A JOURNAL OF THE PRESS INSTITUTE OF INDIA ISSN 0042-5303 April-June 2018 Volume 10 Issue 2 Rs 60 Onus on Central Government to support agriculture CONTENTS • ‘Running like the deer How do Small Farmers Fare? Evidence from Village Studies is the name of the to escape the lion’ / recently released book edited by Sandipan Baksi and Madhura Swaminathan. Colonel R. Hariharan The book was released by Prof Yogindra Alagh at the Indian Society of Agricultural • Is moral policing part of the Eonomics Annual Conference in Barapani in Meghalaya. There media’s job? / Kuntala Das was a discussion on the book later with a group of development • Why does mainstream study students at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. media throttle consumer rights? / Sashi Nair spoke to Swaminathan about the book, about the small Sakuntala Narasimhan farmer, the farming community, and whether the plight of the average • The vulnerable still farmer in India had really changed for the better search for food and jobs / Bharat Dogra Seventy-one years after India gained Independence and after the Green • When schools lack even Revolution spearheaded by Prof M.S. Swaminathan, when novel methods the basics, where is hope?/ and technology were adopted to improve production, the plight of the average Afsana Rashid farmer in the country hasn’t really changed and the majority of small farmers • Where are the women continue to live in poverty, isn’t it? Why has this happened? in urban planning? / Ranjita Biswas You want me to summarise the book… (smiles). Actually, we didn’t use poverty (as a part of the study) because the Indian poverty level is also a matter of debate, • Childhood obesity – a threat to the future health / but there is no doubt that the average small farmer is not having a basic minimum Aditi Panda standard of living. Income is something that fluctuates every year. For example, • Child-friendly education in our study of some villages in West Bengal, the potato prices crashed and they is the need of the hour / went heavily into debt. But the previous two or three years had seen high prices Rakhi Ghosh and that was why more farmers were picking up potato cultivation. As you know, • Call to preserve a historic the growth of potato in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal has been very rapid. So building / Nava Thakuria it’s not that people are in poverty every year or that there has been no change. • An outstanding journalist, an We have not been able to study change very much, so I don’t want to give the intellectual and a nationalist/ impression that 70 years and nothing has happened. Things have happened. Mrinal Chatterjee One of the things that has happened is that the crops that have been grown have • The best in Bengali changed. For example, potato cultivation is widespread in UP and Bengal and cinema recognised / potato consumption has gone up such a lot in India because of production. But Shoma A. Chatterji we don’t have any price support system for potato. It is not coming under crops • 2001-2011 – the best that are listed by the Government of India as having the minimum support price. decade for Indian cricket / Even those that come don’t get it. There are so many intermediaries and the small Partab Ramchand potato farmer sells to the trader on his farm field. He needs the money because he • Tributes to S. Nihal Singh, spends so much – on potato seeds, fertilisers. Potato is so input intensive and the Shammi, Supriya Devi, Stephen Hawking, Mohan Deep, Sridevi (Continued on page 3) April-June 2018 VIDURA 1 FROM THE EDITOR Why do farmers in India get so little attention and sympathy? ost of the space in the city. Educational inequality is it is unhealthy to have two meals newspapers, on television increasing.” There are new schemes ten hours apart? Is it the lack of Mand on news publishing for crop insurance but how do we information, is it the constraints of websites is occupied by politics and expect a person with no schooling time or something else – these are all the mudslinging and ugliness to deal with such schemes and how questions to be studied,” she says. associated with it. Then there is will they be implementable, she Incidentally, How do Small space for crime and film and sport. wonders. What will happen is a few Farmers Fare? Evidence from Village So, why doesn’t anybody talk will benefit but the majority will be Studies is a spin-off of the work about Rural India and the lives of left out. “Education is the basic need, that Madhura Swaminathan has farmers? Farmers usually make the it is the future. They are now talking been doing with an organisation headlines only when they commit about e-auction and giving market called the Foundation for Agrarian suicide. It’s almost as if their lives intelligence to farmers, also, e-nam Studies, a group of academics in don’t matter. Agriculture in India or e-national market. How do we India interested in agrarian and is generally looked at as ‘farmers expect such important transactions rural issues. The book is written in a feeding the people’. Ironically, like price for your output to be simple way so that it’s assessable to nobody seems to care much about done online without electricity or the general reader. One of the good their welfare. Why such widespread Internet? The design for agricultural things is, she and her team head apathy? Education and health policy is coming from urban back to the villages and share the pertaining to farming communities, residents who have hardly gone to a findings with farmers and peasant critical for the well-being of farming village. We are getting carried away leaders, and also activists. In households, are not spoken or by technology without looking at 2005-06, MSSRF started a series of written about enough. Farmers find the underlying problems.” village surveys, starting in Andhra it difficult to educate their children I then asked Madhura Pradesh and the last one was in and access primary health care. I Swaminathan about health, infant 2016 in three villages of Tripura. was recently talking to Madhura mortality and malnutrition. Does Detailed household surveys were Swaminathan, chairperson of the farmer have access to the PHC? conducted in 25 villages across the MS Swaminathan Research Although this did not form part of ten states in India over ten years. Foundation, about her book, How the study, she referred to covering Although this book focuses only do Small Farmers Fare? Evidence from two villages in Mandya and Kolar. on one issue – small farmers, how Village Studies (detailed interview In the first survey done in May, the they are doing, their income levels, alongside), which is based on a hot season, most women had only indebtedness, their access to bank loans, cost of imports – there is study, and I asked her these very two meals a day. They took their considerable data, useful data that questions. first meal at around 11.30 am or 12, should be made available to the Madhura Swaminathan’s res- their breakfast comprised ragi or Government of India in the hope ponse helps give us an idea about mudde; the second meal was at night. that it will goad at least a few in how life is being lived in most When the team visited during the the administration to do what is parts of Rural India 70 years after harvesting season, they found the required make the lives of small, India’s Independence. In the 25 women were having three meals. marginal and landless farmers in villages she and her team visited “I think on average they are having India happier. and studied, 50 per cent or more two meals a day – the first at 12 of women above the age of 16 had Sashi Nair noon after getting up at 6, sweeping, [email protected] no years of schooling. “This is the milking the cow, cooking – they are state we are in, she says, “We see not sitting idle. It is going to have big differences – by caste, larger nutritional effects. We have not paid farmers who are now sending their attention to the question that you are children to hostels and schools in asking. Do these women know that 2 VIDURA April-June 2018 (Continued from page 1) – of all the governments that were has announced, then the Centre in place – was on productivity will withdraw all support. TN is and production, not on incomes. offering a higher price; Kerala is, So we have had new crops, higher for paddy. These states are now production, new technology. under attack; I don’t know what Tripura is an exception; everybody has happened now. It is political. there is organic because they didn’t It’s a way of saying that we are not have money for fertilisers. But you going to spend money; it’s a way go to the smallest village anywhere, of curtailing expenditure. Actually, Bengal or Andhra Pradesh, there agriculture is a state subject, so this is a huge amount of fertiliser, the is rather interventionist. latest seed whether it is BT Cotton or something else, so technology That agriculture is not being has spread, output has grown. given due importance is clear However, the price of output is low when we know that small farming while the price of input is rising, households are unable to generate so you are being squeezed – the incomes to maintain a minimum cost price squeeze.