik (summary): Farmers are not benefitting from politics because economic policy is all about promoting industry right now, so it is an economic issue. Government should be promoting infrastructure in these impoverished areas to promote farming as opposed to creating pricing policies.
 
 

Host: So, with all things considered, I asked my guests to make one final statement they felt was most apt for the current situation involving human rights in Indian agriculture, and how to progress forward with policy and change. Their statements sum up their takes on the issue very well.

Devinder Sharma (summary): Until economists realize that copying the west and using this outdated model of macroeconomics is not gonna help, nothing will change.

Nilanjan Banik (summary): There is no human rights issue here, it is gonna take time but this is a natural progression from agriculture to industry.