Ahead of the full annual budget for 2019-2020 which is going to be presented in parliament on Friday next, central government has constituted a high-powered committee for transformation of agriculture and raising farmers’ income. The nine-member panel, comprising the CMs of various states will suggest  policy measures and submit its report within two months. The compulsion behind this step can be attributed to the mounting expectations to address the agrarian crisis and along with it all eyes will also be now on the general budget to see how this rising concern is met.
Agriculture crisis is really a big issue and there can’t be any denial that farmers are in distress in most parts of the country which was also a big electoral topic during the last general elections. The figures of farmers’ suicides have reached alarming levels and have caused much furore in the media too.  But agriculture has always been the primary sector in India economy  which is  still  agrarian in character and  in spite of integrating itself into  globalization, close to 70% of the population still depends on agriculture for livelihood.  Although  the  country has seen  a  Green Revolution and  is now self-sufficient in food production with  technological advancements in farming as well,  the ground-level realities are too conspicuously visible  to be overlooked. Among the various contributing factors for the present woes of the farmers with region wise variations in magnitudes, over and above, it is the  instability in their incomes due to risks involved in production, market and prices that can be singled out at the outset. Images of farmers destroying their produce for want of adequate prices appear with regularity in newspapers and media and lamentably it is primarily the segment of small and marginal farmers having no say over prices, who are the hardest hit. Then there are the perennial  issues of  drought, flooding & unseasonal rains,  pests, diseases, shortage of inputs like seeds and irrigation which result in low productivity and declining yield. And even if agricultural credit has come a long way, a parallel presence  of  the system of  informal sources of credit through moneylenders can’t be denied either. The country, even  after seven decades of  independence  hasn’t been able to present the farmers with an ideal ecosystem that would cater to their basic post-harvest necessities like  better collection, storage, transport and distribution to the markets.
Getting out of the current crisis and attaining the goal of a double income figure for farmers will be a challenging task according to most experts. It will thus be interesting to see how the duo- the annual budget and the farm panel report  respond to these agrarian realities. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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