Why are the farmers so adamant and taking Modi government’s assurances with a pinch of salt? The answer is well known to all farmers because PM Modi have been in the habit of promising extravagantly, such as “doubling farmers’ income by 2022”, which proved to be a rhetorical trick played on our land tillers, about three years before the Lok Sabha Election 2019.

One can hate the pliability of bureaucrats, but it is a truth. They generally don’t have guts to say the truth to the political leaderships in general, and a leader like PM Narendra Modi in particular. That is why when PM Narendra Modi announced “doubling of farmers’ income”, the entire bureaucracy forwarded logics that it could be done. The Government think tank NITI Aayog then started working on how it could be achieved. By the end of 2018 they came out with 14 volume of research work to suggest ways and means to double farmers’ income. Thereafter, Lok Sabha elections 2019 were held and PM Modi won the second term. Nothing noteworthy was done to double farmers’ income, and there was no end to their sufferings, on account of ever rising input costs, low MSP not sufficient to offset higher input costs, and a distorted agriculture market in which middlemen, corporate, businesses thrive at the cost of farmers.

The distortion in the agriculture market has been the result of certain amendments in other legislations, which allowed legal hoarding of large quantities of yields by the corporate and big businesses, who artificially increase the cost of yields in the open market, while farmers get only a fraction of the market price. In absence of legal guarantee of MSP for their yields, farmers are usually compelled to sell their produce at much lower costs, sometimes even much less than the input costs.

Now, when the farmers are at war path, Centre has got published through an unknown official the reason as to why government can’t afford to give legal guarantee for MSP for all crops. Governments do such things and therefore in is not a surprise. Chief argument of the government official was that the cost of entire agricultural yield in the country is around Rs40 lakh crore. If there would be legal guarantee for MSP, the government would need around Rs 45 lakh crore for this scheme alone. It would adversely impact the other sectors of the economy and the development goals of the country. Such an argument has been forwarded on behalf of the government to create an environment in the country so that the Modi government could be saved from the responsibility of saving the farmers.

One can ask simple questions, such as, why the corporate and businesses would be enriched further at the cost of farmers? Why such officials allow amendment in even the Essential Commodity Act to legally enable people to hold large quantities of agricultural yields to sell at higher prices while farmers are getting only a little for their produce?

It was ridiculous for the Modi government to have come out with three controversial farm laws in 2020 intending to bring Corporate to the farms, while ignoring the need to correct the distortion in the agricultural market and keep the rising input costs for the farm sector under check. It resulted in stiff opposition by farmers, who continued their sit-in protests over one year in 2020-21, leading to withdrawal of the controversial farm laws but not before death of about 750 farmers. Numerous cases were registered against them and no compensation were given to families of dead farmers despite government’s written assurance. Farmers felt cheated and hence the agitation.

As for the MSP is concerned the government sets MSP at 1.5 times the Cost of Production (CoP), where the Cop is A2+FL. A2 covers all paid-out costs directly incurred by the farmer in cash and kind on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, hired labour, leased-in land, fuel, irrigation etc. FL includes an imputed value of unpaid family labour. Farmers are no happy with this.

MS Swaminathan Commission has given a different formula which Modi government doesn’t want to accept, though hypocritically it has just given the agricultural sciences veteran who died last year, the Bharat Ratna. Swaminathan Commission has given C2+50 per cent formula. Farmers have been demanding to accept this formula since C2 included not only A2+FL but also the interest on the value of owned capital assets, rent paid for leased-in land, or the rental value of owned land. Swaminathan submitted his report in 2006 and suggested that the solution to the farm crisis was to provide remunerative prices to the farmer.

Why should then Modi government refuse remunerative price to farmers? Especially, when it had boasted that earlier governments did not care for the farmers, and he would be doubling farmers income by 2022. Further, on July 12, 2022, Centre had notified about formation of a committee to “promote zero-budget-based farming” and one of the claimed intents was to bring transparency and efficiency in the allocation of MSP. However, no representative from Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) leading the 2020-21 agitation was included, say the agitating farmer leaders. They say therefore the claimed transparency was also a falsehood, because three SKM representatives were supposed to be included in the Committee. Centre said that SKM did not nominate representatives to the committee.

It is in this backdrop of mistrust between the Modi government and agitating farmers under the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political) and Kisan Mazdoor Morcha, a third round of talk is scheduled to take place soon. Let us hope that the Modi government takes care of the interest of the farmers, and does not insist on pushing corporate and business interests only, as it has been doing in the last 10 years with making false and unmet promises to farmers. (IPA Service)