K. P. Prabhakaran Nair

Yet another National Commission on Farmers. While it is heartening that the new dispensation at the Centre is serious about reviving the farm sector, it will take more than intentions to see the farmer getting a fair deal. Whether it is a firm stand on transgenics or hard bargaining at the WTO, political resolve and a steely stance will be vital, says K. P. Prabhakaran Nair.

On the horns of dilemma.

THE Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Sharad Pawar, has announced the setting up of a National Commission on Farmers under Dr M. S. Swaminathan. National Commission, was set up at the initiative of the former Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and was headed by Mr Som Pal, a former Minister of State for Agriculture and member of the Planning Commission.

In India, commissions have a strange way of coming into existence, often with much fanfare, and as often fading out of public memory. During the early part of the previous NDA regime, a "Task Force on Agriculture" was set up by the then Agriculture Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, but was later disbanded when Mr Ajit Singh joined the NDA and became Agriculture Minister. The country does not have the benefit of knowing what was accomplished by the Task Force in the three years it remained in force.

In India we are known to work at cross-purposes and the duplication of time, energy and money expended is not uncommon to our ethos. This time, the stakes are so high for Indian agriculture and the farmers that the nation cannot afford to take the Commission lightly, lest it becomes another exercise in futility, depleting in the bargain he national exchequer.

On a downhill

Ever since "economic reforms" were initiated, in the 1990s, agriculture has been going downhill steadily, the fall being steep during the NDA tenure. The annual rate of increase in foodgrain production had declined to a negative value as also and the compound rate of growth in agriculture.

This is not to say there was much to write home bout during the earlier Congress and United Front governments. Food production had already declined to 1.5 per cent while the annual rate of population growth was already hovering around 2 per cent and the nation was on a "Malthusian trajectory" wherein population growth starts to outstrip the rate of increase in food production.

India is home to more than a third of the world's hungry, at 800 million plus, and it was both morally unjustifiable and economically self-destructive when nearly 35 million tonnes of wheat and rice were exported at an average of Rs 5 a kg, which is below the price at which those below the poverty line could buy grain. Even as the nation exported grain, nearly 20 million were added to the list of undernourished. India's per capita food availability is about 350 grams against the 500 grams fixed by the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.

State of agriculture

To know why, let us examine the general state of Indian agriculture. Our arable land to the total land area is 51 per cent while the world average is just 11 per cent, which means that we have enormous landmass that can be cultivated. In other words, for every acre of land in the country, only half is farmed.

Both the US and Europe (the OECD countries) put together have about 10 million farmers who get a subsidy that works out to $1 billion a day, while we have ten times this number engaged in what is called "subsistence farming". One is not talking about the rich and super-rich farmers of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, who have large tracts of land, but the one- two-acre holders , including those in the States mentioned above, many of whom have gone bankrupt unable to sustain the "high input technology" of the so-called Green Revolution.

If one analyses the Report of the Advisory Committee on Flow of Credit to Agriculture, the mindset of commercial banks, regional rural banks and co-operative banks towards poor agriculturists becomes clear. While a corporate business house with political and financial clout can walk away from a bank with loans in crores of rupees at 6 per cent interest, the same institution will balk at lending Rs 50,000 to a poor farmer at 9 per cent. Where is the justice, then, for farmers? Can this new Farmers Commission correct this distortion or will it only stop with "recommendations"?

Global player?

Mr Sharad Pawar has said he intends to make India a "global player" in agriculture. When our share of trade in world agriculture is not even a pittance — just about 1 per cent — where is the question of becoming a global player?

Both the earlier Congress regime, which initiated the economic "reforms", and the NDA, which continued with them, dismantled the quantitative restrictions on more than 2,500 items to the economic disadvantage of India, at the bidding of Washington and the World Bank. Many of these items are of agricultural origin, which led to steep price fall in many products.

Indian market is flooded with Vietnamese pepper, Guatamalan cardamom, Sri Lankan coconut, Australian apples and Chinese pears. Is there a comparable reverse flow of farm products?

Take Japan, which has a tariff wall of 2000 per cent on rice. Can the Farmers Commission do anything about it? The only way we can rectify these trade-distorting tariff structures is through an Act of Parliament, inspired by political and public resolve. But will such resolve be displayed?

The rhetoric of the Farmers Commission may not be enough when it comes to hard bargaining at the World Trade Organisation. The route to Indian farmers getting a fair deal is not through such commissions alone, but through political strength. Can we expect the political leadership to adopt the required steely stance?

Land, the key

If one goes to the countryside, it becomes clear that it is the inadequate access to land and the insecurity of land tenure that keeps large sections in poverty and hunger. Nearly 70 per cent of the population is made up of such disadvantaged Indians. Can India embark on a radical land redistribution programme? These are some questions that beg immediate answers. Nearly 400 irrigation projects have been languishing for the last 15 years. If completed speedily, they would cover 21.5 million hectares of additional land for farming. Investments in minor irrigation programmes, including rainwater harvesting, are only talked about than implemented seriously. Now doing the rounds is the talk of the mammoth Rs 5,60,000-crore river linking project which can spell environmental, economic, social and even political disaster.

Another important aspect is warehousing facilities, which most farmers, big or small, do not have access to, leading to distress sale of produce. New Delhi must promote the setting up of warehouses close to farms, so that farmers can use a "receipt system" to store the grain and sell when prices are good.

Biotechnology questions

The current Chairman of the Farmers Commission is also the Chairman of the Task Force on Application of Biotechnology in Agriculture. He might like to look at the following suggestions so that there is a synergy between what is done by the Farmers Commission and the Biotechnology Taskforce.

The high input technology of the Green Revolution, originally inspired by the US, has petered out and our agricultural scientists, primarily the plant breeders, are at a dead-end in their quest to break the yield barrier in important staples such as rice and wheat. They are being nudged by the US, now the leader in genetically modified (GM) crops, known as transgenics, to turn to biotechnology but whose environmental consequences are not known.

Sir David A. King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, who was recently in India, remarked thus: "GM is a new technology, hence careful regulation is needed." Dr Andrew Kimbrell, Director of the Centre for Technology, Washington, was more forthright when he said: "Biological pollution (resulting from biotechnology) will be the environmental nightmare of the 21st century."

India is the homeland of rice but we are being nudged to grow transgenic rice. In Orissa and the North-East, we have extensive and unpolluted rare rice germplasms, which form the most important reservoir of rice biodiversity.

Once we start growing GM rice, these rare germplasms will face the danger of irretrievable biological pollution and the country risks losing invaluable plant wealth, the consequences of which the future generations will have to bear.

Mexico, a small country in the backyard of the US, had the courage to stop growing transgenic maize and also prohibit any research with transgenic maize, because that country is world's most important centre of the origin of corn (maize).

The history of the Green Revolution is that it has benefited, primarily, the land- and capital-rich farmers. Will a "gene revolution", leading to an "Evergreen Revolution" repeat the old story?

Future generations may have to pay a high price, as we are doing now vis-à-vis polluted groundwater, DDT-contaminated milk in lactating mothers, lead-loaded fish, and copper-loaded grapes... Will the Commission on Farmers address these issues too?

(The author, a former National Science Foundation Professor, Royal Society, Belgium, can be contacted at nair_kpp @yahoo.com)

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