#bizz buzz

A few days back, 10 indebted farmers from Hingoli district in Maharashtra made a unique but strange plea to the Chief Minister. They were willing to put their body organs to auction so as to pay back loans to the nationalised banks from the money so raised. They offered to sell their body organs, and in fact had a 'rate card' ready - Rs 90,000 for liver, Rs 75,000 for a kidney and Rs 25,000 for an eye. While this strange offer did create a ruckus in the Maharashtra Assembly, it was all forgotten after a few days. The tragedy being that anything that depicts agrarian distress is brushed away rather easily.

Against 10,881 farm suicides reported in 2021, NCRB recorded farm suicides to be 3.7 per cent higher in 2022 when a total of 11,290 farmers and farm workers took the fatal route. In 2022, of the 5,207 farmers who took their own lives, 208 were women. Similarly, of the 6,083 farm workers who committed suicide, 611 were women. Most suicides were reported from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Maharashtra alone reported 38 per cent of the total farm suicides, recording 4,248 suicides.

Budgetary support for agriculture, despite many schemes being introduced over the years, has failed to translate in a profitable income for the farming community. The economic design is so cleverly cast that although farmers are hailed as food providers or annadatas, what they receive as support is a pittance. This is the primary reason why agriculture continues to struggle against all odds, and with each passing year the level of distress only grows. As I have repeatedly said: little do the farmers realise that when they undertake cultivation they actually end up cultivating losses.

In an analysis of the farming sector in 54 of the major economies, including 38 members of the OECD, the latest report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that farmers in India have been continuously taxed since the year 2000. Although there are a few countries where agriculture is in the negative zone but all these countries have covered up the farm losses by budgetary support. In India, budgetary support has failed to make up for the continuing shortfall in farm incomes. Simply put, it means while all other sectors of the economy receive ample support through annual budgets, it is only farming that is left at the mercy of gods.

Across the country, rural wages have been on the decline, and even the agriculture gross value addition (GVA) has been the lowest since FY 2012, thus driving rural consumption down. The economic boom that we see is concentrated in the hands of the top 10 per cent. This is seen mostly through the lens of automobile sales. While the sale of four-wheelers is growing in the metros, with the maximum growth in the luxury segment, the sale of two-wheelers is still not picking up. It is generally expected that an increase in rural wages is what makes the rural population shift from bicycle to scooters or motorcycles.

A handout here and there is not going to work. What Maharashtra needs is an alternative package of holistic policies and related incentives that can sow the seeds of a revitalised agriculture. After all, if just 4 per cent area under sugarcane can draw 70 per cent of the groundwater, how will the doles help to rebuild farming unless the water balance is set right? But the bigger question is who will have the political courage to even talk of phasing out the area under water-guzzling sugarcane?

Over 1.7-crore farmers have been given the benefit of crop insurance at Re 1 but who will ensure that the insurance companies compensate them judiciously for the crop losses farmers suffer? We have seen reports of Rs 15, Rs 100 and Rs 200 and so on, paid to farmers for crop losses. Crop insurance is touted as a big benefit for farmers, but the data shows that private insurance firms have walked away with profits of Rs 57,619-crore since the scheme began in 2016. In reality, PM Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY) seems to be a scheme that ensures large profits for the bima companies.

I remember