Q.7 “For a remunerative farming India needs to first secure a healthy industrial expansion”. Give your comments in light of the changed economic contours of India.

Ans. There has been a strong case in the country to make farming a remunerative profession. In past few years, we see increase in the number of farmers’ suicide, too. Though, all such suicides can not be linked to the farm sector, but around 43 per cent have been directly or indirectly linked to it (NCRB, 2015). Experts have cited several reasons for the farm distress which may finally lead to suicides by the farmers. But one very important factor for it has been declining or non-remunerative farm practices in the country. Even for non-remunerative farming there are many reasons responsible but one major reason has been structural—the under-developed industrial sector. In recent years, we see a strong view emerging in favour of speedier industrial expansion for the purpose of making India’s farm sector remunerative. We may understand it in the following way:

• Presently, agriculture provides employment to 48.9 per cent of the population while contributes just 17.4 per cent of the GDP (Economic Survey 2015–16). This shows the non-remunerative condition of the farm sector.

• As farmers did not get other employment opportunities, the increasing rural population just remained piling up on the farm sector itself. This has been happening since decades.

• Several farmers keep migrating from the rural to urban sectors in search of jobs. But this makes a negligible dent in the size of population dependent on the sector.

• Had the industrial sector (particularly, the manufacturing sector) expanded in a healthy way together with skill generation among the farm community, the livelihood dependency on the farm sector could

have been checked and per capita income of the farmers enhanced like many other countries across the world.

• India has missed several decades in chalking out a time-bound policy framework which can systematically try to make farming a remunerative profession. The suitable steps in this regard are as given below:

• India needs to expand the job-creating (labour-intensive) manufacturing industries as the first step. We see India trying hard on this front with a variety of related policy initiatives—New Manufacturing Policy, Make in India, Start-up India, MUDRA Yojana, etc.

• Promoting agro-based industries will serve a great purpose in this regard. It will not only provide farmers additional income but also check the rural-urban migration which leads to expansion of slums, urban congestion, etc.

• A concerted effort is needed in the direction of making farmers get non- farm sector job. For this a two pronged strategy is needed—firstly, skilling the farm community and creating enough sources of employment. A special care is needed in this regard is that the new jobs should be created as locally as possible (so that the farm community does not need to travel to a typical urban settlement which has its own social hazards—a touch of socio-cultural planning is needed in this regard. The idea of ‘smart cities’ have potential to serve this purpose.

• Lately, land acquisition has emerged as a major roadblock in industrial expansion. A friendly land acquisition policy is needed which could be effective, non-partisan and speedier. A very timely step is coming from the government in this regard—’land leasing’ policy’ (NITI Aayog is supposed to come with the policy by mid-2016).

This why experts believe that the path to remunerative farming in India goes through industrial expansion.