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Pauperisation of Farmers: Punjab sits on Powder Keg
Gobind Thukral

THESE are upsetting facts that stare anyone who has even a slight consideration for Punjab. In the next five to ten years, marginal farmers owning one hectare or less would disappear and join the large army of unemployed. The number of unemployed, educated or uneducated is already a neat 24 lakh. In hey days of Green Revolution in 1971, they were 5.17 lakh strong farming families. Small farmers owning up to two hectares would meet the same destiny in to ten years later. This together account for 45 per cent of the farming households. Same period would witness medium farmers also suffer, but marginally. Those who now own large [4 to-10 hectares] and extra large holdings [above 10 hectares] would devourer them.

That is the logic of intensive high cost commercial farming where the land holding size is dwindling.  Farmers can no longer afford to upgrade technology and provide costly inputs necessary to stay in the business. Neither the new technology nor the intensive farming ought to share the blame. These are the consistent adverse terms of trade which are turning farmers into paupers every passing day. Already  4.35 lakh tractors, 1.45 lakh seed drills, 5.40 lakh sprayers, 3.25 lakh threshers, 7300 harvester combines and 9.5 lakh tube wells mean a neat investment of over Rs 20,000 crores. What a staggering sum for an occupation where suicides are becoming too common! Farming demands heavy investments that marginal and small farmers just do not have. Only Monsanto and Reliance can afford farming and make money. 

Green Revolution has assured food security as well protected the independence of the country. India is no longer a starving nation, though some economists wrongly tend to declare it a food surplus and advocate export. They forget those 20 crores who get one meal a day. If our policies and their implementation had taken care of the millions of poor, Punjab farmers would have also got a better deal too. Some in the business of politics or in bureaucracy and of course in commerce have had a field day. The big posh bungalows, five star hotels and upcoming malls make it amply clear. In India otherwise, the average per capita expenditure  of farm households was Rs 503 in 2003, just Rs 75 above the poverty line. Since it is average across the board, it hides huge inequalities. In 2003, the collective worth of 311 billionaires is neat Rs 3.64 trillion. This is up by 71 per cent from a year earlier when it was Rs 2.13 trillion only. Punjab too presents similar stark inequalities.   It may have lost to some other states in per capita income; it leads in the consumption of Indian made foreign liquor and all other consumer durables.   Green Revolution has pushed up the demand for essential and ostentatious commodities to an unprecedented level. It is a rich state where the majorities are paupers. 

Out of total geographical area of 50, 36,000 hectares, Punjab cultivates 84.13 per cent that is 42, 37,000 hectares. It can not stretch further and also it is reaching limits in intensive farming. Paddy, the crop that helps many farmers survive has been a costly affair as combined with wheat, this rotation has meant 98 blocks out of 138 blocks turn black with brackish water. Farmers have been resorting to deepening of tube wells, adding to burden of costs. Also, the heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides has meant more disease like cancer. Clearly, this pattern of farming causing heavy pollution is ecologically unsustainable. 

The villain of the piece is pricing mechanism followed by successive governments. In 1967 a quintal of wheat fetched Rs 76 and diesel cost was 71 paisa a liter. One kg of wheat was equal to one liter of diesel.  Now one kg of wheat sells for Rs 7 and diesel cost Rs 30 per liter. A farmer has to sell 4.25 kgs of wheat to buy one liter of diesel.  This is true of all other inputs or commodities the farmers buy. Cost of other inputs has always outpaced the price of what the farmers pay to live by.  

From time to time, the calculations by the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices present a dismal picture.  1998 estimate showed that return of paddy and wheat from one hectare was just Rs 7300. If the average size of a small farmer is taken at 1.61 hectare, the return is Rs 12,000 for two crops, well below the minimum wage necessary for survival. Even with best possible crops or combination of crops, the returns are always small. During the last ten years, yields from wheat have marginally increased, those from paddy, sugarcane, maize and potatoes have remained stagnant and in case of cotton these have declined considerably.

Increased mechanization and heavy investments have pushed the farming community into heavy debt. Social spending the ‘demonstration pressure’ too has contributed to that. A 1999 study found that small and marginal farmers depend heavily on private borrowing which they were unable to pay on time and thereby incurring higher compound interest and thus land up indebt trap. Thus study placed the total debt at Rs 5,600 crore. A recent study has pushed the figure to Rs 14,000 crore. 

Liberalisation since 1990s has meant   as vigilant experts warn that the farmers have been pulled by the increasing demands of the market and the state into a nexus of relationships that extend beyond the farm to national and international level. This relationship may not be new as market has always been dead set against the cultivators, yet the entry of multinationals and under the new WTO agenda, only Pauperisation is assured.

Punjab is part of India and gains or suffers because of the policies or their implementation

Vulnerability to disasters is directly related to relative socio-economic status. Poor, marginalized and underprivileged segments of societies are always found to be more vulnerable. When a gender perspective is added to this general conclusion, women’s combination of productive, reproductive and household maintenance responsibilities places them at significantly different risks and stresses as compared to men’s. Unfortunately, these differences are seldom recognized and mitigated.

The components of vulnerability include elements of livelihood security and assets, personal health and access to basic needs such as food, water and shelter, and extent of social organization, preparedness and safety nets.  Gender is a pervasive factor affecting various aspects of vulnerability in societies. It shapes division of social and economic resources in a way that women generally have lower access to all forms of capital, and are, therefore, more vulnerable to disasters than men. While it can be seen that poor households are likely to suffer most in disasters in rich and poor countries alike, these disadvantages are even more acute for women and for households supported by women alone.

Those who have better access to information, cash, rights to means of production, tools and equipment and the social networks to mobilise resources from outside the households are less vulnerable to hazards and may be in a position to avoid disaster. They are generally able to recover more quickly.