The Hindu Business Line : Sowing hope in Vidarbha

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey; where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; a breath can make them, as a breath has made. But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, when once destroyed, can never be supplied." Oliver Goldsmith's immortal lines in the celebrated poem The Deserted Village may well exemplify the plight of a vast majority of farmers. At one level, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh's Rs 3,750-crore relief package is an earnest endeavour to resuscitate the enervated lives of tens of thousands of farmers in six districts of the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra; and at another, it is a good attempt at expiation — a price for past omissions and commissions.

The tragedy is, it has taken many seasons of blighted crops, years of unsteady (often, unremunerative) prices and suicides by several hundred cotton growers (over 600 at last count) in Vidarbha for the Government to wake up and train attention on this rain-shadow region. Integral to the latest relief package are interest waiver and debt rescheduling. While financial support is crucial, it can at best bring temporary relief. The long-term solution lies in strengthening all the necessary conditions for successful farming — input supplies, water management, agronomy, rural infrastructure, markets and so on. Sadly, if the past performance of the Maharashtra government is any guide, little is going to happen anytime soon.

The cotton economy has been doing rather well the last three seasons with rising production (250 lakh bales), higher yields (over 400 kg a hectare) and better prices. Indeed, India has begun to export cotton in a big way (35 lakh bales in 2005-06). Cotton farmers, say, in Gujarat or Punjab, are much better off growing the fibre. Obviously, the problem is specific to Vidarbha, a region to which successive State governments paid little attention. It is imperative that the Maharashtra government seriously reviews its cotton policy. Monopoly procurement, even in its present diluted form, must go at the earliest; the system has made the growers more dependent on the government, rather than allowing them to take informed decisions about what to grow as also when and to whom to sell. Policymakers have to understand the distinction between farmer `support' and farmer `empowerment'. Little attention has been paid to crop diversification and promotion of non-farm employment opportunities. Lack of commercial intelligence among policymakers has meant poor response to market dynamics.

The Prime Minister has announced other initiatives such as funds for speedy completion of pending irrigation projects, seed replacement programme and promotion of horticulture. The Centre is also committed to launching a special rehabilitation package to mitigate distress of farmers in 25 districts in suicide-prone Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. State governments have a critical role to play in the success of agriculture. Will they oblige?

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