Monsoon, Market and Middlemen as Key Ingredients to Agrarian Distress in Contemporary India: Prioritizing for Policy and Practice Based Interventions

India has been an agrarian society since ages but fails to be an agriculture economy especially post globalization. Farmers who have rightly been termed as ‘Anna-data’ i.e. ‘giver of food’ have been facing an existential crisis unprecedented in India post-independence. One just needs to look at the rich literature on farmer suicides to understand the shades of distress that a farmer household has been going through off late. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has been publishing the statistics for suicide in India since the 1950s. The same body has also been collecting and publishing the statistics for farmer suicides since 1995. More than three lakh farmers have committed suicides in country as per government’s own records only in past two decades. There has been varied responses by both government as well as non-government sector to the issue. However, there has been no substantial change to the existing situation. This paper dwells into the reasons of failing interventions to the issue. Results The paper revisits major factorswhich have resulted in an unprecedented farm crisis in the countryover recent decades. Analyzing secondary data by individual and institutional researchers, it draws conclusions towards farm crisis being an inherently environmental issue surrounding climate change, unsustainable practices of water management and genetically modified seeds -needs attention foremost from an environmental view point, whereas not to discount economic factors like market and middlemen being given due attention for a rights based approach and not just with politically sellable loan-waivers or ritualistic jargons of Minimum Support Prices (MSPs). Counseling and other support services too deserve their due but largely as complementary to environmental and economic factors and never at their cost.

The current farm downturn vs the 1920s and 1980s farm crises

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the current farm economic downturn and credit restructuring by comparing it with the 1920s and 1980s farm crises from both economic and regulatory perspectives. Design/methodology/approach This paper closely compares critical economic and regulatory aspects of the current farm downturn with two previous farm crises in the 1920s and 1980s, and equally importantly, the golden eras that occurred before them. This study compares key aggregate statistics in land value, agricultural credit, lending regulations, and also evaluates the situations and impacts on individual farmer households by using three representative case studies. Findings The authors argue that there are at least three economic and regulatory reasons why the current farm downturn is unlikely to slide into a sudden collapse of the agricultural markets: strong, real income; growth in the 2000s, historically low interest rates; and more prudent agricultural lending practices. The current farm downturn is more likely a liquidity and working capital problem, as opposed to a solvency and balance sheet problem for the overall agricultural sector. The authors argue that the trajectory of the current farm downturn will likely be a gradual, drawn-out one like that of the 1920s farm crisis, as opposed to a sudden collapse as in the 1980s farm crisis. Originality/value The review provides empirical evidence for cautious optimism of the future trajectory of the current downturn, and argues that the current downturn is much more similar to the 1920s pattern than the 1980s crisis.