Do Indian Farmers need technology? Tavleen Singh

[Guest guest]

Nirguna wrote:

 

> Also attaching a story/ view by a well known columnist in India about how

> necessary it is to give farmers tractors

 

[Here's the article. As I said, I believe that Vandana Siva, Arundhati Roy and

E.F. Schumacher have a more realistic perspective on the futility of

capital-intesive solutions to try to help Indian farmers. ys, hkdd]

 

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India Today magazine 18 December 2000

 

Fifth Column

 

MULTINATIONAL MYTHS:

 

WHAT THE INDIAN FARMER NEEDS IS FOREIGN TECHNOLOGY, NOT POLITICAL GIMMICKRY

 

by Tavleen Singh

 

Farmers are suddenly hot politically. So hot that our current Parliament

session

began with Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav fighting over who should speak

first for India's farmers. Yadav claimed first right on grounds of his peasant

origins but if he had anything more worthwhile to say than Sonia nobody knows.

It was the polemics that became the floor show. And if this was not cabaret

enough we then had Parliament's most famous windbag, Renuka Chaudhury, driving

to Parliament House on a tractor and effectively trivialising the issue. The

sight of her in green silk and gold anklets mounted on a tractor was considered

more newsworthy than anything said inside the House. Most Indian farmers cannot

afford tractors, so this was a cruel piece of symbolism but Ms Windbag did

India's farmers a favour by inadvertently drawing attention to how little even

MPs know about their problems. The gist of the Congress' case, and that of

others who speak for farmers, appears to be that cheap agricultural imports

will

kill the Indian farmer.

 

Interesting. Especially when you consider that neither our MPs nor our

environmentalists-in their constant battle against multinationals-appear to

have

noticed that the Indian farmer has already been killed. He has been destroyed

by

policies so bizarre that much of his produce gets eaten by rats in government

warehouses or rots before it can be used. To give you only one statistic: India

wastes more fruits and vegetables (40 per cent of annual production) than the

United Kingdom eats in a year.

 

This shocking waste in a country where nearly half our people live on less than

a dollar a day is due to government policies so mistaken that in the interests

of helping the farmer they have actually harmed him. Since this has nothing to

do with foreigners, multinationals or the WTO, it hardly ever arouses passion

or

polemics.

 

It is time that it did. First, allow me to paint you a picture of the average

Indian farmer. He owns between three and five acres of land and one acre earns

him Rs 5,000 a year on an average and Rs 10,000 if it is a really good year.

Even if you take the higher figure and double it, you can see the pavement

shopkeepers-and perhaps beggars in Mumbai-make more money. So when rich

businessmen and learned policy makers talk of the urgent need to tax

agricultural income they should keep in mind that very few farmers earn enough

to enter the tax bracket. We also hear a great deal about the subsidies on

fertilisers, electricity and water that farmers supposedly enjoy. The truth is

that there is no rural area in India that has guaranteed supplies of

electricity

or sufficient water for irrigation. And 40 per cent of our villages is still

not

connected with roads. Have you ever heard an uproar in Parliament over this

outrageous state of affairs?

 

No, because farmers' problems appear to be uninteresting unless we can drag

multinational companies and the WTO into the discussion. It is not just MPs of

socialist bent who rage against this mythical foreign invasion but even

non-governmental organisations which screech constantly about preserving our

"bio-diversity". Talk to a farmer, though, and he will tell you that what is

desperately needed in the farm sector is foreign technology: new seeds, new

pesticides and new farming methods. We do not have them because in the past 50

years, government policies have emphasised only the importance of wheat and

rice. Our agricultural universities have concentrated their research here as

well so other crops-oilseeds, pulses, maize-have suffered terribly.

 

Farmers need new technologies wherever they come from. When Pepsi Cola wanted

potatoes and tomatoes grown in Punjab they found local quality poor. They

brought in new technologies to produce better crops and the farmers benefited.

 

Foreign fruits and vegetables are now flooding our bazaars but there is no

reason why Indian farmers should not be able to compete if they are provided

the

necessary infrastructure: roads, cold storages and modern means to transport

goods. They also need credit and crop insurance, something our nationalised

financial institutions have miserably failed to provide.

 

In Delhi and Mumbai liberalisation is a fashionable word but the Indian farmer

continues to be in the clutches of a state-controlled market. Ask a farmer what

needs to be done about the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and he will tell you

it needs to be abolished. This year FCI godowns were bursting at the seams with

double the stock they need (42.25 million tonnes of rice and wheat against a

requirement of 24.30 million tonnes). They did not want more foodgrain. Farmers

were forced to make distress sales but nobody talks about freeing the market.

There is then much to talk about in Parliament but we need a serious

discussion,

not a cabaret.