DNA Edit: Complications Ahead

With the ‘Long March’ and the farmer protests over, the Maharashtra government must now sit back and mull over the implications of their promises. Granted, with a fierce Opposition, continuous media attention and public support very much on the farmers’ side, there was little room for the government to manoeuvre, but they must realise that the problem has simply been deferred, not solved.

Maharashtra’s rural economy is in crisis and no promises of deferment or even withdrawal of loans can fix that. Thanks to uneven rainfall and slowdown in agriculture-related activities, the Economic Survey for the state shows that GDP for Maharashtra will grow at 7.3% instead of the previous year’s 10%.

This is a crisis for the state, and the country, as Maharashtra contributes the most to India’s GDP.  The government has done its best to contain the problem. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented what was seen as a very ‘farmer friendly’ Budget this year and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and his government has so far pardoned loans of nearly 60,000 farmers so far. But loan waivers are not the solution, what Maharashtra’s farmers really need, among other things, is easier access to working capital, investment in other aspects of farming apart from irrigation — such as marketing and storage.

Much of the produce of Maharashtra’s farmers perish as they reach the mandi due to lack of adequate storage facilities. Other problems include calculations of the MSP — Minimum Support Price — which is the price at which the government has to buy the crop from the farmer.

However, agricultural experts say that due to the high input costs of seeds and fertilisers, Maharashtra’s farmers do not get the full benefit of MSP as other farming states do. The solution, some say, is to create different MSPs for different states, depending on input costs to better help the farmer.

Apart from all this, the most urgent issue is the need to increase rainwater conservation in rural Maharashtra. Most of the farms in the region are ‘drylands’ and programmes by all state governments have failed to provide or conserve water.

Such solutions are long term and will not yield results straight away. But all parties  — the government and the Opposition  — can and should realise that they must act now and reach some kind of consensus as the farming crisis is only likely to get worse. But already the political battles are being played out.

The farmers that made the ‘Long March’ were led by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), an organisation affiliated to the CPM who after its drubbing in Tripura is all the more likely to pressurise the BJP on the farming crisis, not just in Maharashtra, but in states with large farming communities, such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

The political battle for the Indian farmer’s vote has just begun, but sadly he and the common man will end up being the loser unless some real changes are made.